But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars—their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulphur. This is the second death.
Revelation 21:8
There have been many times that you, my readers, prompt me to look deeper at verses I thought I had plumbed the depths of but your comments or questions have led me to dig deeper. There have also been many occasions where I have discovered new perspectives on problematic verses as I have dug deeper. Each time this happens such insights cause me to pause and rethink the interpretation. Especially so when it’s an interpretation no one else has come up with before.
I noticed an anomaly when I was investigating the Greek grammar constructions in the list of sins in Revelation 21:8. I always figured they are present continuous participles. However I noticed that John is actually using the dative case for nouns in most examples. However there is one example which stands by its uniqueness. That’s [ebdelugmenois], the word John uses for “abomination”, “polluted” or “detestable”; number three in the list. This word is actually a perfect participle of the verb bdelussomai. That my friends is hugely significant.
Allow me to explain with the example John himself uses in his Gospel when he wrote:
Then John testified, “I saw the Holy Spirit descending like a dove from heaven and resting upon him.
John 1:32
The Greek word used for “I saw” is also a perfect participle [τεθÎαμαι] from the root verb [θÎαoμαι] theaomai. The significance of the perfect tense is it describes an action that has taken place in the past, the effect of which continues through to the present day. What John is saying in John 1:32 is that John the Baptist (a different John) saw the Holy Spirit coming down on Jesus back then and he still sees it vividly “today”. It is indelibly imprinted on his mind. He sees and keeps on seeing it to the present time (his present time). The meaning of this verb is “to look intensely”, “gaze upon”, “look closely”.
I believe I have now spelt out what John the apostle is doing by using this verb in the perfect tense. Now you can extrapolate (gain an understanding of) the use of the perfect tense in Revelation 21:8 by the same John who wrote the Gospel. It is not a throw-away line or an inconsequential use of the perfect in this example in Revelation. It is deeply significant! I thought to mention it in Gem 2380 but refrained because that Gem was already too long. In the end I decided to hold it back and bring it up in discussion or when people asked. However. Mary, a member of Wycliffe, wrote to me in response to Gem 2380 and thanked me for “tackling a hard subject well”. Mary then attached three videos, the Folau’s interview “telling their side of the story” and the testimonies of two detransitioners, Zara and Issy. All three videos were insightful. The system is stacked against detransitioning and heavily weighted toward encouraging transitioning. [If you want the links to the videos just ask me and I will send them to you. The videos are also available on the Family First website.]
There are many inferences I can draw from John’s use of the perfect participle to highlight why sex change is abhorrent to God. But it seems inescapable that God should be offended by his creation changing His choice for how He made an individual and that individual wanting to transition to the opposite gender. Only to later conclude they had made a grave mistake, then to find their medical advisors tell them the change is permanent and they will not find peace by detransitioning. How do you think God would feel about that situation? Furthermore, how do you think God would feel once you know how He created your physical body for intimacy and sex as opposed for excreting waste? How might He feel about mixing up the use of both created functions?
I have a personal story to tell at this point. I think I escaped a bullet by being born when I was. My father was a hard man working as a carpenter and who became an alcoholic at an early age. He had a passion for rugby and boxing, and harboured aspirations that his son would play rugby and box as well. I began playing rugby when I was 7 or 8 and promptly quit by the time I was 9 in order to play real football (some call it soccer). My father disowned me when he heard I had started playing “that sissy game”. But he still had the hope that I would take up boxing. So he asked his friend Trevor to coach me in boxing. It seems I had fast hands, or more to the point quick reflexes. But imagine my father’s disappointment when after a few weeks I decided boxing was not for me. I was ok with hitting the other guy but didn’t like the other guy hitting me. When I told my father both decisions I had made: to play soccer and not rugby and to quit boxing, he said “You are no son of mine!” He told my mother, “He’s your son, not mine; I disown him!”
From that point on when he was disappointed or hacked off with me he would call me “Sharon”. I didn’t know why until one day I asked my mother why my father called me Sharon at such times. She told me for the first time that if I had been a girl they had decided my name would be Sharon. I have never felt tendencies toward being effeminate or thinking I wish I had been born a girl; I was a boy. However, my mother described me as a sensitive boy who empathised easily with people’s hurt or pain. I often pray like Epaphras, interceding with tears an another’s behalf.
However, I have wondered what would have happened if I had grown up in this present age with all of the influence to wait and choose the gender I want to be. All of that amid the pressure my father would have put on me to “be a man” while calling me Sharon when I didn’t measure up to his standards of manliness.Â
This experience makes me despise the current pressure put on young children to choose their gender when it is so clear to me how God feels about such an approach to life. God personally chose your gender when He formed you in your mother’s womb.      Â
I met Sy Rogers on numerous occasions here in New Zealand and also in Indonesia. Jeffrey Rachmat, the lead pastor of JPCC, would strategically invite Sy to come and talk about sex and sexuality regularly. I appreciated Sy so much and learned from him the travesty of sex-change operations. Sy himself came ‘that close’ to having the operation. One dramatic moment he often shared was the photo of himself as a woman. He was stunningly beautiful as a woman. However, his testimony attested to the fact that God’s truth convinced him not to have the op; neither top nor bottom operation. My friend Sy Roger’s testimony and John’s use of the perfect tense for the third category of sin in Revelation makes it clear that transitioning is something that God abhors. Despite the fact that many of those who offer advice to young people encourage them to decide their own gender, yet don’t tell them the full story.
Thus, there is a gem of God hidden in the list of Revelation 21:8 which makes it clear you should not choose your own gender contrary to the way God has made you. Don’t set yourself on a collision course with God who at judgement time will consign you to be a child of darkness as a result of choosing to transition and staying that way. Especially so when detransitioning is so much harder than transitioning; the very thing they don’t tell you. Listen to the truth of God and the testimonies of Sy Rogers, Israel & Maria Folau, Zara and Issy.
[Once again, let me know if you want the links to the videos and I will send them to you. Or if enough readers request the videos I will include the links in this Gem.]
The turtle only makes progress when he sticks his neck out.
James Bryant Conant (former Harvard President)
I am prepared to stick my neck out to explain to you this treasured anomaly hidden in the list of Revelation 21:8.
Ian
Don’t make a decision to do something that will ultimately set you in opposition to God’s Truth at a point of time in your future.
Ian
There’s a price to pay for speaking the truth but not telling the truth will cost you everything.
with apologies to Dr Cornel West
Jesus said: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life, no one can come to the Father except by Me.
John 14:6
Hi Ian
In Gem 2380 you said “the continuous ongoing activity that has now characterised the practitioner” is what keeps those who indulge in those comprehensive categories of sin from heaven. In this gem you said “The significance of the perfect tense is it describes an action that has taken place in the past, the effect of which continues through to the present day.” Excuse my ignorance but what is the difference? Are they not both sin unrepented of?
Chris
Wow, you ask a very good question Chris. I wondered whether I should spell it out more clearly but opted for waiting until someone asked; the Gem was already long enough. You are the one who have asked the key question. Here’s the answer:-
The ongoing continuous sense is captured in the dative plurals describing the people who have a thought, commit that thought to action, the action becomes habitual, and the end result is a life entrapped in sin. You are correct in saying the issue is unrepented sin. Jesus is waiting for every human to realise they can’t escape sin’s entrapment on their own. They need to repent (want to turn their lives around) and ask Jesus to help, as He is the only one who can save them because He paid the price for their release by shedding His blood for them.
What is surprising in Revelation 21:8 is that only ‘ebdelugmenois’ is a perfect participle and not a dative plural. Why is that, when the perfect tense indicates a past action that continues into the present unable to change. That fact fascinates me when it is applied to the gender issue. I realised that fact through the videos which Mary sent to me related to danger of transitioning and detransistioning. I am wondering if the use of the perfect participle hints at the danger of transitioning when you can’t detransition. How can you have an operation (top and bottom) to change your God-given gender to the opposite and then want to reverse it? It seems the seriousness of making that desperate a step is something that is irreversible. Is the hint of that found there in the use of the perfect tense on this Greek word?
I was asked by someone at church who had read the Gem and wanted to know what lay behind my comment. I effectively told him the above. He then asked, “But how would John have known the deep significance of that?” Simply he could have as John was familiar with Greek tenses as proved in his letter to the churches. But the Spirit of God could likely have impelled / inspired him to make that example a perfect participle. I simply found the substitution of the perfect for the sin which God abhors to the extent He does as being highly significant.
Thanks for that. I think what I wanted clarified is that you are not suggesting someone who has ‘transitioned’ is condemned because they cannot transition back. God accepts even dative plural and past perfect sinners who repent before they die, doesn’t He?
Yes Chris, exactly. Let’s let others have their say:
“While Christ is a lion to the impenitent, He is a lamb to the penitent – the reduced, the open, the hungry, the desiring, the confessing, the self-effacing. To no one will Jesus be neutral.” Dane Ortlund
“People do not go to hell because they are gay. There is only one reason anybody goes to hell. People go to hell when they are not reconciled to God through the Christ.” Sy Rogers
“All that My Father gives Me will come to Me; and the one who comes to Me I will most certainly not cast out.” John 6:37
I have let Jesus have the final word. In the end the key issue is did you sort things out with Jesus? Ian