It was only a thirty-second interview....with Matt Damon....on the news....as he was entering an event focusing on the trouble in our streets today....but it was his last sentence that stuck with me in that he said that the event...."hopefully will promote a larger discussion about this."
On the more demonstrative end....my hope here in these posts is that they would....shake or rattle the timbers or the pillars of our conferences and synods and Bible studies and cell groups and pulpits and even everyday conversations....in other words that they would get the attention of people on things that need to be discussed! On the less demonstrative side it would be as Matt Damon described his situation....that it might a promote a larger discussion.
The larger discussion will do it....because when you let a little truth out....it begins to spread like a wildfire. I was glued to a Venice Beach webcam last January....as for days on end the camera focused on the other side of the beaches where the Palisades fire just kept creeping up the hillsides.
We need to put the socialist and woke conversation aside and talk about Trump....and if his constant....ten years running narrative....that our best times are ahead....a literal golden age....qualifies as a genuine biblical false prophet? We need to ask why just about everything in God's Word concerning who and what to not only stay away from....but flee from....and even warn about....describes Donald Trump to a T....yet we do the exact opposite?
What about...."Not by might or by power but by My Spirit?" (Zechariah 4:6) What about "come out from among them and be separate?" (2 Corinthians 6:7) What about all the admonitions to stay vigilant ant awake and alert? What about all the warnings of false miracles and false prophets and a great delusion and a falling away that is coming....so strong of a delusion that even the elect....that is you and me folks....that even we can be taken in....if it were possible....which means temporarily....which is already what has happened to so many!
We need to compare sermons that men like Spurgeon and Martyn Lloyd-Jones gave....and even MacArthur and David Wilkerson....and why our sermons today are not even similar? Why are there no tears in the pulpits? Why no mortification? Why are our entertainments and sport without moderation? Do we even know what an idol can be in this day and age....or even what idolatry is?
We need an entire conversation on whether God meant for us to look for the signs of the Second Coming? We need to sit and watch....(or listen)....to R. C. Sproul's series on the Holiness of God. We need to explore in depth what the cost of discipleship once meant?
We need a crash course in humility....and so do the pastors! We need to make sure our salvation every day! Every one of us needs to look around at what our nation and society has become....and admit that we all played a part in it all! It's not just the woke....it's the greed and the laziness and the pride and the triviality and the boredom with the holiness of God....thinking that everything is just joy and happiness...not realizing that true joy comes from seeing what was done for us on that cross and in that tomb and on that hill of ascension....with the way paved for us by the blood of martyrs and reformers and missionaries who would weep to see what their efforts had turned into in the American church and pulpit.
Maybe the reader would take great umbrage with my statements....so let's talk about it. Is there any possibility that we may have missed things that are very important....that we have left our first love....or that our shepherds may have left the sheep defenseless....that politics may have plopped us into the lap of pompousness...and that....ecclesia reformata....semper reformanda....(the church reformed....and always reforming)....is not worth the parchment it was written on....if one doesn't examine themselves first!
