If I were anyone whose opinion mattered, I would issue an official statement and this is what it would say... I am a student of the Bible and a disciple of Christ so I am well aware that the Bible is clear that whoever follows after Jesus will suffer as He did. I can see that suffering in the lives of faithful disciples all over the world who live under oppressive regimes or in regions that are hostile to Christianity. I read with moved emotions the accounts of faithful men and women who under incredible pressure and under pain of death, torture, imprisonment or even worse - the pain of death, torture, or imprisonment of their loved ones - nevertheless remain steadfast in their devotion to Christ. They forsake it all for the sake of the call. I also understand that my experience as an American Christian has been the result of inheriting God’s blessing on a previous generation. His Word tells us that He visits the blessings on a faithful generation to multiple generations of their children. Our nation was founded by largely godly men on biblical principles who covenanted themselves to God and cried out for His help and God granted that help and heaped incredible blessing on them and their posterity. His Word also tells us that God judges nations and men for their own sins - and that judgment begins with His own people. It cannot be denied that a dozen generations later the posterity of the Founders have all but rejected the source of their blessing. I love my country. The story of America is a grand pageant unfolding over many centuries, involving colorful and flawed individuals and intertwined with the journey of His Church, emerging out of centuries of darkness where the Word of God had been hidden from the people of God by a corrupt and apostate “official” church who had wed herself to the state after divorcing herself from Christ. But then, emboldened by a faith born from the pages of Scripture and fanned by the Reformation, many set out for a New World to claim it for Christ, to make it a City on a Hill for all the World to see, and with hard work and Divine favor to make a better life for themselves and their families. Of course, these very same men and women were themselves fallen sinners who sometimes acted unfaithfully or selfishly. Is everything America or Americans did in the beginning and during her development just or godly? Of course not! But nevertheless, God in His providence continued to bless the land and the nation that grew on it. I am convinced that it can be legitimately said that never before or since the revolutionary period of our nation has a greater assemblage of geniuses ever been in one place at one time. These great minds (not all of whom were devoutly Christian but most were and none were hostile to it) under Divine guidance built an extraordinary nation that they themselves believed could only function as intended in a Judeo-Christian framework. The rapid rise to prominence of that nation in every measure among the nations of men is evidence of the extra-ordinariness and, yes, exceptionalism of the foundation and system they built. America has changed and while many among us celebrate this change because the increase in liberality in a Christ-hostile world seems to promote American ideals of “justice” and “equality” it is forgotten that for those ideals to mean anything they must have a foundation - they must be grounded in absolute truth. In order for any standard to have legitimate meaning it must be based on an immutable truth - otherwise by definition it is arbitrary and only a convention and one baseless convention is certainly as good as any other. At the beginning that foundation of truth was a Judeo-Christian worldview. That is no longer the case. I am torn because I mourn the unmooring and subsequent destruction that the unique nation that I love is now speeding headlong towards. I cry out to God for mercy for my country and I cry to my countrymen to repent before it is too late. However, if that repentance does not come, I recognize that because I have decided to genuinely follow Jesus I will very soon find myself outcast, put upon, and persecuted - ironically, by a nation that was created by Christians who were escaping persecution! Any who doubt this need only to pay attention to events unfolding all around the country. Suddenly, everyone has rights except the right to conscience that is biblically informed. Many will argue that my view of the past and foundations of this Land are mistaken. A non-revisionist view of history, however, proves otherwise. Still, others will say that even if that was once true, it no longer is nor should it be. We are more enlightened now and have rightly freed ourselves from “religious” shackles. The proof is in the pudding. The more progressive our nation becomes the more destroyed it becomes. I never realized the full extent of it until our church started doing ministry in a public school and then into the communities served by that school. What we encounter there is irrefutable evidence that we as a culture have destroyed ourselves, one family at a time. The self-destruct sequence has begun and is counting down to our eventual (and soon) total ruin as a nation. You can laugh and belittle but you cannot deny the facts. In the beginning many in this great land saw a parallel between America and Israel in her miraculous deliverance from oppression by the hand of God. Unfortunately that parallel continues to hold as America, just like Israel before her, is turning her back on the God who delivered her. What I have to say now is only to my fellow disciples - my brothers and sisters in Christ. Many of us have consciously and to some degree all of us subconsciously have bought into a uniquely modern, American, apostate Gospel - a gospel of prosperity and convenience. A gospel of “ear-tickling” and conscience-salving. A gospel that not only does not save anyone from hell but most assuredly sends many there. This prosperity gospel has seemed to many to work because it existed in the bubble of American prosperity. But as the American bubble is now in the act of bursting we will find that this false gospel cannot sustain us, it cannot deliver what it promises, it leaves us exposed and it will be exposed for the sham that it is. The true Gospel calls us to forsake everything to follow Jesus. The true Gospel tells us that everything that happens (even the bad stuff) happens to shape and mold us, to refine our characters, and to turn our hearts into what God intends for them to be. The true Gospel will give us the grace to stand - as our brothers and sisters the world over have already been doing - in the face of incredible persecution all for the glory of God and to rejoice in doing it because we know the One who calls us to do it is faithful and that to be with Him is better by far. The true Gospel calls us to forsake and endure and to stand. When the time comes, will you stand? Whether you do or not will show whether you have stood on the true Gospel or been lured to your doom by a counterfeit, feel-good gospel that tickles your ears but damns your soul. What say you, Church?
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 13:17:16 +0000
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