On March 17, 2021

NOTES ON THE SPECIAL BLESSINGS OF OBEDIENCE IN THE LAST DAYS: RISE OF THE REMNANT CHURCH FOR THE TIMES OF TRIAL Part III

PART III: “THE WAY WE SHALL YET BE.”

SCRIPTURE. “So let those [of us] who are spiritually mature and full-grown have this mind and hold these convictions; and if in any respect you have a different attitude of mind, God will make that clear to you also. Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that.” – PHILIPPIANS 3:15-16, AMPC

QUOTATIONS

“He had learned some of the things that every man must find out for himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out–through error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and confused. Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it. And what had he learned? A philosopher would not think it much, perhaps, and yet in a simple human way it was a good deal. Just by living, my making the thousand little daily choices that his whole complex of heredity, environment, and conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make, and by taking the consequences, he had learned that he could not eat his cake and have it, too.” – THOMAS WOLFE, ‘You Can’t God Home Again,’ 1940

“A Mature Man does not lament aging, engage in adoration of the self through cosmetic treatments, and partake of drug therapy to prolong his virility. An independent thinker does not capitulate to societal pressures or other forms of coercion. I look forward to developing the bark of a rough man, the weathered, tough-skinned covertures that men take on only when they stand straight into the wind. I shall guard against disappointment, rebuff domination by cruel men, and repudiate the easy.” – KILROY J. OLDSTER, ‘Dead Toad Scrolls,’ 2015; edited

“The Pastor climbed the steps of the platform to the pulpit and started his sermon. He was warm, friendly, and eager to preach. He started with a description of a contemporary event and then applied it to the church urging them to follow Jesus and love others. After about 10 minutes, he read the Bible passage that was printed in the bulletin. It helped to prove his introduction. Then he proceeded for the rest of his sermon to use a series of contemporary personal illustrations, stories, humorous jokes and Power Point slides that supported his message. His sermon lasted about twenty-five minutes.

He never explained the words or the details of the Biblical passage that he read, but he did conclude his sermon with a call to action–to be willing to die for others. He hoped that the people left the church with a commitment to love others more. Maybe they were convicted by one of his contemporary illustrations, Power Point slides or jokes, or were impressed with his personal charisma. This is the typical style of ‘Bible Teaching’ in many churches today and the result is Immature Christians.” – JOHN CALAHAN, “Bible Teaching for Spiritual Maturity,” ‘Never Thirsty,’ ret. March 11, 2021; edited

Selah.

FIRST THOUGHTS

I’m not at all sure I should confess this publicly as the definitive curmudgeon, at least at the front of an important essay, but here goes. I am struggling with listening to Christian radio stations, both to the music and its DJ’s, Sunday sermons generally, and the stuff you typically find in a Christian bookstore.

Why, you ask?

Because what we typically find there might Prepare me for a family weekend trip to Disneyland, or possibly for a tougher challenge, a camping trip in the Rocky Mountains. But Preparation for the open spiritual warfare in Storms of the Last Days that lay ahead, beloved?

Please.

TOWARD CHRISTIAN SEDITION. As Pastor Calahan ably pointed out, the Consequences of this eminently polite, timid and inoffensive ‘American Gospel,’ has been catastrophic. Take for example a conservative journal that I used to hang my hat on a few years ago, ‘American Thinker.’ Here is a recent lead graph by one of its most prominent writers.

“While there are a few exceptions who need to be celebrated — Ted Cruz, Ron Johnson, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, to name the most prominent of the HEROES — the rest of the Republicans in Congress are abject Cowards. So anxious to go along to get along with the establishment they were oh, so comfortable with, they have been and are willing to betray their constituents to regain their access to power and money. Forget representing the people; they represent themselves.” – PATRICIA MCCARTHY, “The Unspeakable, Duplicitous Cowardice of the Republicans in Congress,” December 20, 2020; edited, emphasis my own

There is only one Scripture that rapidly comes to mind to match the severity of this Treachery with the severity of its Author, quoted more often that I care to admit.

“WOE to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter! WOE to those who are wise in their own eyes and prudent and shrewd in their own sight!” – ISAIAH 5:20-21, AMPC

WOE! From the Hebrew term, ‘Hoy’ [הוֹי], an extreme interjection translated as: “‘Ah! Alas! Ha! Ho!’ To be weak; depart from or wander away; expressing usually dissatisfaction and pain; used in lamentations; especially preparatory to a declaration of judgment (though perhaps with a touch of sympathy or pity); refers to a condition of deep suffering from misfortune, affliction, or grief; ruinous trouble, calamity; economic woes; great sorrow, grief, or misfortune, trouble; something that causes a problem.”

COMMENTARY. “‘Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil’ — That endeavour to Confound both the names and the natures of Virtue and Vice, of piety and impiety; commend and applaud what is evil, and disparage and discountenance what is good; ‘That put darkness for light, and light for darkness’ — ignorance and error, for Knowledge and Truth: in other words, who subvert, or pervert, all the great Principles of Truth, Wisdom, and of Righteousness. A most corrupt condition of a Church and State is that indeed, ‘in which men, accustomed to vices, begin, with the things themselves, to lose also the names of them, and to draw a veil, as it were, over their impieties, by sanctifying their crimes with the names of virtues.’” – JOSEPH BENSON, ‘Commentary on the Old and New Testaments,’ 5 vols., 1811-1815; edited

DK’S TAKE. My ongoing argument is that once the American Church has reached this critical point of EXCHANGING the True Gospel for the American False Gospel, with its attendant slide away from Orthodoxy, it accelerates toward The Unthinkable.

Do bear with me here, and you might want to be sitting down for this next section in that ominous regard.

POLITICS, PERVERSION & QANON RISING

Spiritual Sedition and Apostasy don’t just occur one day, but rather are the accumulated Detritus of years, decades or even centuries of gradual, stepwise Departures from the Truth of the Biblical Orthodoxy.

PETER WEBER, writing for ‘The Week,’ perceptively takes us to the recent Roots of the current American Dégringolade. Quoted as some length for its rich context.

“Religion and Politics have always comingled in America. Public officials have relied on their religious values and those of their constituents since the United States was founded, and for the most part, those values were heavily influenced by Christianity. But if being a Christian was part of your political identity, it wasn’t the whole loaf of bread. A Christian could be an FDR Democrat or a Reagan Republican, an anti-Prohibition Hedonist or anti-Evolution Creationist, an anti-Masonic Whig or a pro-royalist Tory. Well, times change. Christianity in America has been hammered into a sort of Political Identity of its own…

The evolving capture of the word ‘Christian’ by the Republican Party has been well documented, generally traced back to JERRY FALWELL launching the Moral Majority in 1979. Vice President MIKE PENCE, who regularly introduces himself as “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” is a good example of this Shift. When Pence started college, he was a Catholic and JFK Democrat. In 1978, he started down his path to Evangelical Protestantism.” – “The Sad Politicization of Christianity,” December 11, 2017; edited, emphasis my own

In those 40 Years or so since the Falwell Launch in 1979 and the electrifying Ascendancy of Trump Republicanism, the Religious and Political Landscapes of America have been radically Redefined for what I see as Perpetuity, defined as:

“Endless duration; continuance to eternity. Continued uninterrupted existence, or duration for an indefinite period of time. Something of which there will be no end.” – NOAH WEBSTER, 1828; edited

My Reason for stating this: Again, again, I hear nary a Whisper of Repentance from Church Leaders. Not a sound, beloved. Not a sound.

FIVE DEADLY STEPS. The following Stages are what I see as the Major Contributors to our cowardly Grand Departure from Christianity and Civility, and the tragic Dissembling of Ordered Liberty in America.

Of which this writer became party to from the Reagan Presidency of 1980 forward – Until my 2015 Wake Up Call, through the Ascent of Donald Trump.

THE MORAL MAJORITY. This has already been mentioned as the Cornerstone of our Departures from our Judeo-Christian Foundations. Here is a revealing historic snippet of those origins. “Alarmed at the secular drift of American society, [JERRY] FALWELL launched an evangelistic campaign with a political edge during the [American] Bicentennial in 1975-1976. Falwell called them ‘I Love America’ Rallies and the grand production, featuring patriotic music by a large choir from Falwell’s new Liberty Baptist College (now Liberty University), toured a succession of state capitals. Falwell’s campaigns and books promised to ‘Return America’ to the right, God-fearing track, while also attracting the attention of conservative Political organizers like [Paul Weyrich, Richard Viguerie, Robert Billings, Ed McAteer, and Howard Phillips].” – ‘Association of Religious Archives,’ June 1, 1979; edited

THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT. This became the Primary Identifier of those of us who were advocates of not just the Great Commission’s call of Individual Salvation and Discipleship (Matthew 29:19-20), but now to the Cultural Commission to become Salt and Light to the culture, and more seditiously, to Conquer the culture for Christ, and exercise godly Dominion over it (Matthew 5:13-16). ‘Wikipedia’ defines this Religious Coalition in this way: “Led by Robert Grant advocacy group Christian Voice, Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, Ed McAteer‘s Religious Roundtable Council, James Dobson‘s Focus on the Family, Paul Weyrich‘s Free Congress Foundation and The Heritage Foundation, and Pat Robertson‘s Christian Broadcasting Network, the new Religious Right combined conservative politics with evangelical and fundamentalist teachings… While the influence of the Christian Right is typically traced to the 1980 Presidential election, Daniel K. Williams argues in ‘God’s Own Party’ that it had actually been involved in politics for most of the twentieth century. He also notes that the Christian Right had previously been in alliance with the Republican Party in the 1940s through 1960s on matters such as opposition to communism and defending “a Protestant-based moral order.” – March 8, 2021; edited

THEN CAME TRUMP. The ultimate, twisted expression of Christian Politicization came to us in the Year 2016. What follows is the straight Report of how our intrepid friend and Christian champion, KENDAL CASEY UNRUH, led the movement to “Free the Delegates” from being locked in for Donald Trump at the 2016 National Convention in Cleveland Ohio. ‘Wikipedia’ (December 24, 2020; edited) again summarizes this stunning, historic Turn from Christian Conservatism to Trumpism as its illegitimate child from an Unholy Union. – cf. 1 Corinthians 10:21; 2 Corinthians 2:14

“Free the Delegates Movement was started by eight time National Delegate and former RNC Platform Committee member, Kendal Unruh of Castle Rock, Colorado, who teaches high school government at the Jim Elliot Christian School in Denver. Unruh was a 2016 Cruz delegate for Colorado to the Convention and a member of the Rules Committee. Unruh was the sponsor of the ‘Conscience Clause’ in the RNC Rules Committee. The Amendment was to codify the legal right of the delegates to unbind from the candidate(s) who had been selected in the primaries. She was quickly joined by fellow Colorado delegate REGINA THOMSON. The Movement was aided by BEAU CORRELL of Winchester, Virginia, an attorney who was elected delegate to the Republican National Convention. On July 11, Correll won a federal lawsuit in Correll v. Herring. The effect of the victory was to prevent state law from binding delegates.” Despite support from then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Senators Gordon Humphrey and John McCain, Unruh was strongarmed by then RNC Chairman REINCE PRIEBUS, and the Movement was strangled by the corrupt Trump Juggernaut.

RISE OF THE ALT RIGHT. Next would be the rapid consolidation of the Radical Right as part of, now become the very Core of Trump’s version of Republicanized Christianity, being increasingly fused together in Seditious Alliance by the further transformation of Traditional Christianity to what I derisively call, Trump’s virulent “America First” Nationalism. Here is TAYLOR HOSKING’S writeup of this Transformation for ‘The Atlantic:’

“Shortly after Donald Trump was elected, White Nationalists gathered in Washington, D.C. for an annual conference, where The Atlantic captured the audience offering cheers and enthusiastic Nazi salutes. At the helm was RICHARD SPENCER, ‘ a term he popularized. ‘Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!’ they exclaimed. Spencer would go on to set up a ‘Hub’ for the Alt-Right Movement in the Washington area…STEVE BANNON, the former chairman of ‘Breitbart News’ who once described the site as ‘the Platform for the Alt-Right,’ served as Trump’s chief strategist in the White House. Over the course of the year, the resurgence of White Nationalism would play out on the national stage…[Atlantic journalist] ANGELA NAGLE looked back on the progression of the Alt-Right over the year: How it attracted a broad audience and sowed Confusion about their off-screen threat, and why Charlottesville was a breaking point. And in ‘The Making of an American Nazi,’ LUKE O’BRIEN profiled ANDREW ANGLIN, the publisher of the world’s biggest neo-Nazi website, ‘The Daily Stormer.’” – “The Rise of the Alt Right,” December 28, 2017; edited

A QANON’D AMERICA.’ Now listen carefully to what I more and more strongly consider to be AMERICA’S NEXT STAGE, if we do not wake up very soon. “Former Trump adviser STEVE BANNON’S recent interview with a local Republican Party committee member on how Trump supporters might be able to take control of the Party at the grassroots level is now being enthusiastically promoted on Far-Right platforms — including to followers of the QANON CONSPIRACY THEORY, which has been linked to domestic terrorism and the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol…’And I’ve told people this since 2009. I told the Tea Partyers this,’ [Arizona Republican and attorney DAN] SCHULTZ added. ‘If you will not at least try this, and get involved, and ‘take over the party,’ I can’t guarantee you that we’ll save the Republic, but I can guarantee you this: We’ll lose it. If we Conservatives don’t take over the Republican Party, we’re going to lose our Republic’… Bannon previously made numerous calls for former President Donald Trump to ‘subvert’ the results of the 2020 election. He also compared pro-Trump protests after the elections to the American Revolution and on January 5, said that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow” when the Electoral College votes were going to get counted. (Since then, he has tried to downplay the violence that took place that day — while also urging Trump’s Impeachment legal team to continue pursuing the false claims that the election was stolen.).” – ERIC KLEEFIELD, “QAnon and Trumpists Plot GOP Takeover — With Bannon’s Advice.” ‘The National Memo,’ March 11, 2021; edited

BOTTOM LINE. Beloved followers of God and Virtue, I am increasingly convinced that this is America’s Future if Christian Leaders don’t step up, stand up, speak up and act up to stop this March Toward Oblivion. It is happening, though few are reporting this, so precious few. I will be working on a Three Part Series follow up to pursue this venal possibility toward the end of this month.

But now to a more Joyous Possibility, however remote.

THE TEACHING

“So let those [of us] who are spiritually mature and full-grown have this mind and hold these convictions; and if in any respect you have a different attitude of mind, God will make that clear to you also. Only let us hold true to what we have already attained and walk and order our lives by that.” – PHILIPPIANS 3:15-16, AMPC

WHAT DOES GOD WANT? Now to the Crux of the matter before us today: Just what does God want us to Become for the challenging Days Ahead? It can be summed up in Two Words from the passage above:

SPIRITUALLY MATURE. Taken from the key Greek term, ‘Teleios’ [τέλειος], meaning: “Having reached its [proper] end, complete, perfect; full grown, of full age; specially of the completeness of Christian character; mature (consummated) from going through the necessary stages to reach the end–goal; i.e., developed into a consummating completion by fulfilling the necessary process (of one’s spiritual journey); brought to its end, finished; lacking nothing necessary to completeness; perfect; full grown adult; (in various applications of labor, growth, mental and moral character; grown to obey Christ completely; as opposed to little children.”

CHILDREN’S CHURCH. Beloved, as I said at the outset: I must tell you all, whether I am listening to a sermon, or Christian music radio, or visiting that Christian bookstore that so many love to frequent, or reviewing still another conference or seminar on how to become a super believer, I far too often sense that I am listening to or reading from the work of untested little kids! The absence of in-depth ministry when Scripture is cited, or carefully crafted music and lyrics, or books that do not relate to making me feel better about myself, is at times for me at least, overwhelming. So much tragic surface scratch of God’s rich Truth, turning it into clichés and pretty little memes that taste like pablum to me. I mean, the World is on fire, people are dying, and we are singing nursery rhymes, beloved! Thus ensues a Church of Children, without the Gravitas of a full grown adult, a true warrior for Christ. Instead, it all feels to me as if we are daring to just play church games in an Era of unrelenting Darkness and Danger.

AN ILLUSTRATION. “The house lights go down. Spinning, multicolored lights sweep the auditorium. A rock band launches into a rousing opening song. “Ignore everyone else, this time is just about you and Jesus,” proclaims the lead singer. The music changes to a slow dance tune, and the people sing about falling in love with Jesus. A guitarist sporting skinny jeans and a soul patch closes the worship set with a prayer, beginning, ‘Hey God’…The spotlight then falls on the speaker, who tells entertaining stories, cracks a few jokes, and assures everyone that “God is not mad at you. He loves you unconditionally’…Fifty or sixty years ago, these now-commonplace elements of American church life were regularly found in youth groups but rarely in worship services and adult activities. What happened?…[T]he Juvenilization of American Christianity. Juvenilization is the process by which the religious beliefs, practices, and developmental characteristics of Adolescents become accepted as appropriate for Adults.” – THOMAS E. BERGLER, “When Are We Going to Grow Up?” ‘Christianity Today,’ June 8, 2012; edited

COMMENTARY FROM A GROWNUP. “As many as are MATURE should share Paul’s willingness to suffer and die for Christ and to bend every effort in the quest for likeness to the Lord Jesus. This is the Mature View of the Christian Faith. Some would call it extreme, radical, or fanatical. But the Apostle states that those who are Full-Grown will see that this is the only sane, logical, reasonable response to the One who shed His life-giving blood for them on Calvarey. ‘If in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you’…The reason we have such an easy-going, complacent Christianity today is because we do not want to know the Truth, we are not willing to Obey the demands of Ideal Christianity. God is willing to show the Truth to those who are willing to follow it.” – WILLIAM MACDONALD, ‘Believer’s Bible Commentary,’ 1995, pp. 1975-1976; edited

But only to those, beloved. Only to those. All the rest, “will not get to go.” Selah.

LAST THOUGHTS

As I begin to conclude my once again lengthy tome on “Where We Shall Yet Be” as a Church and a Nation, I think you’ll find my Answer to all this mayhem surprisingly simple. But then, I remain a fan of the Law of Ockham’s Razor.

DK’S MATURITY MAXIM. With that in mind, here is my lifelong conclusion and proposal for how to Fix America and the Church – and oneself along the way:

‘Always strive to tell the Truth, in Love (which comes in many forms), and be willing to suffer the Consequences for doing so.’

Simple, right? Well now, apparently not, since so many Lies and Half-Truths and Myths pervade both the Church and the entire, information infested planet. JULIA DUIN, a Christian journalist and old colleague specializing on religion reporting wrote of this recently, as it relates to several “DONALD TRUMP PROPHECIES” that have utterly, shamefully failed to come true.

CLOUDS WITHOUT WATER. There have arisen countless ‘Christian’ Apologists laboring furiously to either ignore or explain away the Falsehoods. “They weren’t really false prophets, Dr. Kelly. They just made some mistakes.” – cf. Jude 1:12-13

Here’s precisely what I mean.

“Perched on a cream-colored armchair, JOHNNY ENLOW, a 61-year-old, California-based Pentecostal pastor with short-cropped gray hair, a trim beard and Tom Selleck-style mustache, looked into the camera and prophesied that Donald Trump would become president again. Not in 2024. In 2021…

Indeed, Enlow was not alone out on that limb. GREG LOCKE, a Nashville pastor with a massive social media following, said after Trump’s loss that he would ‘100 percent remain president of the United States for another term.’ KAT KERR, a pink-haired preacher from Jacksonville, Florida, declared repeatedly last month that Trump had won the election ‘by a landslide’ and that God had told her he would serve for eight years. In his video, Enlow went further. ‘There’s not going to be just Trump coming back,’ he said. ‘There’s going to be at least two more Trumps that will be in office in some way.’ Donald Trump, he proclaimed elsewhere, was ‘the primary government leader on Planet Earth.’” – “The Christian Prophets Who Say Trump is Coming Again,” ‘Politico,’ February 18, 2021; edited

CAUSE AND EFFECT. Not only are such ‘Prophecies’ Lies attributed to God – easily qualifying as Blasphemy – but they share a Common Core: They originally emanate from a severely weakened Church and Pulpit, having spewed Doctrinal Pablum to the congregations for generations, especially from the Full Gospel Churches (Charismatic and Pentecostal).

Second, vastly more seriously, beloved, in the words of a somewhat chastened DR. MICHEAL BROWN in a January 23^rd tweet but who frankly helped spin this insidious web of False Teachers and Prophecies in the recent Trump Years, cautioned with this:

“To every leader who prophesied that Trump would remain in the White House, this is not about you now. This is about the name of the Lord being mocked and His people left in confusion and disappointment. I urge you to put your focus there, not on your own ministry or reputation.”

Then this still more stunning observation from Duin’s article.

“[JAMES] BEVERLY, the Tyndale University professor, worries the widespread fidelity to Trump Prophecies is part of a broader embrace of Conspiratorial Thinking in America. In a new book, he links the Prophetic Movement to the Far [Alt] Right QAnon Conspiracy: Leaders of both, he says, have said all along that Trump would win and continue to push the idea that this will happen in March. Beverly, however, believes the Charismatic prophets are likely to move on if nothing happens at that point.”

NOTE. I am following in Professor Beverly’s footsteps in the next few Commentaries, since I believe that what lies ahead for the American Church and Political Nation will be fraught with, soaked in and deeply infected by ‘The QAnon Conspiracy.’

Which, if true, will spell the Death of the American Church and State.

THE REMEDY. A favorite book by a favorite Christian thinker who I quoted recently, Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary, DR. DOUGLAS GROOTHUIS, posited this in his final chapter entitled, “The Fixed Point in a Postmodern World.”

“The Fixed Point in a shifting world is Biblical Truth and all that agrees with it, for ‘All truth is God’s truth.’ Truth is rooted in God, who is ‘A mighty fortress…a bulwark never failing’ (Martin Luther). Those who Betray Truth have joined the multitude that is moving toward Depravity morally, intellectually and spiritually – however contented and relevant these Postmoderns may seem. By Betraying Truth, they lose their voice, their authority, their endorsement by reality and their integrity.” – ‘Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism,’ 2000, pp.263-280; edited

He then sounds like a Modern Luther in calling us to do the following.

Be Seekers of Truth as our primary preparation.

Understand that Truth means loving confrontation.

Teach and Preach with a holy sobriety.

Worship in Spirit and Truth.

Present the Truth in all evangelistic outreach.

Rediscover the Doctrine of Calling.

Grasp the importance of the Fixed Point.

CODA. As I reflect again on Ockham’s Law, these very simple but crucial steps can lead an individual, a family, a Church or even a Nation back to Sanity, Order and Virtue – if it truly wants to make the journey.

Simpler and more powerful still are the WORDS OF MESSIAH to us all in these waning hours of The American Century, in full recognition that the Problem is Deception, and the Solution is Truth.

“So Jesus was saying to the Jews who had believed Him, “If you abide in My word [continually obeying My teachings and living in accordance with them, then] you are truly My disciples. And you will know the truth [regarding salvation], and the truth will set you free [from the penalty of sin].” – JOHN 8:31-32, AMP

Or, if you still so desire, you can Choose to Believe the Lie, and consign yourself, the Nation and the compromised Church to Death. As always, beloved, The Choice is completely up to us. Free will is indeed, a thing.

Ever your servant, DK

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