Banned From Twitter Finally

Well, it has finally happened—I’ve been banned from Twitter permanently. All previous bans were temporary bans. This time, I was told, is abiding. As of yesterday morning, June 29, my long-time account has been nuked, my phone number and e-mail address have been blocked, and any new accounts I create will be deleted.

The tweet that did me in was one I posted earlier this week on June 27, when I said the following:

Q: What do abortion, adultery, bestiality, child sacrifice, homicide, homosexuality, idolatry, incest, and witchcraft have in common?

A: They all deserve the death penalty.

Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, and live.

Below this tweet was another in which I pointed to the corresponding Bible verses that say each of those sins are worthy of the death penalty. Below that, I had a reference to Romans 6:23, which says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The story of my being banned made it into Not the Bee (but it was quickly overshadowed by the fact that Twitter banned Jordan Peterson on the same day, for calling Ellen Paige by her birth name and not her “I’m now a boy” name).  I appreciate Not the Bee for the way they framed the story. My tweet was clear. And so is the reason people didn’t like it.

Here’s What I Said

The idea for this tweet was inspired by comments from people who mock the Bible by listing things the Bible says you deserve to die for. The mockery has been ramped up since the Dobbs decision that came out last week, when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade undoing an unjust ruling that has resulted in the gruesome murders of over 60 million unborn babies in the United States since 1973.

The Bible says that an unborn child is worthy of the same justice as a full-grown adult. Exodus 21:22-23 says, “If men struggle with each other and strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband will set for him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall pay life for life…”

In his commentary on this passage, John Calvin wrote, “The unborn, though enclosed in the womb of his mother, is already a human being, and it is an almost monstrous crime to rob it of life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man’s house is his most secure place of refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy the unborn in the womb before it has come to light.”

Debate has erupted as to whether a mother who gets an abortion should be convicted of murder. This has been a source of contention among many people, even at the last two annual meetings of the Southern Baptist Convention. The Bible says that even if an unborn child is killed accidentally, justice must be done. How much more so for the intentional murder of the unborn?

When such arguments have been made with the Bible as the standard, opponents go into full-throated, open-grave scorn over what the Bible says. I responded (to no one in particular) by listing nine sins that God has said are worthy of the death penalty, and I listed them in alphabetical order: abortion, adultery, bestiality, child sacrifice, homicide, homosexuality, idolatry, incest, and witchcraft (in the tweet below that one, I also included rape).

These are not merely Old Testament prohibitions. In Romans 1:32, the Apostle Paul said, “Although they know the righteous requirement of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”

But I didn’t just leave it at that. In the same tweet—and this was really the whole point—I pointed to the way of mercy. You can be forgiven of the atrocious evils for which you and I deserve death: “Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, and live.”

Here’s What Happened

Oh, but Twitter threw a hissy fit. I was accused of calling for genocide or the mass murder of huge swaths of people. It was said of me and is still being said that I was advocating for the United States to change its laws and enact the death penalty for each of these vices (apparently I did all of that in 280 characters). So I was reported, and Twitter agreed with the complaint, and I got the boot.

The enemies of God are dancing on my Twitter grave. I am not bothered by it in the least. If anything, I feel sorry for them. I say, is there really so little to your life that my being silenced on Twitter is a prize? Then you have received your reward in full.

O that you would instead turn from your sin to Jesus Christ—which was the message of my tweet! Instead, you would rather publicly ridicule and slander and celebrate the silencing of a preacher of God’s word. God help you.

But to me, my Lord has said, “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great; for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Matthew 5:11-12). Praise God that I have been “considered worthy to suffer shame for the Name” (Acts 5:41). May God grant me the fortitude to stand strong against greater opposition than a Twitter ban.

Now, you might say, “Oh, don’t be such a martyr.”

I’m not a martyr. If you think that’s what I’m saying, perhaps you don’t know what that word means. The Bible says we will be maligned when we don’t join them in their dissipation (1 Peter 4:4). We are not to revile in return but to consider ourselves blessed (1 Peter 2:23, 4:14). They will have to give an account to Him who judges justly.

But going on, you insist, “Twitter has a clear policy, their Terms of Service. If you violate the TOS, you deserve to get banned.”

Well the message that I received Twitter said that I was being banned for “violating our rules against hateful conduct. You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

Okay, I did not do any of that. I did not promote violence against, threaten, or harass anyone. When you look into the more specific details of the TOS, there’s really only one part that appears to address something like what I said. According to Twitter, a person can be banned for:

“Wishing, hoping, or calling for serious harm on a person or group of people

“We do not tolerate content that wishes, hopes, promotes, incites, or expresses a desire for death, serious bodily harm, or serious disease against an individual or group of people. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Hoping that someone dies as a result of a serious disease, e.g., ‘I hope you get cancer and die.’
• Wishing for someone to fall victim to a serious accident, e.g., ‘I wish that you would get run over by a car next time you run your mouth.’
• Saying that a group of individuals deserves serious physical injury, e.g., ‘If this group of protestors don’t shut up, they deserve to be shot.'”

So would it be that last example that resembles what I said? If someone says, “This group of protestors deserve to be shot,” how is that like saying, “These sins all deserve the death penalty”? That’s really not the same thing. I was pointing to something objective: what God has said according to His word. I was not expressing my subjective opinion.

Under Twitter’s metric, no one can say, “Anthony Todt deserves the death penalty,” or you will be banned from Twitter. In case you don’t know, Anthony Todt was convicted in April of stabbing or smothering to death his wife and three children in their luxury home near Disney World in Florida. He was sentenced to life in prison. If you say that monster deserves the death penalty, according to Twitter’s TOS, you deserve to be banned. (Honestly, if you don’t think Todt deserves the death penalty, you have a pretty warped sense of justice.)

All of that aside, I’m only going over this because it gives me another opportunity to speak truth and share Christ. There is no reason for me to have to explain myself like this. Whether you agree with me or not, we all know what’s really going on here.

Here’s What You and I Know

You and I both know Twitter does not execute their TOS fairly—I wrote about this the first time I was banned, with examples. Leftists get special treatment, but conservatives get banned for speaking the truth. If that weren’t the case, then every woman who “shouts her abortion” after she just had her unborn child torn limb from limb would get banned, and Jordan Peterson, who said, “Ellen Paige just had her breasts removed,” wouldn’t have been banned.

I have been constantly harassed on Twitter, even the target of sexual harassment. Subjecting someone to porn against their will is sexual harassment. In a just society, it would be treated as a crime—on the level of indecent exposure or publicly pleasuring oneself. I hope none of you are ever subjected to the kind of sick, perverted content that people who hate me have sent on social media.

Occasionally I have had my life threatened. Twitter rarely did anything about the harassment I received. A few times, they issued temporary penalties, but that’s all. A few days ago, I posted a screenshot of a man who direct messaged me on Twitter with vulgar bigotry regarding my faith. To my knowledge, no action was taken. (I praise God I’m out.)

Right now there are scores of people on Twitter threatening actual violence in response to the Dobbs decision. What is Twitter doing about them? I see that Maxine Waters still has a Twitter account, even after she openly called for the public harassment of her political opponents. Her comments were on Twitter. Why hasn’t she been banned?

A few well-meaning Christians have contacted me privately and have attempted to help me see the error of my tweet. Perhaps this was not the best thing to say on Twitter, they say. Or there needed to be a lot more qualifying for the biblically untrained. Or I could have been more gracious with my words (ignoring the fact that the message of grace was actually in my tweet).

But in response, I have said: Listen, you and I both know why I was banned from Twitter. And it wasn’t because of my tone or because I was unclear or because through some twisted reading I had called for a bunch of people to be rounded up and executed.

I am banned because people hate God.

What I said was exactly what the Bible says. One of the sins I mentioned was homosexuality, Twitter’s sacred throng. I said to repent of your sin and turn to Jesus Christ, and you will live. And I got banned. That’s the story.

You and I also know that there are more sins than these for which we deserve death and worse than death. There is a fate much worse than the death penalty. We deserve to go to hell. We deserve to burn in eternal punishment for our lawless rebellion against God.

But God is merciful. He sent His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for our sins. He laid down His life as an atoning sacrifice for us, so that all who believe in Him will not perish under the righteous judgment of God. Jesus “was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our peace fell upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

Therefore, I say, “Turn from your sin to the Lord Jesus Christ, and live.”

In Conclusion

This was the week that I was going to post Part 2 of my article on the Liberal Drift of the Southern Baptist Convention. However, in the research that I was doing, I direct messaged several pieces of information to my wife on Twitter—things people said, links to articles and videos, etc. But since I’ve been banned from Twitter, all of that is gone. Not even my wife has it. The DM thread we had with each other has been wiped out.

So it is going to take a little longer for me to get Part 2 completed. The article is about half-written, but I still have some things to finish up. God-willing, I’ll get the second part posted next week, sans Twitter. As always, you may still find me here on my blog, pastorgabe.com, where I hope to post more regularly now that I’m not tweeting. My daily Bible teaching podcast is at wwutt.podbean.com, and my videos can be found at youtube.com/wwutt.

My Twitter days are over, but I have no reason to be ashamed of anything I have said. If I was going to get banned for any tweet, I’m glad it’s the one where I proclaimed the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16).