Sermon Tone Analysis

1.   FAMOUS POLYGAMIST’S NAME IN HISTORIC INAUGURATION PRAYER 

At the historic Inauguration of the United States’ first African American President, Barack Obama, of January 20, 2009, renowned Pastor Rick Warren offered the official opening prayer.

At the very start of the prayer, Warren began, “Let us pray.

Almighty God, our Father, everything we see and everything we can’t see exists because of you alone.

It all comes from you.

It all belongs to you.

It all exists for your glory.

History is your story.

The scripture tells us, Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God.

The Lord is One.

And you are the compassionate and merciful one, and you are loving to everyone you have made.”

By therewith identifying the name of Israel before all the world watching this historic inauguration, Warren openly vocalized the name of one of the most famous polygamists throughout all of history.

Indeed, all “12 Tribes of Israel” were born of the four wives of Jacob, whom God re-named as Israel.

Clearly, the namesake progenitor of the people of Israel was a God-blessed polygamist - against whom no verse in the Bible reproved or corrected for such polygamy.

Even Jesus Christ is reported by the Bible in Matthew 8:11 as saying that that same polygamist would be seen in Heaven.

However, Pastor Warren has also publicly declared that he believes that polygamy is a definition of marriage that he would oppose.

Yet, the Bible he believes in proves that anti-polygamy is very much anti-Israel.

By his making such a declaration, Warren’s assertion unwittingly “opposes” the progenitor of the very same Israel he named in his Inaugural prayer.

And with that anti-biblical opposition, Pastor Warren has thereby succumbed to the temptation of what Christians understand as idolatry.

Although reminding all the world of the one true God and the polygamist name of Israel in the Inaugural prayer, Warren has otherwise allowed himself to turn to the false god of big socialist government for anti-Israel marriage control.

2.

PASTOR RICK WARREN 

Pastor Rick Warren is a noted, quite kindhearted, evangelical Christian author of a best-selling self-help book, “The Purpose Driven Life.”

He is also the beloved pastor of Saddleback Church - a 23,000-member evangelical mega-church in Lake Forest, California.

On August 16, 2008, Warren hosted a public religious forum for both Presidential candidates, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain, to discuss social issues – most notably, what evangelicals view as pre-natal infanticide (abortion) and the biological impossibility of “same sex marriage.”

Even though Warren clearly does not support the hyper-liberal positions of the Democrat, he defended his decision to invite both sides, saying that he believed that Barack Obama should be offered the opportunity to present such views too.

Along with other media, Time magazine has hailed Rick Warren as “unquestionably the U.S.'s most influential and highest-profile churchman.”

Many people and pundits believe that Rick Warren could be the “new Billy Graham” to Presidents and all America, for this generation.

After the election, President Elect Obama returned the favor to the evangelical pastor on December 17, 2008, publicly declaring that Warren would be the clergyman to offer the opening prayer at the Presidential Inauguration.

That announcement sparked outrage by homosexuals and their liberal supporters.

After all, Rick Warren had been a visible advocate for the November 7, 2008, referendum-passage of a big government marriage control amendment to California’s state constitution.

The amendment codified the actually-unbiblical re-definition of marriage as only being defined as “a man and a woman.”

President-Elect Obama responded to the controversy of his selection.

Echoing Warren’s same defense from the August, 2008, forum, Obama said that he had selected Rick Warren to show everyone that Obama is committed to listening to others who have different views – even if they do not align with Obama’s own hyper-liberal views.

3.

NBC’s DATELINE 

NBC-TV responded immediately by promoting its pending “Dateline” show of December 19, 2008: Rick Warren had given an interview to NBC’s Ann Curry.

Discussing the November, 2008, referendum-passage of California’s big government marriage control amendment, Curry suggested that Warren’s opposition to what evangelicals view as the biological impossibility of “same sex marriage” was hurtful to homosexuals who “only want to start their own family” and adopt.

She interrogatively declared, “There is this specter of pain that your position will undoubtedly cause, and I wonder how you reconcile that.”

In NBC’s online promo, Rick Warren offered his un-edited, complete response, “For 5,000 years, every single culture, every single religion, has defined marriage as a man and a woman.

Not just Christianity - Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism.

Every single religion, and every single culture, has defined marriage between a man and a woman.

Why take that word?

I mean, I even have gay friends, like Al Rantel at KABC, who is opposed to using the word, ‘marriage,’ for gay relation.

Use another term.

I am opposed to marriage being used for a relationship between a sister and a brother.

I would oppose that.

I would oppose the term, marriage, being used for an older man and a baby girl.

I would oppose that.

I would be opposed for the word, marriage, being used for one man and six wives - or one wife and six husbands.

I think - God says, it's not my issue - God said in Genesis 1, a man and a woman shall cling to each other for life.”

Warren was semantically correct in noting that marriage has historically always been defined as occurring with opposite genders.

Conservatives note that the anatomical impossibility for homosexuals to share coitus is the biological reason why the modern construct of “same sex marriage” has been definitively excluded from the definition of marriage throughout history.

So, while it is semantically true that marriage has been universally defined as occurring between a man and a woman, it is not true that such semantics thereby excluded polygamy.

Polygynous marriage is indeed “a man and a woman” - in each of the man’s individual marriages with each wife.

And, although occurring far less frequently in history, polyandrous marriage meets the definition in the same way - but in reverse.

Aside from the semantics, and notwithstanding the pastor’s focus on “gay marriage,” Rick Warren’s statement is simply untrue regarding polygamy.

Many cultures, religions, and the Bible have always included polygamy within the definition of marriage.

4.

CULTURES DO INCLUDE POLYGAMY 

Pastor Warren’s statement was definitely incorrect about “every single culture” and polygamy.

Many indigenous cultures around the world have included forms of polygamy in their marriage definition - including South American, Indonesian (Melanesian), and African tribal polygamous cultures, even today.

Over the last three years, one particular TV series, called “Tribal Odyssey,” has demonstrated a number of such examples.

The series has appeared on such television networks as National Geographic, Discovery, and most recently (on December 28, 2008), the Travel Channel.

As that documentary series shows, the Zoe tribe (on the Amazon, in Brazil), the Wolani tribe (in West Papua, in Melanesia), and the Himba tribe (in Namibia, in West Africa) all continue the ancestral traditions of their own unique cultures.

Such tribes obviously do not define marriage “by government.”

More importantly, as these televised episodes prove, the definition of marriage in these indigenous cultures very clearly does include polygamy.

Even though many people may perceive such cultures as “un-civilized” by modern standards, one cannot deny that such cultures do exist.

Because they do exist, then one cannot exclude them in a statement about “every single culture.”

Therefore, Warren’s statement was simply incorrect.

“Every single culture” for the past 5,000 years - and even still, today - has most definitely not excluded polygamy in its definition of marriage.

5.

RELIGIONS DO INCLUDE POLYGAMY - CHRISTIANITY 

Moreover, each of the religions he mentioned also prove that Rick Warren’s statement was incorrect about “every single religion” and polygamy.

Polygamy was not ever banned by original Christianity.

The “ban” was invented a few centuries after Christ when Christianity became utterly transformed.

No longer being the original persecuted faith of the humble disciples and martyrs, it metamorphosed into the dominating political powerhouse of the Catholic institution.

Subsequently, Catholicism subtly found ways to integrate some of the false god theologies and doctrines of the Romans.

Leaning upon Catholicism’s newly-developing and inventive notions of anti-sexual asceticism (out of which priests and nuns were ordered to unbiblically never marry), Catholic popes re-defined marriage for their religion with their new anti-biblical invention of the “one man, one woman” dogma.

Depriving the masses access to read the Scriptures for themselves at that time, they mis-directed the translated-from-Greek-text meaning of 1 Timothy 3:2,12 and Titus 1:6 to imply that those Scriptural instructions given only for bishops, elders, and deacons to be the husband of their “first wife” (i.e., to not be divorced) somehow means that supposedly every married man may only be the husband of “one wife.”

As the mammoth Catholic institution acquired dominating control over most Western governments, it used those subordinated governments to coerce others to embrace its manmade doctrines.

Almost a thousand years after Catholicism’s “one man, one woman” doctrinal changes, the Protestant Reformation (“protesting” Catholicism’s manmade doctrines) corrected and brought Christianity to “sola scriptura” (only Scripture) as the only valid standard for genuine doctrine.

The Reformation also planted the seeds of what would become Americanism with the U.S. Constitutionalism of disallowing a religion like the Catholic powerhouse to control government.

Some early reformers acknowledged that the Bible never forbade polygyny.

“Martin Luther at one time accepted polygamy as a practical necessity,” noted Jonathan Turley, renowned Constitutional law professor, in a USA Today op-ed.

However, the early reformers did not fully complete that Reformation.

Instead, most Protestants simply continued the unwittingly inherited but non-scriptural Catholic invention of “one man, one woman” dogma.

Since the 1990s, though, a recognized movement of evangelicals from all Christian denominations has emerged, called, Christian Polygamy.

Based on the Bible and an established “love-not-force” standard for un-coerced consenting-adults, these modern Bible-based reformers are specifically “Continuing the Reformation” – the actual slogan of the TruthBearer.org

organization for Christian Polygamy.

6.

RELIGIONS DO INCLUDE POLYGAMY – JUDAISM, ISLAM, HINDUISM, BUDDHISM 

Judaism (the forebear of Christianity, as Christ was Jewish) is the religion of the descendants of Israel – the previously-mentioned famous polygamist whose four wives bore the “12 Tribes of Israel.”

The Jewish sacred text, the Torah, was written by polygamist Moses (who had two wives himself) – and it includes polygamy regulations in such verses that Christians know as Exodus 21:10 and Deuteronomy 21:15.

The “one man, one woman” invention insultingly asserts that all the Jews are “illegitimate” descendents (i.e., technically calling them, “bastards”) of supposedly “unmarried” parents - thereby proving that anti-polygamy is definitively anti-Israel.

Judaism did not even consider embracing “one man, one woman” dogma until about the year 1000 when a Talmudist teacher, Rabbeinu Gershom, made it the new standard for Jewish marriages.

Yet, not all Jewish groups accepted the new prohibition, either.

That rabbi’s acquiescence was yet another example of the Catholic institution’s political power to control even people outside its religion – to the mind-controlling point of such another religion actually denying the marriages of its very own polygamist progenitor, Israel.

Even so, as Professor Turley also pointed out, “Polygamy is still present among Jews in Israel, Yemen and the Mediterranean.”

And some of them are also in the United States, as a John Stossel Special Report on ABC-TV’s show, “20~/20,” showed in an interview with a Jewish polygamous family from the Chicago area.

Islam was founded around the year 600 by its religion’s polygamist “prophet,” Mohammad.

The Muslim sacred text, the Qur’an, includes Verse 4:3 which specifically limits regular Muslim men to marrying no more than four wives.

The “prophet” Mohammad himself, however, married many more than that limit, with his many wives known by Muslims as the “Mothers of the believers.”

Any Muslim who rejects polygamy rejects the Islamic religion itself and its founding polygamist “prophet.”

In Hinduism, the Baudhayana Dharmashastra (in Prasna I, Adhyaya 8, Kandika 16, verses 1-8) details how many wives a man in each of the four castes (societal classes) may marry.