NOTES ON REMAINING CHRISTIAN IN TRUMP’S AMERICA: BECOMING PHILADELPIANS IN THE AGE OF LAODICEA Part II

PART II: “THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP”

SCRIPTURE. “And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write…’Fear nothing that you are about to suffer. [Dismiss your dread and your fears!] Behold, the devil is indeed about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and proved and critically appraised, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be loyally faithful unto death [even if you must die for it], and I will give you the crown of life.’” – REVELATION 2:10, AMPC

Selah. Selah.

QUOTATIONS

“He, in Truth, bears witness to himself that he is faithful and loyal towards God; and to the Tempter, that he in vain envied him who is faithful through love; and to the Lord, of the inspired persuasion in reference to His Doctrine, from which he will not depart through fear of death; further, he confirms also the Truth of preaching by his deed, showing that God to whom he hastes is powerful. ” – CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, ‘The Writings of Clement of Alexandria,’ 195-198 AD; edited

“‘I’m here, Satan,’ he said. ‘I can’t see you, and maybe you can move faster than I can, but I’m still here, and by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit I intend to be a thorn in your side until one of us has had enough!’” – FRANK PERETTI, ‘This Present Darkness,’ 1986

“‘By the Angel,’ Jace said, looking the demon up and down. ‘I knew Greater Demons were meant to be ugly, but no one ever warned me about the smell.’ Abbadon opened its mouth and hissed. Inside its mouth were two rows of jagged glass-sharp teeth. ‘I’m not sure about this wind and howling darkness business,’ Jace went on, ‘smells more like landfill to me. You sure you’re not from Staten Island?’” – CASSANDRA CLARE (Judith Lewis Rumelt), ‘City of Bones,’ 2007

“We simply do not know how many Christians suffered imprisonment or died at the hands of the authorities: Possibly hundreds of people, although almost certainly not many thousands. We do know that, in the End, the Christians came out on Top.” – BART D. EHRMAN, ‘The Triumph of Christianity: How a Small Band of Outcasts Conquered an Empire, 2018; edited – cf. Deuteronomy 28:13

Selah. 

1. FIRST THOUGHTS

THE CALL. It was March 2, 1984, I best recall, when Suzette and I were called by Hebert Titus, then Dean of the Regent University (formerly CBN University) Law School and Provost, and were asked to meet at a favorite cafeteria in Chesapeake, Virginia, with Herb and his wife, Marilyn that evening.

Now this in itself was both unusual and frankly, troubling. Suzie and I were relatively new Christians, around five years old in Christ, and were still ‘learning the ropes,’ as they say. We had only been at Regent U for around nine months, my having been assigned to teach various communication theory courses in the all-graduate program while Suzette got a job in a Norfolk Title I school for 3^rd grade.

THE AUDACITY OF GOD. Cut to the Chase: Dr. Titus waited for my wife and I to finish our dinner (he and his wife did not eat – awkward). As we took out last bites of delicious apple pie, he whips out a two-page Prospectus that lands in front of me, as he says this:

“President Richard Gottier and I were praying about who should head up the new Institute of (Public Affairs) Journalism, and your name came to us independently. You have twenty-four hours to decide.”

In some shock, I said to him, respectfully of course: “Um, sir, you’re crazy.”

BACKSTORY. I had appeared earlier that day on ‘The 700 Club’ to share my testimony with then-cohost, Danuta Soderman. After the show, another guest I met in the Greenroom, Rutgers University professor of biology and asparagus breeding, Dr. Howard Ellison, kept asking what my Doctorate was in, and each time I told him he kept insisting:

“Well, Cliff, I know that God wants to Train Journalists who will tell the Truth, and you need to be doing that!”

‘Then Came Titus’ that very evening, and the rest, as they say it, is my personal Journalism History as I said ‘Yes’ after a day and night of fear and trembling prayer, since I was scared down to my socks. I recall after arguing with the Lord about all the reasons to say, ‘No,’ my eyes fell upon this passage from Job:

“Shall the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? He who rebukes God, let him answer it!” – JOB 40:2, NKJV

That was the only time I have ever heard God ‘roar,’ so did I reply at around 4 am in the morning: “No Sir, I am your man for sure!”

THE JOURNEY. Thus began one of the most excruciating, rewarding and formative professional and spiritual experiences of my entire life. The University faculty were outraged that a young, technically non-journalist would be chosen for this important assignment – Dean’s sized office, executive secretary, hefty salary, and all. 

They fought against me relentlessly for two years running in every possible way conceivable, but Today are we are good friends. – On the same side of the Church Divide, I might add.

THE COST. The Lord would speak to me about this sometimes brutal, humiliating Maturation Process, as further Preparation for some Future Call, through an epic Exchange between Jesus and a still young-in-the-Lord Apostle, Peter. 

“He said to him the third time, ‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me [with a deep, personal affection for Me, as for a close friend]?’ Peter was grieved that He asked him the third time, “Do you [really] love Me [with a deep, personal affection, as for a close friend]?’ And he said to Him, ‘Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You [with a deep, personal affection, as for a close friend].’ Jesus said to him, ‘

‘Feed My sheep.’

 I assure you and most solemnly say to you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and walked wherever you wished; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and arms, and someone else will dress you, and carry you where you do not wish to go.’ He said this to indicate by what kind of death Peter would glorify God. And after this, He said to him, ‘Follow Me!’” – JOHN 21:17-19, AMP

And so I am, beloved, and so I am, not knowing where all this may yet lead.

2. THE TEMPLATE

The great majority of what follows will be taken from the classic work by German pastor, theologian, and anti-Nazi dissident, DIETRICH BONHOEFFER. ‘The Cost of Discipleship,’ first published in 1937 under the title, ‘Nachfolge’ [to succeed by emulation of imitation].

German émigré, jurist, legal scholar and fellow dissident GERHARD LEIBHOLZ, offers superb Introduction of our subject in his “Memoir” Overview of Dr. Bonhoeffer, published as Preface to the book. 

I quote at some length about this intrepid Christian leader.

BACKGROUND. “Bonhoeffer was born in Breslau on February 4^th, 1906, the son of a university professor and leading authority on psychiatry and neurology. His more remote ancestors were theologians, professors, lawyers, artists. From his mother’s side there was also some aristocratic blood in his veins…

Both his father and mother brought up their son Dietrich with his three brothers, his twin sister and three other sisters, in Breslau and (from 1912) in Berlin, in that Christian, humanitarian and liberal Tradition which to the Bonhoeffers was as native as the air they breathed. It was that spirit which determined Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s life from the beginning…

This Tradition of the Bonhoeffer family my explain why [he] had already made up his mind at the age of fourteen, when he was still in school, to read theology…Later he came under the influence of Karl Barth’s theology which, though he never went to his lectures or studied under him, left its mark on Bonhoeffer’s first book, ‘Sanctorum Communio’ [The Holy Communion]…

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a great Realist. He was one of the few who quickly understood, even before Hitler came to power, that National Socialism [Fascism] was a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of the map alone. Therefore in 1933, when Hitler came to power, he abandoned his academic career, which seemed to him to have lost is proper meaning…

As late as February 1933 he denounced on the wireless a political system which corrupted and grossly misled a nation and made the ‘Führer’ [Leader-Tyrant] its idol and god…[By] 1935 Bonhoeffer, already one of the leaders of the Confessional Church, returned to Germany [from London and later, America]…as Reinhold Niebuhr says, ‘to the finest logic of Christian Martyrdom.’

‘I shall have no right…to participate in the Reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the War if I do not share the trials of this time with my people…I must choose; but I cannot make this choice in security.’” – 1937, pp. 14-19; edited

Selah. Selah.

3. THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP

Bonhoeffer proposes the meat of his Theology as it pertains to a Time of Crisis in Section I of the book under FIVE SUBCATEGORIES. I intend to briefly present them here, via direct quotes from this prodigious work. – cf. 1937, pp. 43-101; edited

1. COSTLY GRACE. “Cheap Grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap Grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and Incarnate. Costly Grace is the Treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has. It is the Pearl of Great Price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly Rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the Call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Him.” – pp. 44-45

2. THE CALL TO DISCIPLESHIP. “‘And as He passed by He saw Levi, the son of Alphaeus, sitting at the place of the toll, and He saith unto him, Follow Me. And he arose and followed Him. (Mark 2:14).’ THE CALL goes forth, and is at once followed by the response of Obedience. The response of the disciples is an Act of Obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus…It is Jesus who calls, and because it is Jesus, Levi follows at once. This encounter is a testimony to the absolute, direct, and unaccountable Authority of Jesus. There is no need of any preliminaries, and no other consequence but Obedience to The Call. Because Jesus is the Christ, He has the Authority to call and to demand Obedience to His Word. Jesus summons men to follow Him not as a teacher or a pattern of the good life, but as the Christ, the Son of God.” – pp. 57-58

3. SINGLE-MINDED OBEDIENCE. “When he was challenged by Jesus to accept a life of voluntary poverty, the rich young man knew he was faced with the simple alternative of Obedience or Disobedience. When Levi was called from the receipt of custom and Peter from his nets, there was no doubt that Jesus meant business. Both of them were to leave everything and follow…The forces which tried to interpose themselves between the Word of Jesus and the response of Obedience were as formidable then as they are to-day. Reason and conscience, responsibility and piety all stood in the way, and even the Law and ‘Scriptural Authority’ itself were obstacles which pretended to defend them from going to the extremes of Antinomianism and ‘Enthusiasms.’ But the Call of Jesus made short work of all these barriers, and created Obedience. That Call was the Word of God Himself, and all that it required was Single-Minded Obedience.”- p. 79

4. DISCIPLESHIP AND THE CROSS. “‘And he began to teach them, that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days Rise again. And He spake the saying openly. And Peter took Him, and began to rebuke Him’ (Mark 8:31-32)…Here the Call to follow is closely connected with Jesus’ prediction of His Passion…Suffering and rejection are laid upon Jesus as Divine necessity, and every attempt to prevent it is the work of the Devil, especially when it comes from His own disciples; for it is in fact an attempt to prevent Christ from being Christ. It is Peter, the Rock of the Church, who commits that sin, immediately after he has confessed Jesus as the Messiah and has been appointed to the primacy. That shows how the very notion of a Suffering Messiah was a scandal to the Church, even in its earliest days…Surprisingly enough, when Jesus begins to unfold this inescapable truth to His disciples, he once more sets them free to Choose or Rejecr Him. ‘If any man…is prepared to spurn all other offers which come his way in order to follow Him.” – pp. 86-87 

5. DISCIPLESHIP AND THE INDIVIDUAL. “‘If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26).’ Through the Call of Jesus men become individuals. Willy-nilly, they are compelled to decide, and that decision can only be made by themselves. It is not the choice of their own that makes them individuals: It is Christ who makes them individuals by calling them…At the very moment of their Call, men find that they have already broken with all the natural ties of life. This is not their own doing, but His who calls them. For Christ has delivered them from immediacy with the world, and brought them into Immediacy with Himself. We cannot follow Christ unless we are prepared to accept and affirm that this Breach is a ‘fait accompli.’ It is no arbitrary choice on the disciple’s part, but Christ Himself, who compels him thus to Break with his past.” – pp. 94-95

IN SUM. The Cost of Discipleship is, to state it bluntly, EVERYTHING we are and have been given. Everything – Holding nothing back – not even the loves of our life nor our own life are permitted to stand in the way of a Full On, life or death Commitment to the Will of the Lord, period. Full stop. Done. 

4. THE TEACHING

“And to the angel of the church in Smyrna write…’Fear nothing that you are about to suffer. [Dismiss your dread and your fears!] Behold, the devil is indeed about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested and proved and critically appraised, and for ten days you will have affliction. Be loyally faithful unto death [even if you must die for it], and I will give you the crown of life.’” – REVELATION 2:10, AMPC

THE SMYRNA MAXIM. I propose that one cannot ‘Become Philadelphian’ without first being Unreservedly Willing to Suffer for Christ, up to and including loss of all things, and life itself, should the Lord require it.

Second, it is important to note that limited number of ‘Birth Pangs’ Martyrs is NOT the same as the vast throng of Tribulation Martyrs in Revelation 7:9-17, described as “a great multitude which no one could count…the ones who come out of the Great Tribulation.” 

Third, then, let’s break it down to the most Central Ideas.

• FEAR NOTHING. Taken from the Greek term, ‘Médeis’ [μηδείς]: “Properly, ‘no one, nothing’ – literally, ‘not even one;’ no, none, or absolutely, no one, not one, no man; also,  not (at all, any man, a whit); in no respect give it account or weight or character; not any thing; not any being or existence; not any particular thing, deed or event.” 

• ABOUT TO SUFFER. A prophetic phrase for us, beloved, now brought to life (and death) by the New Alt Right Nationalist Redefinition of the Christian Faith, about which I have written much for months now. The term used here for “Suffer” is taken from the Greek, ‘Paschó’ [πάσχω]: properly, to feel heavy emotion, especially suffering; affected, experiencing feeling; to experience a painful sensation or impression; to vex or become vexed; to bear what is painful, disagreeable or distressing, either to the body or mind; to undergo.”

• AFFLICTION FOR TEN DAYS. While precise meaning of the time frame of “ten days” has eluded bible scholars for centuries, the idea of “Affliction” is much easier to pinpoint. From the Greek, ‘Thlipsis’ [θλῖψις], it means: “Tribulation; properly, pressure (what constricts or rubs together), used of a narrow place that “hems someone in”; tribulation, especially internal pressure that causes someone to feel confined (restricted, ‘without options’); to crush, press or squeeze, causing great distress.”

• FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH. Bottom line requirement here, beloved. End of the Road, as it were – and Beginning of an Illustrious Path of honor and courage and yes, even great joy. Taken from the Greek term, the crucially important term, “Faithful,” is taken from ‘Pistos’ [πιστός]: “Reliable, trustworthy, believing; easily persuaded; believing, confiding, trusting; true, just, worthy [of the Crown of Life]; characteristic of the true Christian.”

COMMENTARY. “‘Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer’ – He did not promise them exemption from suffering. He saw that they were about to suffer, and he specifies the manner in which their affliction would occur. But he entreats and commands them not to be afraid. They were to look to the ‘Crown of Life,’ and to be comforted with the assurance that if they were faithful unto death, that would be, theirs. We need not dread suffering if we can hear the voice of the Redeemer encouraging us, and if he assures us that in a little while we shall have the crown of life.” – ALBERT BARNES, ‘Notes on the Whole Bible,’ 1834; edited

A Personal Note. In my draft of ‘The Sixth Seal’ (2017) I related to all this in the following comments, originally penned in 2015 – before all the current Mayhem commenced.

“For a number of reasons, some known to me but others not, I have for the past two or three years been pondering the question if I would be able to die for Jesus Christ, if called upon to do so. No answers yet [in 2015] by the way. But in all that pondering, I am coming to terms with the Ultimate Question: How much am I willing to lay down for following God?” – p. 92; edited

As of 2020, I have arrived at an answer. Willing, Lord, willing.

SMYRNA & THE FIFTH SEAL. I would be remiss without at least a mention here as reminder that the Opening of the Fifth Seal in the ‘Birth Pangs’ Hour in which we find ourselves, portends an intensification of Persecution of the Remnant Church. 

“When the Lamb broke open the fifth seal, I saw at the foot of the altar the souls of those whose lives had been sacrificed for [adhering to] the Word of God and for the testimony they had borne.” – REVELATION 6:9, AMPC

Now to our Final Consideration of how real Joy and enormous Contentment can come from such sacrificial commitment in the Last Days.

5. THE PARADOX OF ENDTIME JOY

So again, I get somewhat personal here with the observation that I have expressed on numerous occasions: I feel exhilarated as never before, as I set my hand to this work He has given me. I mean, I am flat out happier than ever before.

And Yet – No permanent employment in over three years. No fancy house, big salary or fancy title hanging over my office door. Heck, no office door! Loss of most of my longtime Christian friends. So how does any of that make sense, beloved?

Let me offer you an Hypothesis from Dr. Laura Schlesinger’s former radio talk show that I used to enjoy.

THESIS. ‘DOING THE RIGHT THING MAKES US FEEL GOOD.’ Yep. That’s pretty much it, captured in Eric Liddell’s sense of Divine Pleasure when he ran – As with any of us when we Master a difficult and noble challenge.

To this point: Obedience really is much better than Sacrifice, and we truly do experience Divine Pleasure when we are pleasing to the Father of Lights, from whom all good gifts flow. Kind of like when our Moms or Dads were proud of us for doing well in school, or in sports, or in life.

FINDING THE ZONE. For most of my 40 years as a follower of Messiah, I confess I have largely ‘Defined the Zone.’ Meaning, I would see an opportunity in my career, lay down a carpet of prayer to ask God to bless it – and sometimes He did! At times to my success, others, to my utter failure, as a Life Lesson.

But lately, per the Exchange between Jesus and Peter in John 21, I find that after the last three and a half years of staggering loss, humiliation, and ‘failure,’ I have been brought to an unexpected Place of Joy where an old Scripture comes back to visit me.

“You have given him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah [pause, and think of that]!  For You send blessings of good things to meet him; You set a crown of pure gold on his head. He asked life of You, and You gave it to him—long life forever and evermore.” – PSALM 21:2-4, AMPC

DRILL DOWN. Let me break that down just a bit for deeper appreciation of what God is saying here – to me and to you.

• HEART’S DESIRE. Taken from the Hebrew term, ‘Taavah’ [תַּאֲוָה]: “A deep longing; strong desire of the pleasant; must desirable thing imaginable; refers to one’s spiritual or physical appetite; the ornament [or driving force] of man. Also: an emotion or excitement of the mind, directed to the attainment or possession of an object from which pleasure, sensual, intellectual or spiritual, is expected; a passion excited by the love of an object, or uneasiness at the want of it, and directed to its attainment or possession; ‘desire’ is a wish to possess some gratification or source of happiness which is supposed to be obtainable.” 

• BLAISE PASCAL. “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end… What is it then that this desire and this inability proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remains to him only; the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable Object, that is to say, only by God Himself.” – ‘Pensees: Apology for the Christian Religion,’ Section VII, Morality and Doctrine, Second Part, 425, 1670; edited

THE KEY RESATED. The entire point here, at first sounding schmaltzy and cliché, is on reflection the very Key to a fruitful, joyful life, as Designed by our Maker. I have often told my students, “The secret to success and contentment is finding out what you love to do, and then get paid for doing it.”

And for those who have not found that Calling yet – Ask Him, and He will bring it. But really, really ASK HIM!

Christian minister and author of many books since 2009, STEVEN GOODIER has possibly said it best, in direct reflection of the Wisdom of John 21’s Counsel from Jesus to Peter:

“But Beware of this about Callings: They may not lead us where we intended to go or even where we want to go. If we choose to follow, we may have to be willing to let go of the life we already planned and accept whatever is waiting for us. And if the calling is true, though we may not have gone where we intended, we will surely end up where we need to be.” – Ret. November 10, 2020; edited

Finally, DR. OS GUINESS, son of medical missionaries, towering intellectual, author of many books and quiet leader of what might be called Orders of Christian Conscience, wrote a powerful book on our subject in 2003, entitled, ‘The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose in Your Life.’ 

Here is one quotation from that book that nails down all that I am trying to say here, most concisely.

“Calling is the Truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to His summons and service.” – edited

Selah, beloved, Selah.

6. LAST THOUGHTS

As we watch the United States of America and the entire world wax and wane, sway back and forth from Despair to Hope then back to Despair again, we wonder, we wonder: “What, O Lord, are You doing with us?”

The Prophet Isaiah points a tumultuous and accurate Word-Picture of the Answer to that historic question.

“Behold, the Lord will make the land and the earth empty and make it waste and turn it upside down (twist the face of it) and scatter abroad its inhabitants. And it shall be—as [what happens] with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the creditor, so with the debtor.

The land and the earth shall be utterly laid waste and utterly pillaged; for the Lord has said this….The earth shall stagger like a drunken man and shall sway to and fro like a hammock; its transgression shall lie heavily upon it, and it shall fall and not rise again.” – ISAIAH 24:1-3, 20, AMPC

THE APPLICATION. While this Prophecy is clearly aimed at the very Last Judgments of God upon the Earth in the Last Days, we feel, again, the ‘Early Tremors,’ or Birth Pangs of it even now. Even now.

Much of this Divine Shaking is aimed at a single, fiery and insistent Objective by our Sovereign: To force a great Divestiture, if you will, of ALL our Foreign Idols accumulated over a lifetime.

All the more so in His Church: “So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present the Church to Himself in glorious splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such things [that she might be holy and faultless].” – EPHESIANS 5:26-27, AMPC

• GLORIOUS SPENDOR. From the Greek, ‘Endoxos’ [ἔνδοξος]: “Held in highest honor; highly esteemed, splendid, glorious; of something and viewed “in a state of high honor and repute; illustrious, free from sin (or, stain, blemish or reputation); splendid; able to work miracles; reflects the glory of the Son of God in her admirable and mighty works.” 

• COMMENTARY. “‘A Glorious Church’ – A Church full of honor, splendor, beauty. The idea of ‘shining,’ or of being ‘bright,’ would convey the sense here. Probably there is still here an allusion to a Bride ‘adorned for her Husband’ (Revelation 21:2; compare Psalm 45:9-14); and the ideal is, that the Church will be worthy of the love of the Bridegroom, to whom it will then be presented. ‘Not having spot’ – Not having a stain, a defect, or any impurity – still retaining the allusion to a Bride, and to the care taken to remove every blemish. ‘Or wrinkle’ – In the vigor and beauty of youth like a Bride in whom there is no wrinkle of age. Or any such thing – Nothing to deform, disfigure, or offend.” – ALBERT BARNES, ‘Notes on the Whole Bible,’ 1847-1885; edited

• THE AMERICAN CHURCH: 2020. “In 2016, I attended Trump rallies around the country to witness the role played by Religion. I found it in the fervor for oft-traded stories of the candidate’s riches, his private plane, ‘Trump Force One’ and its golden interior, and in the promises of D-list preachers who opened his rallies with sermons ranging from the staples of abortion and decadence to the miraculous wealth with which God had anointed Trump. Back then, the candidate was taken as living proof of what’s known as the Prosperity Gospel, a kind of country cousin to Establishment Christian Conservatism, not so much about saving society as it is about getting right with God by getting rich….In the books he claims to have written, Trump invokes a Personal Trinity: His father, Fred, who taught him strength; his mentor, the red-hunting mafia lawyer Roy Cohn, who taught him cunning; and his childhood pastor, bestselling Christian self-help author Norman Vincent Peale, who taught him ‘The Power of Positive Thinking.’ Believe in it, preached Peale, and it can be yours. Quid pro quo, a deal with God: Affluence (or the dream of it to come) in return for unquestioning loyalty. Trump’s campaign channeled a Convergence of Conservatisms: Fred Trump’s brutality, Cohn’s corruption, and the cross wrapped in a flag preached by Peale.” – JEFF SHARLET, “He is the Chosen One to Run America: Inside the Cult of Trump, His Rallies are Church and He is the Gospel,” ‘Vanity Fair,’ June 18, 2020; edited

From the scintillating Words of Jesus Christ the Risen Lord and soon coming Messiah, to the American Gospel of Donald Trump, with over 80 percent of White Evangelicals, Charismatics and Pentecostals supporting the defrocked president, you perhaps gain a clearer understanding of one thing:

Why God is about to Judge the American Church and Nation – in that order – as never before in our history. Without Repentance sweeping the Church and Nation, it is a Divine Fait Accompli, the Consequences of which are nearly unspeakable.

CODA. So, if you are wondering what all The Shaking is about, beloved, remember always that God is the Grand Master Engineer of it, to make sure He has our attention. To give everyone a Final Opportunity at accepting His Grace, as the Age of Grace comes fast to a close now.

And second, to Cleanse His Houses from all False Ideas and Idols that cannot be permitted to remain, as He Prepares to Return to a Spotless Bride, brimming with the Beauty of Truth and Compassion and Courage.

THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. Bottom Line: The Cost of being a true disciple of the King of the Universe is the Willingness to be Shaken, till we are sufficiently Unfettered from any hint of serious compromise or accommodation to the Enemy’s World Spirit, or any Idol, large or small, foreign or domestic.- cf. Psalm 81:2; 1 Corinthians 10:21

Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews, and now this very day to His Church, burns this Promise down deep into us. I am convinced that these are His Last Calls to us, beloved, and why my fiercest Warnings are to the Pastors.

Listen carefully to what He is Saying, as we close out our study.

“See to it that you do not refuse [to listen to] Him who is speaking [to you now]. For if those [sons of Israel] did not escape when they refused [to listen to] him who warned them on earth [revealing God’s will], how much less will we escape if we turn our backs on Him who warns from heaven?  His voice shook the earth [at Mount Sinai] then, but now He has given a promise, saying, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the [starry] heaven.’ 

Now this [expression], ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal and final transformation of all those things which can be shaken—that is, of that which has been created—so that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” – HEBREWS 12:25-27, AMP

This is, to the best of my understanding, some Biblical Explanation of what is happening all around us. For those who will heed His Words, there is Stability and Joy unspeakable, Divine Favor and Cover – with Persecutions – for winning others to Him. 

Yes, beloved, even in the midst of Historic Chaos, as we invite Him, beg Him if necessary, to get us where we must go – no matter what. 

Ever your servant, DK

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