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Much for which to be thankful!

Posted by :admin On : November 24, 2016
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Category: America, Archives, Culture Wars

This has been a difficult year in America and for most of the world. In spite of all the bitter rhetoric on both sides, the 2016 presidential campaign was not so much about a choice between two candidates but was substantially about the fundamental differences in the worldviews of the voters they represented. Some (including myself) believed that the presidential election would determine the trajectory of the nation for decades to come. Given the outcome of the election, it appears that those identifying with the Judeo-Christian worldview have been given another chance to make the necessary course corrections to save the nation from cultural disintegration.

For many, the election is not over as can be seen on college campuses throughout America, in Hollywood, academia, establishment media, and the remainder of the self-anointed intelligentsia of America who try to guide the political, artistic, and social development of society. Most of the jabbering classes are either largely clueless about or remarkably disdainful of the nation’s original values, principles, and the Judeo-Christian worldview upon which it was founded. Much of their secular-humanistic chatter is nothing more than a lot of noise wrapped in false egalitarian definitions of multiculturalism, diversity, and inclusion. Their post-election sophistry has evolved into a mass tantrum orchestrated and paid for in part by their puppet masters including George Soros and Planned Parenthood. Instead of hot cocoa and grief counseling to mollify their loss of power in the White House and other government offices around the nation, they should be sent to time-out which would be the normal consequence for most three-year-olds that exhibited similar behaviors. The same should happen to the tiny fraction of society who celebrated the election by property destruction, racist rants, and hateful rhetoric because their actions are totally foreign to the substantive positions of the vast majority of those who voted against a humanistic and socialistic future for America.

In spite of all of this present foolishness, Americans have a multitude of reasons to be thankful for our heritage and blessings that surpass even the deep divisions and failings of American culture. If one doubts this, pick a spot on the globe that would be a better place to live than America…New Zealand perhaps?

During the special seasons of Thanksgiving and Christmas, I suggest that both sides of the culture wars take a break, chill out, unplug from the 24-7 news cycle, and reflect on what once made America great and what can do so again. I will be the first to set the example. There will be no more articles published on culturewarrior.net until January 2017. Come January 1, 2017, the engines of what passes for civil discourse can be fired up again. And if they behave during our self-imposed hiatus, perhaps we can release the mindless protesters and malicious celebrants from time-out.

Larry G. Johnson

“…my big fear is, we are Rome.”

Posted by :admin On : November 18, 2016
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Category: Archives, Government, Worldview

San Antonio Spurs basketball coach Gregg Popovich is angry and frustrated about Donald Trump’s election. He was particularly upset with Trump’s’ rhetoric during the campaign.

I can’t imagine being a Muslim right now or a woman or an African-American, Hispanic, a handicapped person. How disenfranchised they might feel. For anyone in those groups that voted for him, it’s just beyond my comprehension how they ignore all that. Not basically because the Republicans won or anything, but the disgusting tenure and tone and all the comments that have been xenophobic, homophobic, racist, misogynistic. I live in that country where half the people ignored all that to elect someone. That’s the scariest part of the whole thing to me.… Everybody wants him [Trump] to be successful, it’s our country, we don’t want it to go down the drain. Any reasonable person would come to that conclusion, but it does not take away the fact that he used that fearmongering and all the comments from day one. The race-baiting with trying to make Barack Obama our first black president illegitimate. It leaves me wonder where I’ve been living and with whom I’m living…My final conclusion is, my big fear is, we are Rome.[1]

What is the essence of Popovich’s remarks? First, he believes that anyone who voted for Trump was voting for intolerance, bigotry, hatred and distrust of women, and intense hatred and fear of homosexuals. Second, Popovich says that Trump’s opposition to Obama amounted to fearmongering in which he was trying to make the first black president illegitimate.

This fact is that many of the millions that voted for Trump were not necessarily enamored with him or approved of his rhetoric. They voted for Trump because it was a vote against Clinton and her policies which meant it was also a vote against a continuation of the policies of President Obama and the Democratic Party. In spite of all the bitter rhetoric on both sides, the campaign was substantially driven by fundamental differences in the worldviews of those who had to make a choice between the two candidates. This conclusion is easily confirmed by examining the results of thousands of other elections in America. From local and state government elections to the Congressional level, there was a backlash against the Clinton/Obama vision of America which was being driven by an overreaching cabal of governmental, cultural, academic, and media elites that sought to impose a sterile, secular, humanistic worldview on a nation that would not let go of its Judeo-Christian roots.

Popovich and others of the liberal persuasion fail to see that there are two camps, one on each side of the fault line that divides America: those promoting a humanistic secularism and those upholding the Judeo-Christian foundations of the nation. Liberals see themselves as the gatekeepers of what is culturally acceptable and denigrate and marginalize those who dare to disagree, i.e., Christians, conservatives, and those opposed to a growing nanny-state socialism. Liberals believe the culture wars are over and that they won. Because they are now in charge, they will dictate what is truth for the moment and what conduct is unacceptable. However, whether approved by the majority or not, the humanists’ truth is relativistic and has no basis for determining what is right and wrong. Their relativistic answers for what ails both men and culture are based on a false understanding of man and his origins. Their humanistic philosophy is disconnected from reality (truth) and ultimately leads to failure in both individuals and societies.

Even after the election, liberals continue to perpetuate the party line in support of the illusion that Clinton lost the election because Trump’s rhetoric appealed to the baser instincts of less-educated white people who are fundamentally racist, anti-women, and homophobic and which propelled a “white-lash” of votes. This tactic has been used by liberals for many years including Barack Obama. During his 2008 campaign for the presidency, Obama attempted to explain his difficulty in winning working-class voters in Pennsylvania and the Midwest because of their frustrations with economic conditions.

And it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.[2]

Hilary Clinton used the race and religion tactic in trashing Trump’s supporters at a mid-September campaign fundraiser.

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? [applause and laughter from the audience.] The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.[3]

Clinton then said some of these people were “irredeemable” and “not America.”[4]

Approximately 120 twenty million Americans voted in the presidential election. Using Ms. Clinton’s calculations, she believes thirty million Trump voters are deplorables, many of whom she considers irredeemable and not reflective of American values. In spite of a half-hearted apology the following day, she continued her assault.

It’s deplorable that Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and voices, including retweeting fringe bigots with a few dozen followers and spreading their message to 11 million people.[5]

For the liberal gatekeepers of a politically correct culture, they believe they are the only ones allowed to judge the views and voices of the people and determine what is hateful and intolerant. Those that have been judged as having violated the humanistic standards of what is acceptable must not be given a national platform to spread their message to millions of other people because they belong in that basket of deplorables. This is operative mindset of liberals and the reason why the voice and influence of Christianity in America has been denigrated, muted, and marginalized for the last several decades as our elite humanist overlords rose to power in every facet of American life.

The issues that divide America are far more important than the winner of a single presidential election. However, the election was exceedingly important in deciding the trajectory of the nation in addressing those issues. Popovich does not address those issues that divide America other than to say that a vote for Trump was a vote for intolerance, bigotry, hatred and distrust of women, and fear of homosexuals. Because of Popovich’s distorted view, he feels America is a crumbling society reminiscent of the Roman Empire. Let’s examine that empire and determine if its decay was the result of a Christian worldview or false pagan and humanistic worldviews.

Roman Practices

The first widespread persecution of Christians under the Romans began under Emperor Nero in A.D. 64. There were many reasons why the Christians were harassed, hated, despised, imprisoned, tortured or killed during the first three hundred years of the church’s history. One of the principal reasons for the persecutions was the church’s beliefs which stood in opposition to Roman culture. Christian morality condemned Roman practices of abortion, infanticide, abandonment of infants, suicide, homosexual acts, and the degradation of women, all fixtures in the culture of the Roman Empire.[6] Which aspects of the culture of the Roman Empire do the humanists and secularists champion in today’s America? Substantially all of them: homosexuality, abortion (and infanticide in some quarters), suicide, and sexual degradation of women. So we see that it is the beliefs, causes, and practices of America’s modern liberals, progressives, and humanists that are similar to the practices of the failed Roman Empire.

Roman gods and the Roman state

The Romans were not anti-religious and dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to all gods. Also, the Roman rulers did not object to Christians worshiping Jesus and were very willing to give the Christian God a place in their pantheon of gods. But those prickly Christians had to insist that they worshiped only Jesus as God and his Father, the infinite, personal God. These beliefs were considered treasonous because they threatened the unity of the state. To make matters worse, the Christians believed their God established the absolute universal standard by which to judge not only one’s personal morals but the actions of the state as well. Because Christians adhere to higher moral standards of behavior, such behavior casts the humanists in a negative light. As a result, Christians are labeled as judgmental, non-progressive, and intolerant.

In the Roman Empire, any group that presumed to judge the actions of the state or question its authority could not be tolerated and were treated as enemies of the state.[7] By modern liberal standards, those early Christians would be labeled as intolerant, non-inclusive, and even bigoted. A similar judgment has been pronounced on many Christians in today’s America. As a result, humanist elites also see Christians as enemies of the state which has resulted in their loss of jobs; massive fines for practicing their faith in their businesses; denial of work in certain professions; enrollment at many universities; and banishment from certain media, cultural, and entertainment venues.
______

The Roman world disintegrated because it was culturally and spiritually impoverished and no longer had a unifying common core of belief. The Christian virtues that had gained stature in the fourth century and offered a worldview built on the reality of divine truth had not time to infuse life into the dying empire. Likewise, the rise of the secular-humanistic worldview and its ascension to the corridors of power in all of America’s institutions have compromised and supplanted the once vibrant Christian character that permeated the nation’s central cultural vision. As a result there is no longer a unifying common core of belief without which American culture will eventually disintegrate. Popovich is correct in believing America is becoming Rome but not for the reasons he thinks.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “Spurs’ Popovich on Trump’s election: ‘That disgusting’,” NewsMax, November 12, 2016.
http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/gregg-popovich-san-antonio-spurs-nba-donald-trump/2016/11/11/id/758509/ (accessed November 12, 2016).
[2] Gleanings, “Obama: ‘They cling to guns or religion’,” Christianity Today, April 13, 2008.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2008/april/obama-they-cling-to-guns-or-religion.html (accessed November 12, 2016).
[3] Amy Chozick, “Hilary Clinton calls many Trump backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P pounces,” The New York Times, September 10, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/us/politics/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorables.html?_r=0 (accessed November 11, 2016).
[4] Dan Merica and Sophie Tatum, “Clinton expresses regret for saying ‘half’ of Trump’s supporters are ‘deplorables’,” CNN Politics, September 12, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/09/politics/hillary-clinton-donald- trump-basket-of-deplorables/ index.html (accessed November 12, 2016).
[5] Chozick, “Hilary Clinton calls many Trump backers ‘Deplorables,’ and G.O.P pounces,” The New York Times.
[6] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001, 2004, pp. 25,
[7] Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live? (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 1976), p. 24.

The Church triumphant – Part II

Posted by :admin On : November 11, 2016
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Humanism

[Part II was intentionally written before the results of the November 8, 2016 elections were known. It was released for posting on November 11, 2016.]

Will the church of Jesus Christ survive in Western civilization? If Christianity does not survive, then the church must also die, and there have been many predictions of the imminent death of both over the last three centuries.

The skeptics

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock n’ roll or Christianity.[1]

These are the words of John Lennon of Beatles fame who made these statements during an interview for a magazine article fifty years ago (1966). But Lennon won’t be the last and he certainly wasn’t the first to predict the demise of Christianity and the Church.

However mild and reasoned their protestations against God and His church are in the beginning, skeptics invariably end with the creature murdering his Creator. The anti-God philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought this the most promising and glorious event in human history. He continued his vitriolic harangue about the death of God to the end of his life from a padded cell in a Venetian insane asylum.[2]

What if our modern skeptics could be transported back in time and allowed to stand at the back of the crowds and listen to and observe Jesus during His earthly ministry, eavesdrop on His private conversations as He taught His disciples, and follow Him as He trod down dusty paths and ministered to people along the way such as the Samaritan woman at the well. Would a seeing-is-believing moment change their opinion as to the longevity of the church of Jesus? No, they would have been like the pagan rulers and religious elite of Jesus’ day who most certainly believed that the itinerant preacher who claimed to be the Son of God and his little congregation of twelve were undoubtedly destined for failure, and sooner rather than later. They would call this little church anything except “The Church triumphant.”

They had multiple reasons for their skepticism. The church did not have the right venue to be successful. It was located in a troublesome little backwater country on the fringes of the Roman Empire. The preacher had little formal education and obviously was not born to wealth and privilege. He was the son of a carpenter and trained as a carpenter. Rumor was that the carpenter may not have been His real father. Even members of his own family thought him delusional. The members of His congregation were not found on the social registers of the day. Most of these men would be called blue-collar workers in today’s vernacular—fishermen and other low-ranking occupations and one hated tax collector. Above all, the preacher’s message was too demanding and short on benefits in this life. He called His followers to a life of surrender, sacrifice, and death to self. He told them that in this life they would be hated of men, persecuted, and that many would be killed for their faith. And He was always in trouble with the establishment—both political and religious.

After only three years of ministry, the preacher was executed on a Roman cross, and his little band of followers went into hiding. The skeptics must have felt assured that their original predictions of the demise of the little church had been justified. The skeptics stooped to etch an epitaph on the tombstone being prepared for the little church. It read, “The Church humiliated.” And the skeptics would have been correct except for one thing. The itinerant preacher really was the Son of God.

The Church triumphant

Why did Jesus’ followers believe He was the Son of God? Was it blind faith? Low intelligence? Lack of education? Hysteria? Wishful thinking? Delusion? Kevin Swanson gives us the correct answer. His followers knew Jesus had defeated death and that only God could do that.

It is an indisputable fact: the Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and He is reigning as sovereign Lord on the right hand of the Father, until all of His enemies are under His footstool. For the Christian this is the historical fact by which all other previous and future events are to be understood. It is the most important historical fact of all. Marx and Nietzsche hated this historical reality, and they fought it with all that they had within them…

However the future is viewed, there is no avoiding one stubborn, historical fact—Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and His kingdom will never fail. Faithless men will put together eschatological scenarios that ignore this fact. Faithless men will minimize the antithesis or compromise with it. Faithless men will give too much credence to the antithesis and not enough to Christ. Contrary to John Lennon’s premature pronouncements, this is not the end of Christian influence in the world. It is only the beginning.[3] [emphasis in original]

The Church and the end of the age

In light of the seeming meltdown of Christianity in America and the Western world, many Christians are exceedingly distraught about the future. Although Christians should be greatly disturbed and dismayed at what is happening in America, they should never be fearful of the future and never believe that the church has been defeated. The words of Isaiah assure God’s people of His and their ultimate victory. “So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.” [Isiah 59:19. KJV] Even when the ungodly rule the land, Daniel reminds us that God is in charge of the times and seasons and that He removes kings and sets up kings (See: Daniel 2:21). Thus we know that God is sovereign and that He orders the affairs of men in all ages.

As the last scenes of history play out, proud, boastful, and seemingly independent man is oblivious to the reality that he is being drawn as though by a hook in his nose to the prophetic conclusion of the age. Mankind is on its last downward slide and nears the end of the last days. The Bible’s itinerary for a sin-filled world cannot be ignored or changed as it nears its final destination. There is no escaping it. The only questions that remain are the final dispositions of the lives of men and women living at this defining moment in history. Nations are also being sifted, tested, and tried to determine the final outworking of events within each before His soon return.

The circumstances and events in the political, economic, and social arenas that Christians see as disastrous for the church are only passing scenes in the unfolding drama that God is directing as the end of the age approaches. Nations that turn their back on God and His laws are paying a high price for their disobedience. Although Christians are aliens in a foreign and hostile land, they are also citizens of these earthly regimes and will also suffer because of their nation’s descent into wickedness. Even now the body of Christ (the Church) in many nations is experiencing a measure of this suffering before the rapture. But the church must never forget that its real home is in the wonderful and eternal presence of God. His purposes in allowing these momentary afflictions are often beyond our ability to comprehend, but He has assured His followers that, “…all things work together for the good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28. KJV]

Becoming impossible people

Satan is attempting to destroy the church through the destruction of the Christian culture of America and all of Western civilization. He and his evil empire oppose righteousness, weaken the church through compromise, debauch the truth of God’s word in the minds of men, and pollute the land with a vile stream of wickedness that is flowing into every facet of life. Knowing this, Christians who in the world’s eyes are “impossible people” must have

…hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable (i.e., coercion through comfortable conformity), without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord.[4]

Perhaps the best advice for the church in this troublesome age comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. First, he makes certain that we understand who the real enemy is that the church battles. Then, he tells it how to prepare for battle.

For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. [Ephesians 6:12-13. RSV]

In his commentary, Donald Stamps gives our modern minds insight into what Paul is saying.
Satan and a host of evil spirits are the spiritual rulers of the world. They empower ungodly men and women to oppose God’s will and attack believers. They form a “vast multitude and are organized into a highly systematized empire of evil…”[5]

The church must confront this empire of evil and does so by putting on the whole armor of God (see Ephesians 6:13-17). And when the battle is heated and defeat seems near at hand, having done all, the Church must continue to stand. It can do so because that itinerate preacher who trod the hills and valleys of ancient Palestine two thousand years ago really was the Son of God, and his kingdom will never fail.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Kevin Swanson, Apostate – The Men who Destroyed the Christian West, (Parker, Colorado: Generations with Vision, 2013), p. 277.
[2] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), p. 11.
[3] Swanson, pp. 289-290.
[4] Os Guinness, Impossible People – Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2016), pp. 31-32.
[5] Donald C. Stamps, Study Notes and Articles, The Full Life Study Bible – New Testament, King James Version, gen. ed. Donald C. Stamps, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1990), p.439.

The Church triumphant – Part I

Posted by :admin On : November 4, 2016
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Humanism

Christians in the West are living in a grand clarifying moment. The gap between Christians and the wider culture is widening, and many formerly nominal Christians are becoming “religious nones”…

We face a solemn hour for humanity at large and a momentous showdown for the Western church. At stake is the attempted completion of the centuries-long assault on the Jewish and Christian faiths and their replacement by progressive secularism as the defining faith of the West and the ideology said to be the best suited to the conditions of advanced modernity. The gathering crisis is therefore about nothing less than a struggle for the soul of the West…[1]

So wrote Os Guinness wrote in Impossible People. One aspect of this grand clarifying moment for Christians will occur as Americans go to the polls in in the November elections. The results will be more than a minor historical footnote and promises to be a pivotal event in deciding the direction of the nation and ultimately Western civilization. Many Christians are shaking their heads in disbelief. They ponder how America could have arrived at such a low point. But the assault on Christianity is not of recent origin for Satan’s war against God predates the Garden. However, God’s special creation gave Satan a new target for striking at the Creator.

After two centuries of growth, anti-Christian progressive secularism in America has recently achieved critical mass and now boldly attacks Christians and Christianity in every sector of American society. We must ask how the church arrived at this sorry state of powerlessness in defending the faith and influencing American culture. When we speak of a powerful church, that does not mean the church should wield power to dominant the state but to change men’s lives who subsequently may exert a Godly influence on society and its institutions.

The large and momentous showdown between the Western church and humanistic progressive secularism is also occurring during the time of the great apostasy within the church—a confluence of events in which Christianity is caught in the perfect storm. Paul spoke of the end of the last days in which much of the church would become apostate, that is, falling away from or departure from the faith. “Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…” [2 Thessalonians 2:1-3. KJV] [emphasis added]

Is the Christian West in that day spoken of by Paul? Considering what has happened over the last two hundred years in Europe and America, Kevin Swanson called this period “the most significant Christian apostasy of all time. As measured by sheer numbers, there is no other apostasy so extensive in recorded history.” [2] Without doubt, the church is in the time of great apostasy.

An apostate church is a powerless church because it has fallen away from or rejected the truth of God’s word. Over time the adulterated message of these churches becomes unrecognizable when compared with the inerrant teachings of the Bible, and without a firm foundation of biblical truth, they become powerless.

The powerless condition of the church in America is not unlike the German church following World War I. The German church was weak in both the war and the peace that followed, but it had not yet allied itself with evil. The weakened German evangelical church was filled with terror as its political power and influence declined during the 1920s. Frail and fearful, the church became territorial and defensive, and some looked to a rising political leader as the savior of the church. This eventually led to an unholy alliance between the German church and one of history’s greatest incarnations of evil—Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime. Whatever their private thoughts, both the Protestant and Catholic churches capitulated to Hitler’s demands and domination upon his rise to power. Hitler’s program for the church was deliberately ambiguous. He placated fearful church leaders with these words, “We demand freedom for all religious denominations in the state so far as they are not a danger to it and do not militate against the customs and morality of the German race.”[3] Do we not hear similar words from our secular leaders today? They assure us that there is freedom for all religions so long as they do not stand at cross purposes with the state.

While the German Lutheran Church was a principal pillar of the Reformation during the sixteenth century and a subsequent forthright defender of the faith, the depths of apostasy to which the vast majority of German church leaders had sunk during the 1930s is incomprehensible. Some sought to obliterate the Jewish background of Christianity. Others proclaimed Hitler as “the redeemer in the history of the Germans…the window through which light fell on the history of Christianity.” Still others welcomed barbarous uniformed Nazi units into their churches and supplied them with chaplains. Both the German Protestant churches and the German Catholic Church gave huge support to the Nazi regime during its rise to power and throughout World War II.[4]

Hitler was not a Christian and most of the members of the Nazi elite were openly and vigorously anti-Christian. Hitler never officially left the church into which he was born, and for political reasons he occasionally attended church during his early years in power. But Hitler hated Christians and Christianity. Soon after assuming power he vowed that he would stamp out Christianity in Germany.[5]

One is either a Christian or a German. You can’t be both…Do you really believe the masses will ever be Christian again? Nonsense. Never again. The tale is finished…but we can hasten matters. The parsons will be made to dig their own graves. They will betray their God to us… [6]

The stated goal of Hitler with regard to Christianity aligns substantially with the goal of most of the humanistic-progressive-secularist ruling elites in all spheres of modern American society Many Christians unintentionally or unknowingly support that goal through their ignorance, apathy, or lethargy. That goal is to stamp out Christianity altogether or so constrain it that it will die of its own accord within a generation or two, and the church has been complicit in its own demise.

Satan subverts the church by injecting into it the very thing in which it is in a struggle to the death—a simpering humanistic worldview that caters to self. Guinness wrote that these church leaders are “courting spiritual and institutional suicide” for themselves and for those they are leading astray.

…[They] are reaping what others sowed with such fanfare a generation ago. For were we not solemnly sold a barrel of nonsense in the form of maxims that all good seeker-sensitive and audience-driven churches were to pursue? Here is one example from a well-known Christian marketing consultant: “It is also critical that we keep in mind a fundamental principle of Christian communication: the audience, not the message, is sovereign.”

The audience is sovereign? No! Let it be repeated a thousand times, no! When reaching out as the church of Jesus, the message of the gospel and Jesus the Lord of the message is alone sovereign—and never, never, never the audience…[7] [emphasis in original]

Audience-driven Church Growth leaders of seeker-sensitive churches justify their methods by pointing to Paul’s admonition to the Corinthians in winning the lost (See: 1 Corinthians 9-19-23). Here Paul renounces his rights in sympathetic consideration of the sinner. However, Paul does not mean that he was willing to compromise his Christian principles or sought to please others for the purpose of winning their esteem. Rather, Paul was willing to conform to the standards and convictions of the lost as long as it did not violate his Christian principles.”[8] Church Growth leaders cry foul and say that they are only changing their methods and not their doctrine. But their methods are in truth filled with the humanistic spirit of the age that undermines or ignores doctrinal truths and are leading millions to an eternity in hell.

Seeker-sensitive churches in their quest to please the seeker have compromised the gospel and allowed the world to change the church instead of the church changing the world. Over the course of the last fifty years, not only has the church failed to defend the faith in the public square and failed to transmit its values to its children, many modern church leaders have also drunk deeply from the well of doctrinal apostasy and have allowed the marginalization of Christianity in the larger culture. The evidence is abundant and undeniable. Many have embraced humanism’s themes of abortion, homosexuality, relativism, higher criticism of the Bible, evolution, progressivism, multiculturalism, diversity, religious universalism, promotion of socialist-Marxist concepts of organizing society, heretical concepts of salvation, and such like. They are digging their own graves and have betrayed their God.

Hosea’s description of Israel’s sinful state is a harbinger of what awaits the Western church without repentance and turning back to God.

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it. [Hosea 8:7. RSV]

Much of the modern church has foolishly sown to the wind and is reaping a whirlwind. Hosea’s prophesy revealed sin and pronounced judgements on a people that would not be reformed and had become apostatized over several generations.[9] Our modern crisis of the soul in Western civilization has arisen because the majority of the Western Christian church is powerless to defend the faith let alone win the lost. There is little truth, little harvest, and what little harvest occurs is devoured by a cunning and rapacious humanistic secularism driven by Satanic forces.

Does this mean an end to Christianity? Never! Whirlwinds need not be followed by obituaries. God is ready to redeem returning sinners (both individuals and nations) and restore a right relationship with Him. The true Church lives and will always remain triumphant.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Os Guinness, Impossible People – Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2016), p. 22.
[2] Kevin Swanson, Apostate – The Men who destroyed the Christian West, (Parker, Colorado: Generations with Vision, 2013), p. 19.
[3] Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, (New York: Touchstone Book, 1976), pp. 479, 483, 485.
[4] Ibid., pp. 484, 488.
[5] Ibid., p. 485.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Guinness, pp. 72-73.
[8] Donald C. Stamps, Gen. Ed., Commentary, The Full Life Study Bible, The New Testament, King James Version, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1990), p. 366.
[9] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, ed. Rev. Leslie F. Church, Ph.D., (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), p. 1105.

America’s “Gray-suited bureaucrats”- Part II

Posted by :admin On : October 28, 2016
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Category: America, Archives, Constitution, Government

As described in Part I, most Americans believe they have been stripped of most of their Constitutionally-mandated freedoms and are being controlled by a vast army of gray-suited governmental officials and bureaucrats who are no longer responsive to the will and wishes of the people.

Three principal culprits were identified in the marginalization of the American electorate in the governing process. First, the modern judiciary has crossed the line of its Constitutionally-mandated powers by creating legislation as opposed to interpreting the law. These court-created laws are wrongly assumed to be the law of the land. Second, overreach of the Executive branch has ignored or violated the Constitution through disregard of Constitutional limits on executive powers, selective enforcement and/or bureaucratic changes to laws enacted by Congress, and circumvention of the powers of the legislative branch through issuance of illegitimate executive orders. Third, there has developed an autocratic, rapacious nanny-state bureaucracy whose regulatory oversight intrudes into minutest areas of the lives of a free people capable of making rational decisions without government interference. This massive, heavy-handed, and adversarial bureaucracy has become largely unaccountable to Congress and the American people.

The Road to Serfdom

F. A. Hayek in his seminal work titled The Road to Serfdom written during World War II addresses the question of how democracies that begin with limitations on the power of their elected officials can succumb to the exercise of arbitrary power of the few.

There is no justification for the belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary…it is not the source but the limitation of power which prevents it from being arbitrary…If democracy resolves on a task which necessarily involves the use of power which cannot be guided by fixed rules, it must become arbitrary power.[1] [emphasis added]

The American Founders’ Constitution fixed the rules by which the Republic was to be governed. However, in spite of the intent of the Founders when writing the Constitution, the popular liberal mantra for most of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century is that the Constitution is a “living document” that must be modified or bent to address the modern age and problems never foreseen by the Founders. By living document, the Constitutional liberals believe that its meaning and intent should be an instrument for enlightened social change to meet the needs of the hour. The liberals’ living document has become an arbitrary document in which the few impose their will on the majority. But Thomas Jefferson cautioned against such liberalism regarding the Constitution.

On every question of construction [let us] carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.[2]

On June 23, 2016, the British people cast off forty-plus years of rule by the European Union, a super-state conglomeration of twenty eight nations that had surrendered much of their sovereignty to an unelected bureaucracy headquartered in Brussels, Belgium. Ignoring the advice, warnings, and propaganda of politicians, cultural elites, and others with a vested interest in the status quo, the British voters asked themselves one fundamental but simple question, “Do we want an undemocratic authority ruling our lives, or would we rather regain control over our destiny?” The question the Brits asked is the question Americans must also ask and answer quickly before the loss of freedom is irreversible.

Hillary Clinton has given her answer, and it is on the side of an undemocratic authority to rule American lives. In a May 2013 paid speech allegedly delivered to Banco Itau, a large Brazilian bank, Clinton said:

My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.[3] [emphasis added]

For Americans, the process of repairing nearly two centuries of humanistic erosion of the biblical foundations upon which the nation was built is far more difficult than the single ballot box victory achieved by the British people. The unelected and unresponsive British task masters operated from the outside—from the headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and its various outposts throughout the EU. America’s wayward overseers are home-grown humanistic oligarchs entrenched in the nation’s governing fabric and headed by the likes of Hilary Clinton.

That America’s governing elite would eventually succumb to lure of power and position to the detriment of the people being governed would be no surprise to the Founders. Daniel Webster recognized the love of power within the hearts of men was a constant threat to liberty.

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of power. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions…There are men, in all ages…who mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters…They think that there need be but little restraint upon themselves. Their notion of the public interest is apt to be quite closely connected with their own exercise of authority…The love of power may sink too deep in their own hearts even for their own scrutiny…[4] [emphasis added]

How can Americans recover their freedoms when their leaders ignore or pervert the original meaning of the Constitution?

For Americans to recover their freedoms from the reigning government by the few (i.e., oligarchy), they must revisit the Constitution to once again fix the rules by which their representatives are to govern. Fortunately, the Founders held the biblical understanding of the fallen nature of man and wisely made provision in the Constitution to rein in a wayward government led by wayward men and women who have strayed from the meaning of Constitution as intended by the Founders. That provision was made in Article V.

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress…[5]

The Convention of States Project was founded by Citizens for Self Governance for the purpose of stopping the increasing abuse of power by the federal government. They believe the governing process in Washington, D.C. is broken because of the growing massive debt incurred by the government and the seizing of power from the states.[6] The following is the stated goal of the Convention of States Project:

…to urge and empower state legislators to call a convention of states. The delegates at such a convention would have the power to propose amendments to the Constitution that would curb the abuses of the federal government. Article V of the Constitution gives them this power; the COS Project will give them an avenue through which they can use it.[7]

Rather than proposing a specific amendment, the COS Project is calling for a convention under Article V of the Constitution for a specific subject which is the limitation of the power and jurisdiction of the federal government.[8] [emphasis added] The COS Project has identified four major areas of abuse by the federal government which are the subjects to be addressed by a Convention of States.

• The Spending and Debt Crisis
• The Regulatory Crisis
• Congressional Attacks on State Sovereignty
• Federal Takeover of the Decision-Making Process[9]

To call a Convention of States under Article V of the Constitution, the legislatures of two-thirds of the states (34) must pass a resolution called an “application” calling for a Convention of States. The applications must request a Convention of the States for the same subject matter. In the COS Project, the subject matter is the limitation of the power and jurisdiction of the federal government. The applications are delivered to Congress. The business of the convention is to propose amendments to the Constitution related to the specific subjects agreed upon by the states.[10]

Commissioners from each state propose, discuss, and vote on amendments to the Constitution. All amendments at the convention must pass by a simple majority of those states at the convention. The approved amendments will be sent back to the states for ratification. Each state has one vote at the Convention regardless of the number of commissioners sent by that state. A state’s vote is on the amendment to be sent to the states will be determined by a majority of the voting commissioners in a state’s caucus. Three-fourths of the states (38) must ratify any proposed amendments. Once states ratify, the amendments become part of the Constitution.[11]

Generally, Congress designates the state legislatures as the ratifying body. However, Congress may choose to have the states call ratifying conventions whereby an election would be held in each state to allow the electorate to choose delegates to the ratifying conventions.[12]

A Constitutional purist, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was one of the most articulate and clear thinking justices of modern times. Scalia was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1986 by President Reagan and served on the Court until his death in February 2016. In 1979 Scalia was a law professor at the University of Chicago when he participated in panel discussion on Article V conducted by the American Enterprise Institute. His remarks at the panel discussion captured the heart of the importance of and need for a Convention of States.

We have come a long way. We have gotten over many problems. But the fact remains that a widespread and deep feeling of powerlessness in the country is apparent with respect to many issues, not just the budget issue. The people do not feel that their wishes are observed. They are heard but they are not heeded, particularly at the federal level. The Congress has come up with a lot of palliatives—the legislative veto, for example-which do not solve the problem at all. Part of the problem as I have noted is simply that the Congress has become professionalized; its members have a greater interest than ever before in remaining in office; and it is served by a bureaucracy and is much more subject to the power of individualized pressure groups than to the unorganized feelings of the majority of the citizens. This and other factors have created a real feeling of disenfranchisement that I think has a proper basis. The one remedy specifically provided for in the Constitution is the amendment process that bypasses the Congress.[13]

These feelings of powerlessness and disenfranchisement arise because the processes of a huge and complex government have usurped the power of the people to govern themselves. Thomas Jefferson recognized the inability of man to restrain his innate lust for power. His solution was also found in the Constitution. “The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first.”[14] Article V is an integral link in that chain.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Bruce Caldwell, ed., (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1944, 2007), p. 111.
[2] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 28.
[3] Frank Camp, “WikiLeaks strikes again: Clinton Allegedly Praised ‘Open Borders’ in Paid Speech to Foreign Bank,” The Daily Caller, October 8, 2016. http://www.dailywire.com/news/9802/wikileaks-strikes-again-clinton-allegedly-praised-frank-camp (accessed October 12, 2016).
[4] Daniel Webster, Speech delivered at Niblo’s Saloon in New York, March 15, 1837, (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1837), p. 17 from Archives.org. https://archive.org/details/speechdeliveredb01webs (accessed October 25, 2016).
[5] Article V, The Constitution of the United States.
[6] Media/About/News, Convention of States. http://www.conventionofstates.com/about (accessed October 12, 2016).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Learn – The Problem, Convention of States. http://www.conventionofstates.com/faq (accessed October 12, 2016).
[10] Learn – The Solution, Convention of States. http://www.conventionofstates.com/faq (accessed October 12, 2016).
[11] Ibid.
[12] Ibid.
[13] Learn – Frequently Asked Questions, Convention of States. http://www.conventionofstates.com/faq (accessed October 12, 2016).
[14] Thomas Jefferson, “Two enemies of the people are criminals and government…” Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Inc. (US), https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/two-enemies-people-are-criminals-and-governmentquotation (accessed October 25, 2016).
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