NOTES ON THE FATAL CONSEQUENCES OF REMAINING NEUTRAL IN THE AGE OF ANTICHRIST: AN INDICTMENT – “CRIMINAL SILENCE” IN THE AMERICAN CHURCH – (WITH VIDEO)

I.  THE THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “I was mute and silent [before my enemies], I refrained even from good, and my distress grew worse.” – PSALM 39:2, AMP

KEY TERM: “DISTRESS.” ‘Keeb’ [וּכְאֵבִ֥י]: “From the root word meaning, ‘To feel pain, to spoil or grieve [one’s peaceful condition];’ to make sad or sorrowful; to experience physical or mental adversity; leads to disappointment and disaster; extreme anguish of body or mind; as, to suffer great distress from the loss of near friends; [great] affliction, calamity; misery.”

QUOTATION. “‘Cowardice, alone of all the vices, is purely painful’- Horrible to anticipate, horrible to feel, horrible to remember; hatred has its pleasures. It is therefore often the compensation by which a frightened man reimburses himself for the miseries of Fear. The more he fears, the more he will hate. And hatred is also a great anodyne for Shame.” ― C. S. LEWIS, The Screwtape Letters, 1942; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘I was dumb with silence.” Quite Silent, as if he had been a dumb man, and could not speak; so he was before men, especially wicked men, and under the afflicting hand of God; see Psalm 39:9; thus he put his resolution into practice.

‘I held my peace, even from good.’ That is, he said neither good nor bad: This expresses the [possible] greatness of his Silence: He did not choose to open his lips, and say anything that was good, lest evil should come out along with it; though this may be considered as carrying the matter too far, even to a ‘Criminal Silence’ …

‘And my sorrow was stirred.’ – This was the issue and effect of his Silence; his Sorrow being pent up, and not let out and eased by words, swelled and increased the more; or the sorrow of his heart was stirred up at the insults and reproaches of his enemies, as Paul’s spirit was stirred up by the superstition and idolatry of the city of Athens, Acts 17:16.” – JOHN GILL, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, 9 vols., 1746-1763; edited

II.  THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS

Though interpretations differ widely on the meaning of this passage – the one for commending King David for not speaking out concerning his afflictions from his enemies, the other cautioning us to never remain “Criminally Silent,” I take the Latter View.

ELIE WIESEL ON MORAL NEUTRALITY. One of the more heroic figures in modern history is Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He has authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night (1960), a riveting work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

In his political activities Wiesel became a regular speaker on the subject of the Holocaust and remained a strong defender of human rights during his lifetime. He also advocated for many other causes like the State of Israel and against Hamas

and victims of oppression including Soviet and Ethiopian Jews, the Apartheid in South Africa, the Bosnian Genocide, Sudan, the Kurds and the Armenian Genocide, Argentina‘s Los Desaparecidos (“The Missing”) or Nicaragua’s Miskito people.

Mr. Wiesel speaks with a unique moral power and authority to the Christian Church of today. His words that follow serve as piercing foundation for my indictment of what amounts today as nothing more than a trembling, cowering mass of Criminal Silence, the likes of which we have not seen since the collapse of the Protestant and Catholic Churches into the bloody lap of Adolf Hiter’s “Final Solution” of a century ago.

Here is his Message to the American Church in 2024, about to reelect our very own ‘Reichsführer‘ this coming November 5, 2024.

“‘We must take sides!’ Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the Center of the Universe.” ― The Night Trilogy: Night, Dawn, The Accident, 2012; edited

This stirring call not unlike that of MARTIN LUTHER 400 years later when he called the True Christian to run to fight precisely “Where the battle at that moment rages!” To do any less is the gravest sort of cowardice and betrayal of the King!

A DEAFENING SILENCE. To drive this crucial point home, I turn to a passionate essay by CHRISTO HEIBERG about his deep structure concern for a stunningly Silent Church overseas. Born and raised on the African Savannah in northern South Africa. He studied at the University of Pretoria and later also earned a Master of Theology at Kampen in the Netherlands. Rev. Heiberg now serves as Pastor-Missionary at Providence Community Church in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Once again, I offer a BULLET POINT REVIEW of his main ideas below. Taken from his essay titled, “A Deafening Silence,” Sober Minds, March 13, 2024 (edited).

• LOSS OF PROPHETIC VOICE. “The Church in the West has lost her prophetic voice. She has little to say about the world. ‘She has retrieved into a calm and cozy spiritual corner.’ No, it’s not the world that tells her to be silent. She convinced herself it is better to be silent.”

• WHY SO FEARFUL? “The Reason we have abandoned our prophetic calling may be manifold. ‘Most importantly we are afraid of controversy, of ruffling feathers and perhaps losing members.’ Everything these days seems to center on not losing members, for that puts us in a very precarious spot in the West where baptism of new converts is so low, and the sheep are constantly on the move somewhere. So, these fears are fully understandable, even though they are (as an omnipresent dominating force) wholly unbiblical.”

• CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS. “For very long a similar type of preaching was deemed perfectly normal and necessary in Christianity. On my book shelve is a bundle of sermons entitled ‘Sermons that Shaped America’ published by Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company. It contains several sermons with a very definite political thrust. Next to it stands another collection of sermons entitled‘Preaching in Hitler’s Shadow.’  Some of those sermons were so boldly political that they send shivers down my spine.And less than a century ago in the Netherlands, a good course in homiletics may have included the rubric of ‘Political Preaching,’ an arrow that a faithful Reformed pastor may never miss in his quiver.”

• ABSENCE OF COURAGE. “Here in North America, things aren’t much better. We suffer from the same lethal malady. ‘Back in 1978 Alexander Solzhenitsyn already named the lack of courage as the most striking feature of Western society, when speaking at Harvard.’ Democracy and prosperity have taught us to live life looking in the rear-view mirror— at the polls and the markets. Nothing negatively impacting our popularity or prosperity may even so much as enter our minds. ‘And so we die for a lack of vision.’”

• A FATAL ERROR. “Are we not making a fatal mistake? No-one may claim that touching on political issues should ever be done lightly. Nor should we fall into the snare of craving for a Theocracy in Old Testament fashion. And please don’t speak about something when you are not absolutely sure about the available facts, or not being willing to be corrected. But surely, the Gospel is not all about eternal salvation and congregational harmony? Did God not so love this world? Will Jesus not come to judge the nations? ‘Have we not become sleeping dogs and fearful watchmen?’ Is the Root Cause of it all not because we love our safe little harbour too much, and the next generation too little?’ EDMUND BURKE apparently also said that the real social contract is not between the government and the people but between us and the next generation!’”

• REDISCOVERING BOLDNESS. “To illustrate what True Courage may look like, please read PASTOR WANG YI of the Early Rain Church’s ‘Declaration of Faithful Disobedience’ before he was recently arrested in Communist China. Or listen to Pastor HELMUT GOLLWITZER preaching to his flock in Berlin, on the day the Second World War broke out on September 3, 1939. His sermon was on the Lord’s Prayer. Gollwitzer continued: ‘In the coming days there will be a lot of cheap faith in God offered up, and there will be a lot of pagan faith in God even in our Christian churches. But truly, the only person who can trust completely in God is the person who can now bow before Him’ (and not only pray for daily bread, but also for peace). ‘We have not earned this day’s bread, but rather this War with all its horrors. We have, each and every one of us, brought all this upon ourselves, and we richly deserve the consequences. Only that person may make the Fourth Petition (‘for our daily bread) who in the same breath makes also the Fifth: And forgive us our guilt. ‘If I may name but one sin, we have become very hardhearted. We all must accuse ourselves of having brought so much misery upon ourselves by allowing so much evil to happen while we watched unmoved, and now this evil threatens us.’”

And now for the Physician’s Scalpel as we turn in the next section for a Closeup View of the American Trump Church, a brand–new Aberration with long roots in a century old Aberration.

III.  THE AMERICAN FUTURE

I am honor bound to report on this Christian Crisis in the United States still again since the recently concluded Republican Convention is now (or should be!) etched into our very souls with the Promise of Catastrophe in the days ahead.

As an observer and participant in Presidential Politics for the past 60 years, I tell you from both boots on the ground experience and the growing research consensus that DONALD TRUMP will become reelected in what could be an historic landslide next November 5.

CONSEQUENCES. Because the American Church still refuses to step up and be the Church even at this 11^th Hour, we are about to enter what the old television series’ host ROD SERLING called, “The Twilight Zone.”

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.” – “A Passage for Trumpet,” May 20, 1960

Of all the post-mortems I reviewed following the conclusion of the GOP Convention, one held me fast as the most penetrative of what a Trump Second Term will mean to all of us. Art historian ROBERT JONES, writing for The Guardian, pens a disturbingly accurate essay titled, “Is This What a Second Trump Presidency Will Be Like?” (July 15, 2024; edited).

Here are my ever-present BULLET POINTS for efficient summary of his main points.

• THE PICTURE. “This breaks your heart. Or at least it does if you oppose the politics of Donald Trump. For with one image, he may have won the 2024 US presidential election. Photographer EVAN VUCCI captured it, and has rightly won praise for it, but we should acknowledge that it was Trump who made it. And he made it with presence of mind and courage.”

• THE BLOOD. “Red blood pools on his ear and stains his face. No wonder some people on social media want to pretend to themselves that the shooting was faked. For the Reality, which any rational observer can clearly see, is that in this moment ‘Trump is defying death.’ He can’t completely know that he’s OK. A bullet has drawn blood from his ear, close to his brain. As he rises from where he initially took cover, with black-clad sunglass-wearing Secret Service agents trying to enfold him, he makes an eloquent Gesture of Defiance: A clenched fist raised in the air, his arm straight up like a flagpole. His mouth is open in a shout: The words he uttered were ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ words that seem chosen as if they might be his last. Who is he telling to fight? Against what?”

• THE RHETORIC. “He uses the ‘Rhetoric of Struggle and Division,’ he always has, but with a New Urgency as he calls on America to fight in his name, over his body. And he has instantly thought out how to communicate this visually. ‘The Raised Fist’ is traditionally a symbol of the Left, which became famous as the sign of Republican Resistance to Franco in the Spanish Civil War: JOAN MIRÓ’S 1937 poster Aidez l’Espagne portrays a defiant worker with a massively enlarged arm raised in this very same fist salute. So Trump could almost be saying, ‘¡No pasaran!’ [‘You shall not pass!’] inan unlikely appropriation of La Pasionaria [Isidora Dolores Ibárruri Gómez, Republican Spanish Communist]. Since the 1930s this Gesture of the Left has been revived in many contexts, from the Civil Rights Movement to Ukraine, yet this gesture has also been co-opted by the Far Right: White Supremacists use a white clenched fist against a black background to symbolise ‘White Rights.’”

• THE SYMBOLISM. “‘Yet the heart of this picture’s meaning can be summed up in one word: BLOOD!’ And the connotations of that go deeper than politics or patriotism. Christian supporters of Trump won’t be slow to see his survival as mystical. And they will be right, at least from the perspective of art history. ‘Whatever else this scene may be, it is, at the iconographic level, “Religious.” It is almost literally “a Resurrection.’” Trump has risen up from below the podium where he’d hidden, as if he were Christ rising from the Tomb. In great paintings of that central Christian Moment, such as MATTHIAS GRÜNEWALD’S spooky, perturbing Vision of a Triumphant Jesus in the [French] Isenheim Altarpiece, there is blood. Grünewald’s Risen Christ shows the bloody spear wound in His side, the bloody nail holes in His hands, just as in this picture we can see Trump’s gory ear and the crimson blood on his cheek.”

• THE DELUSION. “‘Trump truly appears to be giving his blood here, a sacrifice for America. Like Jesus, he survives the sacrifice and rises again.’ Yet that Resurrection is combined with details typical of the way earlier moments in the story of The Passion are depicted in art: The Secret Service agents surrounding him resemble the Community of Christ’s close followers and supporters who lovingly tend his body in paintings like ROGIER VAN DER WEYDEN’S Descent from the Cross in the Prado, or CARAVAGGIO’S The Entombment in the Vatican. Uncannily, there is even a female agent passionately holding on to Trump like the Virgin Mary in such Biblical masterpieces!”

• THE FUTURE. “To say this is the Image that may win Trump re-election may be the least of it. Surely what this Picture tells us is what a Second Trump Presidency will be like. Bonds of Blood between leader and people, Sacrificial Imagery – none of it fits into the calm, dull routines of stable democracies. ‘An electoral campaign that begins with such an image of extremes is one that’s headed into uncharted, frightening places.’”

Selah, beloved. Ponder these things most deeply indeed.

IV.  LAST THOUGHTS

“Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. And Pilate said to them, ‘Behold the Man!’” – JOHN 19:5. NKJV

Even the casual observer of Trump’s Republican Convention would grant that it was, to put it in the simplest of terms: ‘Eerie.’ As in, somehow, ‘Spiritual.’I hasten to add along with our secular art critic, “Profoundly Religious” – ‘but not Christian!’

And yet, because most American Christians have been fed on a steady diet of Doctrinal Gruel for generations, they have not been able to distinguish between a ‘False Spirituality’ and what DR. FRANCIS SCHAEFFER called, “True Spirituality” in 1971.

To conclude our Messianic Metaphor to describe ‘The Spell’ that Trump has cast upon nearly the whole White Church and even leaders now in the media, business sector, the military, and leading policy institutes stretching even to politicians worldwide, I turn to Catholic journalist SOPHIA SMITH GALER, writing for Prospect Magazine (July 19, 2024; edited).

The title of her piece: “Trump’s Supporters Idolise Him with Religious Fervor.” Prepare to be necessarily chilled to your spiritual bone marrow.

“In this ‘Ecce Trump’ [Persecuted One, Martyr], the viewer is provoked to simultaneously feel horror and hope. If looked at as a devotional tool, as Icons traditionally are, many will pause, ruminate and transport themselves to the moment the bullet grazed his ear and his life flashed before him. The former president likely knew this mimesis would be powerful, and so showed it to the crowd. In Medieval art, Text from the Bible may also be displayed alongside the Image, but at the Convention, we had Trump’s own words: ‘Blood was pouring everywhere and yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side.’ 

‘Trump the Redeemer’ gave many of his voters hope yesterday, telling them that he could ‘stop wars with just a telephone call,’ but that hope did not come without caveat. The Holy Triumvirate, after all, doesn’t only have Jesus in it, but a God that spent a lot of the Old Testament smiting people. ‘Christ wished peace to his brethren after His Resurrection; Trump raised his arm and shouted: ‘Fight, fight, fight!’”

Are you listening, Church? Following the Fire, Can you see it now, Dr. Jeffress? How about the rest of you – Franklin Graham, James Dobson, Gordon Robertson, Tony Perkins, Jerry Falwell Jr., Michael Farris, Mike Huckabee, Gary Bauer, TD Jakes, Kenneth Copeland, Richard Land, Robert Morris, Jack Hibbs, Dennis Prager, Tony Suarez, Albert Mohler, Micheal Brown, Rodney Howard-Browne, Greg Laurie, Eric Metaxas, Johnnie Moore, Ralph Reed, Paula White, Joyce Meyer – ‘and 10,000 more!’

And still, yet still, you all remain “Criminally Silent,” convinced that you are somehow doing God’s Work by it?

AMERICAN RUBICON. As Yahweh’s Grand Timepiece draws insistently toward Midnight, there is still a little time. But very, very little. The Roman historian SUETONIUS records that when JULIUS CAESAR on January 10, 49 BC, led his army across the Rubicon River in Northern Italy, he proclaimed: “Alea iacta est!” (“The die is cast!”).  

That phrase has come to mean “The Point of No Return,” and indeed caused the Roman Civil War that installed Julius Caesar as Dictator for life. As of this writing on July 20, 2024, America has exactly 105 days before the Presidential Election of November 5.

How we choose will determine America’s Last Days in one way or the other. It is all but upon us, THE AMERICAN CHURCH: ‘The End of History as we have known it.’ May God help us to Choose for Him, and for Him alone. Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/Bap-JDWwa90