Voice Crying in the Wilderness 1

1 Peter 4:17

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?

Much is transpiring all across the world in these days. While this has always been the case, few alert Christians can avoid experiencing heightened concern on many different levels. The rise of militant Islam, the atrocities being perpetrated upon those that take the name of Christ [whether genuine Christians or those involved with pseudo-­‐Christian cults], the deterioration of the 'American dream,' the entrenchment of immoral values in Western cultures formerly restrained by Christian influence…the list of troubling realities goes on and on and on.

Sadly, many in 'good churches' all across America are falling prey to the wrong kind of responsiveness to all of these things. Far too many are retrenching, hunkering down, and looking to 'right the ship,' hoping to return America to its 'right mind' via the election cycles. But, what is happening in the world cannot be 'fixed' by getting back to American values and so-called right-minded thinking. There is far more to all of this than that.

In this series blog posts I intend, Lord willing, to take a far more scathing look at what is REALLY happening, and what the Lord is almost certainly seeking to accomplish through His sovereign allowance of all of these troubling tidings everywhere. The passage of Scripture at the head of this post will be our constant platform for all of the remarks and considerations throughout this series. May the Lord be pleased to bring forth genuine and lasting fruit to His own glory as we proceed.

Let's begin by making a categorical statement. All of these troubling realities that are inundating us daily with a deeper spiral into darkness all across the world are NOT, and I repeat NOT intended by God to shake up Americans so that we stand more emphatically for our 'rights,' and get America 'back' to some imagined position of esteem in the world. In the American form of government cycling between liberal administrations and conservative administrations is the norm. We have a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." As long as this is true, the constant shifting back and forth will be perpetuated.

America is not a "Christian" nation. We are not dedicated to the glory of God, and have no world standing as a beacon of light. Since this is clearly the case, we are fools if we think that what God is seeking to do is just "wake us up" so that we will stop being complacent about our constitutionally-guaranteed rights. God did not choose America in some mysterious way to be the hope of the world. That position is already filled by Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Now, since the Scriptures clearly teach that genuine Christians are the light of the world [in Christ], it is through Christians that God seeks to fulfill His staggering worldwide redemptive purposes. The 'hope' of the world is NOT America, not even in its greatest and most glorious days. It is that men all across the globe can encounter Jesus Christ through contact with His genuine people. The one thing that can literally crush militant Islam is genuine Christianity. The one thing that can oppose tyrannical governments [even such a government as right here in America] is genuine Christianity. The one thing that can effectively countermand the inroads of immorality in the name of 'freedom' is genuine Christianity.

Therefore, the one thing that God is seeking to accomplish through sovereignly permitting all of these terribly dark things to multiply among us is NOT to awaken America, the 'sleeping giant' of the world. No. He is instead, seeking to initiate the process identified in our Scripture passage above.

I firmly believe that the ONLY hope for the world lies in and through God's people, gathered together in genuine God-honoring assemblies…NOT those institutionalized things called "churches" that are so numerous in America…since so many of those are dead and useless in the warfare we are called to. It is essential, if God is to be truly honored among men all across this world, that Christians abandon the old wineskins of dead religiousness, and come together in assemblies that are characterized by a longing for His true glory among men, and not merely perpetuating traditional 'church life' as most of us have known it.

When the Lord Jesus Christ came unto His own, His own received Him not. (John 1:11) The reason for this was that by the time He came among them, they had long ago settled for dead religiousness in the place of an intimate, living relationship with their God. All that they participated in were religious patterns perpetuated by religious leaders who had a very big stake in the game. Jesus plainly warned them about the traditions of men. (Mark 7:8) Later, Paul also warned those in the churches about the exact same danger, when he said:

Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. (Colossians 2:8)

Clearly, there was cause for concern in the early churches that men were already beginning to embrace the same process of deterioration that had so completely robbed Israel of reality in its relationship with God.

Here is the crux of what I believe the Lord is seeking to lay before us. If we are satisfied to just perpetuate the dead religiousness that has become the norm in our 'churches,' satisfied to simply engage in the endless cycle of 'church life' as we have always known it…we will be just as useless to the Lord as Israel had become when He came among them.

We have much to consider as we decide whether or not we are going to answer the Lord's call to us to enter the warfare in a far more decided manner in these dark days.

cp