What is fornication?

Usually people think of fornication as sex outside of marriage, while adultery is sex sin committed by a married person.  Former U.S. President Bill Clinton

said he wasn't committing adultery when he was doing oral sex with Monica Lewinsky.  Perhaps many people are as deceived as Bill Clinton about this.

Adultery and fornication both begin in the heart. Jesus said, "For from within, out of the heart, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications..." (Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21)  Lust is adultery in the heart.  (Matthew 5:28)

Fornication and adultery can come out of the mouth to defile a man.  (Matthew 15:11, 18-20, Ephesians 4:29, 5:3-5)  Fornication, translated "sexual immorality" in newer versions, is the only grounds Christians have for divorcing a spouse. (Matthew 5:32 and 19:9)

Adultery can be committed by marrying someone who is not Biblically divorced. (Mark 10:11-12)

Fornication includes incest.  (I Corinthians 5:1,  Mark 6:18) Fornication includes self-sex.  (I Cor. 6:18).  Fornication includes homosexuality and bestiality.  (Jude 7)  This is called "strange flesh" in KJV.  Fornication includes all kinds of perversions.  (Romans 1:24, 26-27)

Purposefully viewing naked or sensually dressed people, whether in person or sensual photographs, on movies or TV, is adultery.  (2 Peter 2:14)  "Having eyes full of adultery..."  The word "pornography" comes from the Greek Word "Porneia" which means fornication.  Pornography is writing about or depicting sex in  such a way as to arouse lust, unnatural desires, or prohibited sensual thoughts or urges. Basically, there is no difference between adultery (which means impurity or sexual uncleanness) and fornication which means "sexual immorality."

What is a virgin?

The word "virgin" means "untouched."  I Corinthians

7:1-2 suggests that fornication begins when a woman is touched in a sexual or sensual way so as to arouse her sexually.  "It is good for a man not to touch a woman."  Paul quickly tells the Corinthians in order to avoid

fornication, every man should have his own wife, and every woman her own husband. 

Necking, petting, prolonged kissing, tight vis-a-vis hugs -- any of these can arouse another person and are against standards of purity and holiness. (I Thessalonians 4:3-7)

The standard for fathers in respect to their daughters ought to be like Paul wanted to present the church to Christ.  "I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him."  (2

Corinthians 11:2) In this "adulterous generation" a godly father's watchfulness and exhortations are indispensable.

Think of how many problems would be solved in our society if there were no fornication or adultery.  No pornography, no out-of-wedlock births (which would reduce both poverty and the welfare rolls),  very few divorces,  fewer broken hearts from the emotional turmoil caused by broken sexual relationships,  no abortion, no rape, no homosexuality,  no sexually transmitted disease, clean movies and TV programs, etc.  On the plus side, men would be more productive and creative, and their hearts would turn toward their children.  Malachi 4:6

So join the SOLUTION to society's problems, don't be part of the PROBLEM!

What problems does polygamy bring?

Various stories in the Bible show the following practical problems that polygamy brings.  News reports about this growing phenomenon in our supposedly monogamous society also have brought out common problems.  

1. 1.The father leaves the children to their mothers and the father is not so personal with his children.  This makes it more difficult for a polygamist to raise a godly seed. For example, King Ahab had numerous children and had father-figures in the form of tutors for them. 2 Kings 10:6
   

2. 2.The mothers and children often do not get along, since the polygamist often has a favorite wife.  Examples of this are the stories of Sarah versus Hagar, both wives of Abraham, and Leah versus Rachel, both wives of Jacob.  The animosity between their sons is well-known.
   

3. 3.The polygamist will often keep getting younger wives as his first wife grows older, thus he deals treacherously with the wife of his youth.  David, for example took a younger wife named Bathsheba when he had other wives. 
   

4. 4.The polygamist may not have respect for the institution of marriage and may take another man’s wife, just as Abraham feared that heathen kings may take his wife and kill him.  Also, David took another man’s wife.
   

5. 5. The polygamist will often take child-brides.  Mohammed, the founder of Islam, had many wives, but his favorite became the one he took as a wife when she was nine years old.  News reports about polygamy have shown that incest and sexual abuse of women and children occur in polygamist arrangements. 
   

6. 6. Boys growing up in a polygamist society are often rejected from the household at an early age, but they cannot find a wife as easily as older and wealthier men.  It is common knowledge that Islamic terrorist cells are composed of young single men who are promised that if they die for Islam they will have multiple virgins waiting for them in islamic heaven.
   

7. 7. Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, had 33 wives.  Polygamy breeds an exorbitant lust for having many women.
   

8. 8. Serial polygamy, which is having sex partner after sex partner or marriage after marriage, has similar results of not being able to raise a godly seed and dealing treacherously with the first wife.
   

This page is still under construction.

What does science know about sexual bonding?

Notes from the book  Hooked: New Science on How Casual Sex is Affecting our Children  by  Joe S. McIlhaneyk, Jr., M.D. and Freda McKissic Bush, M.D.

Emotional and psychological impact of sex cannot be guarded against with condoms or other forms of contraception.  p15

What is "sex"?  The most reasonable definition suggested by recent brain studies indicates that sexual activity is any intimate contact between two individuals that involves arousal, stimulation, and/or a response by at least one of the two partners...any intentional intimate behavior between two partners, or even one person if self-stimulation is used....sexual excitement is actually centered in the brain.  p 16

Sexual activity also includes "conduct such as showering together, oral sex, anal sex, fondling breasts, mutual masturbation, and heavy petting." Individuals involved can experience similar emotions of excitement and

pleasure as they would from other sexual activity, as well as experience devastation when the relationship with the person with whom they've engaged in these activities ends. p 17

Beneficial factors, such as home environment and adult guidance, can shepherd an adolescent through this tumultuous period in life.  Negative influence, if it dominates, from peers or the media, can make the journey more difficult.  p19-20

Both boys and girls who have had sex are three times more likely to be depressed than their friends who are still virgins.  Sexually active boys are seven times more likely to have attempted suicide than virgin boys.  p 20

Women who were virgins when they married are less likely to have a divorce after marriage.  Married couples report higher levels of sex satisfaction than unmarrieds with multiple sex partners.  p. 20

Our decision making ability, coming from the highest centers of the brain, can guide an individual to the most rewarding sexual behavior -- unless bad programming from premature and unwise sexual behavior during the adolescent years has occurred, causing the brain formation for healthy decision making to be damaged.  p. 21

Scientists are confirming that sex is more than a momentary physical act. It produces powerful, even lifelong, changes in our brains that direct and influence our future to a surprising degree.  p 21.  The prefrontal cortex of the brain is the last to fully develop, and it doesn't complete growth until the mid-twenties.  It is the part of the brain responsible for mature decision making required of adults.  Cognitive thought comes primarily from what is called the prefrontal cortex of the brain's frontal lobes.  This area is the source of thought that is responsible for setting priorities,organizing plans and ideas, forming strategies, controlling impulses, and

allocating attention.  It includes initiating appropriate moral behavior, anticipating how behavior today will affect one's future, and sound judgement decisions.P. 33 p. 51

Sex is one of the strongest generators of the dopamine reward.  Young people can get "hooked" on sex just as they can get hooked on drugs.  The beneficial effect of dopamine for the married couple is that it "addicts"

them to sex with each other.  p 35.  (The authors later call this married "addiction" a bonding.)  p. 35

Oxytocin is a neurochemical important to healthy sex, especially in females. The female body uses oxytocin four different times.  p. 35  Oxytocin is released during meaningful or intimate touching creating a bonding and trust in the other person.  It is also released during sexual intercourse, creating more bonding. It is released at the onset of labor in a pregnant woman and during nipple stimulation after delivery of an infant, producing milk flow.  p. 36

With sexual intercourse and orgasm, the woman's brain is flooded with oxytocin, causing her to desire this same kind of contact again and again with the man she is bonded to, producing even stronger bonding.  The desire

to connect is not just an emotional feeling.  Bonding is real and almost like the adhesive effect of glue.  p. 37

Oxytocin is values-neutral and unable to distinguish between a one-night stand and a lifelong soul mate.  p. 38

If a young woman becomes physically close to and hugs a man, it will trigger the bonding process, creating a greater desire to be near him... then if he wants to escalate the physical nature of the relationship, it will become harder for her to say no.  p 39

Oxytocin is naturally released in the brain after a twenty-second hug from a partner -- sealing the bond between the huggers and triggering the brain's trust circuits.  So don't let a guy hug you unless you plan to trust him. Touching, gazing, positive emotional interaction (my note -- such as text messaging, talking on phone, etc)  kissing, and sexual orgasm also releases oxytocin in the female brain.  Such contact helps flip the switch on the brain's romantic love circuits.  p. 39-40

A woman's brain can cause her to be blindsided by a bad relationship, even when parents and friends warn her.  p. 40-41

Severing of an oxytocin bond explains the incredibly painful emotions people often feel when they break up.  Break-ups are also seriously damaging a bonding mechanism.

Vasopressin has two primary functions in the male when speaking of relationships.  It bonds a man to his mate and to his offspring.    p 41

The inability to bond after multiple sex encounters is almost like tape that loses its stickiness after being applied and removed multiple times.  p. 42.

Each person actually changes the very structure of the brain with the choices he or she makes and the behavior he or she is involved in.  p. 45

Brain centers that produce feelings of romance and love are different and separate from the brain centers responsible for lust.  Desire someone has for sex can exist without any feelings of caring, love, or romance.  p. 57.

The ability to make sound judgements does not depend on one's intelligence.

The progressive physical contact that a dating teenaged couple may have may even result in sexual intercourse, but such relationships break apart more often than they succeed.  So if skin-to-skin contact or sexual contact

causes bonding, why don't more young couples stay together?  p. 54

In spite of the brevity of these sexual encounters of the

too-young-to-be-married, research indicates that bonding does occur, even when a couple engaged in sex a single time. p55

As young people experience these sexual relationships it affects their  brains, molding them not only to damage their attachment ability but to become desensitized to the risk of short-term sexual relationships.

The healthiest expression is with sexual consummation in marriage.

Synapses that govern decisions about sex in both the male and female brains are strengthened in ways that make it easier to choose to have sex in the future, while synapses that govern sexual restraint are weakened and

deteriorate.  Engaging in sex creates a chain reaction of brain activities that lead to the desire for more sex and greater levels of attachment between two people.  p 62

Infatuation is a great imitator of true love.  Not even a study of the brain can tell the difference.  Being "in love" can be like an obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Brain scans CAN tell the difference between the early stage of passionate romantic love and that of long-term, comfortable, and relaxed loving attachment.  p 65  A relationship started before the age of 21 will probably not be permanent. P.  65 If people of any age become sexually involved before marriage, the intensity of the desire for repetition of sexual activity can overwhelm EVERYTHING ELSE in the relationship. p. 65

Certain brain centers light up in subjects as a result of being shown pictures of their beloved.  p. 67

Sex practiced inappropriately can both control and damage the relationship. A nonmarital relationship is only as old as it is nonsexual.  The relationship stops growing once it becomes sexual, because the erotic aspect will become the primary focus of the couple's time together.  p 69

When individuals in a relationship break up and enter another relationship, they will tend to move quickly and prematurely to the same degree of intimacy in the new relationship that they experienced in the old one.  p 76

93 percent of teenagers think that young people ought to receive a strong abstinence message.  p. 90

Letter to a homosexual

The letter to this young man was in answer to his assertion that Jesus or the Bible is not against homosexuality.

Taylor,

You are right that the word "homosexual" is not used in the Bible (the original Greek or in the King James translation of it).  The word "homosexual" is used in the more modern translations.  It is wrong to condemn two males for performing the same perverted sex acts that can also be performed between a male and a female.  (Such as oral or anal sex).  It is just as perverted -- perhaps more so -- for a male to perform anal sex on

a female as it is for him to perform it on a male.  It is the same perversion exactly.  The reason I say, "perhaps more so," is that the male with a female has the correct anatomy available, but then refuses to use it!

Jesus was against sexual lust.  (Matthew 5:27-28)  The way Jesus worded this, it would be adulterous for a man to look at pornography and lust for the woman in the picture.  Now, admittedly, Jesus did not specifically tell

these Jews to whom he was preaching that it was wrong for a man to lust for another man, but the reason he did not have to spell out such a prohibition was that the Jews to whom he spoke were already quite familiar with and in

agreement with the Mosaic orders against man-to-man sex sin  (Leviticus 18:22) as well as incest (Leviticus 18:6-20) or having sex with an animal (Leviticus 18:23, Exodus 22:19).  With the Mosaic Law, which was already

honored by Jews and was already in place, it would have been redundant for Jesus to have again spoken  specifically against such sexual activity, or to even repeat the warnings against having sex during a woman's  monthly period, or post-partum discharge.  All of these perverted sexual practices were considered "unclean," "detestable," and "defiling."  These practices not only defiled the persons involved, but the entire nation in which such practices were accepted or condoned.  (Leviticus 18:24-30)

Jesus called the nation to which he preached (Israel) an "adulterous generation."  Jesus is against all kinds of adulterous activities, even lust.  (Matthew 12:39,  Matthew 16:4,  Mark 8:38).  Jesus talked about adultery coming forth from the heart and the mouth, even, so he did not

consider adultery to be like what Bill Clinton tried to redefine it as! Adultery begins in the heart and in the thoughts, extends itself to the speech, and finally, to action. (See Matthew 15:19 and Mark 7:21) Fornication is mentioned as coming out of the heart in these passages and fornication includes all kinds of non-marital sexual activity, including sexual activity between two males or between two females.  Other places against adultery in the gospels is Mark 10:19, Luke 18:20, and there are

others.  Jesus was also against fornication because it is adultery against a future (though perhaps unknown) spouse as well as a sin against one's own body and another's.  It is lust gone out of control.

The Old Testament cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were known for its unclean sexual practices.  In Genesis 19: 1-11 we see the men of Sodom trying to get to two men that were visiting Lot in order to have sex with them.  Jude 7 tells us that the people of Sodom gave themselves over to fornication and were even "going after strange flesh (sexual perversions).  However, Jesus told the Jews of his day that their level of responsibility was so great for having heard and seen the Messiah that it would be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of  Judgement than it would be for them!  (Matthew 10:15, 11:23-24, Mark 6:11, Luke 10:12)  Jesus acknowledged the judgement of Sodom as a historical fact.  (Luke 17:28-29).

In the Old Testament, the word for someone who practices the kind of sexual perversions that "homosexuals" practice are called  "sodomites," not

"homosexuals".  A man can sodomize a woman, just as he can a man.  These are the places that sodomite is mentioned:  Deut. 23:17, I Kings 14:24, 15:12, 22:46, and II Kings 23:7.

The overthrowing of Sodom by God is mentioned again and again through the Bible.  In Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Amos, and Obadiah.  However, Isaiah said, "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom, and we would have been like Gomorrah. Hear the Word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom, listen to the Law of our God, you people of Gomorrah!"  Isaiah 1:9-10  Isaiah calls Israel "Sodom" because it had turned so evil, but he knows they were all capable of the same sins as Sodom and Gomorrah.  In fact, he says that unless the hand of

the Lord had intervened, we would ALL become like Sodom.  The human potential for sin is virtually limitless.  It is only by the grace and power of God that any of us have not become sexually perverted -- homosexual,

animal sex or whatever.

So, are people born "homosexual"?  All are born sinners, with limitless capability to sin, but any kind of sexual perversion is unnatural and it is a learned behavior.  Once one's conscience is violated in any way, it becomes easier to indulge in more and more immoral and even unnatural sexual activity.  (See Romans 1: 26-27)

The final judgement for those who continue to indulge in sexual immorality of ANY KIND will be the same as those who continue without repentance to indulge in adultery.  Galatians 5: 19-21 and I Corinthians 6:9-10 and Ephesians 5:3-7. 

However, there is such a thing as repentance and cleansing made possible by the blood of Jesus for any kind of sex offender whether he be an adulterer, fornicator, sodomite, porn addict, filthy dreamer, etc.  See I Cor.  6:11.

"The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body...Flee from sexual immorality.  All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  You are not your own; you were bought with a price,  Therefore honor God with your body."  I Cor. 6:13, 18-20.

Any kind of sexual immorality or perversion is a sin.  Though a sin nature  is something we are all born with, I suppose that we have various weaknesses that we must be on guard against.  They tell us people are "born alcoholics" these days as well as "born homosexuals."  Don't believe that lie.  Sure, someone may have more of a tendency to alcohol addiction than others, but one can only become an alcoholic if he drinks alcohol!  Too, there have been people who have been cured of their  alcoholism.  Same with perverted sexual  behavior.  One may have a tendency to that, but he is not a sexual  pervert unless he indulges in sexual perversion.  Too, there have been people who have been cured and cleansed of their sexual perversion.  There are many

testimonies to this fact.

So may you seek God's forgiveness and restoration in any way that you may be sinning or have sinned.  "He who has this hope in him, purifies himself even as He (Jesus) is pure." (I John 3:3)  May your heart's desire be for purity in your character, your heart, your thoughts, your speech, as well as actions.