Back in 2017, a group of evangelical Christians concerned about the confusion of the age wrote and adopted a statement that became known as the Nashville Statement. A statement that affirmed a biblical understanding of gender, sexuality, and marriage. And also spoke, on clearly biblical terms, to many of the most controversial issues, issues that the church now faces inevitably, in the context of our modern American civilization. But, of course, the situation is not merely American, it is increasingly worldwide.

And furthermore, many of the issues that the Nashville Statement had to address in 2017 had actually emerged earlier in another context. Specifically, the context the Europe. That takes us to a headline that has developed just over the last couple of days, news has come from the Netherlands that 250 Christian leaders, that is both pastors and other leaders, have signed the Nashville Statement, and the fact that they did so has now made headline news around the world. In particular, what's so important for Christians here is that it demonstrates the increasing opposition, even overt hostility to traditional Christianity.

In the case of the developments in the Netherlands, the response from so many, including potentially even from the government of the Netherlands, is that anyone who holds to a traditional, biblical understanding of human sexuality, that understanding of human sexuality and gender that has marked the Christian church for over 2,000 years, is now simply out of bounds in contemporary society.

Indeed, one of the headlines coming from the Netherlands is so ominous as to tell us that the Dutch government prosecution service is deciding whether or not the very signing and publication of the Nashville Statement is actually a violation worthy of criminal prosecution. Dutch News reports, "The prosecution service is examining whether the Nashville Statement on marriage and sexuality breaches the law after a recent Dutch translation was condemned by equality organizations."

Listen to the language used in this report. I'm reading the exact language, "The document, signed by around 250 hardline Protestant ministers, states that marriage is the ‘covenantal, sexual, procreative, lifelong union of one man and one woman’ and that ‘it it is sinful to approve of homosexual impurity or transgenderism.’"

The use of the language "hardline Protestant ministers" is clearly intended to send shivers down every secular spine. But notice the words that the same report indicates represents this hardline position. The words are absolutely what virtually every Christian church, every Christian denomination throughout the last 2,000 years would have believed and affirmed without question. Now, in 2019, that's enough, at least in the Netherlands, to have these pastors identified as "hardline Protestant ministers."

As you might expect, there are some massive developments of long standing behind all this. Remember that in 2001, the Netherlands became the very first government on earth to legalize same-sex marriage. What makes this extremely important is recognizing that the Netherlands demonstrates the trajectory of European secularization perhaps better than any other single nation.

By any measure, the Netherlands is now one of the most secular societies on earth. Almost every single documented survey or research report indicates that the vast majority of citizens in the Netherlands indicate that they have no religious identity, even though the majority have historically had, by their family ties, some kind of Protestant identity.

But the numbers are actually staggering. One report from 2015 indicates that 82% of citizens in the Netherlands indicate that they rarely or ever have entered a church building. And furthermore, 59% indicated that they had never even once in their lives entered a church building. Another report that came out earlier in the decade indicated that for the first time in the Netherlands, atheists actually outnumbered theists within the culture of the Dutch.

Now, what makes that really interesting is that as you look at the kinds of religious self-identifications that are possible, this might lead some to think, "Well, this simply means that there were few who identified as theists because they identified as some form of historic religious beliefs." Say, Judaism or Christianity. And amongst Christians, either Protestantism or perhaps Roman Catholicism. But that's not the case. The remainder were agnostic, or having no religious identification, or some other kind of secular dimensionality.

What we're looking at here is a situation in which a country that had been historically anything but secular, ever since the last two decades of the 19th century has been quickly becoming one of the most secular societies on earth. And it's also important to recognize that the Netherlands, and especially the city of Amsterdam, has gained a reputation for sexual liberalism. Even sexual libertinism. And it is also, we should note, been an international center of sex trafficking.

But as you think about what is represented in the pushback to 250 Christian leaders and pastors signing the declaration in the Netherlands, you also come to understand that the real question here is not who did sign it, but who didn't? The interesting and alarming issue here is that so many who are identified in some way with an historic Christian denomination in the Netherlands, pressed back against the Nashville Statement.

Now when the statement was adopted in the United States in 2017, there was also pushback. There was pushback from Protestant liberals and others in the secular community who have absolutely joined the LGBTQ revolution. That was expected. But there was also pushback from some others who didn't want to identify as Protestant liberals, they wanted to identify in some way as evangelicals, or as evangelical-like. They stated that the Nashville Statement fell short of what a statement should say. That the Nashville Statement could have been better.

Now, that's an interesting claim. And, by the way, it's true of every single statement that has ever been adopted throughout the history of the Christian church. The scripture is inerrant, no other statement, no human document is inerrant. But the situation needs to be pressed back, the question needs to be reversed. If the Nashville Statement can be improved upon, then do so. If it could be more biblical, then demonstrate how.

The reality is, and I'll state this quite clearly, those who in the main rejected the Nashville Statement, did so because they do not want to be publicly identified with any statement of sufficient clarity on these questions. It was really interesting and it will be even more interesting in days to come to see how many of those who were identified in some sense with the Christian church there in the Netherlands will respond to this statement. We simply have to raise the same challenge. The issue is not who did sign the statement, the issue is who didn't and why not?

And of course the reality behind that is the absolute compromise and acquiescence, the surrender of so many historic Christian denominations to the LGBTQ revolution. And even before that, to the revolution in human sexuality that marked so much of the 20th century. You look at all of this and you recognize it's the same sad story.

In the Netherlands, the general society is considerably more liberal, more secular, and at least as this headline would indicate, more hostile to historic biblical Christianity. So much so, as we indicated, that merely publishing and signing this statement may be, as the Dutch prosecution services indicated, a criminal offense.

Going back to the Dutch News story, it states, "A spokesman for the public prosecution service said it was examining the statement to see if there was any basis for a criminal investigation. The service," according to this news report, "gave no indication how long the study might take."

The article then goes on also to tell us that Article 1 of the Dutch Constitution states that, "Discrimination on the grounds of religion, belief, political opinion, race or sex or on any other grounds whatsoever shall not be permitted." Now, let's just state that there might be some kind of loss in translation from the Dutch to the English, but that statement is not only the epitome of modern secular liberalism, it is morally incomprehensible. The statement that there cannot be any discrimination on any grounds whatsoever is insane. And the very fact that the Dutch prosecution service is considering charges against those who hold to historic Christianity shows you just what kind of agenda is actually behind that kind of language.

The leader of one Dutch political party historically associated with reformed Protestantism, that is the SGP, signed the statement. This led one individual in the Netherlands, identified as opera singer Francis van Broekhuizen, to file a formal police complaint against Kees van der Staaij. And the paper explains that that is the first step towards any kind of potential criminal prosecution.

The press report also uses dismissive language about this particular party, by the way, it is the oldest continual political party there in the Netherlands, by explaining that it only holds two seats on Parliament, that's out of a 150, and "draws most of its support from the Dutch Bible belt." Yes, there is still a Dutch Bible belt.

It is interesting historically also to remember that between 1901 and 1905, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands was Abraham Kuyper, one of the most important Protestant theologians of the 20th century. A prominent Dutch clergyman and journalist and politician statesmen. But that was a long time ago. We're not only talking about an entire century ago, we're talking about a development before the transformation of Dutch society into one of the most secular on earth. And, as these news reports indicate, one of the societies that just might be increasingly hostile, even with the threat of criminal prosecution, to those who dare to hold to historic biblical Christianity.

One other word about this, of course, there are many in the United States who would say, "Well, that's the Netherlands, it can't have anything to do with Christians in the United States." But of course it can. Remember that back in 2001, when in the Netherlands same-sex marriage was legalized, even many who later became avid proponents of same-sex marriage, said in 2001, "It can't happen here." But it did happen here. Nationwide in 2015 with the Obergefell decision handed down by the US Supreme Court.

The difference between 2001 and 2015 is only 14 years. Consider that an ominous warning as you consider this headline news story from the Netherlands.