When I was young my sisters and I were required to attend church on Sunday. It was seldom a satisfying experience but it did become a habit. During the heady years of higher education the habit was suspended and not regularly resumed for over a decade.
When attendance was resumed, it was more than a residual habit, it was an obligation resulting from being resurrected by the Object of worship.
My father’s family were Presbyterians. They were not Christians. Grandpa was a swinger before swingers became popular. He left a family of five for a paramour in New York and died without returning to his family. This happened before I was born. He was seldom spoken of in our family.
There were no real Christians on my father’s side.
Mother’s family was Methodist. The aged, tan colored newspaper clippings between the pages of the family Bible faithfully recorded the dates they were converted to Christ and the dates of their entrance into Heaven. The Enlightenment had tainted my Mother’s generation. She, my father, her sister, and two brothers were Christians of the church but not of the Bible.
My own Christian journey began in 1962 when the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob chose to lead me gently to Christ. Following a couple of decades in the Evangelical Charismatic movement, I was drawn into the stalwart Reformed theology brought to America by the Puritans and Pilgrims.
Though obvious, it still needs to be stated, the Christian Church not only failed my family but failed to stem the tide of moral deterioration in United States.
Most Evangelical churches, including Charismatic congregations, are to one degree or another afflicted with the Dispensational heresy. They support the illegitimate nation of Israel and a people who hate King Jesus. Their theological platform expects the soon Second Coming of Christ, jeopardizing their efforts to stem the evil tsunami that has engulfed us.
Recently we began attending one of two Reformed churches in our area. We were delighted to find a reformed congregation and expected to find a vibrant, confrontational pulpit that would equip a congregation to bring righteous change to both individuals and society.
Americans are being bombarded with heinous government propaganda and our press and media are plagued by the usual degree of inherent spin. However, there is still an abundance of fairly accurate news available. The major problem is one of omission and involves subjects and related news that is not covered and not reported. This void allows the total picture to remain esoteric.
Christian churches and the ministers who lead them are constantly tempted to sacrifice the truth and the confrontational nature of the Christian Gospel on a variety of altars; the altar of peace, the altar of church growth, the altar of popularity; the altar of politically correctness, etc. etc.
An analogy can be made between the reasons for omissions in the press and media and omissions in America’s churches. One of the reasons the press and media omit subject matter and news is that it might offend their readership and hurt their advertising revenue. One of the reasons the churches omit subject matter is because it might offend their lay-people and hurt contributions. Revenue is a god in both realms.
The press and media are controlled by individuals whose personal political philosophies have been influenced by the high priests of finance who are the puppet masters of the Council on Foreign Relations and several other elitist organizations. They support One World Government and are complicit in keeping the progress of the conspiracy from the American public. There are no exposes on the deleterious effects of controlled free trade on the American economy or on the deterioration of sovereignty by the United Nations. Nothing is published or aired on television about the implications of abolishing national borders in North America. There is no debate because most Americans do not realize what is happening.
Our churches preach a truncated Gospel. Few American Christians understand that Christianity is an exclusive religion. Pride in religious pluralism is wide spread and thought to be superior to the religious exclusivity of Muslim nations. Sermons on the jealous nature of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are few and far between. Christians consider tolerance to be a virtue.
Jesus considers tolerance to be “a device used to introduce a new law system as a prelude to a new intolerance” (R. J. Rushdoony). The intolerant nature of King Jesus is hidden from lay-people.
Interestingly, contemporary Israel is Zionist, Talmudic and exclusive. We hear very little about the exclusive nature of Israeli society but we get bushels of information on the evil exclusive, “Fascist”, theocratic governments of Islamic nations.
It is the nature of every religion to attempt to shut out all others and the humanistic religion that threatens to engulf the world is using force to accomplish its exclusive ends. Secular power is centered in this evil juggernaut.
When the church fails in its duty to confront society and individuals with truth it opens the door to the Satanic deterioration that has occurred in America. Brannon Howse writes, “Unfortunately, timid, feminized pastors are neither new nor uniquely American. Aside from a few German church leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was executed in a Nazi concentration camp, the majority of pastors in World War II-era Germany did not have the courage of their convictions and did nothing to stop Adolph Hitler’s murderous regime. The lesson, I believe, is that, aside from a handful of courageous pastors, most American church leaders will “go along to get along” right up until the day they find the doors to their churches chained and locked.”
Additional information on the similarities between present day United States and early Twentieth Century Germany are here.
We have a good Pastor at the Reformed church we have been attending. He knows and preaches the Reformed Faith in an expository fashion using scripture as his source and explaining with teaching that upholds The Law and sound theology.
There are very few churches in United States that teach from a proper theological base and even the few that do often make compromises that create a disconnect between the message provided and the action required. This disconnect paralyzes laymen by leaving them without specific direction.
Expository preaching provides a Bible base that keeps the preacher on track. However, like any good thing it can be overdone. God’s chosen people occupy the pews of our churches. They are God’s army. Preachers are ordained by God to exclusively promote His Laws in His creation in order that obedience might become common in nations. Obedience is always a prelude to Godly blessing. Victory is a product of obedience.
Exhortation to obedience cannot be properly conducted without reference to disobedience. It is the duty of God’s ministers to confront disobedience in the church and in the greater social order. When the expository preacher fails to relate his Biblical based sermons to specific problems and provide avenues of necessary action that can be understood and carried out by his listeners, he has failed to complete the proper presentation of the Gospel and left his listeners frustrated and confused.
This pandemic problem has helped the forces of evil to overtake our social order and to now threaten the very existence of the Christian Church itself.
Attempts to communicate the foregoing to our good Pastor met with defensive squirming and innumerable excuses.
The improper application of the Gospel coupled with deafness in the congregation will quickly squelch God’s Spirit. To some extent it happened in my own family.
In our time, Christians are David while secular humanists are Goliath. The Great God of All Creation is on our side. He waits for the contemporary David to step forward and slay the giant. The sword of the Spirit should be sharpened by every pulpit and be a confrontational weapon in the hand of every Christian.
Fifty years ago, after describing the recalcitrant nature of Christian leaders, A W. Tozer offered the following advice to pastors and preachers:
“Don’t defend your church or your organization against criticism. If the criticism is false it can do no harm. If it is true you need to hear it and do something about it. Be concerned not with what you have accomplished but over what you might have accomplished if you had followed the Lord completely. It is better to say (and feel), ‘We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.’
Mere evangelism is not our present need. Evangelism does no more than extend religion, of whatever kind it may be. It gains acceptance for religion among large numbers of people without giving much thought to the quality of that religion.”
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”