From Israel to California… At Che Ahn’s church in Pasadena! Powerful day today Lou Engle and I did

From Israel to California… At Che Ahn’s church in Pasadena! Powerful day today. Lou Engle and I did the morning and Cindy Jacobs is wrecking the house tonight. We need both personal REVIVAL and REFORM of our civic institutions. They have been taken over by radical Marxist with a uniquely American twist of racism and sexual perversion.

I have a word I need to share from a message by David Lane. Here it is.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Os Guinness studied at L’Abri under the great

American theologian Francis Schaeffer [1912-1984] and later worked as a

freelance reporter for the BBC. He wrote or edited more than 35 books, and

argues in his work “A Free People’s Suicide”that it is not enough to win

freedom, but that it also has to be sustained.

He was interviewed recently on Full Proof Theology, a podcast by Pastor J.

Chase Davis [M.Div., Th.M., Denver Seminary; Ph.D. candidate, Vrije

Universiteit]. Chase is Lead Pastor of Ministry at The Well Church in

Boulder, Colorado, and author of Trinitarian Formation: A Theology of

Discipleship in Light of the Father, Son, and Spirit [2021].

What struck us as special in the interview was Dr. Guinness’ discussion of

the rights and duties of citizenship:

“I meet Christians all the way across this country who say ‘Things are in

bad shape, I’m just keeping my head down and I’m trying to be faithful like

the early Christians were under Rome.’ This is dead wrong, the early church

was faithful, yes, but they were under an imperial dictatorship. They had

zero room to move, but they were faithful to the limits they had.

“Here in the American republic - which remember is partly coming from the

Hebrew republic - [the] covenant in Exodus became Constitution in 1787, and

so on... You’re in a Republic where every citizen’s responsibility is for

the health and vitality of the republic. So for Christians just to keep

their heads down, is not only a failure of discipleship, [and Christian]

calling, they’re not being ‘salt’ and ‘light’, it’s a failure of citizenship and absolutely disastrous.

“So the scandal of the American church, if you look at Britain, France, Germany, and many of the countries in Western Europe, the church is a tiny minority now, openly rejected. Here [in America], for all the rise of the so-called religious nuns, the Christian community, the Church, is still the

largest community in America.

“So take our friends, the Jews. They are 2% of America, but if you think

about it, they punch well above their weight: intellectually, financially ... and we [Christians] are a huge majority - and our Lord calls us to be ‘salty’ and ‘light bearing’ - [yet] we are non-influential. Is there any

question? It is time to stand up.”

Let us make spiritual application to contemporary American Christendom and,

specifically, to those who have been “bought with a price.” [1 Corinthians 6:20]

The serpent’s final defeat under Messiah’s heel from Genesis 3:15, writes

Dr. Bruce K. Waltke in his 2002 Christian Book of the Year, Genesis: A

Commentary, is delayed to affect God’s program of redemption through the

promised offspring. “In the interim, God leaves Satan to test the fidelity

of each succeeding generation of the covenant people [Judges 2:22] and

teach them to fight against untruth [Judges 3:2].”

Our battle in America is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, the powers, the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

[Ephesians 6:12]

A.W. Pink understood that although Canaan was God’s free gift unto Israel,

they had still to fight for every inch of it. Combining this with Dr. Waltke’s insight from Genesis helps us comprehend why over the last 100 years or so American Christendom regressed. The Church kept quiet, hiding

behind the four walls of the church building and keeping its light hidden under a bushel. [Matthew 5:15]

The Church may have generated a Christian subculture, brimming with celebrity preachers, massive building projects, bulky budgets, radio and TV presence, God-wants-you-to-be-happy and assorted feel-good messages, it still amounts to just a dolefully microscopic footprint in the culture.

Still and all, Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to enter the public square

by running for local offices, in order to counterbalance the existential

threat to free speech from the unholy alliance of Big Tech, Big Media, Big

Government, and Deep State.

There is more good news. Christian conservatives are beginning to realize

that mustering and marshaling parishioners to register and vote for their

Biblical values is a good thing to do.

If winning people to Christ is the main thing, it makes perfect sense that

preserving the liberty to win people to Christ is the second most important

thing.

Undershepherds must begin to disciple and launch spiritual leaders, also

known as the men and women of Issachar, into America’s public square. “How

is the culture of my community doing?” must become the new standard.