After arguing that gay people are pawns of Satan, Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land told a Washington Watch listener yesterday that God will punish gay Christians until they repent.
Responding to a caller who said that he recently debated with a gay Christian over the church’s stance on homosexuality, Land recounted the story of a woman who left his church to become a Satanist. He explained that God consequently had her killed, and said the story should serve as a warning for gay Christians.
Land: If this person has had a genuine experience with the Lord and they have trusted the Lord as their Savior, I believe that this person will be in Heaven. Having said that, is this person in an active homosexual relationship?
Caller: He is at this point, yes.
Land: Well I believe that the Lord also says that those who are his children he will chastise and he will spank. If a Christian is in a homosexual relationship or if a Christian is in an adulterous relationship for instance, outside of marriage, a heterosexual relationship, God will seek to convict that person and God will chastise that person and God will judge that person. Let me just give you an answer that’s analogous: When I was in my first church, I was pastor of a church in New Orleans when I was a seminary student, I had a woman in the church who had become a Christian and she got involved through a personal relationship with a man, she got involved in Satanic worship and she went around the French Quarter saying that she used to think that Jesus was the messiah but that now she believed the Devil was the angel of light.
I went to her and I talked to her about 1 Corinthians 5 where Paul says to give over someone for the destruction of the body for the salvation of the soul. I talked to her about 1 Corinthians 11 and I said, ‘If you are really a believer, then God’s not going to let you be a stumbling block and God’s not going to let you continue in this kind of sin, and God will chastise you and God will ultimately remove you if necessary. Now if you go along and nothing happens to you, then I have to believe that you were never part of us and 1 John 2:19 applies, you’ve gone out from us because you were never part of us and you went out from us that it might be made manifest you were not part of us.’
She rejected my counsel and six weeks later at the age of around 25 she dropped dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. I believe that God removed her because she was his child and she was a stumbling block to others. So if this person goes on and is perfectly happy in this homosexual relationship and nothing happens to him, then I would have to believe that he has never had a conversion experience. If he has had a conversion experience, the Lord is not going to let him go, the Lord is going to continue to convict him and to chastise him, to bring him back, as he did David.
Later in the broadcast, Land talked to a caller who said that Obama is a “Communist Muslim terrorist” who “might as well be Satan personified.”
Land didn’t contest the caller’s claims but said that in his opinion, “President Barack Obama is a judgment of God on the United States” because of Roe v. Wade and the legalization of abortion.
“I believe that Barack Obama, his presidency, is a judgment of God on the United States,” Land said.
Caller: Satan couldn’t wait for a gentleman like this to be in power. This Communist Muslim terrorist president we got in there, this tyrant, bald-faced lying person in there, he couldn’t wait for somebody like that to get in there because this person might as well be Satan personified, a bunch of Satanists up there running our country. They’re there because the church has not been enforcing the victory like we should and they’ve just been — God has been put responsibility on that’s not his, he’s been blamed and accused for things, we wonder why we don’t have revival, that’s partly it.
Land: I certainly think that elections have consequences and frankly I think that President Barack Obama is a judgment of God on the United States because we have allowed 54 million of our unborn citizens to be aborted legally in the United States since 1973. We have had a situation where we have allowed thirty percent of our unborn children every year since 1973 to be killed before they had a chance to live outside their mother’s womb. God is not going to allow that kind of slaughter to go unjudged, if God would send his chosen people, the Israelites, into Babylonian captivity, he will judge the United States and I believe he is judging the United States. I believe that Barack Obama, his presidency, is a judgment of God on the United States.
