All Is Lost....Or Is It?

It was heroic at times and trying at times but always set apart by a common creed.…life as an American in these United States of America. God blessed this endeavor from the beginning as pilgrims left their homelands where tyranny had enveloped even the church and they saw this new land of America as a new beginning for them and an extension of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the new world. The long distance from the heavy hand of the King of England encouraged them to see beyond being merely a colony or an extension of England to being a nation unto themselves. Liberty is a powerful force and freedom empowers one to reach beyond what would otherwise be available. In the mid-eighteenth century, after the First Great Awakening, the Gospel began to wane while great political minds filled the void and a secular government…that nonetheless proclaimed its dependence upon God…. came forth. Economic growth followed as the frontier was conquered but we faced an enormous stumbling block, the separation of two peoples in two different geographic areas over the issues of state’s rights and slavery. God’s heavy hand of judgment came upon a nation that had forgotten who had bestowed upon it its blessings. We turned to Him momentarily but a brand new frontier of industrial growth drew us away again only this time our educational institutions followed. An already weakened church was at that time under full scale attack from European theological liberalism. God’s judgments now began to come upon the entire world in wars and economic collapse. We retained the sense of being Americans, of being free and of having liberty and defending the liberties of others while the Gospel went throughout the world... and then we hit our peak. We were the most powerful nation on this earth both economically and militarily. We had a creed that bound us together as Americans. We had heroes and causes and confidence. There’s a scene in the classic Marlon Brando film The Wild One where a girl asks the young Brando what he is rebelling against. His answer was “What do you got?” This became the hidden mantra of the 60s generation…my generation. Everything was available to us and little of it was good. America found itself in smaller wars, trying to do what it had done before but the mantle was gone. We were then a lost generation when a former“B” actor in Hollywood revived the memory of that which was good in us but the rebellious generation of the 60s had produced our college professors and they in turn trained our media, the source of most information and news. Our creed that once bound us together was being hacked away at. We were now not only ignoring our heritage, we were attacking it, ashamed of it. Old heroes are old news. Heroes today are created for a purpose irrespective of what they might have done…good or bad. We were no longer “one” as a people but groups, each one out only for themselves. God had watched all of this. The Billy Graham evangelical became the Ralph Reed evangelical which ultimately became the Karl Rove evangelical. Our pulpits, no longer capable of preaching Christ, preached whatever they thought would bring people in. The Democratic Party fell first, taken over by Progressives and then Communists. The Republican Party fell next, taken over by political machinery without a soul. Our country essentially lies in ruins, the demolition notice just hasn’t been served. Yet most of the people party on but that's not unusual, for history is replete with empires that fell while it’s people were oblivious to its nearing demise. All is lost! Or is it? From the vantage point of observation and reality it is. Common sense and truth are utterly impotent in the postmodern mind. The blessing of capitalism became the God of capitalism and then a scourge of profiteering. We pray to it but it does not answer. Our culture is in shambles. We have disasters ahead and we may as well know it beforehand. Fill in the blanks on what they might be. God’s hand had departed from us long before we even heard the name Barack Hussein Obama. If His will is to awaken us one more time it will not be within a political party but over all the land and upon all those who suddenly see what we have done...and who we have become....a people who have forsaken their God. Should God open our eyes and revive us there is no power on earth that can stop it. Those on the outside will utterly abhor what they see happening. This is our hope. It always has been our hope. Apparently we have to reach bottom to see this and we are not there yet. May God have mercy upon us once again and do so entirely for His glory alone. I have often in this blog of four years added a Puritan prayer compiled in Arthur Bennett's book The Valley Of Vision. This is not only how Puritans prayed but how they thought. We can learn a great deal from them for they were closer to God then we are. Please consider the mind of whoever wrote the following prayer for the names were not considered necessary to add:

Lord God Almighty'
I ask not to be enrolled amongst the earthly great and rich,
but to be numbered with the spiritually blessed.
Make it my present, supreme, persevering concern
to obtain those blessings which are
spiritual in their nature,
eternal in their continuance,
satisfying in their possession.
Preserve me from a false estimate of the whole
or a part of my character;
May I pay regard to
my principles as well as my conduct,
my motives as well as my actions.
Help me
never to mistake the excitement of my passions
for the renewing of the Holy Spirit,
never to judge my religion by occasional
impressions and impulses, but by my
constant and prevailing disposition.
May my heart be right with thee,
and my life as becometh the gospel.
May I maintain a supreme regard to another
and better world,
and feel and confess myself a stranger
and a pilgrim here.
Afford me all the direction, defense, support,
and consolation my journey hence requires,
and grant me a mind stayed upon thee.
Give me a large abundance of the supply of
the Spirit of Jesus,
that I may be prepared for every duty,
love thee in all my mercies,
submit to thee in every trial,
trust thee when walking in darkness,
and have peace in thee amidst life's changes.
Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief
and uncertainties.

Should God...Deem It Fitting

         Should God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, deem it fitting to move upon our collective hearts once again, to convict us as to what we have become, to open our eyes to the ideology that has bewitched much of our nation, there would be no power on this earth that could stop it! The media could not hide nor distort what would be happening. The academics in their ivory towers could do no more than flail their arms. Hollywood would ply its trade to empty seats and celebrities of any and all spheres would be ignored. Left to ourselves we cannot change the direction that our nation is going.     
         We usually emphasize that second part of Lord Acton's famous quote "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely" but it's the first part that we are dealing with at this time. Whether it's the media or universities, legislatures or government bureaucracies, or corporations or individuals....power in the wrong hands stifles dissent, governs without accountability and generally bullies its way by using that power to retain that power. We are dealing with an uninformed and easily distracted public. Greed and arrogance filled the void as reverence for God receded.
         We are reaping what we have sown. Pulpits proclaim peace when there is no peace. The cross of Christ is rarely preached. Truth is now but a variable. Our Constitution has become a liability to perceived freedoms, the Bible but a barnacle on our Ship of State. God has stripped us of our suit of armor but in His infinite wisdom we can now kneel and therein is our true power. Christians need first to come together, not for a football game...not to play Apples To Apples... not for pot luck, but to pray.....pray for wisdom and discernment, for mercies unmerited, for humble and wise leaders and all for one purpose, to place the glory at the feet of Him who blessed this nation from its beginnings. And as I have written often, should He refrain from granting us mercy, it would be His will, perfect in every way, with all glory being His forever and ever!

From Russia....With Love

I've related this story at least once in the past but not with nearly as much information, for this last attempt to research this young man I'm about to tell you about finally found results. I couldn't remember his name, or the title of the book that he wrote, only a description of how he went from being a persecutor of Christians in the former Soviet Union to a new Christian in North America speaking of his past deeds. It turns out that the title of the book was The Persecutor and his name was Sergei Kourdakov. It was 1973 when I first read this book. I was 23 and this young Russian would have been a year younger. I had just got out of the army and was attending Pitt, while this young man's body had been laid to rest in a Washington D. C. cemetery, his funeral conducted by Richard Halverson who would later become the chaplain of the United States Senate. I would have been open to a lot of things in those days. I flirted with Transcendental Meditation and Zen while Christianity flirted with me and Sergei Kourdakov's book was one of the ways it did so! My recent research filled in a lot of the gaps in my memory and here is the synopsis of Sergei Kourdakov's story: a young Russian orphan works his way up to the Konsomol, a young communists league, and then the KGB primarily because of his athletic, intellectual and leadership abilities. His primary mission is to violently break up Bible studies among Russian believers. He does not like it for it appears to him that God is with these believers which would make him against God, should there be one. He tries to run away... like Jonah. While a naval officer, he jumps ship in the cold North Pacific and barely reaches the Canadian shore. He then becomes one of the Evangelicals that he formerly persecuted. Some say that he was exploited and became a prize for some in the West with his testimony of persecuting Christians in the USSR followed by his subsequent conversion. Indeed, he may have been thrust into a ministry too soon but none of this takes away from a strength used for evil turned to a courage used for the proclamation of the Gospel. He put his story into book form and in it he tells of warnings he received from the KGB to stop what he was doing or he would meet with a final accident. The book was published posthumously for he was found dead in what was eventually ruled a gun accident. Something stayed with me from that book but this blog isn't only about Sergei Kourdakov. It's about you (hopefully) and me. There is nothing in this world, in this entire existence, that compares with trusting in Jesus Christ, proclaiming His majesty and experiencing His mercies, love, forgiveness and redemption!!! Are there questions? Certainly. I could write a book and you could also, on the things that we do not understand. What is infinitely more important is that He has written a book on the things that we can understand, not in our worldly minds but our regenerated minds renewed as often as we go to His Word. Many in America, and I'm one, dwell often on stories about our military heroes, about the ultimate sacrifice of some and the continued suffering of others, but there are also heroes of the Christian faith that are suffering extreme persecutions at the very moment that I write and that you read this. They are the ones that young Sergei Kourdakovs persecute today throughout the world and the ones whose persecution I am an accomplice to when I fail, as I often do, to remember them in fervent prayer. My prayer at this time would be something like this: God have mercy on me for I know who you are. I know your glories and majesty and have all the freedoms to proclaim your name yet I fail to live up to that knowledge and utilize that freedom. I know that I am the least, the most unworthy, yet you chose to have mercy upon me. Let me now lift up to you those who do not live in a country where they can freely worship you and permit me to tell others of the grace you so freely offer. The day may be coming when we here in America will be in their situation. Maybe it is the coward in me that says God have mercy on America...maybe it isn't, but as sure as the warning that KGB agents gave to that brave young Russian, there is a warning to us, stand up for Christ in America today or there will be no America to stand up for tomorrow!

A Rapidly Unravelling America

A Rapidly Expanding Unravelling

Have you noticed the unravelling? This is no joke and I'm not trying to be cute. Have you noticed the rapidly expanding unravelling of our country, our government and our society over even the last few months? I'm not talking about the unravelling circa 2011 rather acute dystopia 2012. Our spiraling downward cannot go on much longer without impact. How we will handle that impact is the more pertinent question for today. The following blog is from this past January.

America Unravelling

Charles Spurgeon wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now. America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down. Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate. It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us? Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.

The Forty Year Petition

The Forty Year Petition

The following blog is from March 24th of last year:

I sit here and just wonder what percentage of Americans are becoming unnerved as the days wear on and chaos seemingly develops in so many areas of our society. Surely even the most skeptical can see that we are in much more than just another economic downturn, that we are dealing with catastrophe and not just difficulties in our foreign policy, that we on the verge of anarchy followed by tyranny rather than just political division, that we are becoming not only increasingly violent but suicidal, that we are almost breathless at times at what transpires on our news and in what is supposed be the Executive Branch of the United States of America... a Constitutional Republic. I have to believe that whatever the percentage is, it is increasing but I don't want to get too excited because I've felt this way before. I thought that surely the American public would overwhelmingly reject the Clintons but it didn't happen. I hoped that 9/11 would unite America...but it didn't. I thought that the economic collapse might convince Americans that Wall Street was not going to be the answer to our problems...it didn't happen, and I thought that the vast majority of Americans would be outraged that its Constitution was being dismantled article by article but as of yet, it hasn't happened. We have all probably seen a rope that was supporting something begin to look dangerously taut only to unravel and break before our very eyes. We are beyond a weakened rope holding up America and are in the unravelling process. This great empire is in its last days. My prayer has consistently been for God to allow 40 more years...one more period where we would be a source of stability in the world, one more generation added to a storied past of spreading freedom and liberty, one more testimony to the rest of the world that God upholds nations who trust in Him. I hope only for 40 years because of human nature. A couple decades of trusting solely in Jesus Christ and we surely would begin to fall away again. Pessimism, you say? I look at it as the opposite for it is only God's mercy and grace that permitted the world to reach this stage and God is as real today as when He, time and again, humbled and blessed repentant Israel.... as when He sent His church throughout the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.... as when the Reformation of the 16th century exploded in the hearts and minds of peoples and nations.... as when he guided the Mayflower to Plymouth Rock and as when He crushed the occult Nazi Third Reich. We will turn to Him as a nation...should He will it. And if we do not then that is also His will, also glorious as it would be His plan and maybe...maybe...a precursor to His Second Coming in power and glory, the fulfillment of all of history and the final triumph of good over evil. As bleak as the future of our nation is it is within one word of restoration and that word would be spoken within the Godhead. If you are not overly concerned right now, any words that I write would surely seem ridiculous. If you are, then we are two of hopefully many who are petitioning God for one more manifestation of His power in mercy and blessings upon our nation...and therefore the world.

Who Knew?

Who Knew?

One Act Play...sort of. (click on View Web Version for the iPhone)

Betty and John Hunter are in their car talking about the couple that they barely know save for a lengthy conversation while seated together at the wedding of the daughter of a mutual friend. Tom and Jen Ayers invited them over the following Saturday, for their children did attend the same elementary school and it seemed like the proper thing to do. Betty and John cheerfully accepted for it also seemed like the right thing to do.

Betty: Where's your smile John?
John: This is my smile.
Betty: I know better than that.
John: I know. I like Tom. It's just....It's all hunting and sports with him.
Betty: What about me? Jen is like... almost a chef....everything is food, food, food. (pausing) But
they were nice enough to ask us over.
John: I just hope that I don't have to look at more pictures of Tom crouching over a dead deer.

Meanwhile at the home of Tom and Jen Ayers.

Jen: Tom! Try to smile. They're nice people. It's not going to be that bad.
Tom: Jen. I know they are nice but we have absolutely nothing in common. John's a contractor.
Going to Lowe's is like sitting in the dentist's chair to me. And Betty...Her conversation is all
triglycerides, blood pressure and vitamins while I haven't been to a doctor in my life.
Jen: (Peeking through the drapes as a light flashed outside) They're here...be nice.
Tom: I'm always nice.

Betty and John enter with a bottle of wine as a gift.

Jen: Thank-you. Ooh, Tears of Gettysburg. It's one of my favorite wines!
Tom: Hi John. How's everything?
John: Hi Tom. Fine. How's everything with you?
Tom: Good.
Betty: It's just about to rain. My Arthritis always acts up in damp weather.
Jen: Well we have dry heat. Maybe you won't notice?

Jen served up a beautiful (there's no other word for it) vegetable plate and dip. and Tom didn't have to show pictures for a mounted deer head was hanging a foot over John's head at the table. Tom felt that he had to comment.

John: Wow! Get that this year Tom?
Tom: Yeah....ten point. I was only an hour in the woods.
Jen: This dip is great Betty.
Betty: I'll give you the recipe Jen and walk you step by step through it.
Tom: What have you been up to John?
John: I'm remodelling the kitchen. The house is a disaster area right now.

An hour into the visit and John's complete design was laid out for Betty and Tom. Tom then started talking about his golf game. John just nodded not having the slightest idea what a slice was. Jen took Betty into the kitchen and supplied Betty with pen and paper to write down the steps in making the dip while Betty analysed the ingredients to see how the dip would affect her triglycerides. They retreated to the living room and Tom was just happy to get out from under the mounted dear head.

John: Whew! It's 9:30. Maybe we ought to be heading home Betty?
Betty: Well, church in the morning. We go to a 9 AM service.
Tom: Where do you go to church?
John: First Reformed Presbyterian in Lawrenceville. How about you?
Jen: We go to First Baptist right here!
Betty: Do you have a good preacher there?
Tom: Betty, he preaches the Cross of Christ every week. I don't know what I'd do without it.
John: That's unusual Tom...preaching Christ.....We're blessed too. I don't think that we have ever
had a Lord's Day where the Gospel wasn't preached. We had spent five years in a church
previous to First Reformed Presbyterian where the Gospel was never really preached, the
name of Jesus was everywhere but nothing about our lost condition and His atoning work
work on the cross.
Jen: Hey! Can you two stay a little bit longer. I'd like to go into the den and show you Tom's book
shelves. Have you ever heard of Michael Horton?
John: Jen, we were on a White Horse Inn cruise in April and had conversations with all of those
guys! I'd like to see the books. Got any decaf coffee?
Tom: It'll only take a few minutes. What about getting up early?
Betty: Ah...we both had afternoon naps today...Right John?
John: I'm not tired at all.

John and Betty spent and additional two and a half hours at the homes of their new friends.

In the car on the way home.

John. Ya know. I really like Tom. He's a wonderful brother in Christ.
Betty: When do you think the kitchen will be done so we can ask them over?
John: The kitchen doesn't have to be done. I already asked Tom about coming over next week. You
Don't mind do you?
Betty: No! We'll just put some plastic up over the doorway to the kitchen.

Meanwhile back at Tom and Jen's.

Jen: How about that Tom. I just love Betty. What a wonderful time tonight!
Tom: I was wrong about John. Yeah he has those interests but I never knew that they paled next
to his Christian faith.
Jen: Who knew
Tom: Yeah. Who knew?

December 25, 2012