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More of Sodom

Dear Michael,

I am a husband and a stepfather of a three-year-old. I'm hooked on pornography. I sometimes think I can't make it without it. I read your pamphlet Pornography, Road To Hell, and it fit me. I'm 29 and I need someone to talk to. I need lot's of prayers. I want to stop this bondage I am in. I could use some help. God bless your website.

MICHAEL ANSWERS

You don't need to talk to anyone. You don't need help. You don't need prayer. You need to repent. Nearly every porno freak to whom I have spoken has expressed a desire to be free from his addiction. The same is true of alcoholics and dopeheads. I have spoken with prostitutes and Sodomites. They all say the same thing. They are miserable; life is a disappointment. They know they are in trouble. They want to quit very badly, but they are "so dependent on it." I have seen them cry, swear they will never do it again, and then go right back. They will confess their sins, ask for special prayer, let you cast the devils out of them, and then crawl back to their sin.

Many professing Christians, preachers and priests included, are caught in a web of debauchery.

I said you don't need to talk to anyone, because no one can help you. You don't have an emotional problem that you need to "work through." You don't need affirmation or understanding. Yours is not a failure of information. You are a sinner, living after the flesh, and you are dead in trespasses and sins. No counselor can help you deal with your sin.

I said you don't need help because no one can help you decide what you value. If you love the flesh and do not fear God, if you are not afraid of hell, if you do not value your marriage and your self-respect, if you choose to have the worldview of a baboon—to eat, sleep, and play with yourself—no one can help you except to assure you of the misery you will experience in this life and of damnation in the next.

I said you don't need prayer, because God does not help sinners quit their sin. God commands the sinner to repent, and then God places his Spirit inside of believers, and by that Spirit the children of God are all overcomers. Those who are not overcomers are overcome of sin and will continue to be enslaved unless they become truly born again.

You Have Chosen
The Lifestyle of a Baboon!

When you fear God and hell, you will lose your appetite for everything but forgiveness and restitution. You will stay on your knees, fasting, until you touch God and receive the new birth. When you repent to God, you will hate sin so thoroughly that the very thought of a porno image will make you sick to your stomach.

You have never been sincere about ceasing to do pornography. By the time you receive this reply you will doubtless have returned to your lonely room of self-love. If you really wanted to quit, you would permanently disconnect from the internet. If you must use computers at work, you would get a job working in lawn care. You would disconnect your TV from the cable or satellite. You would burn all the images you now have, and you would spend your free time in the Word of God—that is, if you were sincere. There are other, more drastic and permanent methods of ridding oneself of the means to lust, but I will not recommend them. I will leave that to the words of Jesus, found in Matthew 5:29-30: 18:9.

Paul said, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). I have seen many porno freaks, queers, lesbians, prostitutes, dope heads, alcoholics, and adulterers repent toward God and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and never return to their sin a single time. Either the gospel of Jesus Christ is what it claims to be or it is empty religious nonsense. Either Christ forgives the sinner and delivers him from the acts of sin or we are at the mercy of counselors and therapists.

The move is yours, not God’s. God did everything that is necessary to forgive the greatest sinner and to keep him from committing sin. But God cannot save the unrepentant. And, my friend, you have never repented to God. The choice is yours.

From years of experience, seeing God change lives, I have every confidence that the same gospel that has worked a change in others will work a change in you—when you are willing.

(By Michael Pearl, taken from No Greater Joy, May-June, 2002. A free newsletter may be obtained from No Greater Joy Ministries, 1000 Pearl Road, Pleasantville, TN 37147. This is definitely not an endorsement of everything found in this publication or in the materials they offer.)

Richard Hollerman