AUTHENTIC BIBLICAL LEADERSHIP NOT ALWAYS A GIVEN

The discipline of God is not a thing to be taken lightly. On a personal level,  His Elect – those who are saved and bound for Heaven – are saved, yes. However we are also to be tested and tried to be molded into the Image of Christ. Trials and tests take many forms. Just like a carbon coal-like substance is mined, and then pressed down into a diamond, the child of God must be pruned, molded and shaped into Christ-likeness.

This is the discipline for the personal, spiritual life of the true believer.

However, did you know that the Lord also will discipline a group of people? He will do so, whether it is a church which has strayed and most definitely, entire nations!. The Lord said so. He did it. He did it many times. He is and will do it again.

Most of the countries of the world have abandoned the One True God of Heaven – Yahweh. It is blatantly obvious from the daily news accounts for decades. After the Protestant Reformation and its spread west, Europe turn from God.  England, which gave us the great Christians of the 1700’s and 1800’s is now mostly Islamic. The Father of Missions  was the Englishman William Carey. The Wesley brothers broke away from the legalism of the Church of England and brought the Grace of God to both the Old and New Worlds. The Prince of Preachers is the great Englishman Charles H. Spurgeon, who is still studied and quoted by both English and American Christians.

But something happened, both in the U.K.; Europe and North America. After the prosperity of the post-World War the men of God became creatures of comfort, especially here in the United States. Good living; wealth; the loosening of solid Biblical standards allowed that generation and subsequent ones (Baby Boomers, their children and Generations W, Y and Z) to grow up under diminishing leadership which standard was set by God.

The absence of fathers (good and bad) has destroyed all American cities along with ungodly social policies. Now in all strata of society, we see the dearth of the authentic manhood in the homes.  When this has happened in the past, God removes His Mighty Hands and here is what happens:

ISAIAH 3:1-12

1   For behold, the Lord [God of hosts is going to remove from Jerusalem and Judah

Both [supply and support, the whole supply of bread

And the whole supply of water;

2   The mighty man and the warrior,

The judge and the prophet,

The diviner and the elder,

3   The captain of fifty and the honorable man,

The counselor and the expert artisan,

And the skillful enchanter.

4   And I will make mere lads their princes,

And capricious children will rule over them,

5   And the people will be oppressed,

Each one by another, and each one by his neighbor;

The youth will storm against the elder

And the inferior against the honorable.

6   When a man lays hold of his brother in his father’s house, saying,

“You have a cloak, you shall be our ruler,

And these ruins will be under your charge,”

7   He will protest on that day, saying,

“I will not be your healer,

For in my house there is neither bread nor cloak;

You should not appoint me ruler of the people.”

8   For Jerusalem has stumbled and Judah has fallen,

Because their speech and their actions are against the Lord,

To rebel against His glorious presence.

9   The expression of their faces bears witness against them,

And they display their sin like Sodom;

They do not even conceal it.

Woe to them!

For they have brought evil on themselves.

10   Say to the righteous that it will go well with them,

For they will eat the fruit of their actions.

11   Woe to the wicked! It will go badly with him,

For what he deserves will be done to him.

12   O My people! Their oppressors are children,

And women rule over them.

O My people! Those who guide you lead you astray

And confuse the direction of your paths.

Why is this important in 2019 and beyond? It is significant because of the paucity of Biblical leadership in the home,  CHURCH, school, community, city, state and country.  It is blatantly flaunted by those who oppose God, via the corrupt culture, mass media, academia and in all levels of politics. Biblical leadership has been replaced by a confused, ungodly and dysfunctional "leadership" model, where the few real men of courage and Christ stick out like a sore thumb, and are called all kinds of unsavory names.

Still, though despised by the current culture of this perishing world, these authentic men - a remnant of God raise Godly families, follow the Word of God and remain in His grace and favor....and will continue to do so, until Christ returns.

Is there a solution for this? Yes – only when the Second Adam – the Lord Jesus Christ, returns on His White Horse in the soon-coming future and begins His 1000 Year reign on earth. Amen.

THERE IS COMING A DAY.....(as the old Gospel song says)

Some Church Signs say it all!

A whole lot of Christians have been feeling like second or third class citizens in the greatest country in the world - America, founded as it is, on Christian principles. It does not matter if the country was founded, constitutionally, as a Christian country or not. The fact remains that the Foundations of America had its roots in the Gospel, Evangelism and the Bible. The country did not gain independence with just a war, but it was the great preachers and the Great Awakenings of the time which fired a new birth of Freedom.

The great George Whitfield, the British spirit-filled Methodist, who preached the Doctrines of Grace and Freedom in Christ up and down the Thirteen Colonies, leading thousands and thousands to Salvation and the famous Jonathan Edwards, were the catalysts. The numerous churches that benefited from these men's crusades and open air preaching, brought the message to villages and towns and even cities. This was actually the Christian fuel which energized the colonists and THEIR own preachers - the men who would later become known as the "Black Robe Regiment" (BRR). The BRR were the preachers of the American Revolution, who influenced their congregations (most of whom were in the rag-tag Continental Army) and their families into thinking that this cause of Freedom was in accordance with God's Will. Indeed, the British Red Coat Army was virulently anti-Christian in function and had no compunction about burning down a church or three if they got in their way during this American War of Independence.

There is a whole lot more about the rich Christian history and background of the American Experience from which we can learn. There are so many viewpoints on the US Constitution and its interpretation. However what matters most to us even more,  is not just the historical aspect of the Great American Christian Experience but what God says. 

Here is where the seeds of the movement to separate God from His people began in this country - with Paine and one of his fans, Jefferson. In fact, Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists, in response to the lack of protection on the Connecticut Constitution for religious liberty, which was used to promote the idea of "Separation of Church and State", which is now accepted. 

Just like the created right to an abortion, the notion that Thomas Jefferson was promoting the "separation of Church and State" is an overreach derived from a poorly constructed sentence, exclusively extracted from his reply to the Danbury Baptists: "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature would "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." What that letter implicitly implies is the government would not create a state religion as existed at the time in England, from whence the Baptists came. What the secularist, atheists and their sort used was the last portion of the sentence "building a wall of separation of Church and State".

Now there has been an extremely troubling mindset for decades, if not the last two centuries, which may have overflowed from one of the founding fathers himself. That man was Thomas Paine, the "conscience" of the American Revolution and drive for the freedom which created the greatest country which ever existed - the USA. After the War was over and the new Republic was in full swing, under President George Washington, the British-born Paine went over to France to fully indulge in his lifestyle - Atheism! His work "The Age of Reason" (1794) set Europe ablaze in furthering their rejection of the Gospel and Christianity and became popular with deists in the US like Thomas Jefferson, Ethan Allen and Benjamin Franklin - all heroes of the War of Independence. Jefferson and Franklin were not averse to religion in public life as they saw it as necessary for the public good. However, while the elites loved the atheists and his venom against Scripture and Jesus Christ (just as they do today), there was a backlash against Paine. He was called a "demi-human arch beast", "a loathsome reptile" and "an object of disgust, of abhorrence, of absolute loathing to every decent man except the President of the United States (Jefferson)". (Source: Wikipedia).

Charles Darwin took Thomas Paine's Age of Reason to heart and those in the evolution theory movement took his atheism to the extreme. Darwin's immediate family was so stunned that they created a story around this death that he died a Christian. Those in the secular humanist and atheist movement also took Jefferson's seemingly innocuous words to the extreme and are attempting to shut down any mention of Jesus in public life; the Bible and its moral/spiritual truths. It is always the case when a leadership movement in any sphere, conducts himself in an unworthy manner. His descendants and followers take it to the extreme of evil. Such was the case with King Solomon whose 1000 plus wives and concubines were mainly pagan and idol worshippers. Solomon's sons saw how he lived and worshipped the devil more than their father did, resulting in the Kingdom of Israel splitting into two with ten of the twelve tribes eventually being wiped off the earth, by the Assyrians in the 8th century BC.

It is against this backdrop which we find ourselves in the 21st Century. It is against the backdrop we get signs like the one above, where Christians and students of the Word of God - the Bible - know what is eventually coming down the pike. In a sense, this church sign pictured above is absolutely correct. 


In the next post, we will examine what the Rapture is, is not and why this sign addresses a truth which many would rather sweep under the carpet. 

FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN ATHEISM, PART 3

TRIFECTA FROM HELL - BOOKS BY PAINE, ALLEN & PALMER

ETHAN ALLEN

Some people will look at this title and think I am even crazier than I look! I mean...dude, books by some guys named Paine, Allen and Palmer? All we know is Osteen, Lucado and Chan! What is up with that. Well, before you close this page and surf to the next site, consider this: What do "The Age of Reason"; "Reason, the Only Oracle of Man" and "Principles of Nature" have in common?


Well these three rambling diatribes against Holy God, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, The Bible and Christianity led Harvard and other American colleges and those in the northeastern upper crust into full blown atheism! From there, America began its rapid descent into all kinds of cults and christian-themed "religions" in the 1800's, to the point where we are today, where some people boo God at a political convention! This Trifecta of books, by the THEN three top literary minds of atheism, is the Trio from Hell! These trailblazing books provided the unholy scriptures for the new crop of followers of the god of this world, who had unbridled freedom now that the Continental Army and American Independence gave everyone in America, the freedom to be whatever you wished to be!

As mentioned before, Charles Chauncy, the man who hated the First Great Awakening which led to millions being saved in America and the Gospel spreading across the land, moved Unitarianism into the fore. Harvard, where he was in the leadership, later became one of those institutions influenced by Chancy. Unitarianism, by the way, according to Webster's Dictionary, is a denomination that stresses individual freedom of belief, the free use of reason in religion, a united world community, and liberal social action.

In case you think I am overreacting and blaming these men for the people who booed the Name of God at a convention, the point has been missed.  Once these men departed from the Gospel and started thinking what men like George Whitefield and Wesley and Edwards were doing, was uncouth and not done in "polite society"....and once they had the power to do something about it, the die was cast!  What Chauncy did was despicable. He ditched the Bible for his Unitarian sermons and started preaching out of Thomas Paine's "The Age of Reason"! It took a long time to get where we are today, but it had to start somewhere - and it started with Chauncy and Unitarianism, period.

Next to Paine's book, the great American Revolutionary War Hero Ethan Allen was the next most virulent anti-Christ. This is the same Ethan Allen that they named furniture stores after. His "Reason, the Only Oracle of Man" was an incoherent tome to paganism, yet the young men of New England lapped it up. The most outrageous statements by Allen were his writings blaspheming the Holy Spirit - the unforgiveable sin. Allen said "the doctrine of the Trinity is destitute of foundation and tends manifestly to superstition and idolatry"1. He was no different than the pharisees who stupidly (for their eternal souls) attacked Jesus and called Him all kinds of demonic names.

The third and final book of this Terrible Trio of Tomes, which has led so many into eternal torment, was actually written by a former Baptist pastor who was chased out of the ministry by the congregation, named Elihu Palmer! The ex-pastor once said of his fellow pagan Tom Paine that he "was.....the most useful man that ever existed on the face of the earth"2!!! Apparently, Palmer did not care or remember a thing about Jesus Christ! His book is called again ".

Palmer's book "Principles of Nature" contained even more heresy and blasphemy than Ethan Allen's book, this man was so lost. He said of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ "....the simple truth is that their pretended Savior is nothing more than an illegitimate Jew, and their hopes of salvation through Him rest on no better foundation than that of fornication and adultery" 3,4! Elihu Palmer now has an eternity to regret writing, saying and believing those things....just like all the others who "loved and admired" his "enlightened and reasoned" work! These men, others like them and their young admirers were the ones who rallied around Jefferson. This shocked the still involved and decent Founding Fathers John Adams and Patrick "Give me Liberty or Give me Death" Henry to no end. George Washington was horrified. Things were so bad, and especially between the Second US President John Adams and the pluralist/Deist Jefferson that a personal hatred developed between the two men. Adams was more concerned about the declining morals of the new country and finally called for a National Fast on April 25, 1799! This is something you will not see again in these days of anti-Christian bigotry in the media and politics.

While these three major books - most of them poorly written by all accounts - were the founding documents of American Atheism, God was (and always is) on the move! From the dawn of Time until now, He has His men in place everywhere.  Even in ancient Israel, which had gone completely pagan worshipping idols and more, God told the great prophet Elijah that He had 7000 men in Israel who did NOT follow the majority of that extinct nation (until 1948). Right around the time of President John Adam's National Fast,   preachers like Lyman Beecher; Ashbel Green and Jonathan Edwards grandson Timothy Dwight, were getting ready to launch the Second Great Awakening. God was moving to revive His elect and send preachers into the new Frontiers of the West! 

New England has never recovered from those men we have discussed this past week - Chauncy, Paine, Allen, Palmer and their friends from the French Revolution....but the Gospel and the men of God like Asbury; Peter Cartwright; Sheffey; Moody and more brought hope to the new West that only folks, who are completely surrendered to Christ, can do. 
Great is the Lord! Great is His Name! Great is He Who is Worthy to Be Praised! Amen.

RECOMMENDED BOOK: WHY REVIVAL TARRIES BY LEONARD RAVENHILL
Quote Credits:
1. Reason The Only Oracle of Man by Ethan Allen (Bennington Vt 1784) pp 352, 356
2. Principles of Nature by Elihu Palmer (London 1823) pg 112
3. Ibid pg 25
4. Ibid pg 23

FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN ATHEISM, PART 2

PART 2 - THE REVOLUTIONARY HEROES

THOMAS JEFFERSON

THOMAS PAINE

His book was the inspiration for the rebels with a cause – theFounding Fathers of a prospective new country. His words fired up the soldiersright before General George Washington crossed the Delaware. 

He was the authorof “Common Sense”, the biggest seller since the King James andGeneva Bibles in America! His words “These are the times that try men’s souls”have been engraved in the American story. He was a tiny little Englishman whowas introduced by letter to America by another man who loved good living – theerstwhile Ben Franklin. His name was Thomas Paine.  Once the AmericanRevolution was won, however, Paine needed more literary fields to conquer andliked what he was hearing out of France and the evil Jacobin Club. He movedthere to  join the men behind the Age of Reason ….and fellow atheists –Voltaire, Rousseau and others. In fact Paine even wrote another popular book bythat same name and thus began the proposed elimination of Christianity and theBible in pagan France. Now, the French Revolution was about to start. Butunlike the freedom, God-loving spirit of America, these people had an agendafrom another world.

The Jacobins burned down catholic churches; killed priestsand used the guillotine to destroy the entire royal family and anyone else whomthey wished. Their goal was to wipe God off the map in France! Voltaire, whoselast words before he died were “my feet are on fire”, remarked during this timethat within 100 years, Christianity will be wiped out in France! This offendedAmericans to no end, and not just Christian America, but decent people of allstripes, including American newspapers.  President Washington, John Adamsand other Founding Fathers were horrified.  Locally, especially in theuniversities of the northeast, anti-God rhetoric was exploding.  Charles Chauncy  lit the fuse of atheism with his attacks on the orthodoxChristian doctrine of the Bible and his Unitarianism was taken to extremelengths by college students at Harvard, Yale and other now well-knownuniversities.

These young college students went full bore atheist as thebooks and literature of the Age of Reason reached our shores, via subsidiesfrom French atheists and the Jacobin Club, who hoped to do to AmericanChristianity what they did to the French church! The idolatry of these youngAmerican students for the new atheistic movement, in the “Age of Reason” knewno bounds! They even started acting like groupies by calling themselves by thenames of these unsaved men: Voltaire, Rousseau, La Rue and the bunch. These men along with others, two of whom we will examine tomorrow (Ethan Allen and Elihu Palmer) joined up with Jefferson's new political party: the Democratic-Republican Party,( which prophetically enough, just left the Name of God out of their party platform this week)!

But it was not just these unwise young men. The great Founding Father ThomasJefferson was always a Deist, but his stint in France as ambassador reallysolidified his dislike of Christianity. Not knowing the furor that Paine's anti-Christian book "The Age of Reason" and the despicable conduct of the Jacobins and others during the anti-Christian French Revolution, President Jefferson invited Tom Paine back to the US in 1801 to celebrate. The outrage which greeted the return of Tom Paine to these shores shocked Jefferson. Yet, he should have known as American newspapers and the newly independent country did not take kindly to Paine's attacks on George Washington and Christianity!

Here is how the New York Evening Post from 1802 greeted the great American Revolutionary Hero of the 1770's.....Tom Paine....the same Tom Paine, who now had to disguise himself, get an alias and sneak down to visit his old friend Jefferson in the White House:

TO TOM PAINE

Detested reptile! Wherefore has thou come

To add new evils to our groaning land?

To some wild desert let they carcase roam, 

Where nought can wither by thy blasting hand.

In the dark hour that brought thee to our shore

The shade of Washington did awful scowl-

Hence, gloomy monster! Curse mankind no more,

Thy person filthy as they soul is foul!

(Seasons of Refreshing by Keith Hardman, Baker Pub. Pg 105)

Wow!! I don't know any Christian these days who speaks to atheists like that! But this is how Paine was welcomed back to America, causing his atheist friend Jefferson to regret the whole thing. By the way, personally, I don't recommend speaking like this to our non-believing friends. We need to pray first for them, then if they still reject the Gospel, leave them in the capable Hands of God and walk away.

There have been many well-meaning Christians over the years, who try to project Christianity and belief in Christ to these men and other Founding Fathers. The most well-known is David Barton, who just had his own controversy when Thomas Nelson pulled his "The Jefferson Lies" book from all bookstores everywhere. Barton is famous for taking public quotes of these men about God, adding one plus one and coming up with eleven. Jefferson and his friends and party at the time were no more believers in God than the Jacobin friends he had.  Even his Secretary of War Henry Dearborn was an avowed atheist. Dearborn once said of Christianity and the church "So long as these temples stand we cannot hope for good government"!!!  

If there is any doubt why things are the way they are in a country that is now $16 Trillion in debt with moral and spiritual crisis that is unsurpassed in human history, all we have to do is look back and we can find where it all began!

Tomorrow: The Conclusion - "Ethan Allen and Elihu Palmer"

BASTILLE DAY MUSINGS...JULY 14

THOUGHTS ON THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS

Today, on July 14 1789, French Revolutionaries stormed the gates of the Bastille prison in France. It began what is known as the French Revolution and led to the absolute monarchy of Louis XVI being deposed.  It is also the event which gave the world the beheading of Marie Antoinette, for allegedly saying of the peasants "Let them eat cake". 

MASCOT OF THE FRENCH
REVOLUTION:
THE GUILLOTINE!

The French Revolution was modeled after the successful American Revolution which led to Independence in 1776 and the removal of the British monarch as well from this country, and the thirst for new birth of freedom and democracy. However, here is where the similarities basically stopped. Whereas the United States was and is founded on a set of principles, based on Judeo-Christian ethics and morality, the French were, well, the French!

Our freedom in the West was sown into the fabric of men's souls by the Bible, Religious Liberty and the following, among many other giants: the Pilgrims; the Puritans; Jonathan Edwards; George Whitefield; Samuel Cooper and the great preachers of personal and literal freedom. British born atheist Tom Paine's "COMMON SENSE" was a secular philosophical impetus for the America Revolution. However, once that was over, he left these shores and showed his true atheist colors in France!

While Paine was the great pamphelteer and encourager of the US effort, he quickly became the man who introduced secular humanism in Europe (through his book THE AGE OF REASON). Europe is the way it is today, because of Thomas Paine, primarily, and others like him. Here is part of what Paine wrote in this book "I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any Church that I know of. My own mind is my own Church. [Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason].

It was not just Paine, who not surprisingly fell from grace as a hero in the newly formed USA, after the French Revolution, but the famous French writer Voltaire. Voltaire's entire purpose in life was to dismantle Christianity and do away with the bible. He once said "Christianity is the most ridiculous, the most absurd and bloody religion that has ever infected the world.

Within the past two weeks we will have celebrated both Revolutions - American and French. While the condition of America is approaching reprobate status and we are in need of national repentance and prayer, it is more likely to happen in US. This is because of the powerful Christian underpinnings of this country. The seeds of atheism took hold long ago in France, a country where less than 2% of that country are real believers in Jesus Christ.

As we face drought, hopelessness, desperation and depression here in the US, again caused by godless men and women, we are STILL clearly at an advantage on this French independence day. Whereas the bloody guillotine became identified with their French Revolution, we can take comfort in our TWO EDGED SWORD -the powerful Word of God - the Bible!

America can emerge from this present danger by falling on our faces in Repentance and crying out to God. France cannot do that because it has been overrun by people from the religion of peace, who want another Caliphate in Europe. America, or more truthfully, a large minority of Americans know that salvation and peace only comes from the God of the Christian Bible. France, with its Jacobins and Voltaire, tried to literally destroy the church...and they succeeded, but only for this age.

Therefore, ponder the following short verses and thank God for Biblical Christianity and Religious Freedom in the West. Then, unlike Voltaire, many who are not saved, still have time to Repent and put their Trust in the Savior and accept Jesus as Lord. Why? Well, listen to Voltaire's last words before he died "my feet are on fire!"

Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage....Psalm 33:12

(images by google)