"Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell in." ~ Isaiah 58:12
On November 13, 2008, the week after Mr. Obama was elected the first time, the Think About It message was entitled “What We Can Expect”. We offered the following analysis of what government would become. We stated,
“In the governmental realm we can expect more and more animosity toward the churches which teach the Bible to be true. This will probably also include Jewish synagogues. It follows that moral issues like trying to stop abortion and homosexuality will be impossible, unless God Himself intervenes.”
Now that we are seeing this, what do we do?
We must now be willing to suffer for speaking the truth to people. This is a first for our nation. What rejection we received in the past Continue reading →
The Bible says, “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” (Galatians 5:1)
Ladies and Gentlemen: The following document is the reason you and I, in America, are free:
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitles them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Continue reading →
Charles Spurgeon, the great English preacher, gave us a measuring stick by which we could determine if our churches were healthy. He called it a “Graceometer.” Here’s what he said:
“The condition of the church may be very accurately gauged by its prayer meetings. So is the prayer meeting a grace-ometer, and from it we judge the amount of divine working among a people. If God be near a church, it must pray. And if He be not there, one of the first tokens of His absence will be a slothfulness in prayer.”
(The Metropolitan Tabernacle, 1873 edition)
According to Spurgeon’s “Graceometer”, I’m afraid 98% of our churches would have to admit the Lord is mostly absent! Any discerning believer will admit that the church in America is far from what Jesus died to make her. And likewise, the truth is: As the church goes, so goes the nation. A culture is always the mirror of the state of the church in a nation. And while there are some healthy churches—most of which are unknown to the national eye—we cannot deny the obvious. Our culture reflects the confusion we now see in the church. More and more churches are trying to redefine marriage so as to “broaden” the “narrow way” into the church. This confusion is the fruit of a deeper Continue reading →
While in Washington recently, I heard alarming statistics about our nation. But the most alarming stats were not about government: They were about churches, and particularly Pastors. According to a Barna survey conducted in connection with Wallbuilders ministry, only 28% of the churches now believe that the Bible is absolutely true. 90% of the Pastors in those Bible-believing churches say they believe the Bible speaks to current issues. But get this: 90% of those Pastors have never preached from the pulpit what the Bible says about the issues of our land!
Pastors’ AWOL attitude concerning civil government is the reason God’s people don’t know that they must be the ones to watch over civil government, in order to protect the right of the truth to flow to the next generation. Thus, we’re having trouble deciding if marriage is between a man and a woman only; and if it should be protected by government. We’re having trouble deciding if homosexuality is a choice or a trait, when we used to be convinced that it was a crime. We’re even wondering if boys in school should get to use the girls’ bathroom!!
Pastors, if civil government is God’s institution—and Romans 13:1 makes it plain that it is—then should not those of us called to teach the Bible be the ones to reveal the Biblical Structure and Spirit by which government must operate? Is that not logical? Is that not right? Continue reading →
I recall once hearing a state legislator in Kentucky argue that there was no such thing as a “homosexual agenda”. However, David Gibbs, President of the Christian Law Association in America, tells how he was in a state government committee hearing about 30 years ago where an attorney speaking for the homosexuals related their plan to gain acceptance for their lifestyle. We’ll share that plan in a moment.
But why should we question that there is a plan? Since the Garden of Eden, satan has had a plan to keep man from becoming what God had created him to be. Years ago, the apostle Paul revealed satan’s schemes to control man and this earth. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6,
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”
(Ephesians 6:12-13)
There is a war in the spirit realm that causes every action in this natural realm. To deny that this war exists is to invite destruction to yourself and your nation. Continue reading →
Four generations of Americans have now been taught that this nation was birthed out of ideas from many different cultures: That America is the great ‘melting pot’ of ideas. While it is true America has descendants from many nations which make up her citizenry, the men who birthed this nation were very much alike in their basic view of life and the world. The effort to hide from us their beliefs is designed to destroy the very liberty we cherish.
In 1843, Emma Willard, educator and historian, identified both the characteristics of the young republic of the United States and the reason for its emerging greatness. Her words give us insight, which, if taught to our children, will protect God’s precious gifts to us of “life, liberty, and property”. She wrote:
“The government of the United States is acknowledged by the wise and good of other nations, to be the most free, impartial, and righteous government of the world; but all agree, that for such a government to be sustained for many years, the principles of truth and righteousness, taught in the Holy Scriptures, must be practiced. The rulers must govern in the fear of God, and the people obey the laws.”
(1852. Willard, Emma. 1843. Emma Willard, History of the United States. Rosalie J. Slater, Teaching and Learning America’s Christian History (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1980), p. 83. Stephen McDowell and Mark Beliles, “The Providential Perspective” (Charlottesville, VA: The Providence Foundation, P.O. Box 6759, Charlottesville, Va. 22906, January 1994), Vol. 9, No. 1, p. 3. Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg’s Heart’N Home, Inc., 1991), 9.23.)
Since Emma Willard lived in the very next generation after America was founded Continue reading →
On February 3rd in 1970, God worked a modern day revival in central Kentucky. A Chapel service at Asbury College was invaded by the Holy Spirit of God. His work would go deep in the hearts of students, faculty members and many others, for the next eight days. Classes were cancelled as most of the college family waited in the Presence of God. Honest confessions of sin, private and public, were the norm as one person after another made their way to the altar at the front of the auditorium. After their surrender of every area of their lives, they would walk up onto the platform and give their witness to the whole group as to what God had done in them. This was repeated in hundreds of individuals over the eight day span as there were always some people in Hughes Auditorium for every hour of those eight days.
Those days were characterized by deep repentance and, thus, lives being transformed. One rebellious Senior’s testimony describes well what would happen to many. In Robert Coleman’s book One Divine Moment, which recounts the story of the revival, this young man is quoted as saying,
“I’m not believing that I’m standing here telling you what God has done for me. I’ve wasted my time in college…but Christ has met me and I’m different. Continue reading →
Some 600 years before Christ came to earth the nation of Judah was falling apart. Ministers had stopped teaching Biblical morality for fear they’d lose their income. Government leaders had approved the murder of the innocent in their nation. Citizens had oppressed the poor with money loaned by interest, and the bribery of judges. (Ezekiel 22: 25-29) Does all this sound familiar? God warned them that He would judge them and destroy their nation if they didn’t repent. They didn’t. Destruction came by the hand of the King of Babylon, whom God called, His “servant”.
We Americans deserve God’s judgment just as much as Judah did. We have murdered over 55 million of our own children by abortion. We have accepted homo-sexuality, which the Bible calls perversion. And we have given away the civil liberty which God entrusted to us for the purpose of getting the Gospel of Christ to our children and the world. Any one of these is enough to merit judgment on our nation!
And yet, God said to the prophet Ezekiel these amazing words: Continue reading →
Since January 22, 1973 we have killed nearly 57 million of our own children. That number is equal to 20% of our total population in this country. And don’t be fooled by the political rhetoric: only 1% of those killings had anything to do with rape, incest, or the mother’s life being in danger. 99% of this murderous holocaust has been done because these children were thought to be an inconvenience! What heights of selfishness we’ve now reached!
And God has something to say about all this selfishness. When His people, Israel, fell into the murderous practice of sacrificing their children to the demon, Baal, God rebuked them with scathing words through the prophet Ezekiel. He told them,
“Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of My gold and of My silver, which I had given thee, and [made] to thyself images of men, and didst commit [adultery] with them… Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto Me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy [adulteries] a small matter, That thou hast slain My children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?”Continue reading →
This month marks 42 years in which the murder of unborn children by abortion has been legal in America. Not that our Congress, the voice of the people, ever legalized it! It was the U.S. Supreme Court in 1973 that illegally declared abortion legal. Because we in the church sat by and griped (instead of getting involved in the voting process and attending law-making sessions, so as to identify the law makers who supported such a hideous crime and replace them with our votes) now over 55 million of our own children have been murdered. And that in the place that should be the safest on earth: Their mother’s womb. The God Who made us, to Whom we will give a full account of our earthly deeds, is not blind to these hideous “rippings apart” of baby’s bodies in their mother’s womb!
God warned His people in the days of Jeremiah that their nation would be destroyed because they “burned their children in the fire” as a sacrifice to the demon god named Molech. He spoke through the prophet Jeremiah this warning:
“Then came the word of the LORD unto Jeremiah, saying, ‘Behold, I will give this city into the hand of…Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, and he shall…set fire on this city, and burn it with the houses, upon whose roofs they have offered incense unto Baal…to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into My mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.’”Continue reading →
“In the governmental realm we can expect more and more animosity toward the churches which teach the Bible to be true. This will probably also include Jewish synagogues. It follows that moral issues like trying to stop abortion and homosexuality will be impossible, unless God Himself intervenes.”
