Monday, August 7, 2017

09/28/10 BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT

09/28/10 BACKHANDED COMPLIMENT

I have had people try to insult me by saying that my preaching sounds more like conservative radio and news reporting than it sounds like Scripture. The reason I call that a backhanded compliment is that I was foretelling the tragic condition of America decades before America became aware of Limbaugh, or Hannity, or Fox News (considered by many to be the champions of conservative reporting).

This is a bitter/sweet/bitter reality.
It is bitter because my preaching does sound to people like I am preaching the popular controversies today, rather than preaching the Bible. Of course, I know that my message is, and always has been founded in Biblical revelation rather than current events.

But then the bitterness becomes sweet because my preaching the unseen realities have actually become the realities that are the present events, which make up our history. It is always sweet to know that you have been a faithful messenger of God.

Then the bitterness returns, not because I was accurate in lifting my voice against the rise of Secular Humanism and fall of America, but because Secular Humanism has taken such monstrous control of our nation. And though there are now a greater number of people who cry out against America's blatant rejection of God, it is (probably) too late for our country and our world to turn to Christ.

We are (probably) now in the Laodicean Period, which is the post Open Door Period of Church prophecy/history. This period of evangelism is more related to the individual who hears Christ and opens the door of his heart to Him, than like the people movements, and the revivals of the past.

I have been lifting my voice against social
 wickedness, governmental oppression and the intrusion of Secular/Humanism since the mid 1960's (when I first attended John Wesley Bible College in Greensboro, NC), but many of the issues that are flooding the airwaves today are things I have fought against as a pastor since the 1970's.

Seeing the dangers of Secular/Humanism in the "Public Schools," Martha and I started David's school experience by enrolling him in a Christian school in 1976. A few years later our church started a Christian School, grades 1-11.

Make no mistake about it: Humanism, Secularism, Socialism, Communism, evolution, values clarification, homosexuality, sexual activity outside of marital commitment, welfare state, family dissolution, control of Christian churches/ministries/message are all attacks on the Lordship of Christ and His Headship over the Church.

A church that does not lift up its voice against social and political ills is not telling the whole truth. If the Church is not the social conscience of a nation, then the nation has no conscience. If Christ is only important in the four walls of the sanctuary, then Christ is not important. If the Church is not God's vessel of restraining sin and oppression in this world, there is no restraining.