Health and Fitness Reporter

Johnathan Bislew said he had never been alone with his wife before they married two years ago.

Bislew, a campus minster from Maranatha Christian Fellowship in Minneapolis, spoke to more than 60 people Thursday night in the Holmes Student Center Lincoln Room about love, sex and dating.

Campus Missions International sponsored Bislew, who talked about the dangers of premarital sex. He shared statistics about contraceptives and sexually transmitted diseases.

Young people don’t know about the consequences of having sex outside of marriage, Bislew said.

“I think a lot of people are living in the clouds and do not know the risks they are taking,” Bislew said. “I think sex is the number one thing in young people’s minds, and I don’t think it is something that will ever leave your mind.”

Men and women should respect themselves and each other by not having sex before marriage, Bislew said. He spoke about his past mistakes, including alcohol abuse and premarital sex.

“The hardest things in our lives are relationships,” Bislew said. “We are not giving solid guidance when it comes to education about sex. It takes a lifetime to build a relationship, but a moment to destroy it.”

Campus Missions International sponsored the event.

“My generation is dying because they don’t know the truth about sex,” said Wendy Marshall, a junior undecided major and president of Campus Missions International. “Condoms have become the answer to protection from diseases and that is not the truth. True prevention is abstinence until marriage.”

DeKalb resident Ryan Burwell attended the talk and said he believed in the content of Bislew’s lecture.

“I learned about the true covenant that is established in the marriage relationship and how it exists with Jesus Christ,” Burwell said. “The consequences of not following biblical principles and following my own desires is extremely futile when in a relationship with a woman.”

Sponsoring lectures with a religious perspective about relationships is important, said Tom May who founded Campus Missions International at NIU.

“You can only warn young people,” Bislew said. “But you are the captain of your own ship. What you do now affects who you are 25 years from now.”