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What happened to them then (see Rom. 1:) is happening today. We quote from an article
in The Daily Telegraph of 22.6.70:
"Love between two men `can achieve a pure and glorious relationship' the Bishop of
Southwark the Rt. Rev. Mervyn Stockwood wrote yesterday in a diocesan newsletter."
Whatever the Bishop intended to convey, the homosexual camp interprets it as a green
light to them. The article continues:
"The Bishop's comment were greeted enthusiastically by the Gay Christian
Movement. Its secretary said: We are grateful to the Bishop of Southwark who appears
to endorse our views that love should be fully expressed in personal sexual relationships."
We are only too ready to agree that the news media represent the extremes, but the
silence of ecclesiastical authority on what God called repeatedly an "abomination" is
significant.
"And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth
shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make
merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their
damnation slumbereth not" (II Pet. 2: 2 and 3).
We think of the many religious cults of our day and the facile success they have in
raising funds and acquiring property and followers. We think of the frequent callers at
our doors urging Bible study but denying the deity of our Saviour and thus undermining
His qualification to be our redeemer. All these contribute to make for some "the way of
truth evil spoken of".
What other ploys of Satan do we find? Generally we might say formal worship
ceremonies and ordinances usurp the rightful place of teaching and exposition of and
from the Bible. Paul with final instructions to Timothy says, "Preach the word; be
instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and
doctrine" (II Tim. 4: 2).
Peter turns from warning of the dangers of apostasy to examples of judgment and
punishment exacted by God on past generations of men and angels who rebelled and
followed not the commands and ordained way of life for their own habitation.
"For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and
delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; and spared not the
old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the
flood upon the world of the ungodly" (2: 4 and 5).
We have no specific statement of the nature of this sin of the old world. The most
certain inference is that Satan introduced his seed into the world, ". . . . . the sons of God
(angels) saw the daughter of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of which
they chose" (Gen. 6: 2). "The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own
habitation" (Jude 6). This violation of the divine designed habitat of these angels seemed
to have corrupted the old world so that "the wickedness of man was great in the earth"