And as these differences of opinion between Christians have arisen on these political matters, some of us might be (or have been) tempted to simply chalk these disagreements up to the typical culprits of divisions in Church in other matters, such as biblical ignorance or theological subterfuge. In these non-political cases, we would make our claims based on our biblical arguments and theological understandings and be quick to dismiss as wrong anyone who has a differing opinion. We would then view these political issues in the same manner that we view those other issues that are contained within the Church and its theology, and we would readily divide ourselves further with the same power of conviction.

However in these political matters, we should not be so quick to judge and to divide, for I believe that there is something else at work in our time that distinguishes this battle of political opinion from disagreements and divisions of the Church in times past. For, though it is almost cliché to say such a thing, I do in fact believe that we are presently living in a unique and transitional time in our country. It is not a time of outward revolution or change in government (at least in structure), but it is a radical and visible change in the moral climate of our country. And it is changing quickly.

Concerning this matter, there is an excellent article on the Gospel Coalition’s site, and the author makes a succinct but strikingly accurate summary of the personal moral axioms of the present generation:

1. God made me this way.
2. He wouldn’t deny my natural desires.
3. And I don’t have to explain myself to you or anyone else.

By looking at these statements that are increasingly depicting the convictions of persons in our society, it is not difficult to see how the moral climate is changing so rapidly. If a person, whatever his personal vice, convinces himself to believe that he was born / created a particular way and that God would not to create him in such a way so as to frustrate his natural desires, then it is only “natural” for him to practice those things and to confer his convictions upon others in the society with similar and different personal vices. We see this perhaps most clearly in the self-righteous mantras of tolerance and the banding together of licentious groups who would otherwise have no association with one another excepting for their unity in silencing whatever opposition exists that preaches that their desires and practice of them are immoral and wrong.

They not only do such things but give approval to those who practice them (Romans 1:32).

For, as is also becoming increasingly apparent, the human conscience is a fickle thing and is only as good as the knowledge upon which it rests. And as this rebellion against the knowledge of revealed morality grows, it only fuels the suppression of God and his revelation while giving greater and greater credence to the licentious circles who mutually pat each other on the back. It a spiraling circle into moral decay that is garnering strength exponentially, and nothing short of divine intervention will slow or alter its course.

A shift in the people is a shift in the government
It is upon this realization that I base my aforementioned belief that we are in fact living in a very unique and transitional time in the history of our nation. It is also for this reason that I believe that we as Christians are having trouble coming to a consensus on such political issues as Amendment One. For as the government that is “by the people and for the people” starts reflecting the changing will and morality of the people, so too will there be a transition in the political regime. No, leaders will not be forcefully overthrown nor will new foundational documents be written, but in a country where political power is derived from the people, the country goes as the people go. As the country is turning person-by-person against revealed morality and to “whatever is right in his own eyes,” the government is shifting from one in which Christians can participate and have influence into a “tolerant” dictatorship in which they cannot. And as we shift from this present regime to the future regime, the debates over the Christian’s place in government will lessen and lessen, not by choice, but by the force of the will of the majority.

At the present time, some may rejoice that revealed morality triumphed in the passage of Amendment One, but it is hard to imagine that there is anyone who believes that that amendment will stand for long. It was a last ditch effort by the diminishing majority who believe in universal morality, and as their number becomes smaller, there will come proposals to repeal it. It is not a matter of “if” but “when.”

As these times come upon us (and I sincerely believe that they are), we all will have to reconsider our roles as Christians in the government of the United States. There was a time in our history when Christians held considerable sway over the direction of the country, and it was then rightly seen as a Christian duty to conform our laws to revealed morality. But the time is coming, probably within the next decade or two, when the Christian’s part in the governance of this country will be brought to naught. What will be our response in those days? Will we persist on politically as a picketing group with our own suppressed rights, or will we retreat back into the quietness and peace of living out our lives? Will we attempt to regain control of this country “under God,” or will we become as the Church under a hostile dictator?

We, the Church, will have to come to terms with these questions and with others that have yet to be asked, and I am curious as to how we will collectively respond. Nevertheless, despite our response, there are undoubtedly terrible times ahead, yet, even so, I cannot help but believe that the change in America will be for our good, whether we see it as good or not.

On the other side, opponents of the amendment have and still are railing against the will of the majority to “suppress the rights” of the minority. Their chief tenet is that all unions, be it between a man and woman, a man and man, a man and three women, a mother and son, a sister and brother, a goat owner and goat, etc. should receive equal benefits under the law.

Well, maybe not.

I doubt that even the anti-amendment community in all of their “tolerant” glory would support the legalization of marriage within immediate families, polygamy, or bestiality. Or maybe they would. But assuming that they would not, would they not be the new bigots against the Oedipuses and the goat-lovers of the country? What would give them the right to withhold marriage benefits from the sister-wife / brother-husband community or from unions between adults and consenting children? Even those who support legal unions between homosexuals would draw a line somewhere beyond themselves, effectively stripping the “rights” of those who do not fit into the comforts of their hetero/homo marriage model.

And while everyone is talking about rights, who gives anyone the right to do anything? The problem when anyone starts claiming that he or she has a right to something, whatever it is, he (whether he knows it or not) is appealing to some source or Being that is greater than him who has given him those rights. Thomas Jefferson knew this, for, though he was not a Christian, he wrote that we as humans are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. Rights are endowed, given, granted, bestowed, etc. Therefore, to claim a right, one must be given that right.

As far as the homosexual marriage debate is concerned, I scarcely doubt that any against the amendment would look to God for those rights, for most do not believe in a specially revealed God, and, if they do, they would be hard-pressed to find religious writings that do anything but condemn homosexuality. Perhaps they could appeal to Nature, but, then again, Nature also preaches against homosexuality.*

What about government? Government could indeed confer rights upon individuals, and even (against God and against Nature) grant the benefits of marriage to homosexual unions.

But in the state of North Carolina, government did not.

The homosexual community has appealed to the state for rights, but those rights were not granted to them. Therefore, no one has taken rights from anyone. The rights of marriage were not their rights to begin with, so maybe we could all drop the references to “rights”? Probably not.

Personally, I wish that marriage did not have secular benefits or consequences. I wish that marriage was strictly a religious institution and the state had little or nothing to do with it. If these things were so, this would never be debate. Yet, these things are so and are likely never to change. And as long as these things are so, I will never lose a night’s sleep over a group of people not having rights that neither God nor Nature has granted to them.

* Imagine if everyone in the world were homosexual, the human race would be extinct in one generation. Also, the equipment it incompatible. Have you ever tried to plug a 3.5 mm female cord into the female headphone jack on iPod? Spoiler alert: you won’t hear your music.

What are the ramifications of the outcome? The immediate secular ramifications seem small, but the outcome has the potential to have much larger ones in the future. For while the failure of the amendment to be ratified does not change the fact that homosexual unions are still illegal in the state of North Carolina, it does leave open the possibility that the state’s courts could rule the present law unconstitutional and effectively repeal it.

But, honestly, I am not too concerned about the secular ramifications at the present or in the future. The one thing, however, that I am concerned about and have been trying to wrap my brain around since this debate began is how the failure of this amendment to pass would affect the Church. And with all of the strong and super-passionate support for the amendment from the pulpits, from the seminaries, from congregations, and from various and sundry blogs, you would think that I would have a laundry list of negative effects of the amendment’s failure to pass upon the Church.

But I don’t.

What I have read, over and over again, are statements that biblical marriage is between a man and a woman and that homosexuality is sin. Well, yes, and I do not think many who have read the Bible honestly would argue with that. But, is it not also biblically true that salvation is of the Lord, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves, Jesus was born of a virgin, and lust is the spiritual equivalent of adultery? Of course it is, but why are we not seeking legislation to affirm these things? Do you not know that the sin of unbelief is far more treacherous and immoral than the sin of homosexuality? Why are we not drawing up legislation against not believing in Jesus Christ?

The chief motivator, I believe, behind this evangelical push for the amendment’s ratification has little to do with biblical conviction or the supposed negative consequences to the Church, and much more to do with our personal desire for it to pass. We simply do not want homosexuals to be recognized by our state as married. We do not want to have to explain to our children why we believe that Mr. and Mr. Smith are living in sin, and why we believe and live differently as Christians. We do not want to live in a generation where the Family Channel’s slogan is “A New Kind of Family,” and where we can accidentally plan our dream Disney vacation during Gay Week. We simply do not want to live in a generation and a country where everyone does what is right in his own eyes.

And, honestly, I do not think that there is anything wrong with these desires. Despite the means, there is something admirable in wanting to live in a generation and a country that fears God and hallows his name. Yet, there comes a point when we as the people of God must swallow the hard pill of reality and realize that we are not living in such a generation or a country. Perhaps there was a time in the history of our country when that was true, but it is not this time, and no amount of legislation will bring it about. We who have such convictions and desires are quickly becoming the minority, and while there may be (in our eyes) a small victory with the possible ratification of Amendment One, it will be a short-lived one. For this country, for good or bad, is governed by the morality of the majority, and the passage of Amendment One today will only likely lead to a repeal in an Amendment Two.

This is not to say that the failure of the amendment to pass would not have consequences upon the Church, but those consequences are no different than those of living in a wicked society. Those consequences are inevitable. For whether or not the amendment passes, the growing, wicked world around us will always view Christians as intolerant, self-righteous, hypocritical, etc., and, with or without the passing of the amendment, it is very plausible that sermons, evangelism, and theological discussions will one day in the near future become hate speech with legal consequences.

And, unfortunately, there is little that can be done about it.

I know this because Jesus promised us that we would suffer. I know this because the apostle Paul told us that our suffering is a gift to us from Christ. And, now, despite the outcome of today’s vote, the direction our country seems determined. We may comfort ourselves today with the wall we have erected against the coming tsunami, but that wall will scarcely hold it once it has reached the shore. Our only course of action, I believe, is to pray and to become the Church we were called to be. For in that time, buildings will fall and programs will cease; choirs will not sing, and Awanas will be but a faint memory. In that time, all we will have is the Church, and that time will not be the time to figure out what the Church truly is.

For though it is more than evident that the institution of marriage is far older than any secular government and was instituted by no one other than God himself, the fact remains that as a society today, marriage is chiefly a secular institution. While others have said that marriage is an institution created by God and recognized by the state, it is not that simple. For if that were true, no one could bypass the church and be married in a courthouse by a magistrate, and there would be no secular ramifications for being married, except for perhaps the changing of one’s legal name. Yet, these things do exist and so demonstrate that the once religious institution of marriage has evolved into something that can elude religion entirely.

Therefore, when we go to the ballot box to cast our lot with others regarding “marriage” in the state of North Carolina, we are doing so in the efforts of preserving or changing a state-based institution not a religious one. And as such, the outcome has little to no consequences for the Church, for the state has no power over her. Christ alone is her Lord, and no vote consisting of the righteous and the wicked will ever sway his decree.

As for the state itself, I have long put aside the vision of the Separatists who longed to establish Christ’s government in the New World, and have accepted the Christ-given role for the Church to be light in the darkness of the world (including wicked governments and their citizens). As for that role, no piece of legislation can ever remove it, nor will any piece of legislation ever promote it. It is our duty to be that city on the hill, and only we ourselves can deter or uphold that role. In fact, the light that we are called to be shines all the more brighter when the world around us makes itself darker, and we should see these times as opportunities to shine, not through moral legislation and law-based, prescriptive righteousness, but through love, peace, and acceptance knowing that God alone can change the heart of the homosexual, et al, not Christian political activism.

That said, what should the Christian’s role be in the Amendment One vote? Some would say that you are not doing your Christian duty by not voting for it. I beg to differ with that assertion, for whether you vote or not, nowhere is it prescribed by Christ to take active duty in the governance of a country. Yes, we should cry out against gross injustices (e.g. abortion), but chiming in on the definitions of terms of a secular institution is hardly a gross injustice. It may be sinful to grant the benefits / costs of state-sanctioned marriage to the union between same-sex couples, but God will judge those matters not the Church. For whether or not the amendment passes, homosexuality and homosexual practices will continue to exist, and, if the current trend persists, will continue to grow. Our duty should chiefly be as it has ever been, to love each other as Christ loved the Church, and to do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith (cf. Gal. 6:10).

Perhaps if we were to do our duty as the Church, these things would not be an issue. Perhaps if we were the light we were called to be, Christ would draw more to himself. Yet we as the Church have become more legislators of morality than we have practicers of it. We have, as many outside the Church, looked to government and the law as our salvation, rather than to the righteousness and the power of Christ. As Paul so clearly put it, the law has no power to save, and its adherence alone only leads to condemnation. And while we might prevail to “circumcise” the homosexuals of this land, we have only given ourselves reason to boast in their “flesh” (cf. Gal. 6:13). If, perhaps, we were to hone the energy that we put into secular law-making and divert it toward the sanctity of marriage within the Church itself, our divorce rates would not mirror those of the world.

1. What part will this ammendment have upon the purposes of the Church?
This question assumes much, and so first I should seek to remove some of those assumptions. There are some who feel / believe that a purpose of the church is to sanctify the land in which it resides. In other words, the land should be governed by “Christian” law, so to speak. For when we debate these things, it is no debate how the Bible views homosexual relationships. They are “unnatural”, an “abomination”, and are full of sin. In other words, they stand against God’s design for human sexuality. Those who profess to be Christians who claim otherwise, obviously do not heed the Words upon which their faith is supposedly based. There are also the clear arguments from what is referred to as “Natural Law,” but that does not need to be addressed at this time.

However, when heeding this truth from the Scriptures, how does that make us respond as the church to members of our state who are outside the church? In other words, was the Law of Christ designed to govern those outside of Christ as well as those who are in Christ and to make the church his enforcers, or was it designed to govern the church alone? And if the Law of Christ does govern the state, what effect would that have upon the church?

To answer the first, I believe that (contrary to the opinion of many) that Word of Christ is designed for the People of Christ. To put it another way, I believe that the Law of Christ is designed to govern those outside of Christ as much as the law of Honduras is designed to govern American citizens. Though this is a poor illustration, my point is that the Law of Christ, which includes that axiom, “Love others as I have loved you,” is only fully applicable to those whom Christ has loved to the point of his death and substitution (assuming, of course, Particular Redemption).

This point is further shown in Scripture in that the Law of Christ is demanded of those who have died with Christ and to that Other Law, and not vice versa. In other words, we who are in Christ are not saved by binding ourselves to this thing which we call the Law of Christ by keeping it, but we are bound to it after we have been redeemed. Indeed, it is futile to attempt to keep such a Law apart from the Power of Christ residing in us.

As for the church’s duty in the state, Christ said we are to be a city on hill, shining out light into the darkness of this world. Paul puts it in clearer language saying:

I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people–for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a peaceful and quite life, godly and dignified in every way. This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth (1Tim. 2:1-4).

To put it differently, I believe that Christ and Paul are both commenting on the nature of the church and its effectiveness in these texts, and that they are both saying the same thing, namely that with regards to the outside world and its governance, the church is to be actively praying for it and its leaders, but not acting as its legislators. The church’s duty, therefore, is to live righteously itself, even within the world it resides, so as to be a light of Christ to it. This manner of living is designed to manifest itself in quietness and peace, which also carries with it the ability to draw those who are in darkness into the light.

To ask a simple question that corresponds with the text from Paul, How would you characterize the politically active portions of the church, particularly with regards to marriage legislation? Would it quiet and peaceful? Would it be as a city on a hill? Or is more after the liking of every other secular political institution and activist? Personally, I feel that we as the church collectively are characterized by the latter more than the former.

Which brings us back to our main question, “What part does this ammendment have upon the purposes of the Church?” In the light of these texts, it seems as though the effects upon the purposes of the church have less to do with whether or nor it passes and more to do with how we respond in the mean time and afterward. Will we be that light upon the hill that shines quietly and brilliantly into the darkness, or will we be just another secular voice being drowned in the sea of secular opinion? For I fear that morality in this country will fail despite the Church’s greatest arguments and activism, and all that will remain afterward is how we have conducted ourselves.

More thoughts to come…

Many times, “wrongful death” is at the root cause of a lawsuit, but what happens in the case of a “wrongful birth” charge?

In West Palm Beach, Florida, a couple sued a doctor and an ultrasound technician for negligence. The two claimed that they would have aborted their son, who was born with no arms and only one leg, had they known about his disabilities beforehand.

There’s not much more commentary that can be given on a judicial system that will award such a vast sum of money because a life was born (rather than murdered through abortion), and yet will let a man live who raped and murdered his 10-month-old stepdaughter. Imagine how you would feel if you were the child when you were old enough to comprehend that your parents preferred you to be killed, and they have a 4.5 million dollar check highlighting the intensity of that desire. Unbelievable.

I suppose I shouldn’t expect any different. I mean, presuming that the Bible is true, I should expect that the majority of this country’s citizens would be quick to shed blood, would desire to trade that which is natural for that which is unnatural (or at least support it), and would desire that justice not be done. And considering that we have been murdering millions of infants for decades, are infatuated with homosexuality, and are ignoring the blood of a 10-month-old child crying out from the ground, well, I say that we’ve pretty much arrived.

Because of these things, among many others, I’m not proud to be an American. In fact, I’m disgusted. And if I do, for some reason, find myself being proud to be an American, I loathe it. For I know that when all is said and done, America will be a small, rank spot of piss and blood on the fabric of history.

In fact, one of the big no-nos in the religion of the South is buying alcohol, especially in a place where you can be seen buying alcohol. Which reminds me of a joke: What’s the difference between a Baptist and a Presbyterian? A Presbyterian will say hey to you in the liquor store.

Joking aside, there is a serious reality underlying the brown-bagging / teetotaling disposition toward Christian practice in the religion of the South, and it all falls under the umbrella of “Preserving One’s Witness.” Scarcely have many bothered to define what this “witness” is, though it’s preservation could mean the salvation (or not) of one’s very soul.

It goes like this: Matt walks into the local Food Lion. Matt makes a beeline toward the beer aisle. Matt goes to the counter and purchases beer from the beer aisle. Unbeknownst to Matt, a person, who is considering Christianity and knows that Matt is a Christian, sees Matt purchasing the beer and is instantly turned away from the Gospel because of it. Matt, because of his beer purchase, ruins his witness and sends the person to hell.

The problem with this scenario is multi-faceted. First, Matt’s witness, as a Christian, is never toward himself. When a person bears witness to something, say in a court of law, it is concerning something that happened or concerning some reality with which the witness is well-acquainted. Having been saved by Jesus Christ, Matt’s witness should be solely about what Jesus Christ has done to save him from his sins, not about what Matt does or does not do. When we see the apostles bearing witness about Christ in the book of Acts, they do not go about flaunting their religiosity and piety, but they go about flaunting Jesus Christ–the one who died for sinners, who was raised from the dead, and who is now sitting enthroned as King over all. That is the weight of a Christian’s witness, not his ability not to buy a beer in front of sinners.

Secondly, this scenario misrepresents Jesus Christ and the Christian religion. Jesus Christ did not come into the world to keep people like Matt from drinking beer or to teach them how to conceal it. No, Jesus came, as the angel declares at his birth, to save his people from their sins. In fact, if Jesus’ mission were to keep Matt from buying and drinking beer, he started off poorly with his first miracle, viz. turning the water into wine (not grape juice). And if Matt is ruining his witness by buying beer at the local Food Lion, it is reasonable to conclude that Jesus ruined his witness at the Wedding at Cana. And maybe Jesus did ruin his witness … toward the Pharisees at least. Of them Jesus says:

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon.’ The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds” (Mt. 11:19).

The fact is that Jesus’ tendency to drink alcohol publicly (which he did) created a barrier between himself and some, and the some that were offended by his drinking were those who already had everything worked out, religiously speaking. They were the ones who thought themselves right with God, and even went above and beyond what God commanded so as to make sure that they were hyper-right. In their blind dedication to Moses, they missed the greatest command of Moses, namely, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers–it is to him you shall listen” (Deut. 18:15). That “drunkard” whom they questioned and ridiculed was the prophet that they should have been waiting for, instead they were so blinded by their amended law and self-righteousness that they missed him altogether.

The lesson of the Pharisees should strike fear into those among us who seek to “witness” by bolstering our self-righteousness to a law that God did not give. Search and you shan’t find a law that says, “Thou shalt not drink nor purchase alcohol in the presence of thine enemies.” That is good ol’ timey Pharisaical religion, and believe me, it didn’t begin in the South. It has existed as long as men have tried to work and commend themselves to God by their good deeds, and it has only worked for one Man–Jesus Christ, who just so happened to drink alcohol. The Pharisees did it by their fasting, their alcohol-abstinence, and their perfect tithing; the Judaizers after them did it through circumcision–all to whom the apostle Paul screams, “Christ is no advantage to you!” (Gal. 5:2).

Third, and closely related to the second, such a “witness” detracts from the true Witness that we should presenting–Jesus Christ and him alone. Jesus did not come into the world to keep Matt from drinking beer, though he can save an alcoholic from his sins and his obsession. Jesus Christ came into the world to glorify his Father, and he accomplished it perfectly and completely. He glorified his Father when he turned the water to wine, when he fed the five thousand, when he died for the sins of his people, and when he was raised from the tomb. Every breath Jesus Christ breathed was unto the glory of the Father, as was every drink he drunk and every morsel he ate. To say or to even hint that Jesus acted unwisely in anything that he did, whether it was working on the Sabbath or drinking an alcoholic beverage is not simply unwise, it’s blasphemy. And to lay burden on his followers that Christ did not place upon them by calling certain behaviors “unwise” is tantamount to saying the same of Christ.

As followers of Christ and students of his Word, we must remain open to understanding him and his Word and be willing to change our traditions and presuppositions for his sake and ours. We must not be like the Pharisees who religiously and blindly followed after the traditions of their elders so as to miss Jesus Christ in his glory and thus found themselves his enemies and damned. In other words, “Life is short. Drink to the glory of God.”

And I believe that it is good and right to feel a certain sort of disgust and outrage when such persons say such things. Often when they do, they skew the truth, promote falsehoods, and lead others astray in the process. But as with all areas of life, I think that the motivations behind our disgust, outrage, etc. must be tested to show whether or not they are right in and of themselves and promote the truth. For though one reacts to the negative act of one, that reaction is not necessarily positive. In fact, it is probably more often the case that the negative acts of a person inspire and produce negative acts in another.

So then, what are appropriate motivations that inspire such hostile feelings in response to the blatherings of our modern village idiots? A few of these might include a desire to see the truth rightly taught and proclaimed, a desire to dissuade confusion in the church, and others like it.

What then are some inappropriate motivations? Perhaps the chief of these is our concern of being associated with such persons by those who are not in the church. Friends, coworkers, etc. who know that we are Christians see these persons who also claim to be Christians and therefore lump us (or so we think) into the same category as them. If this a motivation of our disgust, etc., then it is likely driven by our pride more than it is by our aspirations to sanctify the truth. And, truth be told, if this is our motivation, there are dozens of more true and orthodox doctrines that the world views as loonier than those of the date setters and the judgment declarers.

Another is the belief that these puny, nutty men can thwart the purposes of God. This is a negative motivation because it is simply untrue. Much is said about our witness to the world, but somehow, between the time the apostles penned the New Testament and now, our “witness” became not about Jesus Christ and his work but it became about the façade that we put up in front of the world. In other words, the church has adopted the witnessing practices of the Pharisees. If our appearance to the world was really supposed to be such a concern, I doubt that the Apostle Paul would have written publicly to the Corinthian church about their incestuous relationship problem or to the Galatian church about how easily they turned away to a false religion of works. The church has always been a messy thing, and she will remain so until Christ actually returns.

When people such as Harold Camping go about sharing their “prophecies” on billboards, one of two things happen to those outside the church who see them: either they are hardened in their unbelief, or they are not. And it is the Spirit of God who controls this reaction, not the supposed free will of person viewing it. As the apostle Paul writes:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ (2Cor. 2:14-17)

In other words, it is not the sanity or reasonableness of our Gospel that saves, but it is the Spirit who saves. And being that this is the same Spirit who raised Christ Jesus from the dead, you’d best believe that he can overcome Harold Camping to call one of his own.