The global flood described in the book of Genesis represents a unique event in human history. The destruction of all flesh, save for Noah and his family, is so distinct an incident that God Himself promised never to do it again.

But what could possibly have caused the Lord to react so strongly toward His beloved creation? What could have caused this creation, which He Himself had once described as, “very good,” to descend into such wickedness that their thoughts became constantly evil?

In episode 2 of Babylon: The Seat of Satan’s Power, Steve Gallagher discusses four of the actions and attitudes of mankind which led to this great cataclysm. And we find that these reasons warn us to avoid all such ways in our own lives.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore.

Everyone’s life can only be aimed in one of two directions. Either our eyes are set on the Kingdom of God, or they’re set on the kingdom of darkness. Put another way, we can either have an eternal mindset or we can be distracted by the cares of this life. But the enemy won’t blatantly divert us from eternal things. Instead, he subtly distracts us by focusing our attention on things that seem important. In this interview, Steve Gallagher discusses the ways Satan uses the media to push this agenda.

Nate: Today we want to deal with things related to mass media. We live in very confusing, perplexing times. The issues that our world is facing seem to be coming much more quickly and with a lot more intensity. Things like the coronavirus, global warming and tensions about injustice. These issues are very unsettling to people, and so they spend a lot of time trying to keep up to date with what they think they should know to make sense of the world they are living in. But you say in your book that this is exposing people to an even greater danger. Why do you say that?

Pastor Steve: Well, let's face it. The news is just another form of entertainment. When you have your own tv show, you want people to watch it because the higher your ratings, the more advertising you can sell for it. So the way the news keeps people coming back is by constantly releasing big stories. They want to consistently broadcast something that will titillate people’s senses or get them excited. When you think about the realities of what's happening in the world, some of these things are not big stories, they're being made into big stories. This is the way the news has been from the beginning.
        Go back to the 1880s for instance, and you've got a reporter from the New York Times who wants to keep people coming back to his newspaper stand to buy them every day. To do this, he must write stories that are going to grab people's attention. Let's say he does a series on how bad tenement buildings are. Pretty soon you've got the whole city, or at least all those people reading that newspaper, in the same mindset of looking at these tenement buildings and saying, “this is a terrible thing.” Now we aren’t looking at whether it's terrible or not, that's not the point I'm getting at. The point I'm getting at is that a corporate consciousness is being established and run by a newspaper or a news outlet.
        Let’s take it back into the unseen realm for a minute. You've got the Kingdom of God with the culture involved there, and then you have the kingdom of the world. When Christians who should be all about the Kingdom of God and the corporate consciousness that is established in that kingdom give their attention and their hearts to the corporate consciousness created in this world by the devil, their hearts and minds are not where they're supposed to be. We're being drawn away into this whole drama that news organizations are pushing for their own agenda. It's taking us away from the things of God.

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Nate: I think the issue that people would have with the answer that you gave is that tenement buildings, in their eyes, represents a small issue from the 1880s. But when the issue is much larger, then it does seem like it becomes something to be concerned about. What’s wrong with people wanting to know about these things and even becoming involved with some of these things?

Pastor Steve: Well, let me change the metaphor. I think it was back in the 1990s that the public finally revolted against tobacco companies and I mean they were getting blistered everywhere. I agree, cigarette smoking is horrible and what it does to people is a horrible thing. But that is an example of a value within the ranks of humanism that would be considered terrible. From a temporal perspective, it is terrible. The bigger issue is that the Kingdom of God is looking at things from an eternal perspective and that's what the most important thing is.
         God's perspective has always taken into account the eternal, but all you can expect from people of the world is that they will look at what’s important in the here and now. So they will pump up things like cigarette smoking, tenement buildings or whatever their focus is on, and make them enormous. But what should be more important to us is being set apart. We should have a completely different mindset than the world. We should be over here saying, “Yeah, that is bad, but it pales in comparison to an eternal soul lost in hell.” That is what should be important to believers.

Nate: You’re saying, it's not so much an issue of their perspective being wholly wrong. It's just that all the things that are left out makes it a deception. I think that's probably one of the reasons that people love the internet. They don't have to dial into a specific viewpoint from somebody else. They can just pick and choose what they believe is true.

Pastor Steve: Yeah. On the internet you have 50 different answers instead of just being subject to whatever CBS, CNN or Fox has to say. But it doesn’t matter if there's fifty, or two or three, it's still all the world and the enemy. If Satan is keeping your mind distracted, that's the important thing to him. He doesn't care if it's CNN, Fox, or some internet site as long as it's keeping your mind from the important issues related to the Kingdom of God.

Nate: Let's just focus specifically on Google as an example. The word google actually means a number so large that it's not even worth quantifying. The founder’s aim is to provide so much information that it's not even really worth quantifying. Is there a danger embedded in that kind of worldview?

Pastor Steve: Well, one of the issues with Google is that they are setting themselves up as the go to place. If you have a question about anything in life, type it in and you're going to get the answer. But you’re really getting their answers. And you get them in order as they want you to get them, and you are subjected to their agenda.
        But there's another issue separate from that. That’s that the Kingdom of God has always been built around people who are struggling through spiritual issues and life issues going to the Lord for a protracted length of time. God wants us to prayerfully figure out what the real answers are that He wants to give us. Those answers aren’t meant to be given in a microwave mindset where you just snap your finger, type in your question and there it is. That’s not the way the Kingdom of God works.
        Another issue with the internet is its whole entertainment value. We want to be able to go and deal with issues in a more entertaining manner. Let me just refer back to a message you gave one time titled Satan is Extremely Amusing. You brought up the word amuse as tied in with entertainment. You showed that the word is a conjunction. The prefix, the letter “a” in amuse means non or un. Muse is a word that we don't use very much anymore, but it means to contemplate on a deep level. For example, you muse over life's issues. And what you brought out in that message is that Satan is all about amusement, which is to stop you from deeply contemplating life's more important issues. He presents this superficial, glitzy show that gets you so distracted that you don't muse over the deeper issues of life.

Nate: It's interesting that you brought up the whole entertainment aspect of the information age, because that was my next question. We see it everywhere. If you go to a YouTube video to get information it's presented in this really exciting, fun and interesting way. It's not just information, it's infotainment. They actually call it infotainment. Why are we like this? And what is this doing to us?

Pastor Steve: We have been trained to be entertained constantly. But the Kingdom of God was built around men like Moses, David, and Paul, who spent large amounts of time out in the wilderness where there were no distractions. That's where they would hear the voice of God. But we have lost our ability to sit in silence and hear the voice of the Lord. And that's one of the things that concerns me about the whole entertainment system.

Nate: Alright, let's wrap things up by dealing with one final thing that you dealt with in the first section of your book. That’s pornography. You said that you could have easily just included that in the chapter on media because really, it's just another form of entertainment. What are some of the most dangerous lies that are being told to us through pornography?

Pastor Steve: Well, let me just narrow it down to what I consider to be the most damaging lie involved with pornography. The message going out on every pornographic piece of material, book, or video is that sex is the most important thing in life. What these pornographers are doing is catering to their target market and trying to keep them coming back. They want to build up that lie inside people’s minds so they will keep coming back to them. Pure Life Ministries has been in existence for over 35 years now and our whole reason for existence is to repair the damage that has been done to countless marriages and lives because of that one lie. The idea that sex is everything has ruined more lives and marriages than anything I can think of.

Nate: One of the things that I've heard so many people say they appreciate about your writing and about Pure Life Ministries is that it's focus is not on the surface, but on foundational and root issues. We've talked today about mass media, how it shapes our values, feeds our flesh and is exposing us to a lot of sinful opportunities. How does this whole conversation today relate to Walking in Truth in a World of Lies?

Pastor Steve: Sin is a deceiver. The Bible talks about the deceitfulness of sin. You cannot be involved in any form of sin without a deception working itself into your whole frame of thinking. I've talked about the importance of being in the Word of God, because it creates a Biblical structure in your thinking and a structure of truth in your thinking. Well, it's the same thing that happens in reverse with sin. It creates a deceptive structure in your thinking. So, it's like you're trying to look at some item or some issue, but it's like in the old room of mirrors that you would see at a carnival. It makes you wonder what the real thing is. You never really can get your mind around it. People in sin live in a state of constant confusion, unable to really lay hold of what exactly truth is. They can take a guess at it, and they may know it on a superficial level, but they can't really know that they're connecting with the truth.

Sexual sin is an obvious manifestation of a worldly mindset. But there are many other, less obvious, and less wicked ways, in which Satan allures us into a godless lifestyle. This was definitely true for Gabriel, Chad and Vinny – three men on staff here at Pure Life Ministries who were once hopelessly caught up in the world system. In this special roundtable discussion, they sit down to discuss the details of what drew them away from God, and also the miraculous transformation that occurred during their time in our Residential Program.

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) by Steve Gallagher
• I Once Was Blind, but Now I See (Article) by Guest Author

Scripture reveals that Satan desires to seduce all mankind. By marshaling the entire demonic realm, he seeks to deceive us and lead us into the same lustful, corrupt and godless mindset which marks his kingdom. The truth is, that as we look at the vast majority of men and women, we realize that Satan has succeeded in this plot. Most of humanity has bought into his lies, wholeheartedly pursuing a self-centered life in this present world. And so, in the sixth episode of our series Babylon: The Seat of Satan’s Power, we discuss what the Bible calls Kosmos. As we explore what Kosmos really is, we’ll see why it’s such a serious threat to every believer and what our response to it should be.

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Why should Christians be concerned about Babylon’s influence in their lives? Think about it this way:

If you have a food allergy but continue to eat the very thing that you’re allergic to, you’re going to constantly battle with problematic symptoms. But you don’t just treat the symptoms while continuing to eat that food. You go straight to the source of the issue. You avoid eating that food and maybe even restructure your whole diet and lifestyle.

Sexual sin is, similarly, only a symptom of a much deeper, and often unseen, problem. In order to get rid of it once and for all, it’s source must be cut off and avoided at all costs. And Babylon’s worldly influence is that source and must be relentlessly dealt with in any believer’s life.

This connection often remains hidden from the eyes of most believers. So in this interview, we sit down with the Director of Residential Counseling here at Pure Life Ministries. Through his testimony and instruction from the Word of God, he helps explain the relationship between worldliness and sexual sin. We trust this conversation will bring clarity, hope, and a pathway to freedom from Babylon’s wicked influence.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore

Can a marriage survive when the husband no longer finds his wife physically attractive and yet still loves her?

Yes, your marriage can survive if your husband will drink water from his own cistern and fresh water from his own well (Proverbs 5:15). I empathize with the loss and emptiness you feel as well as the rejection you must be feeling on a daily basis. But, I know from experience that there are answers that work.

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My husband’s sexual life was very much being lived in - what we call at Pure Life Ministries - the fast lane. After living in the fast lane of sexual addiction, a man finds going into the slow lane of normal sex with his wife almost impossible. It reminds me very much of the Israelites when they came out of Egypt. God was using the wilderness to purge their hearts of the worldliness and idolatry that was filling them. They complained and grumbled because they were used to the fish they ate for free in Egypt –the cucumbers and the melons and the leeks, and the onions and the garlic—in abundance of variety (Numbers 11:5). Manna was just too boring!

Thirty years ago, God began dealing with Steve about using my body while fantasizing about other women, rather than loving me and putting my needs ahead of his own. Proverbs 5:18-23 became a kind of game plan for Steve to follow. It was something a willing heart could do; it was something he could put into practice.

The steps went something like this: 1) “Rejoice in the wife of your youth,” 2) “Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;” 3) “Be exhilarated always with her love.” 4) “For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress, and embrace the bosom of a foreigner?” Or, to paraphrase: if the Lord can help you become thrilled with her love, why would you want to go to bed with some prostitute?

When Steve started following the “game plan”, God did a miracle in his heart. God made that verse a reality in his life. He became exhilarated with my love. He became completely satisfied with my body; and he does not desire the body of some foreigner! It’s a miracle, but it only happened because Steve was willing to let God do that in him.

I pray that your husband will choose to forsake the leeks and garlic and become a contented man, a man who is willing to forsake a life of the endless, perpetual cycle of trying to satisfy sin’s insatiable appetite.

My husband is a contented, satisfied, and happy man. I am a woman who is secure, fulfilled, and joyful. That is God’s desire and plan.

If you’ve been listening to our Babylon series, then you know that it’s all about exposing the spirit that is working in this world to bring everyone into rebellion against God. So far, we’ve explored the historical origins of Babylon. Now we’re going to look at how Satan is crafting a worldwide rebellion against God. He will do it much more easily than we could imagine. He’ll do it by appealing to our desires.

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One of the mysteries embedded within the book of Revelation is the destruction of Babylon. This city can be traced back to Genesis 11, and its empire and rulers played a central role in the exile of Israel.  But Babylon is not just a city of the past. She stands alongside Satan, Antichrist, and the false prophet as a major player in the apocalypse at the end of the world.

What does Babylon represent? Why should Christians be very concerned about her influence in their lives?  And why is she one of the main reasons that so many in the church are addicted to sexual sin?

In this inaugural episode of our series: Babylon: The Seat of Satan’s Power, Steve Gallagher gives insight as to why Babylon is a threat not only for future generations, but for us today and reveals her pervading influence over the church at large.

Resources

This series is based on the book Intoxicated with Babylon: The Seduction of God’s People in the Last Days by Steve Gallagher. You can find out more about that book by visiting our bookstore

Copyright

Scripture quotations taken from the NASB (New American Standard Bible) Copyright 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

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In this segment, Pastor Steve Gallagher sits down to discuss two dangers for Christians in America. He first talks about how we’ve strayed as a nation from the Christian virtues of our founding, and how this has birthed the morally relativistic thinking of our day. He then goes on to discuss how many churches are not even preaching the truth their congregants need. And this reality reveals to all sincere believers their vital need to develop a strong personal relationship with the Lord.

Nate: People have called the day and age that we live in a post truth World. And it seems to me that 60 years ago, people wouldn't even have thought in terms like that. There were major disagreements about what the truth was, but people wouldn't have had a thought like, “there is no such thing as absolute truth.” How did we get to this place?

Pastor Steve: Well I'm 68 years old, so 60 years ago in the world that I grew up in we understood the difference between right and wrong. The culture that I grew up in was founded on Christian concepts which fostered that sense of morality. I had to make a real choice to go down the path of sin, crime and so on. But something happened in the 60s. There was a tremendous shift in the spiritual realm. There was a rebellion and a lawlessness that broke forth in 1968 that affected the direction of the culture.
So fast forward to today and we have gone so far down this path as a country to the point that truth is severely devalued. Why? Because we've gone from a Christian culture to more of a socialist culture. This includes atheism, evolution, and life without God, so, it's humanistic. And in humanism, there are no absolutes about right and wrong. There's a complete setting aside of that. It devalues truth, truth is just not important anymore, and we can make arguments like “your truth is not my truth.”

Nate: In the first chapter of your book, you talked about moral relativism. And you expressed a concern for anyone who would even toy with this idea which is obviously rampant in our culture. But then you identified another group of people that you're also really concerned about, and this, I think would surprise people. You said that you're very concerned with the masses of people in churches who hold to the historical doctrines and believe the general truths that are revealed in the Bible. Aren't they walking in the truth? Why would you be concerned about them?

Pastor Steve: I'm concerned with a large percentage of them who only mentally accept the truth of the Bible. The historical facts that revolve around Christ and so on. They accept all that. But their level of belief in what is taught in Scripture basically stops there and does not go into the real issues that Scripture brings forth which is the kind of inward decision making that comes out in the way you live your life. Paul said it to Titus. He talked about people who profess the truth about Christianity, but by their lives, they deny it.
So, there's a disconnect between what they say they believe and the reality of their life. If you really believed it, then it's going to radically affect the way you live your life. It goes beyond mental acceptance, mental acknowledgement, and even mental comprehension of the truths of Scripture. It should translate into the way you live your life. I heard a metaphor one time that says, if there's a spider crawling on a guy's leg and he says, “Yeah, I know it's there” but it has no effect on him, then he doesn't really believe it. If he really believed that a tarantula or whatever was crawling on his leg, he would scream, hit it, jump, and run. There would be a radical reaction to it. That is what we're no longer seeing in the Church - a radical reaction to the truth.

Nate: Okay. I think there are a lot of people who would be reading this who would probably say a hearty amen to that. But you actually took that line of thought further and said that your concern is that the amount of Biblical knowledge in America is actually harming people. If you had said that saturating yourself with worldly information is going to do harm to your spiritual walk, most people would go, “Yeah, I get that.” But to say that people saturating themselves with Biblical information is doing more to lead them away from the truth than good, that requires some explanation.

Pastor Steve: What I am referring to is the way that a lot of sermons come forth focusing on peripheral issues such as the way the Pharisees lived their lives at the time or what was going on in the culture in the year 31 AD. Just the interesting tidbits, information that helps fill in some of the understanding of the culture of the time and all that kind of stuff. There's nothing wrong with it in and of itself, the problem is when a sermon becomes all about those peripheral things and interesting facts.
That's what our sermons have become. The preacher should be putting his finger in the face of his congregation that he's responsible before a Holy God for and saying, “There is sin in your life. There is worldliness in your life. There is carnality in your life. You are not giving your life to Jesus Christ in the way that He's called you to.” That's truth and that is the kind of truth that is lacking in the church today, because not very many preachers will do that. We're being inundated with a bunch of interesting facts and it's not changing our lives.

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Nate: Well, what I appreciate about your answer is that it's relevant to everyone. Whether you're flirting with moral relativism or you're attending a doctrinally sound church, you're saying that more correct facts aren’t what's really vital to finding truth. If that's the case, it kind of begs a question. If more facts don’t lead me to truth, then what hope is there of finding truth?

Pastor Steve: Hunger. When Jesus really confronted the Pharisees in Matthew 23, He told them that they focused on these trivial matters like tithing mint and cumin. And He exposed their neglect of the weightier issues of the law: mercy, justice, and righteousness. That is what is going on in the Church today. It’s all about focusing on trivialities and neglecting the weightier issues which are the things that have to do with our life in God.

Can we have hope? Absolutely. It may not come through the organized Church system as it is today. But any believer can have a connection with God outside of organized religion. And I'm not promoting doing away with going to Church, because we do need fellowship and we need the body. I'm just saying that our hope lies in our personal relationship with God. It's all about that relationship. The fellowship that the Apostle John talks about in his first epistle has to do with what we can have with the Lord. Whether or not we're hearing piercing truth come forth from the pulpit, we can have it with God in our own private time with Him. There is all kinds of hope because we can always turn to the Lord and He will gladly lead us in the way of truth.

What is proper for the Christian marriage bed? I can’t tell you how many times this question has come up through the years as I counsel couples that are dealing with the aftermath of sexual sin.

Sin Has Marred What God Has Intended for Pleasure

This question arises because sin has marred what God intended for pleasure. Our society has reduced sex to a selfish, lust-filled desire. It has become twisted and deformed from the purity that God originally created it in. But I want every couple to know that God can restore purity, even when a spouse’s sexual sin has brought added confusion, guilt or awkwardness into the marriage bed. My own testimony is that He can indeed make sex pure again. Sexual intimacy is a beautiful experience for the couple who sees it as a God-given gift and as a means to bless one another.

When God created man and woman He looked at all He had done and it was pleasing in His eyes. The Bible says, “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31) The word “everything” includes the way He made and designed our bodies, does it not? I say that because I want you to clearly understand that God intended for us to enjoy sexual relations in the covenant of marriage. Sexual relations were designed by God for procreation, but also to be a time of giving and expressing our love to one another through the giving of our body to bring pleasure and delight to each other.

This Isn’t a Behavioral Issue, It’s a Heart Issue

The question that inevitably comes up is, “What acts are considered acceptable before God to bring that pleasure to my spouse?” Of course, the Word of God is clear about certain acts being sin, such as bringing pornography or another person into your marriage bed. But beyond these blatant violations of the biblical standard, what is permissible? I’d rather not try to convince anyone that particular acts are right or wrong. What I intend to do is to provide the biblical basis for establishing purity in your marriage bed. This isn’t a behavioral issue, it’s a heart issue. The truth is, if your heart is right, you will be able to discern for yourself, with the Spirit’s help, which acts are right and which acts are wrong for you as a couple.

The Scriptures admonish us to, “look out not only for our own interests, but also for the interests of others.”(Philippians 2:4). Paul also instructs the husband to “render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband.” (1 Corinthians 7:3)  Lust and self gratification are self-centered, whereas true agape love is others-centered. Giving, not getting, is what should be in the heart of each spouse as they come together. Love-making should be a time of giving and blessing the other. Our times of intimacy should be expressions of love, not lust.

The apostle Paul wrote, “So then each of us shall give account of himself to God. Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother’s way. I know and am convinced by the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself; but to him who considers anything to be unclean, to him it is unclean.” (Romans 14:12-14). The context here was the eating of certain foods but the principle applies to the marriage bed. Approached from this standpoint, doing things that would violate your mate’s conscience or cause a stumbling block to either spouse is automatically precluded. Let me just say that anything out of the ordinary can prove to be a stumbling block to either spouse, especially a person coming out of sexual sin.

Nurture Openness and Communication

I encourage couples to have open communication about their love-making. Both husbands and wives need to be able to ask questions about what is pleasing to the other, and they also need to be sensitive to things that might be uncomfortable for their partner. I realize these discussions can be awkward for many couples at first. Most of us haven’t nurtured the kind of openness that is required to address sexual issues in our marriage. My wife and I had to go through all of this ourselves as the Lord led us through the process of restoring our marriage after my sexual sin. It meant honestly evaluating what we did in our marriage bed through prayer and using the Scriptures as our guide. As a counselor, I often recommend that couples go through the book Intended for Pleasure by Dr. Ed Wheat. This book can help Christian couples identify and work through some of their sexual intimacy issues.

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Putting the needs of our spouse before our own truly is the way of blessing. When God is in the midst of our love-making, and we are focusing on pleasing Him and our spouse, there is a oneness involved that is beautiful, fulfilling and lasting—the very opposite of lust which is fleeting, unfulfilling and ugly. God desires married couples to enjoy sexual relations as a divine blessing. Couples need to bring godly convictions into their sexual intimacy but they don’t need to allow the past or the devil to rob them of the blessing and sanctity of the marriage bed.

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To understand how the spirit of Babylon invades our way of thinking, we must understand how Satan uses men to help promote his goals. There have been many examples of such men and women throughout the ages, but the first was Nimrod, the founder of Babylon. The rebellion he began against Yahweh continues even today and can be found in the beliefs of many religions, cultures and organizations. And if we aren't careful, any of these ideas can influence us and steal our hearts away from the Lord.

Resources

• Intoxicated with Babylon (Book) by Steve Gallagher

This interview with Pure Life's counseling staff reveals the inner dynamics that lead people to hide their sexual sin and create a false life with two very different sides.

When a person is living in habitual sexual sin, one of the key features of his lifestyle will be a double life—a pattern of deception that creates an outward image to hide his addiction. Steve Gallagher describes this problem clearly in his book A Biblical Guide to Counseling the Sexual Addict:

The typical man who will come to you for help just been involved in elicit sexual activity for years. This immoral lifestyle has been done almost entirely in secret. Although sexual fantasy, pornography, and illicit encounters make up a huge part of his life, he has managed to hide it for most, if not all, of his closest friends and relatives. Most acquaintances would consider him to be a morally upright person and would never guess what he does when no one's looking.

How does someone get here? Where does this deceitful life actually start? Ed Buch, who is a biblical counselor and the pastor of Pure Life's Residential Program, explains the process:

Ed Buch: Very few people actually begin a double life as a decisive choice, like something they've thought about and then executed a plan to accomplish. Almost everyone enters into a double life very gradually, very subtly.

People end up in a double life for a couple of basic reasons. I think the most common one truly is that they're afraid of disappointing people—and maybe even themselves. They've gotten caught up, maybe, in a sin cycle—where they sin, they confess it, they sin, they confess it. They just don't want to disappoint others by letting them know that they are still in that. They expect victory; they expect to overcome sexual sin. But when that doesn't happen, they start to go underground with the truth about their situation, and they begin to develop this double life.

Although some people do just quit talking about their problems because they don't want to keep admitting they've failed, others have hidden sexual sin their whole lives and have never told anyone. And there are various factors that hold them back.

Ed Buch: There's shame...there's the fact that some of them don't intend to give up their sexual sin...and there are others who probably just never had that convenient opening they were looking for, where they could share it.

Over the years our ministry has helped so many people that fit this pattern, and in many of their stories, the double life they lived grew out of a situation where the stakes were even higher than usual.

Ed Buch: At Pure Life Ministries we get a significant percentage of the men coming into the program who are actually coming out of full-time ministry, and so this double life is a common theme. They're active in ministry; people are not aware that they're in sexual sin. They're preaching on Sundays, leading the worship team on Sundays, or doing whatever it is they're tasked to do in the church on a regular basis. But over time, they've allowed a back door open in their life; something has gone awry in their spiritual life, and they have begun to live a double life. And that dark side has increased over time and eventually become the dominant theme in their life.

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We just had a pastor recently in the program who had pastored for a couple of decades. I am sure he was a good, well-liked pastor who had a relationship with the Lord. But over time, he started dabbling in some pornography. He'd gotten hooked into it one day kind of subtly, and over time it just grew and became a very powerful force in his life that overrode everything else, including his marriage vows and his service to the Lord. And I'm sure that, to him, it seemed impossible to come into the light, because his job, his marriage, his house—all of it was was connected to the job he was doing as a pastor, so bringing anything into the light about his sexual sin jeopardized all of that. I'm sure he felt stuck, paralyzed...unable to really break free of this on his own and unable, in his mind, to pay the price of coming into the light with it.

When a person's sexual sin is exposed, this double life can be a shocking revelation—even to those that know them the best. But one of our biblical counselors, Jeremiah Eakin, says that it's not hard to start down this road.

Jeremiah Eakin: You can hide anything, as far as sexual sin. It can be same sex attraction, it can be pornography, it can be masturbation. That's the thing with sexual sin: it's so easy to hide, because you can do it in your mind, or you can do it right in front of people. And no one knows it. You can hide any form of sexual sin and still go to church and wear nice clothes, and then you worship and leave and virtually no one will know your struggle. No one will be able to tell, because it's all happening in the heart and in the mind, and there's not really any outward signs.

The length of time that someone can keep living a double life varies. But it's hard to keep doing it forever, as Jeremiah points out.

Jeremiah Eakin: You have to create something false. So it just depends on how good of a liar you are. It's being double-minded. James says, "A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." People can go 20, 30, 40, or 50 years. But eventually, it's going to come to an end. It's not real and it's in direct opposition to what the Bible says. We have a conscience, and we are supposed to walk out our Christian life in faith. But if you're in sexual sin, your conscience is messed up and faith malfunctions—every time. So you can't go on like this. You'll see someone all of a sudden leave the church after 20 years. It happens very abruptly, but they've never really been walking out the Christian life. It's just been a facade, and all of a sudden they just can't do any more and they leave the church.

If the statistics are correct, sexual sin is a problem every church needs to pay attention to. But since this phenomenon of people having a double life is also going on, how can a person know who's struggling? Jeremiah shares some thoughts.

Jeremiah Eakin: There is a way to tell. They're not going to have real life—life that's flowing out of them. Someone who's stuck in legalism would look the same way. If you have a church where people really know the Lord, you can recognize this problem. There's going to be life in a genuine Christian, and that's the main difference, because someone in sexual sin isn't going to have that real life. And so if you get to know them...if you spend time with them, you'll see. But you have to get to know people. It's not enough just to see them at church. You have to get into their life. You'll see that the reality is they're destroying themselves. There is a cry for help, but you have to get in there and be willing to get your hands dirty with people.

Jeremiah has a burden for people who are hiding out in the church—struggling, but silent. So he shares a final word of encouragement about what people can do to reach out.

Jeremiah Eakin: These things need to be talked about directly, because it's out there. People are struggling with it, but they need an outlet where it's talked about and confronted. And that's the best thing you can do for someone in sexual sin: go straight at it. Talk about it in real terms. One of the best things you can do if you think someone is struggling with sexual sin is just to get to know them. Just talk to them. Because it will show up in their life. You'll just see it. They'll have an opportunity to share. Those who are struggling want to tell people, but they need a safe place to share this, because to them, it's very shameful. And so there has to be some trust involved. It has to be a safe place for them to really open up and share what's going on. That’s important.

This excerpt is from a podcast episode that we designed especially for pastors and other church leaders presenting a three-part profile on the typical sexual addict, “A Leader’s Guide to the Sexual Addict, Episode #326”.

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