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If you are guilty of "forbidding to marry" (i.e., telling someone who has no marriage that they are not eligible to marry), you are committing sin. The apostle Paul declared such behavior to be in the category of "doctrines of devils" (1 Tim. 4:1-3). What happens to you from there is not the point of this article. It is about what happens to those souls who have been divorced when evangelists teach them the gospel. Rather than converting divorced people, preachers instead drive them away with their unscriptural and imprudent demands based on their non-biblical tradition.
God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, but that was just a test of faith - He evidently never intended for Abraham to do it. But preachers who misunderstand and misapply Jesus' teaching are demanding that potential converts, who have been involved in divorce, break off their current marriage (divorce if married) and remain celibate the rest of their life. Anyone who tells you that most true seekers of God, who are in this position, will understand and obey such an absurd demand, rather than give up their faith and\or go somewhere else, is lying. More likely, more than 90 percent of those who are told they will be living in adultery if they don't remain celibate, will reject the ultimatum, the Lord, and the church, and be lost eternally.
On the other hand, we who know and teach the truth experience the joy of seeing these souls obey the gospel, be cleansed of all past sin, and become zealous and valuable workers in the church. We often hear the charge that we are filling the church with adulterers, but that assertion is based upon the assumption that tradition trumps truth and that divorce does not end marriage as taught in Deuteronomy 24:1-2; Jeremiah 3:8; Mark 10:3; and 1 Corinthians 7:1-2; 8-9, 27-28.
If you are guilty of "forbidding to marry," the same thing that happens to the souls that you drive away may well happen to you. Even if you succeed in convincing your converts that they must live celibately and they still decide to get baptized, the story does not end there. You have taken away God's tool to help them "avoid fornication" (1 Cor. 7:1-2), which may lead to their fall. In view of what Jesus said about causing "a little one to stumble," this should be terrifying for traditional teachers to consider (Matt. 18:6). Not to mention how you treat these people in the church. A man may be the best qualified in the area to be an elder, but he is not even considered because he is assumed to have more than one wife - all based upon the false notion that God did not recognize a divorce. (To believe this one must disbelieve or disregard God's clear teaching as to what constitutes a divorce.) This is based upon the idea that Jesus said a "divorced" woman would commit adultery if she married. But He did not say that a divorced woman commits adultery when she marries - not even close. He said a "put away" woman (sent out without a divorce) would commit adultery. This makes sense and it does not have Jesus contradicting established law that would have given reason for the Jews to kill him.
Before promoting any teaching that has become tradition, seems popular, or for which you somehow feel duty bound to promote please consider the consequences if you are wrong.
Much information on the divorce and marriage issue may be found at:
https://www.totalhealth.bz/marriage-divorce-remarriage.htm
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