These are the times that try men’s souls. – Thomas Paine – Dec 23, 1776
Every so often, God sends a test to publicly differentiate the wheat from the chaff. During the Decian (250–1 AD) and Diocletian/Galerian (303–311 AD) persecutions, the official test of fidelity was whether professed Christians would renounce Christ and sacrifice to the gods under pain of punishment including death. Those who succumbed, were branded lapsi (apostates) and traditores (“those who had handed over” – e.g. Scriptures, other religious artifacts, or the names of other Christians). Such would later have understandably difficult time being accepted back into the fold.
In 1934, the church was confronted by fascists and their Deutsche Christen wolves, who attempted to sublimate and subordinate the mandate of Christ under the immediate needs of the Volksgemeinschaft. Yet there remained a minority of faithful who were among those who signed the Barmen Declaration and belonged to the German Confessing Church.
I suspect that the Trump phenomenon might be one of those divine tests. For whether from the sociopolitical perspectives and concerns of conservative Evangelicals or of progressive Evangelicals, Donald Trump, this lawless one, violates the ethics and ethos of them all.
What better way for God to blatantly expose the perversity of Prosperity Gospel walruses and carpenters than to have them freely proffer spiritual imprimatur and protection to this Ahab in this their day in the sun.
Father, we just secure him right now by the blood of Jesus. We thank you that no weapon formed against him will be able to prosper and any tongue that rises against him will be condemned according to the word of God. – Paula White (min 3.09)
What better way to expose those Christians in Name Only, those Country and god American Evangelicals, than to have them freely identify with this Machiavellian chameleon, this fleetingly self-trumpeting “Protector of Christendom.”
What better way to expose the character of those venal Country Club Republicans, those purported sociopolitical allies of the religious and of cultural conservatives, but whose principles are governed by sniffing the zeitgeist? With the Ostrogoths imminent at the gates; how rapidly these eunuchs identify themselves in crouch, proffering to lick upon the libido of their new barbarian overlords, just hopes of perpetuating their crumbs of privilege in the New Order.
How vacuous of mind and heart are those partisan sheeples, who proclaim “my faction right or wrong”; or who, in hubristic and solipsistic folly, think that they shall be able to moderate and veer the direction of the Directionless One. This same vanity was opined by conservative allies and German industrialists in the 1930s. And how timid and cowardly are those politicos and partisans, afrighted into getting with the program by the screeching boasts of the Banshee from Alaska, or who see their opportunity to re-enter into the corridors of influence, after long flailing in the wilderness; or who are wedded to their prior assessments of their Vulgarian-in-Chief with the fecklessness of Hamlet’s mother.
What better way for God to forcefully impress upon His true children not to place their trust in princes; nor to be unequally tied to any alien ideology, regardless of how ostensibly moral these sound. Such things are like spyware. The only safe and fruitful place for any Christian, in any political jurisdiction, at any time, is to be independent of the creeds and the factions of the world. Gospel Christian: #NeverRepublican, #NeverDemocrat, #NeverConservative, #NeverProgressive.
Who would Jesus have voted for, Herod or Pilate?
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Into this spiritual desolation and bleak melee of turpitude, God has seen fit to raise an Elijah, who has retained the perceptual ability to keep the Truth and the Good in front of his nose; who in fidelity to God and history, is less concerned about the next election cycle and quarterly report; but who has kept his head when all about are losing theirs. Such has laid down the gauntlet to all self-professed Christians, “choose you this day whom you will serve,” God or the pyrite calf, in terms firm, consistent, and stalwart.
In an age of personal despair that true, bold, and intelligible Christianity seems to have caught the last train for the coast; when the “people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” and thereafter wonder why their children are a-fleeing; when the confessors of Christianity, in their own words, are barely distinguishable from outsiders, and whereupon Evangelicals wonder why they are considered “no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet”; a preacher, such as Russell Moore, is one of those rarities who can bring tears to the eyes, and bring remembrance that God is still in His holy temple and has not yet abandoned us.
The Donald has clarified matters for these self-professed Evangelicals. For, if “Russell Moore is truly a terrible representative of Evangelicals and all of the good they stand for. A nasty guy with no heart! (Donald Trump – Tweet, May 9, 2016), then I am likewise. Despite the fact that Russell Moore is American (LOL); despite that fact that Russell Moore is Southern Baptist; despite that fact that Russell Moore is somewhat to the right of my moderate extremism; despite the fact that I consider it foolhardy to give simple-minded spiritual and ethical imprimatur to a complicated issue like immigration reform; nevertheless, he is my bro in Christ. To him I belong in Christ, and he I.
Therefore, “American Christians.” It is time to ante up. Choose you this day. Are you bros with the self-trumpeting “Protector of Christianity,” who judges Russell Moore to be a terrible representative of Evangelicals; or are you bros with Russell Moore in Christ? There shall be a reckoning when the fullness of Trump will make manifest the wisdom of your choice.
An Iconoclastic Orthodoxy 