(Note: The relevant texts to this episode can be found here (adb/pdf)), and/or you can view the whole thing here.)

With that, we begin.

Dr. David Kyle Foster is the producer and co-host of a show called “Pure Passion.”:

David founded Mastering Life Ministries in 1987 and has been its director ever since. He is also the producer and host of “Pure Passion” – a televised outreach designed to equip the church to redemptively minister to those who are trapped in sexual sin and brokenness. … The goal of the program is to tell the world of God’s grace and love through Jesus Christ and His power to set anyone free from any sin or bondage.

Foster has a series of articles on homosexuality, rife with all the stale yet vicious antigay talking points:

Kyle Foster, 2008: The reality [of homosexuality] is a dramatically reduced life expectancy and the likelihood of contracting hepatitis, AIDS, or one of a host of diseases and infections, as a result of the unnatural perversity of homosexual activity.

Suicide among homosexuals is epidemic, not because society disapproves, as many would have you believe, but because these dear people feel trapped and condemned into a lifestyle and orientation that they know is out of whack.

And the faithfully monogamous gay couple myth – not even close. Such relationships are statistically nonexistent in the gay community.

On December 21st, 2009, the host of the show was Jayson Graves, a board member of Exodus International:


Welcome to Pure Passion. I’m Jayson Graves, and I’m your host for today’s program.

Today we have a man who has lived with the HIV virus for almost 30 years. His name is Jonathan Hunter, and since 1985 he’s been the director of a ministry to those with the AIDS virus, called “Embracing Life.”

After overdosing on drugs, he also had an after-death experience which utterly changed his life.

In my opinion, this episode exploited Jonathan Hunter’s near-death experience (NDE) in an attempt to convince their audience that there is now eye-witness testimony—proving once and for all—that Jesus Christ Himself is anti-gay.

For those of you who may not know about NDEs, or want to learn more, see near-death.com. It does an excellent job of categorizing NDE stories, with many subjects to choose from, including a gay and lesbian section.

Another helpful resource is the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, or nderf.org.

More on gay and lesbian NDEs later.

Jonathan Hunter’s NDE story begins with the recollection of the stereotypical absent father/I was called ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ in school, therefore I must be one, position. Later in life he accidentally overdoses on drugs and has a near death experience:

Jonathan Hunter: And went through this experience that we’ve all heard about, now, of coming out of this darkness into this light. And I just knew … I’m now in the presence of–instinctively, I said to myself, this is Jesus … he said “Jonathan, I want to show you your life,” … And at the end of it, the Lord said to me, “Jonathan, what did you see?” And I said, “Ugh, God, it was all negative. It was all destructive.” And he says, “Is that all you see from your life?” And I said “That’s…it. There’s nothing there, there’s nothing good.”

…But I didn’t stop participating in the gay lifestyle … I accepted Christ as my Lord and savior … And yet I thought I could be a gay Christian, and that God somehow would bless, monogamous relationships…

…two years after I made that commitment to Christ, I said the Lord … hopefully that I can understand how you could lure me to you, and then tell me that homosexuality was not right, even though that’s what I feel I am.

I don’t think it was the NDE that convinced him homosexuality was wrong, or he wouldn’t have even “thought” that God would have blessed a same-sex monogamous relationship.

Strongly implying that it was only after the NDE that he “discovered” homosexuality to be wrong. Yet the takeaway is that they are connected.

Graves picks up the ball and runs with it:

Jayson Graves: As you know, homosexuality and other sexual sin and brokenness problems have become a literal plague in our world today.

Plague: affliction, contagion, curse, epidemic, hydra, infection, infestation, influenza, invasion, outbreak, pandemic, pestilence, rash, ravage, scourge

“Infestation,” as in rats, or cockroaches.

Nearly all of the NDE stories I’ve read since HS (25yrs), whether it was Jesus, the being of light (angel), or both, are usually only interested in how well you treated others—as in Jesus’ command to love thy neighbor as thy self, otherwise known as the Golden Rule.

In her book, “Crossing Over & Coming Home,” Liz Dale, Ph.D. documents 21 NDEs of gays and lesbians. Many of the accounts didn’t even think that it was an issue worth mentioning.

One story puts it best:

If being gay or lesbian is such a horrible thing, I’m sure God’s angels (my six spiritual guides) would have been told by God to tell me of my gay life being the “wrong” way to live. It was not mentioned or brought up in any way. [p125]

In one of the more interesting and detailed accounts, the man asked the guides he was with if it was “okay to be gay?” They responded by laughing and said “Who do you think made gay people?” (p32)

Even in the life-reviews that so many NDE-ers report, no matter how badly they may have behaved in life, the angel/Jesus does not stand in judgment, but continues to love them unconditionally.

And I would be remiss in not stressing that so many NDE-ers, including Jonathan Hunter, who’ve experienced this being of light/Jesus, describe the experience as having been an all-permeating sensation of peace, love, serenity, understanding, etc.

Anti-gay Christians might retort with the notion that these “pro-gay” beings of light were simply demons in disguise, but that then raises the question as to whether or not Jesus Himself may have been Satan in disguise.

I cannot be sure this program intended to exploit the ‘firsthand-eyewitness’ aspect of Jonathan Hunter’s near death experience in order to depict Jesus as anti-gay, but I certainly see it as the effect.
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Again, for more information on NDEs, see:

http://www.near-death.com/
http://www.nderf.org/
___________________________
~Patrick Fitzgerald, aka Emproph

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