121 thoughts on ““Purity””

  2. Next thing you know these crazies will want us to turn off our TV and music.

    Many times illustrations serve as a means to make illogical jumps from Bible principles to crazy conclusions. Turn your brain off and listen.

    2. What do they do with all the Bible passages that don’t fall into the category of “purity”? What about the passages that talk about those impure things? Is reading those passages causing you to **be** impure? Might as well lock yourself in the closet and not read the Bible, either. The logical conclusion is complete isolationism and self-imposed legalism. No one is truly pure except you and your wife, and well, you can’t really be sure about her.

  3. On a more serious note, what kind of cyanide isn’t poison? And I love all the stock photos stuck in there. Not sure what the picture of the living room was supposed to represent when he was talking about adultery at the beginning.

    2. I liked the picture with the natives blurred out. I don’t think they were naked, just not enough clothes I guess. Although it was ok for the man to visit them scantily clad as they were. 😯

  4. I must have heard this message 100 times growing up.

    I thank God now that he has placed me in a church where the pastor exposits the text. He goes through the Scriptures verse by verse, and I imagine it is quite difficult. It would be a lot easier to just go up to the pulpit and give some rant on sin. To actually explain the Bible, that takes diligence.

  6. For the first 4:00 or so I was thinking, Um he has a point–as he was talking about sin, not about contact with the world. But then the proof texting started…Not to mention that what’s translated “to uncover the nakedness of” in whatever version he’s using (KJV I’m sure) is translated “to have sexual relations with” in the NIV. Yeah, big difference. But it’s typical fundy-ism: Take it at face value so much that you don’t even consider that there might be a deeper meaning you might need to do some “work” to uncover.

    1. Trying to be more pharisaical than the Pharisees.

      It’s a bit of a problem when you misunderstand what your texts mean, though, and keep quoting parts of sentences rather than whole chapters from the Scriptures.

      He seems to have no idea at all when Jesus told some Pharisees, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles it, but that which comes out of the mouth.”

      1. Agggh, that last sentence should be:

        He seems to have no idea at all when Jesus meant when he told some Pharisees, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles it, but that which comes out of the mouth.”

    2. Oh and I meant to add: Making out is a sin?!? Unless my “filter” is seriously broken (which I admit as a distinct possibility), the Bible doesn’t support that, dude…Sorry.

        1. Well yes, but if I’m not mistaken (I’m not watching it again to find out!), he was just talking about 2 people making out–period. 😯

  7. yup, those drops of sin make me want to gulp every time.

    or put another way

    Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will. -yoda

  9. I would definately drink the poison if I was forced to listen to another minute of that sermon.

  10. This is all so painful. Makes me want to drink poison to drown out his ultra loud voice and his impurities.

  11. The complete and utter obsession with sex is the real message of this sermon.

    You can always talk about sex as long as you are putting it in the context of warning against it.

    He is utterly fixated on the thing he wants, but is told/tells everyone that he/they cannot have.

    He even has an extended discussion of how stupid bucks become during rutting season.

  12. AFter listening to that Sermon……Please pass the cyanide !!
    P.s. this website is such therapy for me! Thank you!

  13. In the cyanide illustration, he assumes that humans are innately pure, and that it is something from without that makes us impure. Wrong! The heart is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).

    “For no good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit,” (Luke 6:43)

    Things need to change from the inside out, and God is the one who sanctifies us.

    1. I don’t think he necessarily belives that man is not sinful. Perhaps the problem is does virginity or sexual innocence make one pure and are people like him conflating the two.I think he was using the example of cyaninde to illustrate sexual sin and say that it corrupts or messes up your life/the qulity of your life.

      1. I’m sure he does believe that man is sinful, but the answer is not to focused on symptoms (sexual immorality) or outward things (pornography) but to give them something greater for their heart to delight in–Christ.

        “For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23)

      2. It is not uncommon for Fundies to blame alcohol, TV, music, etc. for defiling them instead of admitting that sin comes from within (that’s how I understood his cyanide illustration, but maybe I’m wrong).

  14. wow. . that was rambling. And he threw in “abstain from all appearance of evil” for good measure, along w/ passages from the Levitical law. And, seriously, maybe I’m stupid or something, but how many people walk around naked in front of their kids?!?

    2. I had a friend in high school whose parents regularly walked around the house completely nekkid. And they still do, so when she visits her parents (with her kids), the shenanigans continue.

  15. Ohhhhhhh S. M. Davis….

    *shudder*

    My mom has 10+ videos of his. She made me watch his “Victory Over the Dating Spirit” vid when this boy at church had a crush on my in highschool. I was truamatized.

        1. Which could lead to sex, which, shudder of shudders, would lead to dancing.

        2. Old Joke:
          Q: Why are Baptists so against sex?
          A: People might think they’re dancing.

  16. Purity? Purity???
    I guess this Son of a Baptist is one who is pure enough to cast the first stone.
    What purity is this cracked pot claiming to have???

    More importantly how small is the god this Super Sanctified shill is promoting?? What a weak, pathetic little impotent god if all you have to do is go out and interact with the “World” to be contaminated to the point of being unsanctified or what ever his point is making here. Just one drop of worldliness makes you useless, contaminated and unworthy… What a Sanctimonious Prig! What a selfrighteous puss bucket! What a religious crack head!

    God save us from such as this.

    2. While watching this, I, also thought that his God doesn’t seem to be able to accomplish much, and his Christians can’t resist even the tiniest distractions.

    3. Don

      Even when I agree with you, you make me not want to when you start soundign like a James Carville and Jack Hyles love child.

      Please, cut down on the name calling and insults. You sound like one of them.

      thanks

    4. @Don,

      Even when I agree with you, you make me not want to when you start soundign like a James Carville and Jack Hyles love child.

      Please, cut down on the name calling and insults. You sound like one of them.

      thanks

      1. It’s about time we started calling these lying, shysters out. They get to stand up there and spew all manner of toxic crap and no one can challenge their lies and fabrications.
        Snakes, vipers, whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones… sanctimonous prigs! No, when I get the opportunity to call them on their pastor-superior legalism and holier-than-thou BULL GIPP I’m going to do it.

        5. Preach it , brother Don! And if you run out of adjectives, I can supply you with some more, even in other languages.

  17. If I keep listening to this kind of preaching I might come to the conclusion that I serve a God who does not like me very much

    1. I think a lot of us raised in IFB churches would agree intellectually that God loves us, but many of us almost unconsciously feel that God doesn’t really like us and is only putting up with us. It’s wonderfully freeing to realize that God delights in us! He rejoices over us! I’m still struggling to grasp this.

      1. Bingo. I knew that “Jesus Loves Me” was for little kids, as an adult I knew better.

      2. Yes, PW, I agree with that. Their fear is that if they don’t dish out the condemnation, we will go hog wild and who knows what we might do – and they let us know that if we go bad, God will blame them.

  18. When you look at “Abstain from all appearance of evil” in the Greek you will see that the point Paul was trying to make was “Abstain from evil when it makes an appearance.” That gives it a very different meaning.

    2. Ive always thought the passage meant abstain from all kinds of evil. the word appearance can also mean kinds

        3. Could we not talk about kids with learning disabilities? I happen to be the parent of a special needs kid. It’s in no way amusing. I didn’t find Don’s name calling offensive, but I certainly did yours. 👿

  20. This might completely destroy his illustration, but if there were a few drops of poison in water but it wouldn’t make you sick/kill me, I’d totally drink the water. I mean, fluoride is toxic in large enough amounts (which is why you don’t swallow toothpaste), but the small amount in water won’t poison you (well I know there is a debate about this among some, but I digress).

    2. I guess my point is, “poison” is sort of relative. And saying “the R word” would probably inspire a look of horror from a fundy anyway.

    3. The debate of fluoridation of water only exists in the John Birch society, not in reality! 🙂

      1. It is not a communist plot, and Barak Obama is not the Anti-Christ, but I digress.

    4. Depending on the concentration, of course, one drop of cyanide solution in a glass of water probably WOULDN’T kill you.

      Arsenic was pretty widely used as a medicine until roughly 100 years ago.

      If you eat a few pounds of aspirin all at once, it could kill you, but taking one aspirin per day can help prevent strokes and heart attacks.

      Water with a whole lot of chlorine in it would kill you if you drank it, but a little chorine added to water keeps everyone from gettting dysentery and cholera.

      As chemists like to say, “the definition of poison is too much.”
      In other words, not only is the analogy a bad one, but the illustration itself is not factual.

  21. *cringe, cringe* I’ve seen the water illustration played out in different ways soo many times. It’s no longer creative and is overused. Also, it bothers me when preachers do the “teens, you think you know more than the pastor or [insert random person] does”. Well you don’t sound so humble yourself either. 😕

    1. It is a bit tired, but effective and there are many who aren’t as familiar with it.
      I have seen this done by even Driscoll and MacArthur—it is a good illustration *to a degree* …it is the application that goes too far.
      And arrogance is always apparent to all but the arrogant.

    2. How about the variation on this theme where it’s not poisoned water, but “just one little smidge of dog doo” in the brownie? ❗

      1. That version of the illustration would definitely make their point. I’d want NOTHING to do with any brownies with ANY dog poo, no matter how small the amount.

      2. For all I know, I may have eaten brownies with a little dog doo in them. If it wasn’t enough for me to taste or smell, I’m not going to worry about it. I remember being grossed out when I read some rules about how many insect parts, hairs, rodent droppings, etc. the FDA allows in various kinds of food. For a while, I didn’t want to eat anything. But, of course, I went back to eating pretty soon. What else could I do?

  22. Huh. I used this illustration to show my middle-school kids that there wasn’t a difference between someone with a little sin (drop in the glass) and someone that we tend to look down on as the “other sinner” – whole glass of cyanide. My point was that sin corrupts the whole nature in it’s extent, so comparisons between the two aren’t of much use. Both equally need Jesus to clean them out, because nobody is pure, Christian or otherwise.

    I didn’t realize the illustration was so well known. Hopefully they haven’t heard it too many times. I suspect not. This was the same group of kids that, when I asked them if they had heard of the rapture, got nothing but blank stares.

    1. Look at it this way: (Supposing there were nothing else to drink, and you were about to die of thirst) Would it be a better bet to drink a glass of water with one drop of cyanide solution in it, or a glass filled completely with a very concentrated cyanide solution?

      Or a more everyday example: Am I better off drinking the water from my kitchen tap, which has a few parts per million of chlorine in it (and which I do drink), or pouring a glass out of a jug of Clorox bleach and drinking the bleach? Same substance; only the concentration is different.

      If you’re trying to make the point that sin is not relative (which is a debatable proposition, but I digress), it’s a very bad analogy to use something that so clearly IS relative.

  23. Did you notice how when he talked about men lusting after women, he said “men lusted after women who were lewdly dressed”? The sin couldn’t be the man’s alone – ooooh no, it had to be the woman’s fault.

    1. Shame on you lewdly dressed women for making me, a godly, honourable, holy, [self]righteous man lust after you. If a man looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart, let the woman find a longer, looser fitting robe with which to cover herself.

      1. To be safe, the woman should also cover her head and her face. Even better, she should never leave the house unless accompanied by her father, husband, or brother. Thank God for freedom.

      2. @cuckcoosnest – In all seriousness, I have heard that verse taught this way. “But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” It says he committed adultery “with” her in his heart. It doesn’t say he did it by himself. It says he did it WITH her. It takes two to commit adultery. She was half responsible for causing him to lust. *insert 15 minutes of hollering about modesty here* (erie silence regarding the wrong the man did)

    2. Not that I want to discourage anyone from dressing lewdly, but I have been a man for most of my life, and I have NEVER needed a woman to be lewdly dressed before I could lust after her.

      2. If you don’t lust after women, lewdly dressed or otherwise, you are gay.

    3. So ladies, grab those frumpy, floor-length, floral dresses or the pale, polyester ones and no man will ever lust after you again. 🙄

        1. A choice of buquas or the full niqab. Because lust is obviously never an issue in Saudi or Afghanistan :rolleyes.

    4. A girl in a bikini is like having a loaded pistol on your coffee table – There’s nothing wrong with them, but it’s hard to stop thinking about it.

      – Garrison Keillor 😉

      1. If I had a loaded pistol on the coffee table, my cat would knock it onto the floor, where it would go off and shoot me in the backside.

  24. Why do fundie preachers all seem to assume that no one has the maturity or intelligence to make sound moral decisions? I found this whole ten-minute spiel so patronizing, as though I were being lectured to because I don’t have any brains.

    1. Because fundies consider themselves to be “babes in Christ”. You don’t trust children to make major decisions for themselves, the MoG makes them for them. At least when I go to my husband’s lutheran church I’m given credit for being if not spiritually mature at least a christian teenager. 🙂

  25. A friend of mine once said that her pastor said that a man can’t look at a woman in a pair of pants without lusting after her. I told her that was a terrible confession to make about himself.

    Some of these dumb preachers need to think about how stupid they sound while making up these silly rules.

    1. It sounds like that guy has a pants fetish. Not as common as a foot fetish, but not too surprising if he was raised Fundy.

    2. So, a man looking at a woman and admiring how beautiful she is, is lust? That’s so silly.

      When I asked my boyfriend why he started hanging out with me, one of his reasons was because I was cute. (not the only reason thank God lol!)

      It’s impossible not to have ANY physical attraction for a woman or man you like and want to date/court/whatever fundies do. If there were absolutely no physical attraction whatsoever, you wouldn’t want to be with that person.

      So quite honestly,you can’t start a relationship without “lust”.

  26. Such a serious sermon for such a strange stage set. I hope this wasn’t preached during Bible School.

  30. Halfway through this clip Davis mentions something about the “world” doesn’t know how to rate movies. I suppose the Fundy-sees think they can do better. They’d probably bring back the old “X” rating and give it to EVERY non-Fundy movie ever made, including The Wizard Of Oz!

  31. The sermon actually begins (in part 1) with reference to a poem, “Beautiful Snow.” The poem was made into a tract by the name Beautiful Snow *1 without giving proper attribution. The poem was actually written by J.W. Watson and published in 1870.*2

    “At the end of this message I will read to you the words of the poem that, that woman wrote, as she lay in the snow, outside. In the 1860’s, dying, and then slipped off into eternity, and left that behind with her personal effects.”

    Oh, the hyperbole! Lying there shivering in the snow this unnamed young woman took out pen and paper and wrote this beautiful poem as she lay dying. She wrote such a memorable piece of American poetry that it was left unsigned, unattributed and undated… but with enough detail that it can be used to build an entire sermon around.

    *1: http://www.mwtb.org/html/200740.html
    *2: http://www.dyanesdesktop.com/watson/jwarren/jwwatson.html

    1. I know that poem. It was in a booklet of poems my parents had called “Apples of Gold.” I too find it ridiculous that anyone wrote this poem while freezing to death in the snow. I can willingly suspend my disbelief long enough to imagine someone writing “Forgive me” or “Help” or “It was George” in their dying moments, but not a long poem with steady meter and unfailing rhyme scheme.

  33. Considering this informantion, the ESV, NIV and NASB are translated more accurately than the KJV.

  34. s.m davis,

    he is a man that will sell you very overpriced tapes and dvd;s, in fact he insists that you buy the most expensive stuff he has, saying that you would not use cheap materials to fix your house.
    he preaches and demands personal responsiblity, he tells people that they need to follow his advise to the letter, not to deviate from it.
    here is the kicker, if you do that and things are made worse from doing it, he tells people on his website, that he takes no personal responsibility for his teachings and the harm they may cause others. (dont take me word for it, look at his solving family problems website)

    of course dont even bother asking him about it, unless you are a fellow pastor, he will not discuss his teachings directly with you.

    if he was not a ifbx, and was lets a say a benny hinn kind of preacher instead , he would be demounced as a fraud by ifbx’s.
    this is a case of, as long as its one of our own doing it, then it is alright, but if someone other does it, then they need to be denounced and run out of town.

    1. It always strikes me as wierd when these “counciling ministries” put a disclaimer on their website saying they are not responsible if things get worse from following their advise. “You really need to follow our advise if you hope to fix your life, but if you screw things up following it we’re not responsible noi not one bit.”

  35. I’m really glad he told us all to cover up in front of family members….My husband and I always have the urge to walk around naked in front of our parents and kids so I guess we won’t be doing that anymore.

    Seriously, what kind of person has to tell a “NORMAL” group of people not to walk around naked in front of family members???? But then again, I guess they are not normal….

  36. Oh boy. We’re going to HELL. My kids come in from playing and rip their clothes off down to their undies, and that’s what they wear all year round. Then they get dressed and run outside. And when they come in, repeat. Repeat.

    And I refuse to make my kids self-conscious about it.

    Stupid.

    1. Given how close your church in Molino is to Pensacola and its very KJVO doctrinal statement, I’m going to assume that your obnoxiousness is rooted in Ruckman’s camp.

      Care to fess up to who you really are?

  38. So, holding hands with the person you love is sinful, but illegally slaughtering fawns isn’t? I guess fundies inflict pain on the helpless anywhere they go…

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