FEARING GOD AND TELLING THE TRUTH: THE LOST ART OF HONORING THE LORD IN AMERICA’S MAGA CHURCHES – UNEDITED

SCRIPTURE. “‘You shall fear [only] the Lord your God’; and you shall serve Him [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect] and swear [oaths] by His name [alone]. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God who is among you is a jealous (impassioned) God [demanding what is rightfully and uniquely His]—otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled and burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the earth.” – DEUTERONOMY 6:13-15, AMP

QUOTATIONS

RYLE. “Young man, be of good courage. Care not for what the world says or thinks: you will not be with the world always. Can man save your soul? No. Will man be your judge in the great and dreadful day of account? No. Can man give you a good conscience in life, a good hope in death, a good answer in the morning of resurrection? No! no! no! Man can do nothing of the sort. Then ‘Fear not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: for the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall eat them like wool” (Isa. 51:7-8). Call to your mind the saying of good Colonel Gardiner: ‘I fear God, and therefore I have none else to fear.’ Go and be like him!” ― J.C. Ryle, ‘Thoughts for Young Men,’ 1865; edited

COCKBURN. “Lord of the star fields, Ancient of days, Universe Maker, here’s a song in your praise … Voice of the nova, Smile of the dew, all of our yearning only comes home to You. Oh, Love that fires the sun, keep me burning!” – Bruce Cockburn, “Lord of the Starfields,” 1976; edited

MOORE. “People are watching. People are overhearing. Some of them are your children. The sight of ‘Jesus Saves’ and ‘God Bless America’ signs by those violently storming the Capitol is about more than just inconsistency. It is about a picture of Jesus Christ and of His Gospel that is ‘Satanic.’ The mixing of the Christian Religion with crazed and counter-biblical cults such as Q-Anon is telling the outside world that this is what the Gospel is. ‘That’s a lie, and it is blasphemous against a holy God!” – Russell Moore, “The Roman Road from Insurrection,” Jan. 11, 2021; edited

DK. And yet to this day, the American Church acts as if January 6 never happened. It has vilified Dr. Moore, forcing him to resign, treating him like a pariah. As with myself and with many of you. Without apology, this essay is designed to devastate the rationale for that sort of conduct.

Beloved: I promise you, this is what is coming to everyone who stands for Christian Truth in the days ahead under the imprimatur of Maga Christianity.

THEREFORE: “We are destroying sophisticated arguments and every exalted and proud thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought and purpose captive to the obedience of Christ.” – 2 CORINTHIANS 10:5, AMP

Selah.

1. FIRST THOUGHTS

The America of 2022 appears somewhat similar to J.C. Ryles’ America of 1865. In his day, the Civil War had just ended with 620,000 lives lost. Lincoln had been assassinated on April 14 by John Wilkes Booth for daring to abolish slavery with The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. White America was bitterly split down the middle over the issue during and following the Reconstruction Era of 1865-1877.

While we were certainly a different America a century and a half ago, there are a growing number of observers of America’s deep divides who portend a Second Civil War percolating just under the surface of increasing social unrest.

Indeed, we are reaching a boiling point, and most Americans if they are honest will tell you they agree.

THE EVIDENCE. A 2021 national survey by pollster John Zogby found a plurality of Americans (46%) believed a future civil war was likely, 43% felt it was unlikely, and 11% were not sure. According to a much newer poll just this year, The Economist and YouGov found that an overwhelming majority, 86%, said the country has become more politically divided since the beginning of 2021, and 68% said they expect that to get even worse over the next few years.

Since 2016 and the steady rise of White Christian Nationalism, America is indeed more fractured now than since the Civil War and some argue even more so. White Americans are, either passively or overtly, increasingly pitted against minorities, people of color and the poor as perhaps never before. Families, friends and Christian alliances are being ripped apart by our differences over politics, immigration, the economy, and worst of all, the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And all of this was started and continues to be gaslighted by just one uniquely divisive, grotesque and uniquely powerful American: DONALD JOHN TRUMP.

But for saying such things, as with Russell Moore, I am called all sorts of things: Liberal! Pharisee! Hateful! Ignorant! Unloving! Un-Christian! Divisive! Demonic! Deserving of death! One young pastor I have loved and known for years once told me that because I raised these matters in warning him about it over a year ago, replied: “I can no longer engage with you, Dr. Kelly, since you told me I was no longer fulfilling my calling if I don’t address it.”

Make that read: A Christian friend and elder in the church told a young Christian leader the Truth and was banished for it. Selah.

WHAT IS HAPPENING? The Question that torments so many of us, though we are clearly a minority in the Church, is this: “How can otherwise godly and ethically principled individuals not only tolerate but frankly champion such an inarguably corrupt and vicious man?

I believe the answer to that historic inquiry lies squarely on the shoulders of one group of men in America: CHRISTIAN PASTORS. I have been relentlessly tough on that group because of this strong and studied conviction securely based in sound Christian theology.

Consider the following Scriptures, all rendered in the Amplified Bible.

• 1 PETER 4:17-18. For it is the time [destined] for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will the outcome be for those who do not respect or believe or obey the gospel of God? And if it is difficult for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the godless and the sinner?”

• JAMES 3:1. “Not many [of you] should become teachers [serving in an official teaching capacity], my brothers and sisters, for you know that we [who are teachers] will be judged by a higher standard [because we have assumed greater accountability and more condemnation if we teach incorrectly].”

• LUKE 12:47-48. “And that servant who knew his master’s will, and yet did not get ready or act in accord with his will, will be beaten with many lashes [of the whip], but the one who did not know it and did things worthy of a beating, will receive only a few [lashes]. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and to whom they entrusted much, of him they will ask all the more.”

SHAKEDOWN OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH. The seditious core of this problem is breathtaking in its doctrinal treachery against the very heart of Christian integrity. New York Times journalist RUTH GRAHAM says many pastors are still being aggressively pressured to resist vaccines and mask mandates, embrace Trump’s claims about election fraud and adopt QAnon-based conspiracy theories. – NPR, “A Divide Between the Pulpit and the Pew is Roiling the Evangelical Church,” May 19, 2022

Writing for The Atlantic, Christian journalist PETER WEHNER observed: “The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.” – “The Evangelical Church is Breaking Apart,” Oct. 24, 2021

IN SUM. There is growing, undeniable evidence that the American Pastor is crumbling beneath the spiritual extortion of MAGA Christians, who threaten to pull down the church if they do not walk the walk of the Trump Narrative. This includes not only waving high the flag of White Nationalism, but also the arcane conspiracy bile of the QAnon Cult, now numbering as high as 68 million Americans by recent estimates. – Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), “Nearly One in Five Americans and One in Four Republicans Still Believe in QAnon Conspiracy Theories,” Feb. 24, 2022

Beloved, of the roughly 200 million Americans claiming to be “Christian,” this means that conservatively, there are likely at least between 30-40 million QAnon sympathizers in our pews today. But if that were not enough, here’s the existential spiritual danger.

American Pastors are either: (1) Unaware of this; (2) Fully aware and compliant;  or much worse, they are (3) Fully aware of it, but are terrified to speak out against it. If all this is true, and these numbers are reasonable assessments of the current spiritual condition of American Christianity, then for all intents and purposes:

Orthodox Christianity is effectively moribund in America toward the end of 2022.

MORIBUND. “From the Latin, mori; in terminal decline; lacking vitality or vigor; in or associated with the process of passing from life or ceasing to be; stagnant, lifeless; not growing or changing; without force or vitality.”

If I am accurate in this assessment to come then THE QUESTION: ‘If the Church dies, beloved, what becomes of that Nation?’ We will explore that difficult question in the next section.

1. IMPLICATIONS FOR THE NEXT TEN YEARS

Most of us of course want to know where America is heading for the rest of this decade until the year 2030. I certainly do and one of my commissions as a cultural analyst is to make my best assessment of just where that is, but I need help.

Writing this time for the Boston Review are two political science professors, RUTH BARRENS COLLIER of UC Berkeley and JAKE GRUMBACH of the University of Washington. Their piece is entitled, “The Deep Structure of Democratic Crisis,” published on January 6th, 2022, the bloody One Year Anniversary of the insurrection at the Capitol.

Once again, I quote at length for your edification and because the content is simply too important to abbreviate.

“To be sure, the sense of alarm is partly due to the specific behavior of a particular individual, DONALD TRUMP, who entrepreneurially and through dint of personality mobilized a following and exploited openings in the U.S. Party System. This explanation is emphasized in literature on the role of leadership and a tradition of analyzing the impact of the Metternichs and Bismarks as well as the Hitlers and Stalins of the world. Trump is a unique, norm-breaking, daring, and mobilizing figure with a particular psychology, which is certainly part of the picture. His ability to mobilize supporters—especially their animus and resentments—is, in one classic image, the narrow end of a causal funnel of explanation that goes from proximate factors to deeper and longer-term factors as it widens.

In fact, as many have noted, Trump is as much the outcome as the cause of transformations in the Republican Party, which go back at least to Newt Gingrich, under whose leadership it became an Anti-System Party—a ‘destructive and delegitimizing force’ as Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein put it in 2016 …

The contemporary Supreme Court, meanwhile, has increasingly employed the Shadow Docket in conservative rulings, and analysts have begun to talk about a ‘weaponized’ Supreme Court.’ In the process, the courts have used Judicial Supremacy to further weaken basic democratic notions of rule of and by the people based on one-person, one vote.”

Should you think but I am only quoting liberal sources, here is an extraordinarily thoughtful essay by DR. ANDREW T. WALKER, associate professor of Christian Ethics at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a fellow with The Ethics and Public Policy Center and managing editor of ‘World Opinions.’

“Despite a nationwide emphasis on restoring civility (assuming it was once even there), America seems more inclined than ever to tear apart at its seams. Literal talk of [internecine conflict] proliferates now more than at any other time I can recall in my life. Everyone wishes to get along with one another, but when it comes to doing the work of civility ourselves, we are prone to think the problem exists out there rather than with, well, me. But we should have a healthy enough skepticism of human nature to know the problems that plague society plague human nature. G.K. Chesterton once quipped, when asked what was wrong with the world today: ‘I am’ …

The ‘Woke’ Progressive barista’ from Brooklyn who champions the de-criminalization of ‘sex work’ may truly have little in common with the ‘Conservative Christian mailman’ from rural Alabama who loves Tucker Carlson [sic]. No one ever said these two had to get along or be friends. The bigger questions are: Can they now even co-exist? Would one defend the other’s right to lay equal claim to participating in the public arena through the airing of one’s views?” “Come, Let Us Reason Together,” ‘What Went Wrong,’ ret. Oct. 9, 2022; edited

Professor Walker’s stunning challenge: “We cannot persist in this maddening cycle of bitterness and rage and think we’ll have a future.”  Selah.

WHEN WORLDVIEWS COLLIDE. Later in my career at Regent anniversary during the 1990s, I began to focus most of my attention, teaching, and research on two areas, including Public Affairs Journalism and Eschatology. Indeed, the two are highly related and travel far in explaining our current Existential Crisis as a nation.

A “Worldview” can most simply be defined as one’s deeply held convictions about Reality and Morality: What is good and what is evil, what is real and what is false – those crucially important values that we hold dear which structure our behavior and over which we will fight, and even die.

It is important to note that history demonstrates without question that of all the causes of great wars, ‘worldview differences’ are at the very heart of them. Christian historian RONALD NASH, author of ‘Worldviews in Conflict’ (1992) elsewhere writes: “Every person has something that concerns her ultimately and whatever it is, that object of ultimate concern is that person’s God” (Closing of the American Heart, 1990).

Over which they will fight, even to the death.

The point is: People go to war over one thing: Their God!Whether it be an Idea, or some Material Gain, or Political Power, or One’s Heritage – Wars are fought over such things. Selah.

FIVE PREDICTIONS OF AMERICA’S NEXT TEN YEARS. Harvard trained market entrepreneur and author NICK STAGER proposes Five Key Trends that America must deal with between now and the end of the decade in 2030. – Adapted from “The Changing World Order: Five Predictions for America’s Next 10 Years,” Median.com, Apr. 16, 2022; edited

Each hold powerful implications for matters of War and Peace here at home and abroad today.

1. THE DECLINE OF GLOBALIZATION. “This isn’t so much a prediction as an observation: Supply chain disruptions started by Covid 19 have still not been fully resolved (China locking down millions of people in the quixotic quest of a Zero Covid Policy doesn’t help). Adding to the mix is the New Era of Geopolitics we’re entering with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” 

• INFLATION IS HERE TO STAY. “At first, inflation was expected to work itself out as supply chains normalized. Then, we pointed to economic stimulus as the culprit. Now the Biden Administration has branded it as ‘Putin’s Price Hike.’”

• REPUBLICANS WILL RETAKE THE WHITE HOUSE. “It’s basic politics: If people feel their lives are improving, they’ll tend to keep the same party in power. If they feel like their lives are getting worse, then they’ll want to mix things up. In this case responsibility doesn’t matter as much as who’s in charge.”

• INCREASE IN US LABOR POWER. “Again, this might be more of an observation than a prediction. Recent Unionization efforts at Amazon Warehouses and Starbucks locations show that labor is becoming increasingly mobilized … Meanwhile, inflation will drive real wages down, which will push labor by necessity to fight for higher wages.”

• INCREASED INTERNAL US CONFLICT. “The events of January 6th were something I never expected to see in my lifetime, and The Insurrection happened in comparatively good times. If we see a prolonged period of economic malaise — like stagflation — internal conflict will increase as both sides continue to disagree about the best path forward.”

In a somewhat riveting piece by combat correspondent WILLIAM S. BECKER writing for The Hill (Oct. 7, 2022; edited), we see a powerful groundswell in America toward what just a few short years ago was Unthinkable.

“There was a time when Americans had values. It seems those values have disappeared, and many things that used to be unacceptable, even unthinkable, became common.

When did it become acceptable to lie? Or to spread fake conspiracies? Or to govern with fear rather than ideas? When did it become okay to deny and reject what the majority of Americans decide? Is it now socially acceptable to send death threats to people with whom we disagree? Is it responsible for a sitting United States congresswoman to make outrageously false statements like ‘Democrats want Republicans dead, and they have already started the killings, as REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) recently did. However, all the automatic weapons and body armor that are now de rigueur under the GOP tent indicate the shoe is likely on the other foot.

When did we decide a president, current or former, is above the law — actually, above many laws in the case of Donald Trump — and law enforcement agents should be targeted for investigating? Where does free speech stop, and domestic terrorism begin? Don’t vile threats against individual Americans and their families cross the line?

When did it become acceptable for militants to lock, load and try to incite Civil War in America?”

MAGA DRIVEN FEAR. Donald Trump’s cancerous MAGA Christian Nationalism on the scene beginning in 2015 his Maga Stormtroopers have driven a wedge into our American Heart like no other politician in our entire history. Since exactly then! And as I say over and over and over again, with the full cooperation and complicity of the American Protestant Church.

Neither has America been the same ever since that time, and I am convinced that we shall never be the same again. Selah.

1. THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “‘You shall fear [only] the Lord your God’; and you shall serve Him [with awe-filled reverence and profound respect] and swear [oaths] by His name [alone]. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples who surround you, for the Lord your God who is among you is a jealous (impassioned) God [demanding what is rightfully and uniquely His]—otherwise the anger of the Lord your God will be kindled and burn against you, and He will destroy you from the face of the earth.” – DEUTERONOMY 6:13-15, AMP

As is our practice, we go to a close-up examination of KEY TERMS followed by a theological COMMENTARY that helps drive home those main points.

• FEAR ONLY HIM. Taken from the Hebrew word, ‘Yare’ [יָרֵא]: “To be afraid of the dreadful majesty of God [and therefore revere]; what one feels about what may go wrong with him if he disobeys; to stand in awe of or have reverence for God; expressed in piety or formal worship; that which motivates godly thinking and living, yet is the Lord more interested in the heart than outward conformity; to be properly frightened toward moral conduct.”

• SERVE HIM.  Here the term used is, ‘Abad’ [עָבַד]: “To work, toil, or labor;  to become the slave of; to plow [as with a field to harvest]; to honor or worship;  to serve as a subject to a king or chieftain; to perform a priestly or Levitical service; to execute or fulfill the role of a husbandman; formally, to bestow the labor of body and mind in the employment of another; to act as the minister of; to perform official duties to; to obey servilely or meanly.”

• SWEAR OATHS. Somewhat more complex is the definition of this important phrase. Taken from the Hebrew, ‘Shaba’ [שָׁבַע]: “To a juror or make a covenant with; to repeat a declaration seven times (to “seven” another person in affirmation of an oath); to declare and absolute asservation; to issue a charge on God’s sacred honor; to make a solemn promise; to be complete [as an individual of integrity].”

• NOT GO AFTER OTHER GODS. The jurisdictional power of this statement drives us all the way back to the very First Commandment, and is to be regarded with fear and trembling. Taken from the Hebrew, ‘Yalak’ [יָלַךְ]: “To bear, bring, carry away, come away, depart, flow; cause to run from; to become weak; to vanish; to wax; to follow a foreign deity; to express excessive attachment or veneration for any thing, or that which borders on adoration.”

• A JEALOUS GOD! Closely attached to that last severe admonition is this aspect of God that we very nearly ever hear taught in our churches today. From the term, ‘Qanna’ [קַנָּא]: “Lit., ‘the Lord permits no rivals!’ He and He alone is the sole object of human worship; neither does He permit the sins of mankind; solicitous to defend the honor of; concerned for the character of.”

The First Commandment. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” – EXODUS 20:4-6, NKJV

New Testament Codicil. “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me] is not worthy of Me.” – JESUS OF NAZARETH, MATTHEW 10:37-38, AMP

COMMENTARY. “‘Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, and serve Him.’ – Serve Him through fear; not through slavish fear, a fear of hell and damnation; but through ‘filial fear’, a reverential affection for that God that had brought them out of a state of bondage into great and glorious liberty, out of Egypt into Canaan’s land, out of a place of misery into a land of plenty; and therefore should fear the Lord and His goodness, and from such a fear of Him serve Him, in every part of worship, public and private, enjoined; this passage Christ refers to Matthew 4:10.

‘And shalt swear by His name.’ – When they made a covenant with any, or were called to bear a testimony for the decision of any controversy which could not be otherwise finished; or whenever they took an oath on any account, which should never be taken rashly or on any trivial account, and much less falsely; it should be taken not in the name of any idol, or of any other but the true and living God; the Targum of Jonathan is, ’in the name of the Word of the Lord, in truth ye shall swear.’”‘ – ALBERT BARNES, ‘Notes on the Old and New Testament,’ 1884; edited

DK. In this section to follow I will argue rather vigorously that the greatest sin of the American Church that precedes all the rest, is this: Her brazen, sustained abandonment of a fear of the Almighty. The nation has turned to politics as the solution to her many fatal flaws, the outcome of which is predetermined by her disobedience. I cannot say this strongly enough.

America’s fear of Antichrist instead of fear of Jesus Christ shall as surely bring this nation down to Sheol as Satan himself shall be at The Last thrown down to the earth, full of fury, “knowing that his time is short” (Rev. 12:12).

1. FINAL THOUGHTS

My journey with Christ since the year 2015 has been very much like riding a rocket sled at about 186 mph, with the howling winds screaming past my face and eyes and ears at hurricane force, tearing away all the unnecessary flotsam and jetsam of prior understanding and presuppositions about what Jesus and Christianity is all about.

And I could not be more grateful.

Or as JOHN NEWTON’S old hymn says it: “I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind but now I see” (‘Amazing Grace,’ 1772). I tell you the truth, beloved, these past seven years have resembled a Second Rebirth for me, ripping away the scales of cultural assumption and faulty teaching about my faith, and I am exhilarated by it! But I am also grieved and even angered at what I now discern in perceive and discern in the American Church.

Not the least of which of course, is the breathless absence of a fear of the Lord.

A CRITICAL APPRAISAL. In doing the research for this essay I came across a compelling review of the most recent work of DR. ROBERT TILLMAN KENDALL, a widely revered Oxford educated American theologian, Christian writer, speaker, and teacher who pastored Westminster Chapel for 25 years. He is author of more than 50 books, including his latest: ‘Fear: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (2022).

Author Note: Kendall was “neutral” about Donald Trump as of 2016, and I have seen no published updates since then.  dk

Here are some telling excerpts from MICHAEL GRYBOSKI’S excellent interview in ‘The Christian post,’ entitled, “American Churches Need to Reclaim the ‘Fear of God,’” at least on February 17th, 2022.

• “I’ve had, in recent years especially, a feeling that ‘there is no fear of God in the nation, and there is little fear of God in the Church.’ And this needs to be dealt with. I wanted for a long time to write a book on the fear of God.”

• “I think we’ve reached the stage that ‘we’re trying to hold people and coax them to stay and get interested.’ And because people naturally hate the idea of Hell and Eternal Punishment, churches have tended not to deal with it at all. And the result is, there’s just an absence of the fear of God in the Church.”

• I believe … that ‘COVID, for example, is God’s gracious judgment.’I think He’s trying to get our attention, and I think He’s not finished with us yet. And so, likewise, in the Garden of Eden, in other words, God was after them to help them, to show grace, not entirely to punish    them.”  

• [He examines THREE FEARS]: the Fear of God (the good), Fear of Man (the bad) and Satanic or Demonic Fear (the ugly). He says further: “One of the worst addictions on the planet is to be in bondage to what people think of us. ‘The Fear of Man refers to being hurt, harmed, or humiliated by people.’”

• “Satanic Fear is the worst kind of fear there is. Satan is ugly. All that he does is ugly. One of his weapons is to make you afraid. I think we should be equipped to know this kind of thing [spiritual warfare] that will certainly happen.’”

Ironically, in light of today’s America aberrations related to the widespread misuse the charismatic spiritual gifts, Dr. Tillman writes as an old school, responsible and theologically well-grounded Charismatic theologian. He admonishes the Church for our embrace of Cessationism, and instead to fully embrace Continuationism in  an orderly fashion, those very gifts in order to effectively combat the forces of Satan’s Kingdom.

We need the Holy Ghost!

CONSEQUENCES. All of this difficult analysis being said and read and heard, I close with God’s Threat through the pen of Moses, should we do not heed these Warnings.

IFAmerica sustains her worship of the ‘Golden Calf of Trump Politics and Policies’ to the devastation of the Canon and the sacred name and witness of Christ, THEN here is what Yahweh Declares.

“The anger of the Lord your God will be kindled and burn against you [America], and He will destroy you from the face of the earth.”

Rather, much, much rather, that we might say along with David who Stood Firm: “For all His ordinances were before me, and I put not away His statutes from me” (18:22).

Ever your servant, DK

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