Preface: In our arrogance....we are absolutely sure that Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee....and he may very well be. The MAGA church is looking cautiously but somewhat confidently to a November victory. Let me explain what I mean by MAGA church. Though just about every congregation in evangelicalism has some kind of split in it as to Donald Trump. This is not a counting beans situation to determine whether this or that' church is a Trump church. Rather...the mere fact that there is a split....and the reasons cannot even be talked about....prove that Donald Trump has essentially destroyed the effectiveness of the evangelical church in America. Pastors literally everywhere have been neutered. Discernment is practically nil. The glory of God has departed the church....Ichabod. This my friends is why Donald Trump is....how the Apostle John described them....an antichrist....not to mention a false prophet....for he has prophesied for nine years now....right in the midst of the church....of which its ministers thank God for his presence....that our best days are yet to come! To reiterate something that is in the post before this post....we in evangelicalism are praying for....an antichrist....to become our president!
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'-yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that'." James 4: 13-15 ESV
President Lincoln used this thought of...."If God wills it"....in his second inaugural address. Jimmy Carter used the phrase 'Lord willing' often....and Ronald Reagan gave the same response when asked if he was going to run for president.
I have at least two plans for this day....take two naps....that may come about and it may not. We have a vacation planned. It may or may not come about. I try to include in my conversation as often as possible....'Lord willing'......and when I forget....I get a twinge of regret.
So with this in mind....we in America have a general election planned for this November 5....and we are sure of the two nominees....at the two conventions....the Democrats in Chicago from August 19 to the 22nd....and the Republican in Milwaukee from July 15 to the 18th. All of this may come about....or none of it.
I had two relatives pass away within the past three weeks....and a friend and former co-worker two days ago. I have no idea how many more days I have left. Paul made this fascinating statement in 2 Corinthians 5:4...."For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens." Granted....it is easier to dwell on these things at seventy-four years old than at thirty years old.
To any Christian with even a modicum of discernment it should be a bleak feeling at best to look ahead to this coming post-convention election season....Lord willing that is. We have had almost nine years of this stomach-churning anxiety....and it is only going to get worse.
Thomas Paine wrote these words in December of 1776...."These are the times that try men's souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
Paine wrote...."My own mind is my own church." He detested the Bible...."It would be more consistent that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God." He thought that George Washington was a fake. His words in the above quote....."Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered"....are very telling....as he thought hell....if there was a hell....could be conquered....though not easily. Thomas Paine's thoughts are those of the radical patriot....where God if he does exist is inconsequential. The Christian's Valley Forge is....The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death...."Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; For you are with me; Your rod and Your staff they comfort me." He gently pulls us in with His staff....but at times He uses His rod....and that is where we are now....for we strayed in pride and arrogance and politics. The comfort is that He is merciful to us who return to Him!
Donald Trump's nomination is not a certainty. From day one....which was the day of his inauguration in 2017....he has force-fed and stiff-armed the entire Republican Party. Anyone else and they would have been sent off to Elba long ago. Neither of these two men....Biden or Trump....can handle what is ahead....and that is being overly generous to them. No one who would replace Trump could stop the judgment that God has told us is coming. DeSantis or Haley....should the Lord will it....would at least be sane voices in a maelstrom....and very easily defeat an eighty-one year old man who for over a half century had dug a deep pit that he will never be able to get out of.
Our hope has always and only been in Christ. That hope today is that God will be with us during the coming tumult and tremors. So....we think that this election is set in stone....and it may indeed turn out as it looks now....but just as Nebuchadnezzar.....after looking around at Babylon asked of no one but himself...."Is not this great Babylon, which I have built by my mighty power as a royal residence for the glory of my majesty?"....and immediately lost his mind and grazed in the grass....and just as we conservatives in 2019 boasted of the greatest nation that we built....and then as the men of Sodom.... were struck with blindness in the pandemic events to come....and just as Donald Trump boasted all through 2020 of the great nation that he built....only to in effect graze in the grass of the ellipse on that fateful January 2021 day....we also...."both small and great"....shall wear ourselves out groping for the door....if we do not turn away from trusting in princes and horses....and proclaim for all to hear...."to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory and majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen."
Addendum: I posting this at 10 PM. I did not get my two naps....but I did listen to a worthy talk by Stephen Lawson that you can Google up with....Steven Lawson; The Passionate Preaching of Martyn Lloyd-Jones.
Genesis 19:11
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