The Coming Persecution in America Revisited

The most popular of my blog entries over the years has concerned Christian persecution within America. The next general area of interest is in regard to sex and gender relations. This seems reasonably indicative of where the heads of modern Evangelicals are located.

Revisiting that entry, I must confess a deep disdain and wincing shame. It is not so much that I repudiate any of the ideas expressed. It is that the entry was so horribly written, with inchoate and tangential thoughts and an incoherent flow of argument. Retaining that entry in the public sphere serves as a talisman for a justified humility.

So let me try again.

Imputed Injustice – The Judicial Importance of Consent

Imputed Injustice

Imputed Injustice – Calvin Against the Calvinists

It is my empirically justified belief that modern Protestant Evangelicalism, and particularly its seminarian elite, have little comprehension of the nature and principles of Justice, including that of due process. In this, the seminarians have seriously failed to uphold the triumvirate of concerns that Christ Jesus deemed primary: judgment/justice, faith, and compassion (Matt 23:23). And if one does not comprehend the nature and principles of Justice, one cannot comprehend the Justice in the Justification in the Atonement.

A, if not THE primary argument deployed to validate the notion of humanity’s collective guilt in Adams’s sin is proof by blackmail. If one repudiates the imputation of Adam’s sin and guilt upon all, neither can one subscribe to the imputation of Christ Jesus’s work on behalf of those who put their faith in Him. We would thereby still be hopelessly dead in our sins.

Let’s Just Stop Singing These Worship Songs

Corrie Mitchell from faithstreet complains about the superficial meaninglessness of modern worship songs; constructing her own Letterman Top Ten List. Terry Mattingly from GetReligion complains about the horrid quality of Christian movies. To which, one can only say, the vacuity of modern cultural products are a direct barometer of the vacuity of modern “believers”.

The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is no evangelical mind.
Mark Noll complained in “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind” (1995) that an Evangelical mind is an oxymoron. Atheists and agnostics know more about religion than Evangelicals. Even the theologians are in on the act. Evangelical theological journals claim that “Evangelical theology has accepted the collapse of classical foundationalism—the notion that there are, or should be, logical or rational grounds for belief.” Surely, one cannot really blame the pupils, if they have idiots for teachers!

Itinerant preacher Paul Washer, made itinerant because most cannot bear his message more than once, complains of the flag waving and tee shirt brandishing level of commitment. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, once deemed heterodoxical, if not heretical, is now consequently celebrated for his “The Cost of Discipleship” (1937).

One observes in horrid amazement, that despite all the travesties and atrocities committed in the name of torture in the last decade or so, over 80% of self-identified Evangelicals still support the practice in the future, including that “reigning intellectual of the evangelical movement in the U.S.”, Southern Baptist Albert Mohler and the egghead of the New Calvinist movement, Wayne Grudem. The divorce rate amongst self-identified Evangelicals barely differs from those without religious identification.

Genie of the Cross preacher Joel Osteen is now the teeth of Evangelicalism.

What is the reason(s) why the heartland of Evangelicalism has become such a scandalous vacuity?

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The true Christian walk requires the use of both legs; one “rationalistic”, so to speak, concerned with truth and coherence; one “pietistic”, so to speak, concerned with ethics and ethos, principle and passion, in the outer and inner man. One needs both legs to briskly walk to the Celestial City. Most Christians have been prone historically to lean rather heavily on the one or the other leg; and thereby are either limping or hopping arduously on one leg.

So although most of my writings might come across as ‘rationalistic’, there exists another element in me, which has become too acquainted with the motions of the heart and mind and has often heard that small soft voice.

After escaping from decades in various degrees of spiritual warfare and psychosis, I grieved and raged at the bankruptcy of the counsel that could be found in Evangelical circles. I did know not then what I know now. It was not that the help was worthless. The help was worse than worthless.

Having come to some conclusions about how to approach my personal demons, I was dissuaded in the most kindest firmness that I was sadly mistaken by the most reputable preacher in the environs of Orangeville. I was crestfallen, to say the least. More so, it put enough doubt to prevent me from doing the right thing. And thus for another 2.5 years, I returned to an interminable, unmitigated psychic hell, until I found sufficient backing from Scriptures and Evangelical greats of the past to confirm my original conclusions.

Recollecting that deepest pall of horrid imagery, verbalizations and sensations, insanity, paralysis of will, grief and hopeless despair; I wailed on my regular walk to a small creek in Amaranth, how I despised the church. Although I might be the third worst of sinners after Apostle Paul and John Bunyan, I felt that hateful rage of the Four Horsemen of the Atheistic Apocalypse.

The still wee voice neither condemned nor rebuked me. Nay. As clear as the day was, I heard “they do not believe Me”. The third person response was spooky in itself. However, it was the perspicuity of the insightful response that confirmed its source. These flag wavers and tee shirt wavers do not actually believe.

They do not even know what the essence and nature of faith is; namely conducting oneself, internally and externally, upon the premises that one claims to believe. The premises are like passive routers. The person must will to be redirected by those routers.

Most do not even know what is contained in the Bible. And those who do, syncretize whatever assertions, promises, counsels and commands found therein with assertions and counsels found without. In this, they make their rational faculties their true God and arbitrator.

Others await for their psychological state of mind to conform with that which is written before acting on it. In this, they make their psychological and sensory faculties (a.k.a. instincts and moral sense) their true God and arbitrator.

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And they wonder why are the millennials leaving the Evangelical church?

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge;
because you have rejected knowledge,
I reject you from being a priest to me.
And since you have forgotten the law of your God,
I also will forget your children. (Hosea 4:6)

Evangelicals have lost their saltiness. And when the world rains down on them, what they will think as persecution and martyrdom, will be found to rightful judgment from Above through means of the Assyrians.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. (Matthew 5:13)

Reforming the songs sung in vacuous worship services is akin to deploying a Barbie doll’s nurse kit to perform heart surgery.

Called to Love the Whore?

In what is becoming common occurrence, I came across an article in Christianity Today last year, which jarred and irked (“Called to Love the Whore” – possible paywall). It continues to do so. After listing a number of criticisms about the churches, the writer proclaims:

The church is like that unfaithful woman God commanded the prophet Hosea to marry and have children with. The church is like that same errant woman God later commanded Hosea to seek and bring home, her and her children by other lovers. The church is like that unlovable woman God commanded Hosea to love. Yes, the church is like the prostitute Gomer: wayward and compromising, unfaithful to her promises, unlovable.

The bride of Christ? She’s a whore.

Love her.

The immediate image that transpired was that of that great whore that sits on many waters; which is depicted in Revelation. And the final verdict concerning her was:

Alleluia;

Salvation, and glory, and honor, and power, to the Lord our God:
For true and righteous are his judgments:
for he has judged the great whore,
which did corrupt the earth with her fornication,
and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.

Alleluia
And her smoke rose up for ever and ever.

Not feeling the love there; from neither God nor the saints!

The Sixth Tenet of the Calvinist Faith

Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say to you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And you, Capernaum, which are exalted to heaven, shall be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in you, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say to you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for you.¹

I am a 6+ point Calvinist, or Spurgeonist, taking a cue from Paul Washer. This self-identifying label is spoken mostly tongue-in-cheek, in order to disabuse the creedalist version of the doctrine of the Sovereignty of God. Five Point Calvinism or T.U.L.I.P. shares all the inherent problems, when humanity attempts to encapsulate an interconnected framework of Biblical understanding into bullet points; whether creeds are called by that name, or confessions of faith, catechisms or whatever.

NSA and Christianity: The Case for Concern (Part 2)

Part 1 is here.

Possible Reasons for Dearth of Concern in Evangelical Circles

Why has there been such a low level of practicable Christian notice, concern and resistance to the dangers of the Authoritarian Omniscient State? This is particularly peculiar since artifacts abound that American Christians are facing noticeable and increasing depredations from such Power. 

Paul Washer warned of coming persecution.

The church in America is going to suffer so terribly. And we laugh now but they will come after us they will come after our children. They will close the net around us while we are playing soccer mom and soccer dad. While we are arguing over so many little things and mesmerized by so many trinkets, the net even now is closing around you and your children and your grandchildren and it does not cause you to fear.¹

Dilution of the Gospel (Part 1)

I visit the local Tim Horton’s to do a little scribbling, usually on a daily basis. And of course, invariably one will pick up on other people’s conversations. And as a matter of course, the committed Christian, especially pastors, intend that their conversations be overheard as part of their proselytizing efforts. I feel no guilt in eavesdropping on that which is intentioned to be eavesdropped.

The general tenor of the discourse of these two young and still zealous pastors concerned the general state of the Church. And the one line of thought that I picked up essentially went like this. “It is not adultery [or other sins] that is primary problem within the Church; but the passivity and lukewarmness”.

The sentiment derives from the admonition to the Church in Laodicea.

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.¹

In light of an incident the week before, a sermon on Salvation, it stirred my mind into a fury to remark:

The problem is not that ‘Christians’ nowadays are lukewarm and passive. They are lukewarm and passive because they are not Christians; not converted; not regenerated.

And they are not converted/regenerated because of silly preachers (of which I exclude these serious pastors), who dilute and thereby denigrate the true Gospel, which starts off with a solid understanding of Justification that grips, sears and scars the mind/heart; before moving onto sanctification. Otherwise, those sanctification messages, which seem to constitute 95% or more of sermons, merely become moralist adages to prod the stubborn mule of natural men’s hearts. Justification is the moral/legal license by which God can justly justify and grant His Spirit in the regeneration and repair of souls.

It is a general belief in Evangelical circles, amongst both Calvinist and Arminian circles, that a born-again person can never be lost. I am still at a loss as to how Arminian theology can credibly and coherently reach that conclusion. And even as a Calvinist, I must remember that this verity exists on the existential plane that God perceives these realities, lest one become prone to presumption. As Paul Washer declares in his final remarks in Ten Indictments against the Modern Church:

You see, my dear friend, I have great assurance when I study my own conversion, when I discuss it with other men, when I look over the twenty-five years of my pilgrimage with Christ, I have great assurance of having come to know him.

But even now, if I were to depart from the faith, and walk away, and keep going in that direction, into heresy, into worldliness, it could be the greatest of proofs that I never knew him. That the whole thing was a work of the flesh.

I know what I am saying is outstanding to you. You think, oh my, I have never heard such a thing, this is the old…read Pilgrim’s Progress.²

Thus, according to this justifiable understanding of Perseverance of the Saints, if those at the Church in Laodicea, who were passive and lukewarm, could be spit out of My mouth if they fail to repent of such tepidness, they will either repent or they were never truly converted/regenerated. If the congregation needs to be prodded like mules towards virtue and graciousness, it is good indication of the general unregenerate state of the church. Passivity and tepidness are mere symptoms.

NOTES

1.        Revelation 3:15-17

2.        Paul Washer, “Ten Indictments Against the Modern Church in America”, Revival Conference 2008, Transcript accessed at http://media.sermonaudio.com/mediapdf/102308839520.pdf on April 21, 2013, p 61.

The Coming Persecution in America: Paul Washer

That a great persecution of existing Christians in the West, including the U.S. will occur, I have not doubt. A fabulist, pre-Tribulation Rapture requires fantastic elasticity of Biblical interpretation to mould this fanciful speculation into doctrinal orthodoxy. It coagulates from pockets of Scriptural mist, more vaporous than those justifying the ever-virginal quality of Mary, the mother of Jesus’ brothers and sisters (Matthew 13:55). Even the Mormon doctrine of baptizing for the dead has clearer outlines of justification (1 Corinthians 15:29); even if there exists only one verse, which gives that birth.

It is not an issue of whether there will a resurrection of the dead and rising of those living, when Christ appears. It is a question of chronology and number of Second Comings. It is a question of fidelity to an interpretative key in Scriptures; that a doctrine can be garnered, only through a minimum of two or three clear Scriptural witnesses (2 Corinthians 13:1). I have read too much Christian history. I have observed too much irrationality, too many absurdities, travesties and atrocities, originating from the creative innovations of peasant seers and vainglorious theologians.

The fluff that is proffered to support this doctrinal contention defies integrity and rationality. Serious persecution of Christians is proliferating around the world. Tentative forays are occurring in Europe. Initial probes are occurring in Canada. It is astonishing Exceptionalist vanity that the American Church should avoid that which 95% of the world is experiencing.

Nevertheless, even if one holds the pre-Tribulation Rapture position, it might be prudent not to hold the position too tenaciously. If it comes to pass, well and good. But if it does not come to pass, one might not be prepared for that any “hell that’s going to break loose on us”. If the doctrine has vaporous foundations; the basis for any anathemas against those who doubt it floats in total ether. Requirement of that belief in order to be a Christian and even for church membership, adds “mental works” to faith in Christ.

Where I might detour from Paul Washer’s warning, involves perhaps speculative eschatology and sociological prophecy in the light of political theory, psychology, history and Scriptures. I don’t have, at all, a bad record in this sideline. I would not dare consider myself a prophet of Biblical proportions. But while some Southern Baptist radio station owner is astonished at recent turn of events about same-sex rights, one of my essays in Grade 13 journalism class (1977-8), saw the writing on the wall on the coattails of the Black civil rights movement. This is a good decade before the self-interested Andrew Sullivan was given credit for that prediction.

Jefferson Bethke, Religion and the Evangelical Inquisitors

A year ago, a young Turk, Spoken Word poet Jefferson Bethke, puts out a winner evangelistic YouTube video, which has garnered in excess of 24 million hits to date. And the response from an outfit called the Gospel Coalition, a self-appointed Evangelical ‘Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’? No less than three of its regular bloggers saw fit to take Bethke to task on points of minutiae. To his credit of his person and profit to his ministry, Bethke responded with humble supplication to assuage the ego of one of these Guardians of the Faith.

The fiery darts that originate from within Christendom were more frequent and with understandably more sting than those from outside. If one is largely naive of the state of Christendom, one is prone not to place another shield against that direction.

About the actual critique though, I’ll be honest, there were times after the poem came out that I just started to crumble. The pain of the critiques was too painful (which I talk about later)… But the tone, words, and down right vitriol from fellow brothers and sisters in the faith have crushed me. I’m a 22 year old dude who has only been out of college 6 months, and who has only been walking with Jesus for a few years. I am beyond thankful to the older godly men who chose to pick up the phone and find ways to contact me privately, before discussing me publicly. I personally had to stop reading and trying to follow the blogs because Jesus showed me pretty quickly it wasn’t healthy for my heart (whether praise or critique). The ones I did come across stung. Some hardly even dealt with my content, but wrote more about my character, my salvation (or lack thereof), my looks, my poetry, etc. Part of me was extremely hurt, while part of me started to really wonder how blog posts fit into the words of Jesus in Matthew 12:36.¹