April 7, 2025 / My Conscience Is Bound

4.7.25

Hey, Calvary Fremont –

My conscience is bound to the Word of God. This is my anchor point. Here’s how this works.

I received a call from a woman who identified herself as a member of the New Heaven and New Earth Church. This is a Korean group convinced that their pastor, Lee Man-hee, is the only one in 2,000 years of church history who has been appointed and anointed by God to properly interpret the Bible. She wanted me to watch a YouTube presentation explaining and proving the claims of her pastor. I told her that I wasn’t interested in such foolishness.

She went on for about five minutes breathlessly describing the incredible vision and profound experience that Lee Man-hee had. He saw God and God gave him a scroll and commissioned him and told him that he is the angel of Revelation 22:16, which says, “I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify to you these things for the churches.” She was quite enthralled with Lee Man-hee’s story and it convinced her that he was the angel of Revelation 22:16. The previous anchor point of her conscience (whatever that had been) had been severed and it was now bound to him.

I said, “So what? My conscience is bound to God’s Word and not to this man’s experience and convictions. Why should my conscience be bound now to this man’s vision? Why should I shift my loyalties from what the Bible teaches to what this man teaches?” She asked which of the 12 Tribes of Israel I belonged to. I told her that I belonged to the Body of Christ. She said that this wasn’t good enough because Pastor Lee Man-hee teaches that we must belong to one of the 12 Tribes of Israel and be one of the 144,00. I thanked her for her invitation and said good-bye.

If your conscience isn’t firmly bound to the Word of God, you could very well be sucked into someone else’s convictions and passions and narrative and have your conscience hijacked. This is happening with increasing frequency when it comes to Christians and homosexuality. The Bible addresses homosexuality in numerous passages and each passage unequivocally condemns homosexuality. You have to be intellectually dishonest and do theological backflips to contend that the Bible endorses, or is even neutral toward, homosexuality. And yet, the consciences of many Christians are being hijacked by the homosexual narrative to where they deny and/or twist what the Bible says.

Here are Christian parents who have held to the traditional understanding that homosexuality is sinful – and then they discover their child is gay. Here are Christian theologians and pastors who do not want to sound like hateful intellectual Neanderthals who are out of step with the enlightened culture. Here are Christians who have held to the traditional understanding that homosexuality is sinful – and then they encounter someone who is gay and confesses Christ at the same time. They are so warm and genuine; they are so sincere and passionate for Christ; they testify to loving Jesus and yet have been so harmed by the Church and its hateful insistence that homosexuality is a sin that disinherits them from the kingdom of God. As a result of these encounters, many traditional Christians disconnect their conscience from the Word of God and bind them to the experiences, reasonings, and narratives of the homosexual community. The gay outlook and narrative have displaced the Word of God as final authority.

The world, the flesh, and the devil are working overtime to unhitch your conscience from the Word of God and tie it off to some other seemingly authoritative cultural narrative. May your conscience be bound to the Word of God and may it be immovable. Yes, you’ll be called unloving, and all shades of phobic, and bigoted, etc. Yet there is a judgment more severe than the culture’s scorn. Don’t forget the pointed warning of James 4:4 – “You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” May your conscience be bound to the Word of God and not to any worldly narrative. Be the friend of God!

Stay healthy and be blessed and follow Jesus – Pastor Tim