NOTES ON GOD’S JUDGMENT UPON THOSE WHO SUPPRESS THE TRUTH IN UNRIGHTEOUSNESS: EVEN IN HIS OWN HOUSE! – (WITH VIDEO)

I.  THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “For [God does not overlook sin and] the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who in their wickedness suppress and stifle the truth, because that which is known about God is evident within them [in their inner consciousness], for God made it evident to them.” – ROMANS 1:18-19, AMP

KEY TERM: “SUPPRESS.” ‘Katechó’ [κατεχόντων]: “‘To hold down or withhold [the truth from those who need to hear it];’ the sense is to hinder or repress [in rebellious unrighteousness]; to take possession of, detain or restrain; to keep from the possession [of those who rightly deserve it]; to overpower and crush; to subdue; to destroy; ‘to conceal; not to tell or reveal; as, to suppress evidence’ [thereby subverting God’s Justice].”

QUOTATION 1. “Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives.  They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a Paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an End. One does not establish a Dictatorship in order to safeguard a Revolution; one makes the Revolution in order to establish the Dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” – GEORGE ORWELL, Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949; edited

QUOTATION 2. “I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill!” – DONALD TRUMP, Reported by AMANDA NAZARRO, “Donald Trump Doubles Down on ‘Dictator’ Remarks at New York Republican Gala,” The Hill, Dec. 10, 2023; edited

COMMENTARY. “Here we have the answer to the question, ‘Why do men need the Gospel? The answer is that they are lost without it, and that the Wrath of God is revealed from Heaven against the wickedness of [all] men who suppress the truth in an unrighteous manner and by their unrighteous lives.’ But how is God’s Wrath revealed? One answer is given in this context. God gives men over to uncleanness (1:24), to vile affections (1:26), and to a reprobate mind (1:28).

‘But it is also true that God occasionally breaks through into human history to show His extreme displeasure at man’s sin’ – for example, The Flood (Gen. 7); the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 19); and the punishment of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram (Num. 16:3) … Those things which may be known of God in Creation [and the Scriptures] have been revealed to them. ‘God has not left them without a Revelation of Himself [therefore they are without excuse!].’” – WILLIAM MACDONALD, Believer’s Bible Commentary, 1995, p. 1678; edited

GOD’S WRATH. “They gathered against Moses [Korah, Dathan, Abiram plus 250 leaders] … And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods. So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly. Then all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, ‘Lest the earth swallow us up also!’ And a fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense.” – NUMBERS 16:3, 32-35, NKJV

Selah. Consider this well all you Pastors who teach not His Full Counsels.

II. TEACHING

THE 1960S. During my 1960s tour of undergraduate studies at what was then called Long Beach State College (CA), I recall from those increasingly turbulent, long-haired, tie-dyed, days where the ocean air was tinged with alternate whiffs of weed and patchouli drifting all about, there was a popular picture of “A LAUGHING JESUS.”

In keeping with the faux happy, Hippie Era of “Sex, Drugs and Rock n Roll,” my generation reconstructed Jesus into our own preferred image. We figured He was just a joyful, love-everybody-equally sort of Divine Egalitarian who never, ever judged anyone, ever! And so, we could bed down comfortably at night with a clear conscience, that we were creating a New American Order where, as the Beatles taught us so well:

“All you need is love.”

A superb analysis by DR. HUGH MCLEOD, emeritus professor of Church history at the University of Birmingham takes us to school about its terrible impact on Western Christianity. His essay is titled, “Why Were the 1960s So Religiously Explosive?” The following is an Abstract of his work.

“The 1960s were a time of dramatic Religious Change throughout the Western world. These years were religiously explosive because of the convergence of Major Social Changes with new currents of thinking and the impact of specific events, notably the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and Vatican II. The social changes included unprecedented affluence, changes in family relationships and especially in the position of women, and the weakening of collective identities, rooted in confessional and ideological sub-cultures. ‘New currents of ideas included a growing Political and Theological Radicalism, culminating in 1968, and increasingly influential concepts of individual human rights.’” – Amsterdam University Press, May 2004, edited

Make all that simply read: The Foundations of Biblical Orthodoxy were infiltrated by the philosophies of German Higher Criticism, Western Romanticism, and Eastern Mysticism in a three-pronged assault leaving Christian Doctrines in tatters in both the Protestant and Catholic orders.

THE 2020S. Now fast forward some 60 years and, well, you may already see where I am going with this. HINT: “For they sow the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads; it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, strangers and aliens would eat it up” – HOSEA 8:7, AMPC

While commentaries abound dealing with our Revolutionary Decade, I have come to a simple TWO-FACTOR DIAGNOSIS of what hit our nation like an 8.0 earthquake, that shifted American Destiny forever in my view.

In my recently published book, The Sixth Seal II: A Prewrath Commentary on the Rise of Donald Trump and the Decline of the American Order (Nov. 22, 2023, pp. 201-202), I write of this New Decade of Radical Change.

“As we begin to conclude our assessment of the rapidly declining American Condition, including its Lodestone – the Church – we find ourselves confronting Two Decisive Days and their attendant Events, that changed the course of American History forever.

I.  JUNE 21, 2016. This marks the date when the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump, met with over 1,000 leading Evangelicals to see them on his candidacy …

II.  JANUARY 6, 2021. I restate here the dispassionate summary of this bloody Wednesday Insurrection at the American Capitol published by Wikipedia, updated on November 4, 2021. [It began]: The 2021 United States Capitol Attack occurred on January 6, 2021, when a mob supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. They sought to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election by disrupting the joint session of Congress assembled to count electoral votes that would formalize President-elect Joe Biden’s victory.”

I write elsewhere of the disastrously mitigating onset of the COVID-19 PANDEMIC that served to exacerbate and accelerate the Extreme Right’s coalescence around the Conspiracy View that the Vaccine was to be resisted at all costs as a faux ‘Agent Provocateur’designed to destroy our individual freedom.

‘The impact of all this on the Nation and the American Church was seismic.’

DK’S CONTENTION. “I cannot say this in strong enough terms, but let me try nonetheless: On June 21, 2016, the Establishment” American Church effectively died, and on January 6, 2021, the Nation began to perish. This pronouncement is based on solid theological and historical ground” (p. 203).

III.  LAST THOUGHTS: THE END OF AMERICA’S “HAPPY CHURCH”

Bearing in mind my earlier allusions to the “Laughing Jesus” of the 1960s, it is not stretch to propose that today’s Evangelical, Charismatic and Pentecostal churches are collectively engaged in ‘Making America Fun Again’ instead of Restoring Christian Orthodoxy, as they desperately should be doing.

THE BIBLICAL JESUS. I am once again reminded of JONATHAN EDWARD’S fiery oration of 1741: “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (edited).Here are a few lines from his epic sermon preached at Enfield, Connecticut on July 8 of that year to remind us of our King’s more likely demeanor today, as He gazes upon the stench of sustained American Church treachery.

“‘The Bow of God’s Wrath is bent,’ and the arrow made ready on the string, and Justice bends the arrow at your heart, and strains the Bow, and it is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, and that of an Angry God, without any promise or obligation at all, that keeps the arrow one moment from being made drunk with your blood.”

Lest we forget that Jesus was not once recorded as laughing in the Bible, hear how He was vastly more accurately depicted by the JEWISH PROPHET: “He was despised and rejected and

forsaken by men, a Man of sorrows and pains, and acquainted with grief and sickness; and like One from Whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we did not appreciate His worth or have any esteem for Him.” – ISAIAH 53:3, AMPC

A ROARING LION. There are only THREE TIMES when Jesus Christ was visibly, unapologetically, and publicly outraged. The First was where He passionately displayed His hatred of ‘Commercialism in the Temple’ when He made a whip of cords and violently overturned the tables of the ‘money changers and sellers’ shouting, “You shall not make My Father’s house a house of merchandise!” Then He explained: “Zeal for Your house has consumed Me!” – JOHN 2:15-17

• “ZEAL.” ‘Zelos’ [ζῆλος]: “Used in the positive sense as with here, ‘Divine Envy’ that signifies the honorable emulation with the consequent imitation of that which presents itself and the mind’s eye as excellent; literally means ‘hot enough to boil; i.e., boiling anger, love, passion, for what is good or bad;’ ardor in embracing, pursuing, defending anything; also, fierceness of indignation, ‘punitive fervor’ [for truth, righteousness or justice].’

The Second took place again at the Temple following His triumphal entry where Jesus found the vendors not only selling their wares inside the Temple area but this time profiteering, charging unfair prices for their services. Though no mention of a whip was made this time, He again turned over tables in a physical demonstration of His Outrage against His own people who were still again placing ‘Profit above Piety,’ and He would not have it! His now famous, public shout: “My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves!” – MATTHEW 21:12-13

The Third took place when He as addressing the crowds concerning the “Proud Religious Hypocrites” who required others to follow The Law but did not hold themselves to account. Jesus then angrily issues the famous “SEVEN WOES” against these disastrously unprincipled leaders that included:

• Obstructionism by hindering others from the Kingdom.

• Appropriation of widow’s holdings.

• Corruption of converts.

• Casuistry, or deceptive interpretations for which Jesus called them, “Blind Guides!”

• Cheating on their tithe while being merciless toward others’ minor offenses.

• Externalism, or showing public religiousness but inside were self-indulgent.

• Inward Homicide by saying they would have killed the OT Prophets but of course, would have – and did! (cf. Matthew 23:1-30; Wm. MacDonald, Believer’s Bible Commentary, 1995, pp. 1288-1291; edited).

CHRIST’S PUBLIC VERDICT. “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt.

^‘Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell?’ Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.” – MATTHEW 23:31-36, NKJV).

I close with a PIERCING QUESTION: Would the Jesus of that Day pronounce any less severe a Judgment upon the Religious Hypocrites of American Christians today? Specifically, the seditious Leaders of Christian Nationalism who deny and persecute and will soon put to death those who refuse to worship Antichrist?

THE ANSWER is found in the Scriptures:“‘For I am the Lord, I do not change [but remain faithful to My covenant with you]’ … Jesus Christ is [eternally changeless, always] the same yesterday and today and forever.” – MALACHI 3:6; HEBREWS 13:8, AMP

CODA. I ought to trust that there are no questions left, beloved, but given the outrageous Rebellion and self-inflicted Blindness of the great majority of the American Church and her Shepherds, I suspect what is written here to be lampooned, scoffed at and dismissed as the raving of a lunatic.

‘Tengan mucho cuidado todos ustedes, pastores, sacerdotes y prelados!’ [“Be very careful all of you, pastors, priests and prelates!”].

Such was the attitude of the Jews of Jesus’ Day when they shouted, en masse: “‘[Give us] Barabbas!’ … Let Him [the Christ] be crucified! Let Him be crucified! … [And] Let [the responsibility for] His blood be on us and on our children!” – MATTHEW 27:21-25, AMP

So has it been written, so shall it be done. ‘As you ask.’ Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/fH5eM9tkppM