The following post is now five years old. America's pulpits have not awakened since this was first posted. Christianity in America is complicated. Liberal churches have abandoned the gospel of Jesus Christ while evangelical churches, for the most part, have relegated the cross to a subordinate role under a much more effective tool for church growth....just about anything other than the cross of Calvary. Will the latest horrors wake our pulpits up? I don't think so. Entering the pulpit with penitential tears for America and pleas for God's mercy tend to make one appear vulnerable....that's not a good tool for church growth. Preaching "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified"....is coming up on April 1st....Easter....and will then be set aside again to concentrate on the more important stuff. Proclaiming the "radiance of His glory" and "the image of the invisible God" in whom ""all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form"....and also His coming "with great power and glory"....will be referred to from time to time....if circumstances permit.
The following post is political and temporal yes, but only in as much as we are citizens of a nation who God blessed for a purpose, which may very well have completed its course.
All Is Lost....Or Is it.....January 2013:
It was heroic at times and trying at times but always set apart be 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 as great political minds filled the void and 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 the 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 American, 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 was 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 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 not 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. (and today is the make America great again evangelical) Our pulpits, no longer capable of preaching Christ, preached whatever they thought would bring people in. The Democrat 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 our history is replete with empires that fell while its 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 blessings of capitalism became the god of capitalism and then a scourge of globalization. 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.
