Tall Hats And Gold Watch Fobs

There's a scene from Ted Turner's Gettysburg where Brigadier General John Buford, played by Sam Elliot, scans rocky heights and farm land that would in one day become a battlefield and literally spews out these words as he foresees carnage in the Union army if the politicians and generals play their war games as usual, "afterwards men in tall hats and gold watch fobs will thump their chests and say 'what a brave charge it was'..... I've never seen anything as brutally clear as this.... Its as if I can actually see the blue troops in one long bloody moment....as if  it were already done....as if tomorrow already happened and there ain't nothin you can do about it..."  He went on to lay a plan to change that, "We can block that road till the main body gets here, and deprive the enemy of the high ground!" There are a significant number of Americans who feel the same way about our nation today. The Republican elite, or Republican Establishment are the "men with tall hats and gold watch fobs" who are playing their political games while bursting forth all around us have been venomous attacks on our Constitution, our national defense, our financial stability, the American Creed and the very essence of our being, that being a nation blessed by God, and packs of wolves split us and devour those that did not have the foresight to prepare themselves for such an onslaught. The high ground in this coming election, should the Lord even permit us to get there, is at the feet of Jesus Christ, humbly prostrating ourselves for thinking we could do anything at all, let alone succeed and flourish as we had in the past, without reverence to and dependence upon Him. The GOP elite seek just the opposite. They avoid the One who guided those ships to these shores so many years ago, who gave us the perseverance to blaze out upon the frontier, who gave wisdom to men in founding a nation, who in spite of our waywardness kept us together and strengthened us as Nazism, Fascism, Communism and all sorts of totalitarianism swept this beautiful ball hanging in the expanse of His universe. This is the answer they give...shun Him, and those who trust Him, and make our own paths! I easily turn to those scripted words given to General Buford for unless we block that road we will lose the high ground of our calling and America will no longer exist in its present form. We will have let down our God, our country and our children. The ballot box is only one target of our prayer and petition and it would do us well to remember David's words in Psalm 18:1-3:

I  love you, O Lord, my strength.
The Lord is my rock my fortress and my deliverer,
my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge,
my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold.

Cargo Unspoiled?

August 26, 2009. The cultural revolution of the 1960s spawned a number of very different movements. One of them was the Jesus Movement sometimes described as Jesus Freaks on the West Coast. Hippies were being baptized and some very legitimate churches had their beginning. Obviously, it came with its own music, Larry Norman being one of the first. Kris Kristofferson wrote a song called One Day At A Time that was recorded by a few country artists and eventually by Christian singer Christy Lane, whose album I bought in 1981 for the song. Amy Grant, Don Francisco, Dion and B. J. Thomas (yes, Dion and B. J. Thomas) and many other Christian artists came afterwards. It was a heady time, the early 1980s, for new Christians in America. There was a little bit of Jesus Freak in most of us. As the 1980s moved into the 90s, James Dobson stepped into the spotlight. Most Christians were concerned with secular humanism's intrusion into our schools. This all changed on September 11th, 2001. James Dobson contributed a lot, and continues to contribute, to families,and the patriot that evolved after 9/11 at least knows and proclaims that without God, we have no hope as a nation. One cannot go their whole Christian life only saying Jesus loves you and asking Brother, are you saved. We have to be able to explain in depth, if called upon. There was another movement parallel to the Jesus Movement. The time period is similar. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was causing waves over liberal theology in the Anglican church in England, J. I. Packer's book Knowing God from 1973 became a classic and the emergence of Presbyterian pastor/teacher/theologian R. C. Sproul (born 1939 in Pittsburgh, www.ligonier.org ) brought the intellect back into its proper place in the Christian life. All of these people, in both movements, had an influence on me as did numerous others. This is not an attempt at an historical account, but only personal observations. The question of the hour is where are the churches of today headed. There are far more dubious signs than encouraging ones but the embers that remain are hot and the dangers of the day provide a very dry forest should God breathe on us once again.

         

Understanding the history of the church is important. Without it each new generation would consider itself the latest and the greatest to come on the scene. With even a cursory reading of what transpired previously one would becomed humbled...over the challenges that were already faced and met head on, over the ever-present difficulties the church will always face, over persecutions and over the obvious hand of God guiding a church that often tended to go astray. American Christianity 2012 did not appear out of a vacuum. It was forged in fire, at times rescued from a raging sea, at times severely chastised and at times used mightily by God. It is our race now, for the baton has been passed. Those gone on before watch and say, "Look at us...learn from our mistakes, rush to the fountains that we were refreshed in, take advantage of having our histories set before you." The following is but a short and very incomplete synopsis, from my eyes, as to how you and I came to run on the same team, brothers and sisters in Christ, weak but strong...not in numbers but in Him.

         The frontier in America was slowly moving westward. Itinerant ministers serviced the small congregations with the Gospel of Jesus Christ but with only enough doctrine that fit into their saddlebags. Back East, the seminaries battled something more dangerous that Indians, a dead Christianity imported from Europe. The nation headed to Civil War. Christians on both sides fought for either the Union or their states in trying to leave it. The winning side would determine where the church would go and that bastion of liberalism in America resided in the land of the victors.
         With the Civil War over, America was free to grow with full use of its bounteous resources. The church became very proper and the remnant of Biblical Christianity were now outsiders, whether on the prairies, in the mountains or in the few seminaries and churches of the east that remained true to the Gospel. Eventually, all kinds of mystical religions sprang up from false teachers who thought themselves directly indued with knowledge from on high. True Christians on the farms and in the towns beyond the big cities were labelled "fundamentalists," and "troublemakers" in the Eastern population centers.
         Wars ravaged the world and Communism sought to put the final nail in the coffin of Christianity. Out of the chaos of agnosticism was born the "Evangelical." Refrigerators and television sets replaced tanks and jeeps on the assembly lines. Prosperity freed the imaginative preachers to pursue glorious doctrine founded in the mysticism of decades past. Liberalism built the American style cathedrals of beautiful stone, tall steeples and great red doors entered by large congregations of only the most respected of the community.
         The youth had revolted as war returned. Both the new Evangelical and the liberal churchgoer languished as the plague of Beatles chewed at the potential of the young American mind but the remnant of true Christianity survived, as it always does. Great minds, part Puritan and part Geneva, trained a cohort that would one day, a decade later, work towards a reformation.
         Out of the rabble came "freaks".....Jesus Freaks who would grow into a powerful force of their own. The Fundamentalist had returned and the Evangelical entered the halls of our Congress and the stage was set. The Reformation minded and the Evangelical waged war on ignorance from two fronts with the liberal who turned ultra aggressive in attempting to, once and for all, banish this God who would not keep His proper place in society.
         And so here we are. What does tomorrow bring? Should the Lord of Glory tarry, future generations will either look back on us and learn from our mistakes, look to us and be encouraged, or ignore us altogether and navigate raging seas with no compass, no maps and no hope to arrive safely in harbor with, as the Puritan once wrote, "hull unbreached, cargo unspoiled."

Now I'm A Believer!

Most people are aware that Davey Jones of Monkees fame died a few days ago at the age of 66. I listened for a little while to a tribute on Cousin Brucie's XM radio program and one of their hits that he played was, Now I'm A Believer. The refrain caught my attention in a way that it never had before:

Then I saw her face, now I'm a believer.
Not a trace of doubt in my mind.
I'm in love, I'm a believer!
I couldn't leave her if I tried.


Now when this song came out in November of 1966 I was a junior in an all boys, Catholic high school. The war was raging in Vietnam. Almost 400,000 of our military had already arrived (I would show up a little less than four years later) and we were bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail heavily. Back home, Ronald Reagan was running for Governor of California. As for me...I was a daydream believer, scribbling girls' names on the cover of my books instead of paying attention to Brother Michael, then going home and playing touch football for a few hours before sitting down in time to watch Gilligan's Island on CBS while the Monkees were a couple of clicks over on NBC. Who would guess that such a budding genius chose to stay up long enough to watch I Spy instead of getting enough sleep to be attentive in the following day's classes? It was definitely the year for pop music...1966... every bit as much a drug to the youth as any of the tech-toys of today.

When I heard those lyrics anew yesterday, my thoughts immediately turned to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This type of thought transference isn't all together new to me for on occasion I would listen to a 6os song and see the lyrics as an invitation from the enemy of Jesus Christ (one can't say Satan today and be taken seriously,) to the young listener. For example, this one from The Doors ...Light My Fire (another 1966 hit):

The time to hesitate is through
No time to wallow in the mire
Try now we can only lose
And our love become a funeral pyre

Interestingly, to me anyway, Jim Morrison died of a drug overdose in Paris and I just now watched Midnight in Paris, the new Woody Allen film where the main character at first dreams of the golden age of Gay Paree in the 1920s (spoiler here!) only to see that there is no golden age. Meanwhile, back in Special Dogville, I commented on that very topic in my last blog! But I digress as the phrase goes. My message for today...finally...is, one cannot love Christ, nor believe in Him, without seeing Him. Not a vision, but in truth as written in His Word. Once one does, through the Holy Spirit, one cannot but love Him! One can profess faith, become a minister, even win souls to Him without ever having seen Him (for religious faith is powerful even when it is in false religion, and don't we know that today from the front pages of our newspapers.)  It's the Word of God preached, proclaimed and read that God uses as a conduit for salvation.  If one sees Christ then one would also have to see oneself, and our dire predicament today, as sinners hopelessly adrift in a life leading to judgement. If one sees Christ... one sees the cross... one feels the burden of who we are and one sees the blessed promise. Indeed, one cannot see all of this and not believe and one cannot believe without truly seeing who Jesus Christ is. So, the Monkees hit, Now I'm A Believer, with Mickey Dolenz singing lead (and written by Neil Diamond by the way,) envisioned a man falling in love after seeing the object of that love. I know the same feeling in the love for my wife, but I also know it in the love for our Savior, our Redeemer, and our King:

Then I saw His face, now I'm a believer
.............Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight. Then he rose and was baptised. (Acts 9: 17,18 ESV)
Not a trace of doubt in my mind
I'm in love, I'm a believer
I couldn't leave Him if I tried
..............but I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that He is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me. (2 Tim 1:12 ESV)