REACT: Polygamist 'Pastor' Rich Tidwell

Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Church does *not* teach that all valid marriages are unable to be dissolved!  Canon lawyer Andrew Kong eloquently explains the three scenarios in which a marriage can be dissolved according to the teachings of the Catholic Church on the @TotusTuusApostolate podcast.  I express my disagreement where I find this teaching deviates from Scripture.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Rich Tidwell is a pastor in Missouri. He's a bad pastor. He's a Christian nationalist and he claims to have two wives. And his argument for polygyny, which is when a man has more than one wife, uh involves him twisting scripture to try to justify his adultery. He should divorce his second wife, which is a fake wife, and just be married to the first one. And so a friend on YouTube asked me to uh cover Rich Tidwell's argument. And so we're going to go ahead and debunk him here.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Timothy chapter 4, verse 1. But the spirit expressly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars, seated in their own conscience, as with a branding iron. Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. When has marriage been forbidden? Well, there's actually three forms of marriage that I've seen forbidden by the Christian church that aren't forbidden by the law of God. The first one is priests having a wife. There's about a thousand years of Christian history where it was believed by the majority and practiced within the Catholic Church that a priest could not have a wife. So the guy most committed to the word of God and to teaching it to others was not allowed to have offspring. That is a doctrine of demons. What's the next one? Well, the next one was a little more recent. Interracial marriage was not allowed between Christian churches during slavery and segregation and all of that. And some people still today kind of think that the races shouldn't mix. This is wickedness because in Christ the scriptures say there's neither Jew nor Gentile. And that means that there's no regulations in the New Testament regarding races. The only regulation for marriage in the New Testament is that it must be two believers. And obviously, according to the law, they can't be an adulterous union. The woman can't be one flesh with another believer. Okay. Okay. Okay, this guy.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

All right. So yes, priests shouldn't be precluded from marriage. That's correct. Uh, yes, people shouldn't be precluded from marrying other races or nationalities or ethnicities or whatever. And yes, we should only marry other believers. But there's nothing wrong with, you know, two unbelievers marrying. Uh, and yes, people should not remarry while a prior valid spouse is alive. So let's continue.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Okay. So without diving into all the marriage law doctrine, you got to understand that that is the regulation, is believers with unbelievers is what's not allowed. So we said interracial marriage. So first we said, oh, priests cannot have a wife. That was a lie. Luther challenged that. It was a big scandal. He married uh Catherine von Bora, and she was a nun. And so this was a huge scandal in the eyes of many. And yet it's lawful for a priest to have a wife. There's nothing wrong with that. And having offspring is good, and that is one of the primary means of growing the church. How did Israel grow? Yes, conversion. But what was their primary growth? Birth. It was birth. Which brings me to the next point. How did Israel form? It formed through Jacob and how many wives? Four wives. Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, Bilhah. And it was done by divine providence.

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Okay, so Tidwell here is implying that just as Luther and others uh overcame improper prohibitions on marriage, so Rich Tidwell is overcoming an improper prohibition on polygamy. He's the new Luther. That's how he's kind of framing this. And so he's borrowing from a sense of injustice uh that we feel towards those prohibitions on marriage, and he's smuggling that into polygamy. Uh, and just as people, you know, were victims of unjust prohibitions on marriage in the past, so Tidwell and other polygamists, they're the victims now. And if that strikes you as ridiculous, that's because it is ridiculous. Jesus famously calls remarriage adultery, he says it seven times in the New Testament. If he's saying that, obviously polygamy is all way off the table. Like that's like saying, well, Jesus opposed assault and battery, but he didn't he didn't oppose murder, so murder must be okay. No, that's ridiculous. If he opposes assault and battery, obviously murder also is opposed. Or it's like saying, Oh, Jesus opposed stealing a hundred dollars, but so but it doesn't say anything about stealing a thousand dollars, so a thousand dollars be okay. No, of course that's ridiculous. If divorce and remarriage is wrong, obviously polygamy is wrong. That's like obvious to most people, but escapes Rich Tidwell. So next he he mentions uh Jacob's polygamy as a means through which Israel was was started. Rich needs to hold up for a second because we should go before Jacob. Uh how about Abraham, who married his uh his sister, right? Famously, Abraham married his half-sister, Sarah. And without incest, then there's no Jacob. So if Tidwell is right, then incest must be permissible because without it, we wouldn't have Jacob, if you follow his reasoning. So the idea is Jacob, without his polygamy, we wouldn't have Israel, therefore, polygamy must be okay. Yeah, well, without Abraham's incest, you wouldn't have Jacob, so therefore incest must be okay. This is terrible reasoning. And Leviticus 18 tells us that incest is wrong. Therefore, it is not the case that if a particular marriage arrangement was used to bring about the nation of Israel, that that arrangement is therefore morally permissible. That is a non sequitur. What about God's providence, though? You know, there are a couple of truths about God's providence that you need to know before trying to make deductions about it. And Rich Tidwell just kind of glosses over this. But the first part you want to think about is that, you know, evidence that God's providence was involved in someone's action is not evidence that that conduct the person did is morally permissible. Consider, God caused Jesus to die, he was predestined to die, but the men who killed Jesus committed murder, morally speaking, by doing so. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. God did not sin in doing so, but Pharaoh sinned when he acted according to his hardened heart. So God's providence bringing something to pass does not mean that the actions that people committed were without sin. Here's the second thing to consider: evidence that good things come out of bad conduct is also not evidence that the conduct of the people involved was morally permissible. Jacob's brothers left him for dead, and they meant it for evil, but God meant it for good, we read in Genesis. So people have a hard time kind of wrapping their head around providence, and they have a hard time understanding what changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament, which we'll discuss later. And so he's hiding behind those two areas that are like doctrinally challenging for believers to kind of get wrap their head around. And so he's hiding behind those to kind of cynically justify manipulating his wife and another woman so that he can commit adultery and call it marriage.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

God built Israel through those four women. In fact, in Ruth chapter 4, verse 11, it says that Rachel and Leah, which includes their servants, together built up the house of Israel. And it's said as a blessing, it's said as a positive in that statement. Okay, so God built Israel through that practice. Well, in today's Christian church, you're not going to find, very rarely will you find, Christians or pastors that say that a man can have more than one wife. And so this is the current forbidding of marriage that we're currently experiencing. Can priests have a wife? Yes. Now, at least if you're a Protestant, yes. Can uh two different races marry each other? Yes. We seem to have mostly overcome those two deceptions. But the current deception that's still active right now is that a man cannot have more than one wife, and somehow it is adultery. Let me ask you this: if it is adultery, and the scriptures say that adulterers will be condemned, why did Abraham and David and the other prophets and patriarchs, Jacob included, not repent of that sin of adultery?

SPEAKER_01 7:38

All right, that's an easy question. That's an easy question. More sin was tolerated in the Old Testament than is tolerated in the New Testament. This is not complicated. People have known this, theologians have known this, like for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's like very obvious. More sin is tolerated in the Old Testament than is tolerated in the New Testament. So Matthew 19, 7. The Pharisees asked Jesus why Moses uh had the certificate of divorce. And Jesus said it was tolerated for their hard-heartedness. So something like this, Tidwell is going to respond with, for example, Psalm 119, 160 that says, The sum of your words is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. So which is it? A hard-heartedness or is it like a righteous rule that endures forever? Jesus addresses this in uh Matthew chapter 5, verse 17. He said that he came not to abolish or like subtract from the law, but he came to fulfill, which means to add to the law. So the idea is that when one law comes into conflict with another one, the higher law overrides the lower law, right? So it doesn't abolish the lesser law, uh, but it overrides it. And so, like you see that with sacrifice on the Sabbath, right? So on the Sabbath, uh they're supposed to rest, but also they're doing sacrifices. Sacrifices is not what you would call rest, sacrifices is work, it's a lot of work. So, what do you do when those two things come into conflict? You have to figure out which law is the higher law, and the higher law wins, and the higher law will be the sacrifice law. And so that's why they were able to uh work on the Sabbath, and Jesus even says they're profaning the Sabbath. A way to understand what Jesus does when he comes forward with his overriding laws is with if you imagine a beach and there's an umbrella on the beach, and the umbrella casts a shade over some of the sand. That is like the effect of the law. Like the umbrella is the law, and then the law casts that kind of shade and it prohibits some kind of immoral conduct. Well, then comes a larger umbrella. Somebody puts in a larger umbrella next to that one and it casts a wider shade, right? So that's like the New Testament with uh Jesus overriding some of the laws of the Old Testament, and so it casts a wider shade. And so it it covers the immoral stuff that was that was addressed from the smaller umbrella, but it but it addresses a lot more. And so that's what it means when Jesus came to fulfill the law. He's adding to the law, uh, and so he's covering more kinds of immoral kind of conduct there. Consider Hebrews chapter 7, verse 12 says that there was a change made to the law now in the New Testament, right? And so in the New Testament, uh oaths are now disfavored, they weren't disfavored in the new in the Old Testament. Uh circumcision is no longer required, it was required before. There's a change in the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday. Uh, we've added baptism now, we've got communion now. We're not doing the temple, we don't have to rebuild the temple, that's done. We're not sacrificing animals, we don't have the high priestly system, we don't have the uh whole calendar with all the high holy days. There's like a ton of different changes from the Old Testament to the New Testament. We have our promise from the prophets that God's going to take out our stony hearts and now give us a heart of flesh. So the and the entire book of Hebrews is designed to show how momentous a change was made from the Old Testament to the New Testament. There's a whole book about this. And so it should be obvious to us that there was a significant change from Old to New. So then you can't use the conduct uh that was permitted under the Old Testament or tolerated under the Old Testament, and then it kind of imported into the New Testament. It's a different period in time. And this has been obvious to theologians across traditions for hundreds of years. You can read John Calvin and Exodus 21, for example. You could look at his commentary there. So now look at the speech and conduct of the disciples before and after Pentecost. They're not making the same mistakes after Pentecost as they made before Pentecost, right? And if you read Matthew in comparison to the history of God's people, you'll notice Herod wanted to kill Jesus just as Pharaoh wanted to kill uh newborn males, and just as Moses was saved from death, so was Jesus. And then when the threat was gone, they left Egypt and they came back into Israel. And Moses quotes, out of Egypt, I called my son, because just as God's people came out of Egypt, so Jesus did. And then Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist, which could which could picture God's people like kind of going through the Red Sea. And then Jesus was tempted of the devil, and those temptations were very similar to the kind of temptations God's people had in the wilderness, but Jesus overcame them. And then Jesus gives the Sermon on the Mount. So this is comparable to Moses coming down from the mountain uh with the law, and just as Jesus surpassed God's people in their obedience, so now he's giving a higher law than what they received under Moses. Jesus is the more perfect one coming forward to replace what was done before, which was a lower standard in the Old Testament. Here's another way you can see this. If you look at Luke 16, 16, Jesus says the law and the prophets were until John, that's John the Baptist. Since then, the good news of the kingdom of God is preached. What was formerly tolerated is not now tolerated because the kingdom of God is being preached. Romans chapter 5 shows us that Jesus is the new Adam, and what the first Adam lost is what the new Adam buys back. And so the history goes like this there's Adam and Eve in the garden, everything is fine, then they fell, and the goal has been to reverse the fall ever since. The fall is the problem. So Noah, Noah was like a type of Adam, uh, and the idea was, you know, they're gonna rinse and repeat, and you're gonna reset. And then that doesn't work because just getting rid of bad influences, that's part of the problem. But but the real problem is inside Noah and his kids. It's the problem of the human heart. So then you fast forward to Moses and like, you know, let's make a community and let's use the writings of Moses to kind of shape that society. We're gonna have government laws that are designed to like regulate and reduce sin. We're gonna have history, uh narrative that is taught to the people. So we'll have a religious system, and we're gonna use all these things to kind of institutionalize good influences to kind of shape people, to try to mitigate the fall. That doesn't work. And so here we are now with Jesus, and he's going to regenerate us. He's gonna take out our hearts of stone and replace them with soft hearts. So he's teaching a higher law that finally cuts to the heart, and Chidwell doesn't use this framework. Uh, so he thinks the lesser standards tolerated in the Old Testament are the standards for today. And that's like identifying expectations you have for a five-year-old and then using those expectations for a 50-year-old. That doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

Why was Bathsheba adultery and not Abigail and Ahinoam when David married those two women? Why didn't God step in and tell David that he was sitting? In fact, why did God tell David in 2 Samuel chapter 12 that he, God, was the one that gave David Saul's wives?

SPEAKER_01 14:16

Okay, so 2 Samuel 12 is a favorite passage of uh these polygamous people. Nathan the prophet is confronting David. He is saying, You took a man's wife and killed the man. He says, God gave you wives and would give you more. You didn't have to kill this guy and take his wife. That's Nathan's argument. Nathan's point was David crossed a line. It was unnecessary for David to cross it because David could have had all the women he wanted. Tidwell is wrongly deducing that the fact that God would give David more wives means it's morally permissible for David to have more wives. So in Numbers 11, the people wanted uh meat, for example. So God sent them quail, and it was wrong for them to eat it, but he sent it to them. In first uh Samuel 8, they asked for a king. It was wrong for them to do, but God gave them a king. God giving something to someone does not indicate it was good for them to take it. Therefore, just because God gave and would have given more wives to David doesn't mean it's morally permissible to have more than one wife. Nathan's point there was not about the moral permissibility or impermissibility of polygamy. Nathan's point there was it's wrong to be taking another man's wife and then killing the guy. That was that was crossing a line. Is the polygamy wrong? Yes, the polygamy is wrong. But this is more wrong. And again, you have to understand the law at that time under Moses was there to mitigate sin. It wasn't going to perfectly stop sin. It was a there was government laws and they had moral implications and they taught people about morality, but they were regulations. They didn't perfectly, it wasn't a perfect reflection of the real moral law. We don't we don't see that until Jesus comes and he gives us the higher standard that we that we read in the New Testament.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

Why would God say that? That God gave David more than one wife. And so, in these last days, friends, what the devil wants is for us not to procreate. It's the first written commandment in the Bible: be fruitful and multiply. He knows because he's watched Israel grew through procreation and specifically polygyny, which is one man with more than one wife. And lots of the patriarchs practice this. In fact, in the lineage of Jesus, there are seven honored polygamists in the lineage of Jesus. Did you know that? Seven. Abraham, Jacob, David, and others. There are seven honored polygamists. None of them rebuked at any time.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

None of this matters.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

Any priest, prophet, or God himself for having more than one wife. In fact, God says he gave the wives to them in 2 Samuel chapter 12. Pretty wild stuff. And marriage is divine. Matthew 19, verse 6, what does it say? It says that they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no man separate. In other words, marriage, if it's lawful, is always divine. That means God joined Jacob to Rachel, God joined Jacob to Leah, God joined Jacob to Zilpah and Bilhah. God did it, and then God created the 12 tribes of Israel through that.

SPEAKER_01 17:13

God did not join the men to more than one wife. These polygyny relationships were continual states of adultery that were tolerated in the Old Testament. And we know this because Matthew 10, verse 11 says, if a man divorces and remarries, he commits adultery against his first wife. The only difference between polygyny and divorce and remarriage is the divorce. The whole point is the divorce doesn't grant the man permission to have a second wife. So a lack of divorce certainly wouldn't grant permission to have a second wife. The whole rationale why remarriage is adultery is because the man is still married to his first wife after the divorce. The divorce does not end the marriage. That's why the remarriage would be adultery. So if you just take out the divorce step, the remarriage, the second marriage, would still be adultery. But in the Old Testament, a man wasn't treated as an adulterer under the Mosaic law if he divorced and remarried. But in the New Testament, he is treated as an adulterer in that scenario. Now, why is that? Because less sin is tolerated in the New Testament than was in the Old Testament. Now I said that the man is not treated as an adulterer. So the question is, was it adultery for David to have more than one wife? Yes. According to the moral law, he was committing adultery. The question is, would that prohibit him from entering into heaven? No, it would not, because he was in the Old Testament period in time where more sin was tolerated. But today, if you had somebody like David who had more than one wife, or you have a rich tid well here, and this person dies in a state of, you know, more than with more than one wife, then yes, they would be dying in a state of adultery, and that would prohibit them from entering into heaven. So it's different now than it was in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

And what you're really arguing with is God. Same with interracial marriage. God caused interracial marriages, not in scripture and in the Christian church today. God caused priests to have wives. And God calls more than one woman to a man sometimes. He calls some to celibacy, according to Matthew 19. He calls some to monogamy, and he calls some to polygyny. Even Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 7. You know what he says? He says that I wish everybody was as I am, which he was celibate. But he said, Each has his own gift from God.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

Totally incorrect.

SPEAKER_00 19:38

One of one kind and one of another. In other words, God decides when it comes to marriage. What God has joined together, let no man separate. Now, none of that was in my notes, but it came up by the spirit that one of the issues in today's church today is the forbidding of marriage. And it started early on and it's taken different forms at different times. And I'm telling you, this beast that must be slayed, this fortress that must be crushed, is this one that denies godly good men from having more than one wife and more offspring and denies women from having a godly husband. People think that polygyny is all about the man. Women guaranteed can have a guaranteed good husband and not settle or get with an unbeliever, which an unbeliever is unlawful, or settle or have to be forcefully celibate.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

So the adulterer is doing it for the women. Look at his good motives. He must just be God's gift to women.

SPEAKER_00 20:35

They are able to have a good and godly husband, and they are not sinning. And this reawakening will happen before Jesus' return. If you actually want to study this out, Isaiah chapter three is all about the spirit of feminism coming upon really, it's it's the daughters of Zion. It's it's the Christian church, is what it's actually talking about. The feminist spirit comes upon the daughters of Zion. And then by Isaiah chapter four, verse one, they've realized that they're able to share a godly husband, and seven women cleave to one man, and the Messiah returns shortly after that, because the very next verse is about the branch of the Lord and the Messiah returning.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

This is such a gross twisting of scripture. I I just rarely come across anybody who is this brazen and absurd in their twisting of scripture. Isaiah chapter 4 and verse 1 is the end of a long list of punishments that include men falling by the sword near the end of Isaiah 3. One of the punishments is polygyny. Polygyny is not permissible, it's not a blessing, it's a punishment. The women are so desperate they agree to it. So this shows the judgment has culminated. God's wrath is uh is appeased, and then in the next verse, God starts to bring them back uh and starts to restore them. So two dwell things polygamy. A polygyny is a blessing. It's not a blessing. It's sin. It's desperate. Well, here's what happened. A terrible war appears to have broken out. Large numbers of men probably died. Society was breaking down. People are terribly traumatized. They're probably unsafe. And in desperation, seven women marry one man. So this is like saying a group of people disobeyed God. God made them people get stuck out at sea. Due to their desperate hunger, they resorted to cannibalism and then they were rescued. Therefore, cannibalism is a blessing. It's just, it's just complete nonsense. The fact that uh those women, the seven women who married one man, they didn't marry him because they realized, oh, polygyny is great. They married him because they were desperate in a terrible, traumatic, nightmare scenario. That's why they did it. It was the culmination of punishment. It was not a blessing. This is like opposite day for Rich Tidwell.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

But the point is that forbidding marriage is a commandment of men. It's not a commandment of God. And you'll know this because there is no prohibition of polygyny in scripture. In fact, there's regulations, which means it's approved. Homosexuality, prohibited.

SPEAKER_01 23:13

Polygyny, regulation is not approval. You have to know that. When you go to read the Mosaic Law, regulation is not approval. Regulation is oftentimes like this. You guys are doing all these terrible things. Okay, we're gonna draw a line in the sand and we're gonna say, okay, we're not going to use the power of the state, we're not gonna use government force to stop you from doing this bad thing and this bad thing and this bad thing. But once you cross this line over here, that's too much. Now we're gonna use the power of the state to prohibit what you're doing. So regulation is not approval, regulation is mitigating the evil. That's what regulates, it's mitigating the evil, it is not approving the evil.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

All marriage, all lawful marriage is regulated. In fact, the silence of the New Testament indicates that there's no prohibition in the New Testament either. Because there would have been converts in the first century who had more than one wife, very common at that time. So why isn't there a protocol in the New Testament that denies, are you listening, that denies them those additional unions and gives them a protocol on how to divorce the additional additional women and what to do with the children in order to maintain that they wouldn't be fatherless? What are we supposed to do? There is no protocol because there's no need for the divorce.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

And here's the question Okay, so by the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had largely rejected uh polygamy. A lot of the conversations we see are between Jesus and the Pharisees, or later you have the apostles and Jewish converts to Christianity. So there wasn't a debate about polygamy because both sides basically agreed. Uh, every time you see a verse that says to stop committing adultery, you see a verse that says end a polygamous fake marriage, or to end an adulterous remarriage where the first valid spouse is alive. They're not marriages. Okay. So you don't need some, I don't know why he thinks you need some elaborate process, just have the adulteress move out. And that suffices for divorce under Roman law at the time. This isn't complicated. So if the congregation understands polygamy is adultery and they understand a remarriage is adultery, while the prior valid spouse is alive, then when you say don't commit adultery, which you have all over the place in the New Testament, they know that means, well, you got to quit with this marriage. And they're not calling it a marriage because they don't think it's a marriage. It's an invalid marriage. That's the whole point. And you can deduce that very simply from like Mark chapter 10, verse 11. It's very obvious. So rich is presupposing they need to say something in a letter uh that we have today about how to handle assets and children or whatever. No, you don't. You just say quit committing the adultery.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Okay. Obviously, you know me. I have practiced plural marriage. I have two wives. I have a bunch of kiddos. God has blessed me greatly. He who finds a wife finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord. And maybe you despise me because I'm a Protestant, but what about the Mormon who converts and has more than one wife? Are they welcome at your church? What about the Muslim? There's two billion of them. What about the Muslim that converts to Christ and has more than one wife? What is your protocol?

SPEAKER_01 26:15

Protocol is very simple. The first marriage is a valid marriage, the rest are fake marriages. Divorce the pretend marriages.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Can they attend your church? Can they hear the word of God? And I'm telling you, it is a doctrine of demons to forbid those marriages. Was marriage created by God? Yes. When God joined David to more than one wife, was it good? Yes.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

It's just unbelievable to me that a guy could have like this kind of outrage that people think it's not good for him to be cheating on his wife with a second woman. It's just unbelievable to me that he could think that.

SPEAKER_00 27:13

Because God did it. Did you know in Jeremiah that God identifies as having two wives? And in fact, in the new covenant passage at the end of Jeremiah, he says this behold, verse 31, Jeremiah 31, verse 31, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, which by the way, uh Israel and Judah were his two wives in this context. Okay. Verse 32. Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day, I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them. Plural. I was a husband to them. I was a husband to a group.

SPEAKER_01 27:51

Okay, so Jeremiah 3 also says that they are sisters. So now we're supposed to believe it's okay to be married to two sisters in violation of Leviticus 18. Tidwell is making the simple mistake of taking an analogy beyond the intended limits of the writer. So 1 Timothy chapter 3 says, a pastor shouldn't be the husband of more than one wife. If that means anything at all, it means a man can't be a polygamous pastor. So Tidwell thinks it just means he can't be divorced from his first wife. So he changes the word one to first. And I know of no translator that agrees with him. So it's polygamist versus like thousands of translators, you know, ESV, NIV, KJV. But no, Rich Tidwell in Missouri, who happens to have two wives, has found the right translation. Okay. Jeremiah three isn't designed to teach us about the moral law of human marriages. So in Ephesians 5, Paul says God is married to one bride. Is Paul contradicting Jeremiah 3? In Matthew 25, Jesus marries five virgins by analogy. Is Jesus contradicting Paul and Jeremiah? No, it's an analogy. It is designed to convey a point, not to tell us about how many women a man can be married to at once. This actually reminds me of uh a person who told me that he doesn't think it should be uh good Friday, the Friday before Easter. He thinks it should be good Thursday. And his reason for that is that Jesus says that the only sign he was going to give a group of people was the sign of Jonah, uh, who is three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish. And so he said, this my friend of mine said, Well, three days and three nights. So that's you know, so many hours, blah, blah, blah. And we know it he raised, he was raised on the third day, which would be Sunday. So if you track back the number of hours, it must he must have been crucified on a Thursday, which is totally incorrect. It was it was on a Friday. And so I said to him, the point, uh, the point of making an analogy back to Jonah was not the number of hours. That wasn't the point of the analogy back. And so and with Jeremiah three, the point is here's how many wives you can have. That's not Jeremiah's point at all in chapter three. So you can't take an analogy beyond its intended limits.

SPEAKER_00 30:08

Why is Jesus depicted in Matthew 25 as the bridegroom who is betrothed to ten virgins and ends up marrying five? Because this imagery is not shameful or wicked, it's actually divine.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

So is it one in Ephesians 5? Is it two in Jeremiah 3, or is it five in Matthew? It's just not the point of those passages.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

God the Father identified as plurally married and even does so in the New Covenant passage. So the new covenant, which is what you and I are in, is the place where God identifies as plurally married, husband to them. This is also good. Did you know that Paul writes to the Corinthian church that the Corinthian church by itself is a pure virgin betrothed to Christ? 2 Corinthians chapter 11, verse 2, for I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy, for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. Each individual church is a virgin betrothed.

SPEAKER_01 31:13

Okay, wait a minute, wait a minute. We have just told we have a new problem. So Ephesians 5 says there's one bride, and then Jeremiah 3 says there's two, and then Matthew Matthew says there's five, and now he's got one for each church. Now we have to count out how many churches we have. The number keeps changing. Rich has really got to like settle on a number here. The the point of these passages, again, is not to tell us about the the rules for human marriage, how many wives somebody can have? That's not the point of these passages.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

So to Jesus, and there's nothing wicked about that symbolism or practice. What happens when a godly man has more than one wife? Lots of godly offspring. You think the devil likes that or hates that? Hates it. Satan is the god of abortion. Polygyny is literally on the opposite end of the spectrum.

SPEAKER_01 31:57

Okay, so adultery, like a man who's married and then is unfaithful, or let's say the wife is unfaithful to the man, yeah, that could also produce offspring. Oh, so we're supposed to think that's morally permissible because it can create offspring. This is just the reasoning is just not very good here.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

It's be fruitful, multiply, it's raising up godly offspring in accordance with Malachi chapter 2, verse 15. So doctrines of demons deny us marriage.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

I mean, I'm waiting for him next week to come out with a video about like how fornication is good because when the scriptures very clearly both uh do not prohibit, but they prescribe it.

SPEAKER_00 32:36

God gave David his wives in 2 Samuel. Are you listening? God gave him his wives, it's prescribed. Deuteronomy 25, 5. Leverate marriage is required, whether the man was married or not. He must marry his late brother's widow and raise up offspring. He shall go into her and marry her and raise up offspring for his brother. These are the laws of God. Church laws are not the laws of God. Marriage must be between okay.

SPEAKER_01 33:10

So Deuteronomy 25, 5. It says that if there are two brothers and one is married and he dies, if his wife has no son, her brother-in-law should marry her so that they can have a son to keep the land like in the family. And now this brother can refuse. Uh, and it doesn't say that he is obligated to do this if he has a wife already. So therefore, it does not require uh polygyny since he does not have to marry her at all, and it doesn't say what to do if he is already married.

SPEAKER_00 33:43

Between one man and one woman is a made-up fallacy that's not in scripture. Now each marriage is a man and a woman, but each marriage is genuine and divine. David was just as married to Abigail as he was to Ahinoim. Are you listening? Jesus is just as betrothed to the church in Corinth as he is the church in Kansas City. He is just as betrothed to each one, and it's not evil. I know this is tough, but we're gonna need to overcome this and return to the commandments of God. It's not tough, it's just the traditions of men. Go to Matthew 15, verse 15. This is Matthew's rendition of the same. Matthew 15, verse 15. It says this. This is actually the same uh circumstance that we just read in Mark 7, but this is Matthew's version. Verse 15, Peter said to him, Explain the parable to us. Jesus said, Are you still lacking in understanding also? Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, slanders. These are the things which defile the man. But to eat with unwashed hands does not defile the man. What was he pointing out? Their law that they made up wasn't real, and there was no defiling of the person just by not washing their hands. So there is no defilement if there's no law that says it's defiling. So if the church says a man cannot have more than one wife, it's a sin, but the Bible never teaches that, then it's not a sin. And any theologian worth their weight is going to tell you the truth, that it isn't a sin. Now they'll argue why it's not okay or why in the new covenant we shouldn't. And I would present, well, why does the new covenant passage in Jeremiah present us specifically with God being in a plural union? If it has nothing to do with the new covenant, why would it be there? Why is it there when Jesus is the bridegroom in the parable of the 10 virgins in Matthew 25?

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Okay. So he likes to repeat himself. You don't need to be a theologian to see this is complete nonsense. Mark chapter 10 and verse 11 says a second marriage is adultery. If you take Jeremiah 3 to be giving rules on marriage, suddenly it's it's not incest anymore to marry two sisters in violation of Leviticus 18. So, I mean, all of his arguments just totally fall apart. There is a teaching from Jesus that prohibits a man from marrying a second woman while his first wife is alive.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

Why is it there in Paul's writing to the Corinthian church saying, you, Corinth, alone are a pure virgin betrothed to Christ? That means that's true for Ephesus. That means that's true for Galatia. Why is it there and it's holy, and yet we're saying that it's not? That is the yeast of the Pharisees. That is a false teaching in the church today. And it's going to take serious commitment to destroy that false thinking. It's it takes some time. Uh when Luther, you know, decided, okay, it's actually lawful for priests and monks and what have you, clergy to have a wife, it was so scandalous, and yet it's not scandalous according to the word of God. When Christians started engaging in interracial marriage, it was so scandalous, and yet it wasn't scandalous in the word of God. And now when a man has more than one wife as a Christian, it's viewed as very scandalous, and yet it's not scandalous in the word of God. Sin is a transgression of God's law. That is the only law that matters. The only law that matters. In fact, when man's law deviates from God's law, you are always supposed to obey God's law. Go to Acts chapter 5, verse 29. Acts chapter 5, verse 29. But Peter and the apostles answered, We must obey God rather than men. We must obey God rather than men. What are we supposed to do? Obey the traditions of men and the commandments of men when they conflict with the commandments and the scriptures themselves? Or should we go with God whether the synagogue puts us out or not? Friends, if we were complying with everything that the church taught, why would Jesus say, You'll be hated by all because of me? They will put you out of the synagogues. Hello, the synagogues are supposed to be our own people. They will put you out of the synagogues. Okay? And there will come a time when they kill you, they think they're doing a service to God. How many times were Protestants murdered throughout the Reformation period?

unknown 38:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 38:38

The guy's got a real victim complex. He's going to Fox's book of murders here to try to justify his polygamy. All right. Um, you know, like how dare you excommunicate an adulterer, right? So he didn't raise it here, but in other places he raises uh 2 Chronicles 24, verses 2 and 3. And so it says, and Joash, Joash did what was right in the eyes of the Lord all the days of Jehada the priest. Jehada got for him two wives, and he had sons and daughters. So the concept here is that this is a person named Joash, and he did he was a good guy, he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, right? So good guy. And then the high priest got him two wives. So the argument is well, if a good guy, and then the priest got him two wives, two wives must be morally permissible. That's an argument that they advance. Well, there's another passage I think helps shed light on this. So you have 2 Kings 12, 2 and 3 that says, uh, and Joash did was what was right in the eyes of the Lord all of his days because Jehadah the priest instructed him. Right? That's verse 2. So he again, this is the same thing. This guy did he did things that were good, and the high priest kind of instructed him, so he was generally a good guy. Next verse, it says, Nevertheless, the high places were not taken away. The people continued to sacrifice and make offerings on the high places. So the fact that in general what he did was good and right in the eyes of the Lord doesn't mean that everything he did right, he did was he did perfectly, right? So he tolerated uh idolatry. And so you can't use 2 Chronicles 24, 3 to make polygyny to be like sinless. He also argues that regulation implies permission, and that's just totally incorrect. Matthew 19 and verse 8 says the divorce regulation allowed under Moses uh was divorced for hard-heartedness, not because it was morally permissible. It was morally impermissible, but it was tolerated because more was tolerated in the Old Testament than was tolerated in the New Testament. Uh, he also cites in other places Deuteronomy 23, verse 2 uh no one of illegitimate birth can enter the sanctuary. And that's speaking of illegitimate according to the regulations. So his point when he brings that up is if polygamy was, if those marriages were invalid, then the children from those marriages would be invalid. And so then those, therefore, those people would not be able to enter the sanctuary. Um, but those uh marriages aren't treated as invalid, and so those kids aren't treated as illegitimate, so those kids can enter into the sanctuary. So he's saying that must show that those marriages were uh legitimate. The problem is it's validity according to the regulations, not according to like the perfect moral law. So that's where that argument breaks down. He also makes an argument in another place where in the Old Testament it would refer to like a second wife or a third wife, it would use the word wife, and so therefore, those must have been valid marriages. Otherwise, the word wife would be an inappropriate use of that word. But that is incorrect. That's not how language worked at that time. So if you look at like Mark chapter six, for example, it talks of Herod marrying Herodias, and Mark calls it a marriage in Mark chapter six, but Mark doesn't believe it's a valid marriage because it's incestuous. It's an incestuous fake marriage because Herodias had been married to Herod's uh living brother. So the the words wife and husband and married and divorced, they tell you what occurred based on like the conventions of language at the time it was written, but that's not like the theological reality that was occurring at the time. To figure out what the author thinks about the theological reality, you need the context, not just the Greek or the Hebrew word. All right, so here's another Tidwell special, 18 verses 29 and 30 says, and he said to them, Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time and in the age to come eternal life. So Tidwell has made the argument. He thinks in the age to come, men will receive many more wives. Now, can you think of any other religious group that thinks heaven is about sex with a bunch of virgins? Uh, it's just, it's like such nonsense. Jesus famously taught the Sadducees there's no marriage in the afterlife. Jesus is talking about joining the community of believers in a family, which may require decisions that alienate you from your current family. So the idea is you're gonna live for the kingdom of God now, that might alienate some family members, but in the age to come, in the afterlife, you're gonna you'll be in heaven and you have a huge family. So that's what Jesus is talking about there. He's not talking about you're gonna have lots of wives to have sex with. So a couple more things from Tidwell. He thinks that sex makes marriage, and this actually view is kind of common in evangelicalism, but it's wrong. And you can see my episode about the myth of consummation. Uh, he also thinks that sending away is divorce, which is a whole like convoluted word theory thing that makes no sense at all. And I have an episode on that as well that you can look at. Now, Matthew 19 very clearly tells us that the moral law for marriage is based on Genesis, which has one man and one woman, and the two become one. So let me know what your thoughts are in the comments below. Make sure you like, you subscribe, and get my book, Divorce You are Remarriage. It's on Amazon.com. I'll have a link to it in the description below, and I'll see you guys next time.