Tempests And Doldrums

         May God have mercy upon our nation. From small vessels bearing cramped pilgrims we developed into an empire. We surpassed every empire this world has ever seen in not only power and might but in knowledge and scientific skills. More than that even as God used us a conduit for the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every corner of the earth. We fought Him all along the way, this is true, but we were a very large piece in His grand design and he would use His rod and His staff on many occasions to both chastise us and to gently but forcefully bring us back.
          As I sit here in my study and pause, my eyes lift to a photograph on canvas on the wall in front of me. The camera is on the teak deck. The thin rails give the impression of a much older vessel. I stare right into the sea as billowing waves heave the ship at about a 40 degree list. Clouds dominate the sky but the sun found an opening as the shutter was clicked. In the foreground, barley visible, are rolling hills where possibly a safe harbor awaits. I look at this photo often and wonder in awe at the power of God's seas and the safe harbor of His grace.
           We in America are on a ship. It may as well be anchored in Boston Harbor next to the USS Constitution for it no longer guards our freedoms and liberties. I've related this story before. Fifteen years ago, sitting in a classroom of mostly younger fellow members of our cohort working for a degree in Higher Education, we were discussing the issues of the day as they related to colleges and universities. I remember standing up for emphasis and warning that a division was coming within America. Two different peoples were emerging, two different methods for thinking, two opposing opinions on what truth is and what it is not. If anyone agreed they did not speak up but unfortunately I was right. Our American Creed is not even a memory. Our heritage is almost spat upon. Our traditions are deemed useless in a world that mocks God.
       As it often seems to happen as I write, the XM radio plays something that relates to the topic at hand and in this instance it's classical music and Edward Elgar's Coronation March written for the coronation of Great Britain's King George V in 1911. There is no pomp and circumstance in this piece. The music seems to roll along with the hills and the ship in my photograph. 1911! A new century was underway, a century that would hurl England into two World Wars within three decades. Bombed.....but never into submission......no, it would lose in other ways, even as we are losing now.
       Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, had warned them but they would not listen. Their pulpits were not vigilant and the gospel was being modernized. Today, over a century later, England is surrendering. Surrendering to confusion. Awash in chaos, their heritage trampled underfoot by foreigners who take advantage of a malnourished liberal tradition; they fight back but there is no Churchill to rally them, no Thatcher to prod them and face down the enemy's threats and lies, and although many faithful preachers-no Spurgeon...Ryle...or Martyn Lloyd-Jones to call down fire from on high on their (our) arrogance!
       Some see the world today as simply a new paradigm, that the world will go on. Others see it as progress but all the evidence, if allowed to be submitted, shows a crumbling Western Civilization.... puzzle pieces added almost every day where a picture of our future is beginning to appear. It's one of a dystopian society ruled by Herbert Spencer's 'survival of the fittest' and birthed by Charles Darwin's On The Origin Of Species. In the background, behind the robotic movements and hollow faces of the people, above the gay-colored storefronts that have absolutely nothing to sell that can enliven that people or that can inform, and movie theaters with films that preach the chimera of a nation adapting without God, is an onrushing sandstorm obliterating all vision and discernment....a tsunami that sucks in the surf before it exposing a soft underbelly of a nation that once acknowledged, reverenced and relied upon its benefactor and at least tried to navigate by His written Word.
         Twelve hours from now men and women will fill the pulpits of America. Well-exercised healthy specimens, pastors of the First Church of the Fit and Buff, tolerant of everything except that written Word; they will smile and preach peace oblivious to two previous millennia of pulpits that extolled the glories of Christ, warned of hellfire and offered salvation bought on a bloody cross.
        Not all pulpits have decayed. Many of God's ministers shed tears throughout the week and reach out as if to grab the hem of the cloak of their Saviour seeking power from on high to awaken those given into their charge. Seeking a revival, even a reformation and seeking mercy, their work is not in vain. Christians in America are as strong and faithful as they ever were but far, far fewer in percentages. Almost isolated, often ridiculed, sometimes persecuted, they sense that the King of Kings is mounted, that His mighty angels are silent, awaiting the voice of thunder that beckons them forward. May God have mercy upon America. May He use us one last time, according to His will, for His purposes....and for His glory alone!