Romans 12:1-11 Matthew 22:34-40 Romans 12:2 2 Corithians 10:4-5 Romans 8:31-39 “Ideology is a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory…
Psalm 49:1-20 Proverbs 2:6 Ecclesiastes 8:11-13 Daniel Webster, 1837 “I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct;…
1 Timothy 1:1-20 2 Timothy 4:1-5 2 Timothy 3:16-17 2 Timothy 4:3-5 1 Timothy 1:18-19 2 Timothy 4:7-8 Lucado, the teaching minister at Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas…
Colossians 1:9-23 Genesis 1:26-27 John 1:9-12 1 John 3:1-2 Galatians 4:4-5 Ephesians 1:5 Rod Dreher in his book titled: “Live not by Lies” writes: “Over the past few years, America…
Matthew 3:1 Matthew 4:17 Matthew 6:32-33 Hebrews 11:6; Jeremiah 29:13 John 3:1-21 The author Scott David Allen in his book “Why Social Justice Is Not Biblical Justice” on pages 56-58…
Daniel 3:8-30 Daniel 3:8-12 Daniel 3:12 Daniel 3:14-15 Daniel 3:16-18 Daniel 3:24-25 Hebrews 13:5 Erwin Lutzer in his book “We Will Not Be Silent”; sub-titled: “Responding Courageously to Our Culture’s…
Winston Churchill was once asked to give the qualifications a person needed in order to succeed in politics, and he replied:
“It is the ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year. And to have the ability afterwards to explain why it didn’t happen.” Winston Churchill
On May 22, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke at the University of Michigan these words: “In your time we have the opportunity to move not only toward a rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the GREAT SOCIETY.”
President Lyndon B. Johnson
“Look to others and be distressed;
Look at yourself and be depressed;
Look to God, and you will be blessed.”
A Former KGB Agent by the name of Yuri Bezmenov defected to the United States in 1970.
He gave an interview in 1985 (which is still on YouTube today) were he revealed the strategy Communistic regimes are using to bring down the United States and the Western World.
“Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the softheads of at least three generations of American students, without being challenged or counter-balanced by the basic values of Americanism and American patriotism.
The demoralization process in the United States is basically completed already…Most of it is done by Americans to Americans thanks to lack of moral standards.
As I mentioned before, exposure to true information does not matter anymore. A person who was demoralized is unable to assess true information. The facts tell nothing to him. Even if I shower him with information, with authentic proof, with documents, with pictures. Even if I take him by force to the Soviet Union and show him concentration camp he will refuse to believe it until he is going to receive a kick in his fat bottom. When the military boot crashes him, then he will understand, but not before that. That’s the tragic of the situation of demoralization.” Yuri Bezmenov
“The United States is in a state of war. Undeclared total war against the basic principles and the foundations of this system……
The time bomb is ticking. Every second, the disaster is coming closer and closer. Unlike myself, you will have nowhere to defect to unless you want to live in antarctica with penguins. This is it. This is the last country of freedom and possibility.” Yuri Bezmenov
Francis Schaeffer in his book “How Should We Then Live?” published in 1976 wrote these words:
“The danger in regard to the rise of authoritarian government is that Christians will be still as long as their own religious activities, evangelism, and life-styles are not disturbed.
We are not excused from speaking, just because the culture and society no longer rest as much as they once did on Christian thinking. Moreover, Christians do not need to be in the majority in order to influence society.”
“If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be THE ENEMY OF SOCIETY AND THE STATE.
No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute. This was the issue with the early church in regard to the Roman Empire, and though the specific issue will in all probability take a different form than Caesar-worship, the basic issue of having an absolute by which to judge the state and society will be the same.”
“To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision for it.” Francis Schaeffer
Bill Muehlenberg wrote “A commentary on issues of the day” in CUTLURE WATCH. He published it September 4, 2018
“The Christian claim that Christ is Lord always puts it at odds with the state and other power structures. Demand of absolute loyalty to God alone makes the faith something that will threaten rulers who seek to have total control and demand complete allegiance.”
What are you waiting for?
• A supernatural event that would change our circumstances?
• A powerful political leader that would lead us out of this mess?
• A powerful religious leader who understands the spiritual battle?
• A 100% proven effective vaccine that eradicates COVID-19?
• A power economic miracle that would promise a better standard of living than we ever had before?
Isaiah 40:31
But they that WAIT FOR THE LORD, shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Nobody Home, Nowhere To Run, Just a Dead End Alleyway (following quotes from the Complete Works Of Francis Schaeffer volume 4 & 5.
• “For man is not just a chance configuration of atoms in the slip stream of meaningless chance history”. NO, MAN, made in the image of God, has a purpose-to be in relationship to the God who is there.”
• “What marks our own generation? It is the fact that modern man thinks there is nobody home in the universe. NOBODY TO LOVE, NOBODY COMFORT HIM, even while he seeks desperately to find comfort in the limited, finite, horizontal relationships of life.”
• The Fragmentation of Humanity:
Theological: fragmentation between God and man
Psychological: fragmentation between man and his mind, his soul or heart
Sociological: fragmentation between man and his neighbor (humanity & nations)
What or who fills the fractures?
• Resulting ethos: The erosion of cultural norms (absolutes, form and freedom, the Constitutional authority) that has led to a vacuum thereby lending to an elite group who give authoritative arbitrary absolutes. To quote FAS “… if there is no absolutes by which to judge society, then society becomes absolute.”
TWO KINGDOMS
Our confrontation now in America is with the Kingdom of Man: TYRANNY>ONENESS
Our Hope for Humanity comes in an Invitation to the Kingdom of God:
Matthew 3:1
Matthew 4:17
• Repent: “RETHINK YOUR THINKING. Repent , as Jesus commanded in Matthew 4:17. REPENT just means to turn back on how you are thinking about things and reconsider”.(book by Dallas Willard, “Living In Christ Presence” p. 15).
Matthew 6:32-33
• Seek First the Kingdom of God:
Hebrews 11:6; Jeremiah 29:13
Authenticity in seeking
• The Story of Nicodemus: an example of authentic seeking
John 3:1-21
• Rebirth: Born IntoThe Kingdom Of God (Metamorphosis)
• A renewed existence, a second birth, the real you whom God indwells creating a masterpiece to accomplish great things in you and through you.
• A NEW PERSON: see 2 Corinthians 5:16-18
• A NEW IDENTITY: 1Peter 2:4-12
• A Kingdom Life: Colossians 1:11-14
Chuck Swindoll in his commentary on Malachi writes:
“The people of Judah began to be exiled from the Promised Land in 605 B.C. and returned from Babylon about seventy years later. By the time of Malachi, they had been back in the land for more than a hundred years and were looking for the blessings they expected to receive when they returned.
Though the temple had been rebuilt, the fervor of those early returning Israelites had given way to a thorough apathy for the things of God. This led to rampant corruption among the priesthood and spiritual lethargy among the people.
Malachi came along at a time when the people were struggling to believe that God loved them. The people were focused on their unfortunate circumstances and refused to account for their own sinful deeds.
So, God pointed the finger back at them, and through Malachi, told the people where they had fallen short of their covenant with Him. If they hoped to see change, they needed to take responsibility for their own actions and serve God faithfully according to the promise that their fathers had made to Him on Mount Sinai all those years before.”
In his book ‘DARK AGENDA’ – “The war to destroy Christian America”, author David Horowitz (published 2018) writes:
“Religion must die in order for mankind to live”, proclaims left-wing commentator and comedian Bill Maher in RELIGULOUS, the most watched commentary feature of 2008.
Both title and script were transparent attempts to stigmatize religious people as dangerous morons whose views could not be taken seriously. Through the film, Maher travels to Jerusalem, the Vatican, and Salt Lake City, as well as other centers of religion, interviewing believers and making them appear foolish. How did he gain interviews with his victims? HE LIED TO THEM, SAYING HE WAS MAKING A FILM CALLED ‘A Spiritual Journey.”
According to Maher, “THE IRONY OF RELIGION IS THAT BECAUSE OF ITS POWER TO DIVERT MAN TO DESTRUCTIVE COURSES, THE WORLD COULD ACTUALLY COME TO AN END.” He predicts the destruction of the human race as a result of “religion-inspired nuclear terrorism.” Hence the need for religion to die if mankind is to live. Maher’s views accurately reflect the attitudes of a movement called THE NEW ATHEISM, whose leaders are prominent scientists and best-selling authors, far superior in intellect to Maher but equally contemptuous of religion and religious believers.
Like Maher’s film, the New Atheism movement seeks to discredit all religious belief by caricaturing its adherents as simpletons, and worse. The goal of the New Atheism is to delegitimize and extinguish the religious point of view.”
Most people don’t realize that if God is dead,
THEN EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED, BECAUSE THERE ARE NO GROUNDS FOR CALLING ANYTHING – AN ACT, A STATEMENT, AN EVENT, A CHOICE, EITHER GOOD OR BAD, RIGHT OR WRONG, VALUABLE OR WORTHLESS, IMPORTANT OR UNIMPORTANT.
Richard Dawkins “The God Delusion” (2006)
“Do we know of any……examples where stupid ideas have been known to spread like an epidemic? Yes, by God! Religion. Religious ideas are irrational. Religious believes are dumb and dumber. Religion drives otherwise sensible people into celibate monasteries or crashing into New York skyscrapers. Religion motivates people to whip their own backs, to set fire to themselves or their daughters, to denounce their own grandmothers as witches, or, in less extreme cases, simply to stand or kneel, week after week, through ceremonies of stupefying boredom.”
C.S. Lewis in his book “The Abolition of Man” writes:
“The triumph of personal desire over objective validity as a standard of behavior creates what is tantamount to a moral vacuum into which will rush disordered passions bloated in their abnormal freedom from any constraint.
The three passions are: THE LUST FOR SENSATION, THE LUST FOR MANIPULATIVE KNOWLEDGE, AND THE WILL TO POWER, respectively.
The egotistical will to power and pleasure supersedes any less explicit idea or sentiment of obligation to some criterion or good outside of self.
It assumes that the pleasure of self is the highest good and that life is an aesthetic phenomenon; under such conditions, society becomes a jungle in which eventually a contest for the survival of the fittest can only favor the Nazi, the Hell’s Angel, the robber baron, and the gangsters.”
Chuck Swindoll in his Daily Devotional from December 31, 2020 writes:
“A new year is smiling at us, with twelve months of the unknown. I feel like we’re sitting on the beach, an entire ocean of possibilities, including both sundrenched days and a few storms with howling winds and giant waves, stretched out across the unchartered waters. If you and I let ourselves, we could become so afraid of the potential dangers that we would miss the adventure.
Becoming a couch potato is an option. You’d look toward the horizon, entertain a few thoughts that start with “Someday……” but then lean back and just keep looking and longing. Hawaii would never have been discovered had everyone chosen to sit tight and stay with a sure thing.
Sandwiched between January 1 and December 31 are twelve exciting yet unlived months of opportunities. Challenges brought on by changes await us. We will be shoved out of our comfort zones and required to respond. We can do so positively or negatively, with optimism or with pessimism. Even the familiar beach we have gotten used to is in for some changes, forcing us to leave our “spot” and accept new surroundings. If you are not careful, you’ll be so preoccupied with complaining, you’ll miss your golden moment to grow a little…to make some new discoveries…to switch from being a passive sitter on the beach to becoming an active participant in the adventure beyond the familiar.