Surrender or Fight: Our Nation Is at Stake

Following the November 8, 2016 election, I wrote the following words to the 100K American Renewal Project pastors:

“Anyone who thinks that Christians won anything other than an election last Tuesday is confused.

“As we begin to dismantle godless secularism from the warp and woof of America and remove the different parasites dependent upon the government (those gaming the system over the last 2-3 generations), all hell is going to break loose. There’s going to be a hair-raising brawl in the public square, and someone’s values are going to reign supreme.

This election is over, but pastors must continue to fight if America is to be saved.”

Newt Gingrich reinforced the message last week: “Surrender or fight—our country is at stake.“

If you missed Newt’s eight-minute video from last fall, you might present it to your congregation on Sunday to illustrate what is at stake in America.

Pastors and pews have no choice but to engage the public square if America is to survive.

The rules and objectivity that once guided American journalism no longer apply. The media is sleazy. The secular left has decided that since they couldn’t win the election through the ballot box, they will win it in the streets instead. Their current actions mimic many third-world banana republics. The secular media must be dealt with.

Last fall’s presidential election revealed the bias of the secular media. What’s more, they are not embarrassed or ashamed at this public perception. They had skin in the game. They had a favorite candidate, and they felt no need to hide behind the facade of “fair and balanced” news coverage.

Once elected, secularists “framed” Donald Trump’s win as “not a legitimate win.” They based their argument on his not winning the popular vote–though the popular vote alone has never been responsible for electing a United States President.

So, on November 29, 2016, I penned these words about “The Electoral College“:

“Why didn’t America’s Founders just make it easy and allow the presidential candidate with the most votes to claim victory? What is the purpose and why do we need the Electoral College? The answer is critical to our understanding of “freedom and liberty for all.

The Founders had no intention of creating a pure-majority democracy; democracies implode. A Democracy has been described as two wolves and a lamb voting on “What’s for dinner?” At all costs, the Founders were dogged in their determination to avoid a pure-democracy model. The Electoral College designed by America’s Founders encouraged coalition-building and national campaigning. A candidate must have a multitude of voters and types from various parts of the country to triumph. Winning only the South or the West Coast is not good enough. One cannot win the needed 270 electoral votes if only Massachusetts, California and New York are supporting the campaign.

If victory consisted only in winning the most votes, a candidate would likely concentrate solely on major U.S. cities, thereby abandoning the interests of citizens in Montana, West Virginia, Vermont, Maine, Wyoming, Delaware, Rhode Island and more. However, with the Electoral College, no candidate can ignore a state for too long without suffering the political reality that every voter in every state is important. Thus, the genius of the American Founders is reflected in their creation of the Electoral College.

Evangelical Christians have abandoned the obligations that come with living free. We have turned over the making, enforcement and adjudication of laws to the godless. Those at cross-purposes with biblical values now dominate public education, higher learning, City Hall, big business, the courts and politics. Christians have empowered their own defeat in the public square.

And so, we have now arrived at our kairos.

America is in need of prophets who hear what God is saying, men and women who can, as A.W. Tozer put it, “appraise the religious scene as viewed from God’s position, and tell us what is actually going on.”

One thing is crystal-clear: Prayer must be resurrected in America’s churches—led by the senior pastor—if she is to survive.

I’ve quoted from A.W. Tozer’s Of God and Men before, but this seems the perfect time to address the church in America. Hear Tozer:

Religious leaders who continue mechanically to expound the Scriptures without regard to the current religious situation are no better than the scribes and lawyers of Jesus’ day who faithfully parroted the law without the remotest notion of what was going on around them spiritually.

What disturbs me is that amidst all the religious hubbub hardly a voice is raised to tell us what God thinks about the whole thing.

What is needed desperately today is prophetic insight. Scholars can interpret the past; it takes prophets to interpret the present. Learning will enable a man to pass judgment on our yesterdays, but it requires a gift of clear seeing to pass sentence on our own day. One hundred years from now historians will know what was taking place religiously in this year of our Lord; but that will be too late for us. We should know right now.

If Christianity is to receive a rejuvenation it must be by other means than any now being used. If the church in the second half of this century is to recover from the injuries she suffered in the first half, there must appear a new type of preacher. The proper, ruler-of-the-synagogue type will never do. Neither will the priestly type of man who carries out his duties, takes his pay and asks no questions, nor the smooth-talking pastoral type who knows how to make the Christian religion acceptable to everyone. All these have been tried and found wanting.

“Another kind of religious leader must arise among us. He must be of the old prophet type, a man who has seen visions of God and has heard a voice from the Throne. When he comes (and I pray God there will be not one but many) he will stand in flat contradiction to everything our smirking, smooth civilization holds dear. He will contradict, denounce and protest in the name of God and will earn the hatred and opposition of a large segment of Christendom. Such a man is likely to be lean, rugged, blunt-spoken and a little bit angry with the world. He will love Christ and the souls of men to the point of willingness to die for the glory of the one and the salvation of the other. But he will fear nothing that breathes with mortal breath.”

There is good news, Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand in the public square. For example: “Like father, like son: The Costners on Christianity in public places.” {eoa}