Posted on 10/03/2001 9:46:58 AM PDT by TomSmedley
Beloved people of the Living God, it looks like we are being prepared for more than war. We are being prepared for the further concentration of power in the hands of government, and we are being prepared for the eradication of the voice of God from the Public Square.
When the God of the Bible is accorded His rightful place as Lord of nations, many peoples can gather under Him. But when a nation pretends to ultimate deity, as Rome did, and as America is, I fear, doing, than many gods will be gathered under her-- many gods, but not the God of the Bible. For He demands that all nations submit to Him. You can't have it both ways.
The rhetoric calling the attack of September 11 an attack on freedom asked us to look at radical Islam as the only threat. But the rhetoricians failed to tell us of the equally ominous threat to freedom posed by themselves, a threat which they are even now carrying out.
Since our days in the Christian Reformed Church, back in the 80's, we have been pleading with our brothers and sisters in Christ to understand that the greatest and nearest threat of liberal Christianity is by no means merely theological. Rather, unbelieving Christianity provides the perfect setting for the State to suppress Biblical Christianity while retaining something to point to as it says, See! We are not against Christianity. We are only against 'hate' and 'intolerance.'
The speech of September 20th, and the thunderous applause that punctuated every pause, has made it clearer than ever that America no longer believes in one nation under one God, but many gods under one nation.
On September 20 the President of the United States defined the new religion of America and it was not Christianity: This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom. We should not need to point out -- yet we must -- that Christianity believes in all these things, but it does so on God's terms. What we heard on September 20 is different: instead of progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom as brought before the bar of God's Word and tested, it is now God's Word being brought before the egalitarian, humanist bar of statist anti-Christianity. America, apart from the Bible, will define all things for us: love, hate, justice, truth, acceptable religion. The French Revolution is now grown up, accepted, and strong.
From now on, only those religions will be free which place themselves before the State for authentication and validation. We have a replay of Rome: If you wish yours to be regarded as a licit, lawful religion, you must offer incense to Ceasar. Acknowledge the divinity of the State, and then believe whatever you like. The sin of Falwell was not a hastily conceived sentence: it was the audacity to call evil what the state has called good. He was ordered to repent. He offered words of attrition, if not contrition. He had to if he wanted to keep a place at the table. The table is strictly fenced, you know.
The religion of the modern State has no place for repentance from sin as defined by God, no place for a law from any higher source than itself, no place for God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.
We used to confess, One nation, under God. The radical attack of radical Muslims on September 11 marked a radical change in our national religion, or rather brought directly to the surface that radical change which had already occurred, thanks to the enginery of government schooling. It is no longer God above all, according to the new creed, but the nation above all gods . If God wants a place at their table, let Him and His followers first acknowledge that Infinite Justice belongs not to Him but to man, man in the State, the new god walking on earth.
Every day we have more to pray about.
Points to consider:
Alas. This is true of much popular "folk" piety in our circles.
Mr. Blumenfeld, however, is one of the newer, more aware Christians who have been springing up recently. He was converted one night after spending some time reading Jean Cauvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion.
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