We want a revival. We want to turn America around. We want to have this nation return to the shores of glory. BUT are we really doing what is necessary to achieve that. One important step is REPENTANCE! NOT just America repenting of her sins but the American church repenting of it’s sins. (Not just personal repentance, each believer repenting, but corporate repentance, the church as a whole repenting.) YES the American church has sins. We are NOT sinless. We are NOT perfect. We are NOT spotless. Way to much of the American Church is full of pride and full of themselves. I know this is a message the church doesn’t want to hear. It wants soothing ear tickling messages. It wants pep talks and to be told we are a spotless bride waiting for the lord and we have done NOTHING wrong and thus are blameless in the country’s woes. (satan did it all we did our duty) We must repent of what we have done wrong and of what we left undone.(The good that we should have done but didn’t.) We must repent of our pride, our apathy, our inattentiveness, our lack of resolve and our being afraid of the world.
America’s problems didn’t start in 1963 with prayer and bible reading being thrown out of school it started as far back as 1850, and as close as the 1880’s, when the church started changing its methods and message. Consider this: had we been a christian nation we would not have thrown out prayer and bible reading in 62 and 63; we would not have had the court “discover” separation of church and state in the establishment clause of the constitution in 47; we would not have had playboy magazine in 53; Alfred Kinsey, and his network of child molesting researchers, would have been denounced; if we had after 63 returned to God we would not have had the sexual revolution of the 60’s and it's debauchery and we would never have gotten the woman right to murder her baby in 73; If the moral majority had made a difference in our spiritual standing we would not have had a explosion of the homosexual movement in the 90’s; if Dubya Bush had truly been "God’s man in the white house” we would not have had the huge expansion of government under him leading to the election of Obama and the persecution of people of faith under him using that expanded government; if we had used the Bush years wisely NO Obama and NO homosexual marriage.
Back in the late 19th century thing s started changing for the church especially in the seminaries. “New” ideas starting popping up and being taught. We should have rebuked the people espousing these ideas immediately and excommunicated them but we didn’t and slowly the church changed. The knowledge of the rapture came back to us in the 1800’s but some thought the best way to get the rapture here sooner, i.e. hasten the lords return, was to let society go to pot. Not sure how many but some of these may have gotten into influential spots and started the withdrawal of the church from society. No matter how it happened we started removing our presence from society and changing our beliefs little by little. If we had stayed involved in the political area and in government we wouldn’t have had society crumble as it has but we started thinking that we not dignified for a christian to be in politics to dirty and sinful. Some even felt that since Christ‘s kingdom is not of this world we shouldn’t be involved in government. That it would not please God for a christian to be welding power on earth and that the godly thing would be to be on the outside looking in and trying to show a godly example. Yet without us there in the government there was no one looking to protect us from government abuses. We could not show our Godly example in the halls of legislature but only outside of it and hope the officials took some notice. With us gone there was a spiritual vacuum and satan was all too willing to move in to fill that vacuum. If we had stayed in education and prevented the takeover be social engineers doing satan's bidding we wouldn’t have the ungodliness that is currently taught. Respect for your elders especially parents would still be part of the curriculum. If we had kept teaching morals to our own kids we wouldn’t have such problems with youth not only today but for generations now.
If we had been TRUE watchmen on the wall we would have kept a look out to what satan was doing so we could have stopped him before he got too far in his plans. (some object say we should just keep our eyes focused on the lord and don't worry what satan is doing.) A watchmen on the wall in biblical time didn’t JUST watch for his Lord’s return he also kept an eye out for enemy attack. We failed to do that. If we had watched out we would have seen satan attacking and fought back. Now yes we can’t exclusively focus on satan and what he is doing but any army fighting a war has lookout and patrols to find out what the enemy is doing and report back. That way you can avoid ambushes and can detect enemy assaults and rearrange forces to counteract those assaults. We should have had people watching to see what satan was doing so we knew where to send forces to fight him. By not watching him he was able to move into areas and take over without us fighting back and before we knew it he had majority control or total control of those areas.
We took our founding on God for granted and got puffed up thinking satan couldn’t touch us. We even thought satan couldn’t do anything. The worst thing you can do in a war is UNDERestimate you enemy. We forgot satan is a powerful being. When I try to mention that to people they immediately balk and say “are you saying satan is more powerful than God?” as if the only two options are satan has NO power or satan is all powerful. (This is rather odd since they seem to think satan was powerful enough to overcome the church and take society away from us{we did our part but satan took America from us} but think he is so weak he can’t hurt us [a toothless tiger]) They fail to recognize that while yes God is more powerful than satan he was created as the most powerful angel, the anointed cherub, and as such has a lot of power MUCH more than any human. Also they forget Job. When satan wanted to attack Job, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil, God allowed it only forbidding him to take Jobs life. So we see that satan has quite a long leash even with believers. He can tempt us and test us but can’t kill us without permission from God. While true he cannot tempt us above what we are able to resist we often underestimate what we can resist. Sometime we may have what seems to be a terminal diagnosis and we wonder why would God allow us to die. well A) it could simply be your time and this will show people your faith. What better testimony than someone who remains faithful unto death especially a very painful death or B) You are not actually going to die but this is to see if you will curse God much like with Job. Remember a line from the second Aladdin movie “you’d be surprised what you can live through” (it had to do with a genie not being allowed to kill people and that there are things that you can live through that can be just as painful and seem just as bad.) Especially with modern medicine there are many things that while they can take you to the brink of death won’t actually kill you.
We need to Listen to one another regardless of age. Remember the saying ‘there is many a beardless sage and quite a few old fools’. Now yes most wisdom is found in the elders but there are elders who are simply old but not wise. And yes there are some young who are wise beyond their years. We should judge what is said by content not by who delivered it. If we heard a young person give a piece of wisdom we should draw attention to it and not coopt it as our own. Sometimes we heard something good from a younger person people don't listen to then turn around and say the same thing pursers and people listen but we don't tell them who originally said it so we get the credit for saying it not the younger person who actually did. Truth is true no matter who said it. Even when out of the mouths of babes! Sometimes it seems young children have deeper faith and more insight than the adults. Yet they in many instances lose that insight and faiths they grow up. I think the reason is we fail to teach them the meat of the word in a timely fashion. We are afraid of confusing them or giving them too much to handle so we keep them on milk FAR past when we should have started the meat. No Parent as soon as their child is weaned feeds their kids a full thanksgiving feast with all the trimmings! They start with small food and work up to larger food and finally to whole meals. The same is true with the word when it is time to wean them from the milk and start the meat we don't give them the theologically heavy subjects first. We start small and build up but even the small is meat. If we would stop singing silly songs that rhyme but teach nothing and start into the meat we could start to get them equipped to counter satan’s influence when they run against it which they will at ever younger ages. While we want an ideal childhood for them full of fun and whimsy and void of danger that just isn’t the world we live in satan starts fighting for our children souls when they are in kindergarten and even preschool it is high time we started fighting in preschool and even before.
We need to go back to biblical standards especially for those who claim to be prophets. Too often we excuse a false prophet saying he is a true prophet but satan interfered and that is why he got the prophesy wrong. Or our flesh corrupts the message and that is why he go the prophecy wrong. God NEVER had such problems in the OT or the NT of the bible. In those times he got the message the whole message and only the unadulterated message through to his prophets. If a prophet is wrong in his prophesy you are left then with 2 choices 1) he is a false prophet and is to no longer be listened to or 2) God is slipping up in his old age and thus is no longer able to get messages through to people like he could when he was younger. If you are a true christian option 2 is absurd which only leaves the false prophet conclusion. Now some may say “well he has been right in the past”. Satan can sometimes make a good educated guess as to what the future holds in a short time frame. He is far more intelligent than humans (intelligence doesn’t equate to knowing God look at how many brainiacs are atheists or humanists) and even the smartest humans can take the info at hand and make accurate predictions much of the time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Also maybe at one time he was a true prophet but for some reason became too confident in his ability and ran with a message without checking it out first. God does not give prophets Mulligans. The prophet can’t just shout “do over” and everything is ok. When you go on your own you’ve blown it and that is it. Otherwise there would be no way to ever know who is a prophet of God and who isn’t if being right all the time didn’t matter. We must hold pastors accountable as well. They are the shepherds of their flocks and as such THEY are responsible for the souls of their sheep. (not some hireling or church member appointed by the pastor to help out) They must preach the truth in season and out. They must prepare their congregations for the spiritual battle we all face. When they preach heresy we must rebuke them. When they refuse to preach the whole council of God we must rebuke them. If they don’t respond to our rebuke we must replace them with a pastor who will teach the whole council of God and will not teach heresy. We must hold teachers accountable. Yes they teach us but we must guard against false teachers coming in with damnable heresies. We must check every teaching with the bible and with God himself. We must test the spirits when we ask God to ensure we are speaking to God and when we ask God we must be open to whatever he says not predetermine something then insist he confirm what we believe.
We should have stuck with truth and substance over emotion. Feelings are a poor indicator when it comes to Biblical truths. Being sober can refer to not being swayed by emotion as well. We were too caught up in experiencing some “new thing” from God, having some “new revelation” from God. We started wanting showmanship and entertainment in the pulpit. We started desiring spectacles and signs and wonders. Thinking that christianity should be something that draws people by being such a spectacle. While yes I believe in the gifts of the spirit and true experiences do happen I also know plenty of fakes are out there. People who are healed on stage but wheeled out of the arena in a wheelchair having lost the healing. People who will fake tongues by speaking gibberish just to get some pushy “tongues is a requirement-type” off their backs. We have to admit that yes gifts of the spirit can be faked. So we have to be careful in this area. Tongues in the bible was not some intelligible unknown language but was a known language in the world just not know to the person speaking it. When tongues are spoken an interpreter is to be present elsewise you should not speak in them unless alone (something woefully lacking in many tongues oriented churches). Miracles is listed by some as a gift of the spirit but remember Pharaohs men and how they could do most of what Moses did. So they can be faked so we must be on guard.
We should have stuck to the biblical God. Unfortunately we let ourselves try to change God by over emphasizing His Love and deemphasizing, or even eliminating or denying, His Holiness and His Justice. We now have a society that only sees God as love so because of that we allow things that violate His Holiness to exist in society and even in the church and we refuse to speak of His Justice. We let the world define Love for us and used that definition to remove His Holiness and His Justice from Christian belief. We also let the world start interpret certain passages of the bible for us and allowed the world to tell us how to apply those passages. We allowed to world to intimidate us and cowered before it as it called us names and laughed at us. We decided that being liked was important. “If the world likes us they will listen to what we have to say”. We should have stuck with being different from the world, separate from the world, IN the world but not OF the world. But we started becoming more worldly. Especially in response to the rise of youth culture. At a time when we need to separate ourselves from the world more than ever we instead confirmed more than ever. NO I don’t mean we should have removed ourselves from the public but that we should have shown that we had a different and better way not a similar way.
We can get a revival going but it mean serious work on our part. First step is for the church to overcome her pride and admit her failings. Without that we won’t be able to do anything else. If we can do that then we must then return to the bible as written as passed down through the ages. Return to the faith of our spiritual forefathers. Throw out all worldly influences in the church - the music(words can be good but when mixed with the world tunes the effect is compromised) (the old fashion hymns work just fine without any compromising factors), the interpretations, the definitions, the desire to be liked, the showmanship, the entertaining at the pulpit, the feel good messages, the health and wealth messages, all the heresies, all the corruption and perversion, EVERYTHING that isn’t biblical - and get back to authentic christianity. A good blend of Law and Grace so people will know they are sinners and know that there is salvation available. Too often now we hear we are saved but never what we are saved from or why we need saving. Too much Grace and not much law does that. Of course too much law and not much grace can be bad too as it can make on feel there is no hope and they are condemned. We need to have a ‘goldilocks’ type preaching.
We need to get back to working hard at conversion no more it has to be done my way or I won’t do it. Keep trying. If they haven’t rejected God then don't give up. Maybe it isn’t going according to your formula of how conversions should happen. So be it. Do you want to stand before God and say you walked away from a person because he didn’t want to do the conversion your way???? Thus you decided it was ok for that persons so to be lost because you had to have it your way. ‘better a soul be lost than I change my formula’. Ok so they ask questions you think are irrelevant but they may have a good reason for doing so before they discuss Christ with you. Maybe these are their ‘proof’ questions and that if you can answer them to their satisfaction they will then listen to you about Christ. Whatever the reason if they haven’t rejected Him don’t walk away. Also don’t be afraid to get ‘back up’ if you are not getting anywhere or if you don’t have a gift for conversions. (I don’t have that gift I once spent the whole night up with someone but didn’t get anywhere. Another time I spent time trying to get a christian acquaintances son back in to fold but again could not. I learned later someone else had) Some people are harder than others and it may take a more seasoned person to guide them to Christ. Nothing wrong with admitting you’re not able to win this person but someone else might. We can be unwilling to let someone else convert a person because we want the credit for the conversion. (We want God to credit their conversion on our records or account) I believe if you sincerely try even if you fail God will credit you with trying. But if you are failing and refuse to let someone else help the person and he doesn’t end up coming to Christ I don't think you will be credited with trying since you refused to get help when you needed it.
We also need to be civil and patient with our brothers and sisters in Christ. Sometimes we are more willing to be nice and kind to unbelievers we want to convert than to fellow believers. We put on a good face for the unbeliever to win them over but take the mask off with our brethren. We should have sharp tongues and cold shoulders for each other just as we don’t for the unbeliever.
We need to get back to having Sunday be the Lord’s day where we don't just treat it is another day to goof off and stuff except for the 2 hours we are at church. We should have Bars closed, and Liquor stores, and anything unnecessary to life closed. We should spend time reading the bible and spend time with our children showing them the Love of Christ and helping them grow in Christ. It should be a day of rest yes but a day for the Lord a day we thank him and show him our love and demonstrate that love to others. (it would mean no more NFL on Sunday)
We need to get rid of our modern “breads and circuses” as they are a distraction. Youth sports is one thing, if done properly, but professional and even college sports are divisive and distracting. (NASCAR, MLB,NBA,NHL,MLS etc. end up become like idols and end up taking too much of our heart and mind.) (Hollywood and TV have become that way as well with so many channels and reality TV there is just too much out there most of it not worth our time.)(TV can have its place in a society but we no longer keep it in it’s place.)
We need to first get OUR house in order then we can get America’s house in order. God is the answer. Politics, government, economy, culture, law, schools, media, entertainment, Hollywood, and more all of these things will be fixed if we return to our first Love.
What will it take to bring such repentance and to get us to the point of overcoming our pride and returning to God’s ways?? We shall see. Maybe we should be asking God to bring about an event that will precipitate that return even if that event is painful. A dose of Judgment isn’t pleasant but does get the job done a lot of the time. While he has brought many smaller judgments against us to try and bring us back (listed above - 47,53,62,63,73,90’s,2015) It may take a more substantial, more massive judgment to finally get through to the church. If that is what is need then Lord bring it quickly.
Paul Wilson
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