Posted on 10/23/2004 6:53:00 AM PDT by woodb01
although it's still not too late
October 23, 2004
Often, in and out of church walls today, we hear about the apathy of the religious community. Hardly a month goes by that the church is not embroiled in some major controversy to the glee of the anti-christian left. The Church in America has lost its soul. The American church no longer fears God, and no longer loves God.
If this sounds like harsh criticism, I intend to fully support it in just a moment.
First, a little background. Since as far back as I can remember, I was raised in a Baptist Church, in my late teen years, after considerable rebellion, I had an "awakening" to what is meant by being "born again" after getting involved in the Pentecostal / Charismatic movement. Not the typical emotional "born again" experience that many people go through, but a true, life-changing, life-altering event that only an encounter with a living God could have initiated. This event led me to pour over the pages of the Bible for over 20 years, reading it cover to cover many times.
In a direct parallel to the church and our out of control culture today, I was on a roller coaster ride. On the wagon, off the wagon, running after God, running away from God, believing in a Heavenly Father and then having my doubts. Compromise, tolerance, foolishness, and sin were regular occurrences in my life, just like the American Church and American Culture today.
Then one day reading my Bible I stumbled on this:
Proverbs 8:13 The fear of the LORD is to hate evil...
That unnerved me because I didn't HATE evil. I was "tolerant," I was accepting just like all good little secular humanist citizens should be. I knew there was something wrong because if I didn't fear God, then how could I profess to truly be a Christian? Then other verses struck me:
Psalms 97:10 You that love the LORD, hate evil...
Romans 12:9 ...Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.
Confronted with this harsh reality that I did not HATE evil and therefore did not love or fear God, I was forced to change. My realization forced me to concede that I was headed straight for hell--, just like today's American Culture, and frighteningly enough, the American Church.
HATE, is a passionate thing. HATE is an active thing. You can't be apathetic if you have that passion. Activism and involvement against the causes of evil are the obvious results. Am I advocating violence? NO! Absolutely not! What I am advocating is serious, sincere, and committed activism to confronting and changing the sick and twisted evil in this culture today.
For example, as prayer was taken out of the schools, and abortion became the judge made "law of the land," every pastor and Christian in this country should have been running for Congress for the sole purpose of impeaching the Supreme Court Justices. It should have been the American Church's passion to stop the evils of the anti-christian assaults of American religious tradition and to stop the butcher of innocent human life. But there was nothing.
Today, with the controversy surrounding gay marriage, it hasn't been the Protestant faiths leading the fight, but the Catholic church, family groups, father's groups, and the Republican Party. The American Church's protestants are eerily silent.
Recently the democrats in Congress attempted to pass new "hate crimes" legislation identical to Canada's. In Canada, it is a hate crime to preach against homosexuality, even if you take it directly from the Bible. Yet still the church and christians do nothing.
The church, the family, values, morals, ethics, our children and our country are under attack. A relentless assault is being waged on patriotism and America from treasonous traitors within and still the American Church stands idly by as a spectator. It's time for American Christians to find their passion and their souls. DEMAND that your pastor abide by the Bible and teach what the Bible says about hating evil and if that pastor refuses, that pastor does NOT fear the Lord, and does NOT love God! That pastor must be removed from that position. It's time for the American Church to clean house and once cleaned to stand face to face with the vile anti-christian beast that has arisen in American government and lop the 7 headed hydra's heads off!
For an eye opening expose of the "democratic" party's agenda, and how it is focused on destroying family, faith, and America, please see this recent 2003 Congressional Testimony.
And if you haven't done so, it's a long read but one of the MOST educational reads on the democrat agenda you can ever find... See this 2003 Congressional Testimony
Christian churches should wave their tax exempt status and stop selling God out for pieces of silver.
That's the problem with too much tolerance --- it's actually acceptance of everything that is wrong.
I hate evil. I hate heresy. I hate Satan. I hate the promotion of sin. I hate sin. I hate it when people call good evil and evil good. I hate it when people deny truth and/or attempt to replace it with error.
well said,
we should stop worrying about the state of our church buildings and reach out and help those in the community.
well said,
we should stop worrying about the state of our church buildings and reach out and help those in the community.
sorry about the double post
my mouse is sensitive this morning.
Tolerance= "The inability to say yes or no. The inability to take a stand." A Great Historian 1888
I'm retired and have lived in Minnesota for a little over two years. In the church my wife and I now attend, I lead a small group Bible study for older members of the church and also teach the same age group in a Sunday morning Bible class.
The most common complaint I hear from them is how sin and judgment are not preached in today's church. They see it as an attempt on the part of the modern church to not be offensive to the culture in order to build membership. I have to agree with them.
In an age of self-indulgence, materialism, relativism, and post-modernism, it's difficult to get people to agree that there is evil and that certain things are wrong.
Let us not confuse the 'Church' with those 'leaders' who profess to set policy or 'speak' on behalf of it WE are the Church and regardless of any doctrinal differences we may have coming from different denominations, in the real world our faith and values bind us together and we must ALL strive to be living Christian witnesses and that includes our actions in the public and political arena EVERY lay Christian as as much authority in this regard as the so called 'leaders' and , thus, we must not be cowed or intimidated by vestments or collars or so called 'holy offices'
In the early church preaching the Gospel shook things up. The Gospel wasn't about morality. It was about faith. And those who came out of a religious background wanted to hang the proscribed behaviors on the new believers. Paul and the apostles said no. They a gave a few simple instructions.
ACTS 15
28 "For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials:
29 that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell."
30 So when they were sent away, they went down to Antioch; and having gathered the congregation together, they delivered the letter.
31 When they had read it, they rejoiced because of its encouragement.
God initiates His goodness to us, we respond by trusting Him, having faith in Him. That results in fellowship with Him, we become new creations in Him. As we are drawn closer to Him we desire, and do become more like him. It starts with the attitude of our heart. Whereas we used to just refrain from killing others, we begin to not even hate others, and move to loving others. Where we used to just refrain from adultery, we move to where we ask to God to take away even the thought of it. Paul said that if a law could be given to bring about life, then that law would have been given.
1 Corinthians 15 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law
Preaching morality will never change the culture! Preaching Jesus crucified and risen will change people, and will change the world!
If the Gospel the apostles preach was about morality then they would have not been so persecuted. What they preached did change their culture, and the whole world.
Jeremiah 31:
33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
Caesar is dead any gone. The government wants control over every part of your life and that includes all of your income.
Liberty is worth fighting for and most Christians are too lazy or stupid to realize this fact. God may save them in the afterlife but for now they in this socialist Hell on earth that the Democrats are creating.
Jesus himself told the Adulteress to go and sin no more. He died for our sins, not for our faith.
Yes He did. And when we come to Him he says the same to us! But any action short of faith is SIN. Without faith it is IMPOSSIBLE to please God. And only with faith can one be able to go and sin no more, but if we do, we have an advocate before God on our behalf. And without faith we might not outwardly commit adultery we are what what Jesus called whitewashed tombs, pretty and clean on the outside, but inside full of corruption.
Telling the culture about morality will never change the culture. God himself gave the rules of morality to Israel and they couldn't be what He wanted them to be. Only when the law of God is written on our heart are we able to begin to behave with Godly morality.
Galatians 2:
16 Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
17 But if, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is therefore Christ the minister of sin? God forbid.
18 For if I build again the things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor.
19 For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God.
20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
21 I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.
bump
This statement is untrue. Any true church is under the authority of Almighty God, and His Holy Word. Those that misinterpret it do so to their own destruction.
ping
Christians are allowing Leftists, together with the MSM to marginalize them in the name of "tolerance"...meanwhile, the new religion (secular humanism) is taking over every facet of our lives.
This becomes very clear when a popular presidential candidate like Kerry says that he will not allow his "deeply held" faith to influence his political actions.
Several years ago I read a quote.
Then as time moved along, I tried to remember the words.
I went to my Pastor one Sunday after the sermon. I asked him about it, because I only remembered a few words. He quoted it perfectly. So, I wrote it in my Bible.
Because this is how I feel.
And lot of folks in our Country have hugged sin very tight.
Sin is a monster of such awful mein.
That to be hated, has but to be seen.
But seen to oft, familiar with face.
First we pity, then endure, then embrace.
Sin is terrible. Those that practice it, are hard to endure.
God Bless America with Righteousness!
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