Why the Church Needs to Take Its Game to the Next Level if America Is Going to Survive
Evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians will have to take their game to the next level if America is to survive. Freedom talk is not enough; there is no right to freedom.
A once-a-year election sermon, although good, is not a denomination of political currency. By contrast, there is no larger political capital than mustering and marshaling parishioners to the voting booth. However, due to America’s current cultural-spiritual condition, Bible-believing shepherds will need to work overtime, first to educate, then to register to vote 90% of His flock and finally to get them out to vote.
Dr. Jerry Falwell had a unique way of registering parishioners at Thomas Road Baptist Church. In the middle of his sermon on the “Old Time Gospel Hour” broadcast, with ushers ready with voter registration cards, Dr. Falwell would say, “We’re going to take two minutes to do this. I want all of the good citizens of Virginia that are registered to vote, please stand.” Waving the ushers to come forward, “Now for you good citizens that are seated, we’re going to get you registered today. This is where it gets hard,” he would joke, “you have to know your name and address. Fill out the registration card now and pass it back to the usher, please; otherwise, they will be in your Bibles three years from now.” Dr. Falwell did this two or three times a year to have 90% of his parishioners ready to fulfill their civil government responsibilities.
Spiritual men and women must come to the public square’s forefront if virtue is to reverse the more than 120 years’ regime of Secularism. Since virtue is a key component of freedom, 40% of America’s approximately 65-80 million evangelical Christians not being registered to vote is a sad commentary on why today’s America finds itself in such dire straits.
Given that 40% of evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians have never found their way to the ballot box, is it any wonder that secularism has taken over the culture and heaven is silent?
Running a bus across a state the week before an election, with 50% of the vote already in from early voting, comes down to campaign ineptitude. Press conferences, press releases and getting a shout-out on Fox News are a far cry from campaign competence, and similar to bringing a pocketknife to a gunfight. Organizing an educated congregation, on the other hand, ensures victories on Election Day.
It is going to be a long, hard, toilsome wrangle. Because, as Peter Jones writes, “We are not dealing with marginal cult or a new theory that can be resisted with a little effort and goodwill by the American heartland. The ancient pagan giant is stirring. The formidable beast of thought and practice that dominated the ancient world is now at our door, demanding authority in our homes, laws and even churches. Needless to say, it is essential that contemporary Christian believers understand the true nature of this opposing—and recently reappearing—spirituality.”
Which brings us to the upcoming Promise Keepers’ national event of “Igniting A Revival.”
With Gideons beginning to rise in America, a projected 80,000-plus men will join together on July 31-Aug. 1, 2020, to raise the roof at the Dallas Cowboys/AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, with another 5 million participating via simulcast.
Imagine what would happen if men, spiritual men, would fill the spiritual void of America’s marketplace, to next initiate what Jesus specified as His model for cultural revolution in Matthew 16:18: “I will build my ekklesia; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Three institutions shaped the life and culture of the ancient Jewish people: the temple, the synagogue and the ekklesia. As Ed Silvoso expounds in his book Ekklesia: Rediscovering God’s Instrument for Global Transformation: “The Temple and synagogue were religious, the ekklesia was secular. … Rather than in a building, the ekklesia is meant to be centered in the public square, where the cultural mountains of influence are affected and nations are discipled. The key is to insert the ‘leaven’ of the ekklesia into the local communities.”
The “sexualization” of the culture by public education, academia, newsrooms, sports, the courts, Fortune 500, Big Business, medicine and Hollywood over the last century has largely “effeminized” American culture. Being viewed as a man’s man is no longer an asset in present-day America, but framed as “toxic.” Nothing could be further from the biblical truth. Listen to the warrior, the sweet psalmist of Israel:
“O God, You are my God; Early will I seek You; My soul thirsts for You; My flesh longs for You
In a dry and thirsty land with no water. I have seen You in the sanctuary, to see Your power and Your glory” (Ps. 63:1-2).
“In David we have a notable example of a sensitive, tender, self-analyzing soul, living in sustained communion with God, while deeply sensible of the claims of the civil and religious polity of Israel, and, moreover, while externally devoted to a large round of exacting public duties,” says H.P. Liddon.
A national movement, a social change, is on the way in America, effecting a head-on collision between two rival religions in America, Christianity and secularism, and their persistence to shape society according to their tenets of faith. Since each worldview is expansive and evangelistic, there will be no reconciliation of opposites with God; one will ultimately end in the eradication of the other.
Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand.
