The only thing that I knew when I came into the faith....'started my pilgrimage' is also a good way of putting it....this back in 1982....was that I was an egregious sinner who God had mercy upon....and that Jesus Christ....who I had my whole life as a Catholic bowed my head everytime that I said His name.....was in fact real.
I came into the faith with my own personality. I was a reader interested in all kinds of things. I had just completed two books in short order....Ernest Becker's 1973 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction....The Denial Of Death....and Eric Hoffer's small classic The True Believer....both powerful works. In the film Annie Hall....Alvy Singer had given Becker's book as a gift to Annie. Hillary Clinton had recommended Hoffer's book to her staff during the 2016 campaign. Both books were highlighted throughout....Becker's torn in two so that I could carry half of it with me in my pocket.
I could list a dozen other similar secularism best-sellers that I had read over the past decade. God I'm sure prepared all that for me in order to lead me to a Christian bookstore.....(never been in one before)....browsing.....to pick up Josh McDowell's classic Christian apologetic....Evidence That Demands A Verdict. God gave me the best the world could offer on the topic....and then one book to dispute it....which led me to the Bible....and my life went another way.
Because of these interests I almost immediately went into Christian apologetics....the defense of all Christian truth. I focused on 'Christian cults'....sects that claimed to be Christian but denied the essential truths therein. I spent years in this area....and ran an ad in our local newspaper in an attempt to talk to people who were being wooed by the Jehovah Witnesses.
All of the above is a preface to tell you that what we are witnessing in America concerning Donald Trump is pure textbook cultism. I watched yet another rally yesterday. It's like archaeologists finding the Rosetta Stone in that it is right there in front of us....the evidence and the methods and the psychological "systematic and forcible" indoctrination of many people who wind up defending that which beforehand they would have passionately argued against.
I observe this in evangelicals....Christians....all the time. Their minds were over years worked upon by a grandmaster of deception.....with tried and true methods going way back....but particularly to the 1930s in Germany. Their countenance changes....and some are ready to fight for....what their Lord and Savior warned of....a false prophet and a deceiver.
I'm kind of at a standstill right now....even with forty years of off and on research....at times as last evening....just watching in amazement how the human mind can so easily be taken in. Christian pastors are either fully recruited....or they live in fear that someone in their congregations might ask them if they are going to vote for Trump....and if not told that they are then voting for Biden.
This is all part of God's perfect plan.....of which we will find out....and rejoice in if we remain faithful to the gospel of Jesus Christ. If Trump does regain the White House it 'may' be concerning him as a mortal political "head wound"....miraculously healed....and the whole world will stand back amazed. If the church wakes up....enough of it anyway....and Trump loses....the 'right'....joining in with the 'left'.....may unify in at least their contempt for the historical and true and powerful Christian faith?
There is a difference between a politician with which everything about him is opposed to God.....this being Biden....where no one in any evangelical church even remotely takes serious any mention of God.....there is a difference between that politician and one who tells the evangelical everything they want to hear....but embodies everything in God's very Word to us to stay far away from. The former is easy to discern....the latter...."mouth [s] great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage"....who...."cause divisions"....and are...."raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." This choice.....Biden or Trump....is God's judgment on America....and on the church that wants only to continue the way that it was....which itself was under God's warnings of judgment.
Addendum: I wanted to give this anecdote. It was about 35 years ago and my wife had a friend over for dinner. This friend was very talkative....and very atheist. After we conversed for a while she confidently said to me that I sometime should read Bertrand Russell's classic....Why I Am Not A Christian....upon which I walked over to our bookshelf and showed her the book...."Do you mean this book?"....which was highlighted and notated throughout.
