Mike Winger | jesus-and-bible

MIKE WINGER - DIVORCE AND REMARRIAGE.

NEW COVENANT LAW .

The new covenant law of Jesus is very very simple, and never has any headaches or problems attached to it or to understand it. After the salvation gospel was completed, (referred to by Jesus in Luke 24:44-48) it became the new covenant law of God that Christian marriage reflects the marriage of God to his church. God will be faithful for life, and will not divorce the church. Thus if you enter into a legitimate marriage it is also for life. The teaching of Jesus about what the KJV rightly interprets as "fornication" (in English) is Jesus teaching us to keep our virginity before wedlock. If people stayed virgins and took choosing a partner seriously, and remained faithful, not one puzzling question, headache or problem would arise. But when people commit sexual immorality and also do not take their vows seriously they can be caught up in a whirlwind of complications that can claim their very souls.

He makes the most absurd claim that there are 5 major beliefs about what the word "porneia" means in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9. Winger does not even mention the obvious, very prevalent belief, to believe it means "fornication" tht is a premarital sin, even though the most famous bible in English in the world, the KNJ, interprets it as this, along with a lot of other bible versions, and famous preachers like John Piper have taught this.

Winger ignores the obvious first reason, and instead states the first of these 5 interpretations of porneia represents fornication in the Jewish betrothal period. If he had stopped there he would have been largely right, but then he claims it is a major interpretation invented to explain why Joseph wanted to divorce Mary at the start of the Gospel of Matthew, which is entirely ridiculous because in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus was laying the foundations of what would become new covenant law for the whole world, not expounding old covenant law, and what makes it even more absurd is that between the old covenant law, and to make it an even worse blunder there was also the transition period of John the Baptist between the old and new laws.

So, Mike Winger totally fails to analyse or examine the belief that one of the most credible interpretations of "porneia" in Matthew 5:32 is simply to believe that the KJV bible has it right, and that the Greek word in context refers to "fornication" before marriage, whether in the engagement period, or before it, and that it is referring to lying to your intended spouse, which is discovered in the marriage chamber, or after the vows. He sullies this very credible correct doctrine by turning it into merely an attempt to explain the relationship between the parents of Jesus, so Winger can throw a frog in the cake and throw the entire cake away. Preposterous. To totally prove my point, in Medieval England there was an official law of the land called: "The Law of the False Virgin" which stated that if a woman was discovered not to be a virgin in the bridal chamber, the new husband should bring in guests from the wedding feast and expose her fraud, in which case he was empowered to both divorce her and marry again (it was still a marriage without consummation as marriage is a covenant, and Jesus otherwise would have been born out of wedlock). This preoccupation with a woman being a virgin has been prevalent in just about every culture and country in the world. How could Mike Winger ignore this? However..... the teaching of Jesus goes further than this, it cuts through male hypocrisy about the issue, if "porneia" means fornication (and it definitely does) and the inescapable conclusion is that premarital fornication must be confessed to your intended spouse, then this applies to men just as much as it does to women. Women must be empowered by hearing the truth, and if it turns out that their intended husband turns out to have been a seducer, bed hopper, playboy, call him what you will, she should be allowed to know.

MY BEST GUESS.

My best guess at the motivations for Mike Winger avoiding the obvious interpretation of porneia meaning unconfessed fornication (the literal KJV interpretation), is to avoid the uneasy and distasteful issues about what can seem like intrusive interrogations about past sins. The bible instructs us to be discrete, Solomon emphasises it. Perhaps Mike Winger wants to avoid all the distasteful headaches about teaching people to be diligent and dredge up and delve into a fiancee's sexual history, and the explosive emotional reactions it can cause. So he chooses to spoil, sully, pollute, poison, taint. tarnish. soil, stain, destroy and ruin the obvious fact the KJV has the word right, it is "fornication" and nothing to do with situations under the old law.

CAN ONLY VIRGINS MARRY THEN?

People like Mike Winger, John MacArthur, John Piper, and modernist Catholic and Orthodox priests etc make such an ultra complex mess of the simple theology of God, I refuse to delve into the more complex issues until I get the core centre issues clear as crystal.

He teaches what amounts to polygamy, not just polygyny either, polyandry.

THE HIDDEN DILEMMA.

When you follow every lead, and examine every topic, the study of marriage and divorce melts down into a shocking dilemma. The man of God is almost forced to make a decision between two uncomfortable choices:

1) If you say the law of Jesus allows men or women to commit multiple acts of fornication, then marry a virgin, as the old covenant law of Moses had a "law of obligation" where a man was simply forced to marry a maiden he had seduced (unless her father refused (Exodus 22:16-17) some might strongly argue the Law of Christ in the new covenant is licentious, allowing for unbridled lust without serious enough consequences.

2) If (on the other hand) you say a fornicator is (or should be, or can be) forbidden to marry a virgin, then you might fall under the accusation you fulfil the scripture "forbidding to marry" when, considering it is described as a "doctrine of devils" is a disturbing situation. Do you feel 100% sure all trace of the law of obligation is really absent from the teachings of Christ? If two 18 year old virgins go too far and fornicate, from your church, and she gets pregnant, is he really free to marry some other virgin? And his punishment is only to pay child support for most of his life?

Considering the amount of lies told by people wanting to marry each other, sometimes lying by not confessing their past transgressions, when the entire point of the "porneia" Matthean clause is such confession should take place, decades ago I decided to do a u-turn and never try to be pastor and all the best to those who want to try to solve such dilemmas.

PONTIFICATING.

Mike Winger - YouTube video: "Divorce and Remarriage: EVERYTHING the Bible Says about It."

Official YouTube Transcript 57:25 mins to 1:00:52mins .

Let's imagine you want to make this case how would you make the case and then how would we refute it?

so definition one is:

that porneia, Jesus's exception for divorce. only refers to sexual violation of an engagement such as sleeping with someone other than the person you're engaged to, and it's mutually exclusive to adultery while in marriage, so thateven if your spouse sleeps around you can't divorce them. That would be this view. Now how do people make a case for this view?

Well they say "Well Matthew has the exception and the reason we don't see it in Mark and Luke is because Matthew's trying to give us justification for why Joseph was gonna divorce Mary."

so in in Jewish contexts the Jews did require a divorce to stop an engagement. You actually don't get a divorce to stop an engagement, but they would say this is what Matthew's doing, he's saying "Look this is why you know it was okay for Joseph to divorce Mary, or at least he planned on it, and that was a righteous thing according to the text, and that's okay because it was porneia she had (in his mind) he thought she had committed sexual immorality.

Now this depends on isolating the meaning of porneia to this. But this is totally unsustainable. I mean this just utterly falls apart when you actually look at the usage of the term porneia in various texts, in the Bible, and out of the Bible, at the time - It completely fails.

Now the view that this is referring to - you know - premarital sex during engagement, that view is utterly refuted by a number of things in the scripture.

number one: PORNEIA: the term is used in a variety of ways in the Bible. In 1st Corinthians 5:1 it's talking about incest. you know in Jude verse 7 is talking about homosexuality, and I know there's a debate on that, but it is that's what was being talked about.

poorni is talking about adultery in the Septuagint or the Greek

translation of the Old Testament that many of the gospel authors were familiar with in Jeremiah 3:2 it talks about

adultery and calls it pornea in Jeremiah 36 talks about adultery and calls it pornea also in Ezekiel 1623 Hosea 2 3

and verse 5 Amos 7 17 it's not referring to pre marital fornication

it's referring to adultery in those places a third reason to reject the the

the engagement view would be that Jesus uses the term in the context of a question about marriage and divorce not

engagement and breaking off engagement with a divorce it relates to two Old Testament texts that he even is

referring to and they're referring to that are about divorce after marriage not anything that happens during an engagement period and so

there's the Old Testament context of the verses that are being quoted also third

reason to reject that view the debate of the day wasn't about engagement it was about marriage so not only there the Old Testament text

about marriage and divorce the debate and the question Jesus weighs in on is about marriage in not engagement and divorce and number

four God divorced Israel for fornication so this view would say that God did something wrong in Jeremiah three when

he divorces Israel for fornication they weren't just betrothed there was a marriage there in the analogy of

Scripture a fifth and final reason to reject this engagement hypothesis comes from a non canonical book called serac

and it's in chapter 2 verses 22 and 23 where it accuses someone of committing adultery by fornication now the

terminology there in the Greek is really interesting because it it calls it says

committed adultery by porneia so that porneia is a Umbrella sexual sin that

causes adultery why because you were married when you did it and that's of course my view on on it which I'll get

to in a minute so the second definition we'll cover is this we've ruled out the engagement hypothesis it's that poor knee is just

incest and so it basically means and this is by the way this is the position taken by Roman Catholic scholars this is