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What will it be like when liberty is gone in America? What will it be like when you can’t tell your children about your faith in Jesus for fear that they might innocently repeat it, be reported to social services, and then be taken away from you? You think that can’t happen in America? This is satan’s main design with the push for homosexual law. And what has caused us to get to this point of nearly losing our liberty? As humbly, yet as honestly as I know how to say it: It’s because our Pastors have backed out of the realm of civil government. We’ve lost the Biblical understanding of it, thus God’s people have been taught by our example—and sometimes by our words—to stay out of government. Yet, this is so different from Biblical examples of government leadership.
Ezra, the Priest, understood fully the role a spiritual leader should take in restoring a nation. Notice what he did. The Bible records in Ezra 7:10,
“For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord, and to practice it, and to teach His statutes and ordinances in Israel.”
Ezra not only studied the moral law summed up in the Ten Commandments, he began, “to teach [God’s] statutes and ordinances in Israel”. That is, he began to teach civil law in Israel as a part of his spiritual call from God. We as spiritual leaders have got to teach and participate in civil government as Pastors did in America up through the early 1900’s. It’s a “Johnny come lately” idea that spiritual leaders should stay out of government.
Every time you don’t show up at a Fiscal Court or City Council meeting you’re saying, “I don’t care what happens in God’s institution of government, I’ve got other things I want to do.” We’re saying, “I don’t care if my children’s right to hear the Gospel of Christ in public doesn’t get protected; I’m too busy to go to that government meeting.” Sound ridiculously selfish? It is!!!
The people of God can change any culture they choose to, and they especially can change a culture where they have the right to vote. Yes, it will take the power of God working through us (not just our efforts), because satan and his demons will wage war against us. His greatest desire for this world is to control civil government so he can use law to hinder the flow of the Gospel to the next generation. But we can change our culture! It’s happened before in American history. With the Second Great Awakening, in the first half of the 1800’s, came a return to Biblically based morality and, eventually, the end of slavery.
We can change our culture. But only if we choose to read the Bible through, over and over, so we ourselves can first regain the Biblical principles of education, economy, and government. If we refuse to disciple people in these subjects because we’re afraid of what people think, or because we think Jesus is coming soon, or because of our Biblical ignorance about these institutions, then we work with satan in destroying the right to proclaim the Gospel in public!
Pastor, will you and I change, in order to include these subjects in our preaching and teaching, without deserting the basic truths of the Gospel of Christ? If we will, there is hope for the liberty of the Gospel. If we don’t, the church will be driven “underground” in America. As spiritual leaders the choice is ours. God commands us,
“I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”
(Deuteronomy 30:19)
Think about it; because if you don’t, someone else will do your thinking for you—and for your children! And you won’t like what that brings to you. I’m Don Pinson; this has been Think About It.