Last week on Generations Radio, Colorado pastors Kevin Swanson and Dave Buehner addressed the forest fires hitting their state. They wondered why God was punishing Colorado with the fires, and specifically targeting the heavily conservative city of Colorado Springs.
The two ultimately determined that the forest fires were linked to the state’s liberal abortion laws and the recent success of civil union legislation. Swanson added that a Denver Post photograph of State House Majority Leader Mark Ferrandino kissing his partner also played a role in inviting God’s wrath.
Buehner: Why Colorado Springs? Understand that Colorado itself is a state that has been begging for God’s judgment. How did we do that? Well, we were the first state to make abortion legal; you could murder your baby as long as it’s in your womb.
Swanson: 1967.
Buehner: Gov. Love, a Republican.
Swanson: Two ironies there, not just one, the man’s name was Gov. Love and he’s responsible for killing more babies than probably anybody in the history of this country because he’s the guy who started it.
Buehner: Our legislative session opened up this year and their very first order of business, their most pressing order of business—
Swanson: They could hardly wait, they could hardly wait.
Buehner: Like the very first day, was to pass a civil union bill, which is an uncivil bill.
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Swanson: When you have a state where the House leadership is performing a homosexual act on the front page of the Denver Post two months ago? Does God read the Denver Post? Do you think He picks up a copy of the Denver Post? He gets it. God gets the Denver Post.
Buehner concluded that Coloradans should be glad God “hasn’t destroyed the whole state yet” as “an act of grace.” But why were the fires concentrated in Colorado Springs, Buehner asked, “Why not wipe out Boulder or Denver” where all the Democrats live? He answered his own question: “Judgment begins in the House of God.”
Later, Swanson elaborated on the point, saying that Christians have not done a good of a job resisting cultural trends pushed by television shows and fashion. He described a particularly disturbing plane ride he took back from Australia, in which he was forced to look at other people’s airplane TV sets. “I’ve never seen so many breasts in all of my life,” he reported. “Every form of aberrant sexuality and women’s breasts are shown in front of me almost nonstop for fourteen hours.”
After saying that he was a victim of “oppressive” breast exposure, he criticized young men for “doing the metrosexual thing with the skinny pants and the little fairy shoes” and not growing out their facial hair as God commands. But feminism is also to blame, he said, as too many Christian women have embraced feminist fashions like hats and pantsuits.
Buehner: Colorado is asking for judgment and God is delivering it in little pieces. He is very gracious that He hasn’t destroyed the whole state yet; I think that’s an act of grace. But then the question is: of all of Colorado, why Colorado Springs? I mean, Colorado Springs is the Christian mecca. Why not wipe out Boulder or Denver? I mean those people are in more radical rebellion.
Swanson: Oh yeah, they’re Democrats up there.
Buehner: And the answer is: judgment begins in the House of God.
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Swanson: Coming back from Australia, I’m stuck in fourteen hours of these visual presentations, sitcoms and stuff, on seventeen screens in front of me and I’ve never seen so many breasts in all of my life. The immodesty going on in our society is far worse than it was back when Cheers, Family Ties and The Cosby Show was playing. I mean every form of aberrant sexuality and women’s breasts are shown in front of me almost nonstop for fourteen hours. It’s just such an oppressive, horrible, horrible world and so many of our young girls in our Christian churches are running down to Wal-Mart and buying the same clothes. These are the sorts of things that I’m bringing out in front of God’s people, I’m saying: how are we going to repent of the sexual sin that is paraded in front of us in the wider culture? Why do we have to submit to theses sexual sins again and again?
I brought up androgyny and how many young boys are running out and doing the metrosexual thing with the skinny pants and the little fairy shoes. They’re working on the gender blender for themselves and they don’t want to look like a man and God is just so upset, He hates it when man are not manly in their approach. 1 Corinthians 6 speaks about homosexuality and feminine behavior and feminine dress for men. God does not want men to be androgynous and feminine like in their approach; He gave them facial hair for a reason.
These are the sorts of things that I preached yesterday because I said, you could just say, ‘well all of the unisex, homosexual, metrosexual stuff that’s out in the world is so bad but we’re not going to repent of anything, we’re not going to look any different, we’re not going to bear any fruits of repentance in the way that we dress and the way that we interact.’ Then I brought out the whole thing on feminism and how feminism has corrupted our women today. I brought out this quote from Forbes magazine, July 27, 2012:
It’s hard to deny the key role that fashion has played in the women’s movement…Ms. Magazine points to New York City women garment workers in the early 20th century who wore hats to signify that they were earning their own money, and thus financially independent. Women in the 1980s adopted a male style of dress—ties, tailored skirt suits, shoulder pads—in order to gain a foothold in the male dominated world of business. And Carol Moseley Braun, the first African American woman elected to the U.S. Senate, wore a pantsuit on the Senate floor in 1993, ending the Senate’s ban on women wearing slacks there.
My question was: Do you resist feminist trends? Do you argue with it? Do you find ways to oppose it? Or do you just succumb to it and just kowtow to feminism? Dave, I’m afraid this stuff is all over the place in our nice little evangelical, reformed, conservative, fundamentalist churches.
Buehner: Kevin my main text this last Lord’s Day: God is a consuming fire.
