AIDS, Homosexuality and the Power of Christ/Program 5

Changed Through the Power of Christ

Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. I want to ask you, do you believe that Jesus Christ can change any person to what He is talking about in Scripture? What if you're a drug addict? What if you're a prostitute? What if you're a homosexual? Can Christ change that person? Is He powerful enough? Does the church really have something to offer to people that don't agree with what we usually consider to be normal behavior? That's our problem and that's our question we're going to talk about tonight. And my guests are Roger Montgomery who has come out of the homosexual lifestyle. All of his life that's all that he knew and yet around 26 years of age, Christ changed him and we're going to talk about what took place in that change. How does it come about? Can it come about from maybe you? And then Dr. John Weldon who has done a lot of research concerning the problem of homosexuality and we're going to talk with him in just a little bit of time. Roger, I'm glad that you're here tonight and yet there may be many homosexuals that are watching and saying, "If he actually changed, then he couldn't have been a true homosexual." What would you say to that.

Montgomery: Well, that's a lie because I lived the homosexual lifestyle for many, many years and I never experienced a heterosexual feeling until I received Christ.

Ankerberg: And you received Christ when?

Montgomery: At about the age of 26 years old. And I had over a thousand homosexual contacts during that time span. I was homosexual.

Ankerberg: Yeah. How did you get into the homosexual orientation?

Montgomery: Just like almost every other homosexual does, he was led into or recruited into by an older homosexual through child molestation.

Ankerberg: Uh, uh. And when did that happen to you?

Montgomery: At about the age of six for several years it happened.

Ankerberg: It was your next door neighbor that came over?

Montgomery: Right. Right.

Ankerberg: And when is it that you can remember saying, "I am a homosexual"?

Montgomery: Well, at first my encounter with him was very painful. But then as time went on I began to enjoy our contact and actually seek it out and that's when I began to perceive and to identify myself as being homosexual and not heterosexual from a child.

Ankerberg: And you didn't have any desires toward women.

Montgomery: No, I didn't. I loathed women. I hated women. And I saw them as a nuisance and as an interference.

Ankerberg: There came a day, Rog, when you actually told God you hated Him. Why did you say that?

Montgomery: Well, because of all the frustration that had built up in me. I had some religious training and I believed that God could deliver me and help me and if He couldn't He wasn't a God at all and He had not changed me so I blamed Him for it.

Ankerberg: That came a little later on because actually when you grew up you didn't go to church, you didn't read your Bible, you didn't know about these things.

Montgomery: No.

Ankerberg: You got into the homosexual lifestyle and then it was that you started to think about what it was that you were involved in and you actually tried religion but it didn't work. And when it didn't work like so many other people that might be listening, you finally said, "Okay. I'm marking it down. It doesn't work. And God you're a liar. Your Bible's a liar. Christianity is a fraud and I'm leaving." And then what did you do?

Montgomery: Well, you're definitely right. Religion does not work for the homosexual. He doesn't need religion. What I did at that point after cursing God is I went full blast into the homosexual lifestyle and lived my life as a homosexual.

Ankerberg: Okay. And for five years basically you were a homosexual prostitute. Why did you go into prostitution?

Montgomery: Well, I went into prostitution because immediately after cursing God I found myself to be homeless and jobless and I wanted to maintain sexual contacts in the gay bars so I didn't want to work and so I went into prostitution as a means for a living. I could make as much as $1,000 a week and spend it on cocaine and in the bars.

Ankerberg: Okay. But then after the homosexual community had used you up, you said there came point where they didn't want you anymore.

Montgomery: Right. They no longer wanted me around even though I was homosexual which is very typical of the homosexual experience. After it's taken from you what they want, they discard you. It's a very common experience.

Ankerberg: Okay. And so you also had an addiction to alcohol and drugs. How did that come about?

Montgomery: Right. Well, through my gay lifestyle I was constantly in the bars and in gay bars hard drugs such as cocaine are sold very freely and I became quickly addicted to cocaine and alcohol.

Ankerberg: And so one day you found yourself on the street -- no home, no food, no money, the homosexual community didn't want you and you were actually contemplating suicide. And what happened then?

Montgomery: Well, you're right I was very much alone. My family had given up on me, the church had given up on me, everyone even the homosexual community had given up on me and I found myself alone and begging God, if there was a God, that He would kill me because to live only meant to suffer for me. And that's when the miracle took place. I was not seeking after God. I was only seeking death. But God in His mercy wanted to give me life instead of death. And that's when He came to me saying, "I'm not going to offer you, give you death. I'll give you life if you want it. But you'll have to choose between the two."

Ankerberg: Okay. So what was the message that God gave to you? I mean, you had heard of Christianity and you'd heard about church all your life, what was different that actually persuaded you to invite Christ into your life? What changed?

Montgomery: Well, there was a resistance there to religion because I did not want to go back to being religious -- outward conformity to the law. But what changed me was Christ would accept me as a homosexual which I didn't have to change myself. There was no self reformation I had to go through in order to be accepted by God. He came to me. I did not come to Him. He came to me saying that you can come as you are and if you trust Me and believe in Me I will change you. You do not have to change yourself.

Ankerberg: That was not saying that God would accept you in your homosexual practice. It would be the fact that you could come and you couldn't reform yourself before you came. You were saying, "Lord,..."

Montgomery: Right.

Ankerberg: "...this is what I am. And I come and if you can change me, then here I am and I'm ready."

Montgomery: Right. I came to Him totally on grace as a homosexual. If there was change and He demanded change from me that was one of the things that I had to agree with with Him. But He came demanding that change but He was giving me the power also for change.

Ankerberg: Now, Rog, you came to a point where you recognized that Christ could forgive you, but even forgiven you still had the desires of a homosexual. And you wanted more from Christ than just to be forgiven, you wanted Him to change you completely on the inside and make you a new person so that what you lived, it wasn't a fake, it wasn't a cover-up. You wanted the actual inside to be changed and Christ says He can actually deal with that which a lot of people in the church and in the world just believe it will not take place. How did it take place? What did Christ in Scripture tell you that that change took place?

Montgomery: Well, the first thing He told if He was a Savior at all not only could He save from the penalty of sin, He could forgive me, but He could save me from the power of sin. He was strong enough to do that. And I had to put my faith in Him. The first thing was realizing that He could and that He was willing to deliver me. And when I put my faith in Him that deliverance came. Then I had to recognize or to understand that my deliverance from homosexuality was not dependent upon me or my behavior it was dependent upon Christ and His substitutionary death that He had already accomplished. What that means is that when Christ suffered and died under the hand of God 2,000 years ago as a penalty for sin that I was also there too.

Ankerberg: Yeah. The Bible actually talks about besides the fact of paying the penalty of sin, that something else uniquely took place and most Christians don't even know this after they've been Christians for a long time.

Montgomery: Right.

Ankerberg: And you found that where?

Montgomery: In the Scripture -- Romans Chapters 6, 7 and 8. The Lord showed me that I did not have to depend on my own self effort or my own self crucifixion. It was His crucifixion was the key to the whole matter. What had He done for me already, not what is He going to do, but what has He done already for me. And what He had done already was to set me free. According to the Scripture when He died and I received Christ, that I was freed from sin. Homosexuality was no longer my master or my slave. Christ was my new head now. I did not have to do what homosexuality told me to which I did before. All I had to do now was what Christ told me to do.

Ankerberg: Yeah. The Scripture says that when Christ died on that cross, the old Roger Montgomery also died. And you didn't know this until you became a Christian and God says in His mind that's what happened. All the homosexuality, all the drugs, all the alcohol, all that behavior, that died. Okay? And now when you accepted Christ, Christ came into you and also did things for you. He's made you a new creation in Christ and for Christ. But you have to accept that by faith.

Montgomery: Right.

Ankerberg: And how did you accept that by faith?

Montgomery: Well, that's the key is accepting that by faith. Because I had received no deliverance before there was no other method I could use. Was I going to trust Christ or was I not going to trust Him for my deliverance. I knew that I could not deliver myself or crucify myself that it had to be a power outside of me. A power greater than myself. And that's who Jesus Christ is. He's a power outside of me and a power greater than me that is able to deliver me and change me.

Ankerberg: Yeah. You said that one of the verses that caught your attention was that, "sin shall have not dominion or power or authority over you."

Montgomery: Right.

Ankerberg: And for a homosexual that's what he needs because boy, homosexuality is a compulsive, addictive, strong desire that really finally take over and control you.

Montgomery: Right. What Christ does is He sets you free from homosexuality the minute you receive Him as Savior. You may not feel that way but that's exactly what happens and you begin to reckon it and to make it real by faith. Because I am free from homosexuality. I no longer have to serve that desire in my flesh. I no longer have to. I can, but I do not have to any more. The person who says I cannot overcome homosexuality knowing Christ is a liar because Christ has already said, "You are free." You're not becoming free, but you are free. You are a new person.

Ankerberg: Okay. But the steps that you took, Rog, first of all you accepted Christ as Savior and you got rid of the penalty of sin and you realized you are now accepted by God and forgiven. But you want to change the inside and you found out from Romans 6 that that old Roger actually died with Christ as far as God is concerned...

Montgomery: Right.

Ankerberg: ...but He wants you to see it. Then third, He says to do two things -- reckon ye also yourself to be dead indeed unto sin...

Montgomery: Which is faith.

Ankerberg: ...but alive unto God. And you had to take that statement by faith and then it says to make it a living reality for the power to be applied to your life. You have to yield yourself. And what was the verse that you found in Romans 6 and 7 there concerning yield?

Montgomery: Romans 6:13 says, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." See, I was an alive person now and my homosexual person and my prostitution who I was the prostitute, he had died. But a new person was born. That person was heterosexual. And I began to live that and experience that by yielding myself to Him knowing that He knew the answer and He knew the way for me, that I didn't know it myself.

Ankerberg: Okay. And so every day you'd wake up you'd have these desires and you would say, "But Christ you say I'm a new creation and the fact is I'm going to yield to you." And when temptation would come your way, the Holy Spirit would remind you of what Christ had said and you would yield. And the power was there to do it.

Montgomery: Right. The power was always there every time I wanted it. Was I going to yield to God or was I going to yield to my old sinful desires was the question. But the power was in the yielding, was not in myself, but in Christ.

Ankerberg: Because you saw yourself now as the new creature in Christ.

Montgomery: Right. I saw myself as a new creature and I knew that my old life was going to kill me, was going to destroy me.

Ankerberg: How long, Roger, from the time that you accepted Christ did you have the change of desires from men to women?

Montgomery: Well, the first year I accepted Christ was the hardest year of my life because it was a time of withdrawal. But then I met my wife shortly after a year maybe a year and a half and I began to have sexual desires or heterosexual desires for her.

Ankerberg: Did that surprise you?

Montgomery: Yes, it did. Because it was not a self effort type of deal. It wasn't something that I conjured up within myself. It was a natural outflowing...

Ankerberg: It just happened.

Montgomery: ...of who I was on the inside. Right.

Ankerberg: Now was the first time it happened that didn't happen until 27 years of age, correct?

Montgomery: I was almost 27, right.

Ankerberg: And I'd like to talk a little bit about the fact of the gay community using some of the Bible verses against the traditional view of homosexuality and its condemnation in the Scripture. Dr. Weldon, let's start with the first one, Sodom and Gomorrah. Genesis 18:20 says, "And the Lord said, 'Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous,"' God says that He will condemn them. In Genesis 19:5 concerning the story where Lot meets the men and it says, "And they called unto Lot and said unto him," -- talking about the men of Sodom and Gomorrah -- "'Where are the men which came in to thee this night?'" -talking about the two angels that had come to rescue Lot -- The men of Sodom and Gomorrah said, "'Bring them out unto us that we may know them.' And Lot went out at the door unto them and shut the door after him and said, 'I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly.'" -- don't do this wicked thing. What the gay community is saying is that God is condemning this city because of its inhospitality to strangers not that it's condemning homosexuality. And secondly, that the word yada -- to know -- is not talking about sexual intercourse, knowing in a sexual way, but it's talking about just acquaintance. And therefore, Christians have misinterpreted this down through the ages and we need to reinterpret it today. What would you say to that?

Weldon: John, the teaching here is very clear. It is a condemnation of homosexuality. Not only has this been the historic viewpoint of Jewish tradition and Christian tradition, it is the unanimous viewpoint of all commentators with the exception of one or two. The word yada' is used eleven or twelve times in Genesis and in ten of those instances it clearly refers to sexual activity. So the word in this context means sexual intercourse. Secondly, Lot's response is out of character if the townspeople simply want to become acquainted with the strangers. He says in verse 7, "Please, my brothers do not act wickedly." Now, that's not the kind of response you would expect from people who simply want to get to know or become better acquainted with other people.

Ankerberg: All right.

Weldon: In addition, 2 Peter 2:7-10 specifically states that the sin of Sodom referred to "the sensual conduct of unprincipled men." And Jude 7 says that they indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh. So other Scripture also clearly teaches that this is referring to sexual immorality.

Ankerberg: What would you say to those who say, "But yes, Jude and Peter got those remarks out of the popular writings of the day not from historical information?"

Weldon: Well, Jude and 2 Peter were inspired by the Spirit of God. The entire Bible is the Word of God and it is profitable for reproof, correction, training, etc. It's an irrelevant argument.

Ankerberg: Yeah. And even if they had taken it from the popular sources that was the standard Jewish interpretation of Sodom and Gomorrah and they were writing not in a poetic or fictional fashion. They were talking didactically so that it is teaching in from the apostles. Another passage of Scripture is Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 20:13 which says, "If a man also lies with a man [kind] as he lies with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death, and their blood shall be upon them." Now the standard interpretation from the gay community is that this condemnation actually is a condemnation of the fertility rights and the temple prostitution of the Canaanites and therefore, it's not talking about homosexuality per se, but the practices of another nation. What do you say about that?

Weldon: Well, even your liberal theologians such as Derrick Bailey and Bishop John Spong admit that this refers to homosexuality per se. In addition, the entire context of Chapter 18 is referring to various kinds of sexual immorality. In verse 20 it's referring to adultery. In verse 21 it's referring to human sacrifice. In verse 22 it refers to homosexuality and verse 23 it refers to sex with animals -- bestiality. These are things that God says to stay away from in the first four verses of chapter 18. He says do not do any of these and in the last five verses of this chapter no less than nine times does He call these kinds of behaviors abominable and something that is sin and not to be practiced.

Ankerberg: What would you say to somebody who says this is part of the holiness code of the Old Testament and not for us today?

Weldon: There is no indication in the chapter that this is restricted to an ancient culture. As a matter of fact, if we throw out the verses on homosexuality, we have to throw out the verses that condemn adultery, and bestiality, and making human sacrifice and other things as well.

Ankerberg: Plus we'll see in just a moment that they are reiterated again in the New Testament.

Weldon: Exactly.

Ankerberg: Let's go into the New Testament. Paul, the apostle, writing in the book of Romans says in verse 26 of Chapter 1, "For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature." So here you have, it seems, a condemnation of lesbianism. "And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." Now those would seem to be straight out words against homosexuality. How has that changed today?

Weldon: The argument of the critics and gay theology here is that Paul is really not condemning homosexuality per se. They believe that he is condemning the ancient practice of pederasty, the Greek practice of a homosexual man in relations with a young boy. Or that Paul is really condemning heterosexuals who practice homosexual acts which is something unnatural for them. But it is not something unnatural for homosexuals. Paul very clearly is condemning something that is against nature and he doesn't even mention the Greek practice of pederasty. He doesn't even mention that he's condemning heterosexual behavior here. It is clearly a condemnation of homosexual activity.

Ankerberg: Dr. Weldon, the final one that is at stake here is 1 Corinthians 6:9-10. "Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God."

Weldon: The critics attempt to teach that this is referring to exclusively practices of the ancient world or that there has been mistranslation here and that the first word relating to homosexuality malakos just means a general moral weakness and the second word is exclusively restricted to male prostitutes and has no relevancy to modern homosexual relationships. The problem with that is that the words themselves are dealing with modern homosexual relationships. Malakos literally means "soft to the touch" and it was used in Greek culture metaphorically for the homosexual who took the passive role in the homosexual act.

Ankerberg: Yeah. That's translated "effeminate"....

Weldon: Effeminate.

Ankerberg: ...in the King James.

Weldon: Right. And in other translations. The second word there comes from two Greek words arsen which means "male" and koitai which means "bed" and it literally means "male in a bed" and it was used metaphorically in Greek culture for the one who took the active role in the homosexual act. To say that this passage is restricted to an ancient culture does not make sense because it says clearly, "Do you not know the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God?" We don't want to restrict unrighteousness to an ancient culture. It's quite abundant around us.

Ankerberg: And the other thing is it says right after that, "And such were some of you, but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God." Roger, that tells me that you can change whether you're any one of those. If you're a thief, if you're covetous, if you're a murderer, if you're a drunkard, if you're homosexual, whatever you are Christ can change you and that's what you're saying.

Montgomery: Right. You can change. There is change through Christ.