NOTES ON THE MISSION OF THE LAST DAYS CHURCH: RESCUE! (YES, BUT WHO?)

SCRIPTURE. “‘My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you strays from the truth’ and falls into error and [another] one turns him back [to God], let the [latter] one know that the one who has turned a sinner from the error of his way will save that one’s soul from death and cover a multitude of sins [that is, obtain the pardon of the many sins committed by the one who has been restored].” – JAMES 5:19-20, AMPC

QUOTATION. “‘If the heart is closed,’ the most skillfully crafted words expertly honed to the finest edge have no means by which to penetrate the hardened exterior. And this is the condition of the exterior that insures the death of the interior. Therefore, ‘I will forever enhance my skill and hone my edge so that some exterior part of the heart might be breeched so that the interior might be saved.’” ― CRAIG D. LOUNSBROUGH, Author, Licensed Counselor, In the Footsteps of the Few – The Power of a Principled Life, 2022; edited

1. FIRST THOUGHTS

It was not until I joined the CBN-Regent University as a newly minted Christian in 1983 that I first heard of a much touted and endlessly prayed on “Last Days Revival” of the entire earth that would take place just before Jesus Returned.

Here is a fairly recent sample of that ‘New Theology’ I was about to become immersed in for the subsequent 30 years or more. It is taken from an interview on PAT ROBERTSON’S 700 Club from December 10, 2022; edited). DUTCH SHEETS was the guest on the show that day.

“PR: The Bible says, ‘In the latter days, I will pour out My Spirit. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy’ [Joel 2:28]. And it looks like God is sending a great revival among the young. Enthusiasm and the zeal for God is just overwhelming, and we’re thrilled to see it. Dutch Sheets is here with us. You recall, he was here before the election. He had a message, the Holy Spirit came upon him at his church. He issued two stirring calls to us to fast and pray before the election. Remember that?

DS: I sure do. I’ve been on a rocket ever since …  We were all just overcome by the presence of the Lord. You know, ‘I’m telling you, it’s coming!’

PR: ‘I’m absolutely convinced of it. I think this is going to eclipse those great revivals,’ the 1857 Revival, the Revival of the Frontier we had around the turn of the 19th Century, the Great Awakening. ‘It’s going to be bigger than any of them!’”

FALSE FOUNDATIONS. Now the Foundation for all this frothy (and horribly unjustified) enthusiasm was revealed in a New York Times piece written by former Christian Century news editor and Times religion writer JOHN DART about the time Robertson was thinking of throwing his hat in the ring for president in 1988.

The article is entitled, “The Predicted Second Coming: Past Robertson Remarks Deter Secular Believers” (March 4, 1988; edited). Take a close listen to this, beloved, to better understand where the American Church is today, some 35 years later.

“Shortly before he began to contemplate running for President, Pat Robertson said, ‘God had called him to usher in the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, an Event he expected soon and said would be accompanied by Christians’ “taking dominion” over all of society and reaping the wealth of non-believers.’

Addressing a religious seminar in Dallas in December of 1984, Robertson said God had told him ‘I have called you to usher in the coming of My Son.’ He received the prophecy in 1968 through HARALD BREDESEN, a close associate who laid his hand on Robertson’s head and spoke as if God were speaking.”

Now jump forward to JANUARY 6, 2021, never even whispered by either Robertson or Sheets in their later interview. Why? Well, Robertson prophesied that Trump would win in 2020, and then five years later an asteroid would hit the earth (Justine Coleman, The Hill, Oct. 20, 2020). And the good Mr. Sheets was recently quoted in a 2024 podcast in which he passionately prophesied that “God isn’t finished with President Trump’s assignment for America.”

So just who is it, beloved followers of Christ, that we are to Rescue in these perilous Last Hours? Vastly more importantly: ‘Who shall we permit to lead us in the days ahead?’ Keep that tightly in mind as we proceed.

II. THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you strays from the truth and falls into error and [another] one turns him back [to God], let the [latter] one know that the one who has turned a sinner from the error of his way will save that one’s soul from death and cover a multitude of sins [that is, obtain the pardon of the many sins committed by the one who has been restored].” – JAMES 5:19-20, AMPC

KEY TERM: “TURNS.” ‘Epistrephó’ [ἐπιστρέφω]: “To revert or convert; turn about (again); ‘to cause to return from error to the service and worship of the true God;’ as with the breath of spirit returning to a dead body; to bring back [from mortal sin] that they may be in the wisdom of the righteous; to return to one’s [first] love and obedience of God; to reform and repent unto to a better mind.”

COMMENTARY. “‘Brethren’ — As if he had said, I have now warned you of those things to which you are most liable. And in all these respects watch, not only over yourselves, but every one over his brother also. Labour, in particular, to recover those that are fallen. ‘For if any of you do err from the truth’ — From the right way in which he ought to walk, if he be seduced by any means from the Doctrine and practice of the Gospel; ‘and one’ — Any one; ‘convert him’ — Be a means of bringing him back into that way from which he had wandered; ‘let him know’ — Who has been enabled to effect so good a work; ‘that he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way’ — From the false doctrine and bad practice to which he had turned aside, shall produce a much happier effect than any miraculous cure of the body; for he ‘shall save a precious immortal soul from spiritual and eternal death, and shall hide a multitude of sins’ — Namely, the sins of the persons thus converted, which shall no more, how many soever they are, be remembered to his condemnation …

‘[Such] love covereth a multitude of sins; not, however, in the person who is possessed of love, but in the person who is the object of his love.’ — James McKnight.” – JOSEPH BENSON, Notes on the Holy Bible, 5 vols., 1811-1818; edited

WHO NEEDS RESCUE?  Most of us have heard over the last couple of decades that it just may be America and her Church that needs missionaries more than anyone else. Since the ‘ADVENT OF DONALD TRUMP’I have seen my life take a 180 degree turn from evangelizing the ‘Secular Lost’ to focusing almost entirely on the ‘Religious Lost.’

The reasons for this personal Paradigmatic Shift in my calling has been spelled out in hundreds of Commentaries over the past four years, and in my recently published book: The Sixth Seal II: A Pre-Wrath Commentary Redux on the Rise of Donald Trump and the Decline of the American Order (2023).

We shall take up this grave matter in the next section.

III. THE FINAL HARVEST

In the Spring of 1993, I was briefly associated with a ministry outreach under the name of ‘Children of Chernobyl.’ At the invitation of the late JAMES SANTO, a dear friend, business executive and mentor to me for my early years following Christ, we flew to Moscow, Russia to speak with government officials and church leaders about how to help thousands of precious Russian chldren who were dying of cancer in grotesquely underequipped hospitals.

I could tell a hundred stories about our journey in the midst of utter Russian Chaos while BORIS YELTSIN was an often intoxicated President in the wake of the Policies of Glasnost and Perestroika engineered by the previous leader, MIKHAIL GORBACHEV.

But one stands out as a Spiritual Reckoning for me that bears upon what I will write next.

We met with a young priest in the Russian Orthodox Church, a lovely individual with gracious manners yet with a face etched with a seriousness I had not often seen in the American Church. I asked him how long he had been in charge of this church and he said only for brief time. Then I wanted to know about his predecessor and what he told me I have never forgotten.

The former priest had been beheaded by the KGB, leaving an opening for this much younger priest to step in after his execution. Selah.

TRUE SPIRITUALITY (1971). This was my first stunning ‘Wake Up Call’ that American Christianity had long strayed from her original calling as a sacrificial Light to the Nation, settling increasingly for an American Gospel of material prosperity and “the Good Life” it would provide.

Yet it would be over 20 more years until that Reality hit me square in the face with the onset of TRUMP CHRISTIAN NATIONALISM in 2016.

To This Point: “‘The American Church is at a critical crossroads.’ Our witness has been compromised, our numbers are down, and our reputation has been sullied, due largely to our own faults and fears. The Church’s Ethnocentrism, Consumerism, and Syncretism have blurred the lines between discipleship and partisanship. Pastor Eric Costanzo, missiologist Daniel Yang, and nonprofit leader Matthew Soerens find that for the Church to return to health [if she can, I insert], we must Decenter ourselves from our American Idols and Recenter on the undeniable, inalienable Core Reality of the global, transcultural Kingdom of God. Our guides in this process are Global Christians and the poor, who offer hope from the margins, and the Ancient Church, which survived through the ages amid temptations of power and corruption.

‘Their witness points us to refocus on the ‘Kingdom of God, the Image of God, the Word of God, and the Mission of God.’ The path to the future takes us away from ourselves in unlikely directions. By learning from the Global Church and Marginalized Voices, we can return to our roots of being Kingdom-focused, loving our neighbor, and giving of ourselves in missional service to the world.” – ERIC COSTANZO, DANIEL YANG & MATTHEW SOERENS, “Publisher Synopsis,” Inalienable: How Marginalized Kingdom Voices Can Help Save the American Church, 2022; edited

What Dr. Cosanzo and his team seek, therefore, is a frank and even jolting Wake-Up Call to the American White Church that its theological presuppositions are bathed in its own cultural stew. Thus have we become, they argue, ‘Spiritually (and Ethically) Myopic,’ having lost the larger, Global Christian Model set down by the Messiah and the Apostles.

AN ARROGANT CHURCH. The American Church has been on perpetual Cruise Control regarding what it sees as its False Two-Fold Primary Mission for some 40 years and more: (1) Castigate and Replace the Secularists at every cost to enable National Rescue; (2) Guard the sacred Christian Citadel [“a fortress on high ground protecting or dominating a city”] against all those who would disagree with her.

Unholy Mission. “For what business is it of mine to judge outsiders (non-believers)? Do you not judge those who are within the church [to protect the church as the situation requires]? God alone sits in judgment on those who are outside [the faith]. Remove the wicked one from among you [expel him from your church!].”– 1 CORINTHIANS 5:12-13, AMP

CHURCH RESCUE? Ironically enough, I have spent the last seven years or so falling completely out of love with the Establishment American Church given her multiple doctrinal and political fractures separating her from Christ and Canon. However, I have fallen head over heels for Our Messiah as I became ‘divorced from Church Apostasy,’ as the Lord graciously rescued me by giving me a set of new spiritual lenses through which to discern both the Church and the Culture.

Beloved, I can hardly tell the difference between them anymore! Selah.

So comes to our attention a penetrating piece by a Christian leader with a love for the common men and women among us. NATHANIEL MANDERSON was educated at a ‘conservative seminary,’ trained as a minister, ordained through the American Baptist Churches USA and guided by ‘Liberal ideals.’ Selah.

His essay is entitled, “Can Evangelical Christianity be Saved? Only if it Dumps Trump” (Salon, Feb. 18, 2024; edited). I am with this man nearly 90%, but the other 10% is reserved for my admittedly darker view of the American Church: I don’t believe it has neither the desire nor the courage to Dump Trump. I see no evidence for it anywhere, as of March 15, 2024 – fully nine years after this Beast exploded upon the American Presidential scene.

HE WRITES what I consider to be a sober, doctrinally sound and compelling argument for the Church to “heal herself!” rather than look to some human political agent from the Outside to do it for us.

“Trump is the ‘Bad Boy’ that many liberals have been warning Christians about — and now, ‘the more dangerous he seems, the more they like him!’  Another way to look at this is that someone only ends an unhealthy relationship if they can come to that conclusion on their own. Evangelicals will never dump Trump because of some clever argument by Rachel Maddow, or a brilliant takedown by Bill Maher. ‘Such a breakup, if it ever happens, must come from within the Evangelical Movement itself’ …

I have read a great deal about the Civil War and it’s clear how divided the Christian Faith was 160 years ago around the issue of slavery. Far too many were willing to espouse a perversion of Christian theology that justified the brutal enslavement of human beings. Yet the Christian Church in the North played a central role in the Abolitionist Movement and the Underground Railroad, providing a consistent ethical and moral clarity in arguing that Black people needed and deserved freedom and full citizenship. What I’m saying is that in every generation Christians face a choice. That’s as true now as it was then.

Both sides in the 1860s believed they were following the Gospel of Jesus Christ faithfully. But some chose to support oppression, murder, rape and genocide, while others fought for equality and sought to express forgiveness, repentance, love and grace. The only way we will ever see that kind of change today is from a Movement from the Evangelical Church itself.’ But there’s a BIG PROBLEM: Evangelicals must do something that, so far, most simply do not want to do. ‘They must reject the last 50 years of political posturing, at least, embraced and endorsed by the evangelical church and its leadership.’ They must reject the very foundations of the political agenda that has provided the Evangelical Church with so much power, even as its absolute numbers in society have continued to decline.”

DK. I have said it several times before and must repeat it here: I see no scintilla of evidence that, as Mr. Manderson hopes, the Church wants to change. I mean, none! On the contrary, here are several TALKING POINT RATIONALES for the Church continuing their love affair with The Beast of Babylon.

Adapted from a blog by Christian minister, writer and tech consultant CHRIS GOSWAMI (“Why Christian Evangelicals Still Say ‘Amen’ to Trump,” 7 Minutes, Aug. 6, 2023; edited).

• PUTIN.”[‘If Trump had been president, it’s very likely Putin would not have attacked Ukraine’]. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but here’s my thinking. I believe Putin is a tyrant and tyrants don’t lose sleep over predictable men like Joe Biden. Biden isn’t going to overreact, Biden won’t ‘push the button’ on nuclear war. But tyrants are very wary of unpredictable, irrational and impulsive men who might do anything … Men like Donald Trump.”

• MARTYRDOM. “In recent days, this chatter has reached a crescendo This week, Trump was formally charged with the most severe indictments yet. 45 pages accusing him of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 US election through fraud. This is in on top of ongoing charges concerning payments to a former porn-star and misuse of official government documents, and charges yet to come, regarding direct interference in the 2020 election in the state of Georgia. ‘And yet, US Evangelicals, by and large, are convinced there is a Washington led crusade against him.’ To them these charges only enhance his appeal, and his lead over other Republican candidates for 2024 carries on growing.”

• FAUST (1592). Back in [June] 2016, before becoming President, Donald Trump said: ‘Christianity will have power. If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else … Remember that!’ It’s a Promise he has kept. He has delivered on the number 1 issue for many Evangelicals by making abortion more difficult across America. He nominated Supreme Court Justices who helped overturn the Constitutional right to have an abortion. He moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, again ‘playing to’ Evangelical support for Israel, and he has stood up for religious freedom. He understood the evangelical wish-list, and he got it done.”

• PRAGMATISM. ‘Many Evangelicals don’t personally like Trump but their relationship with him is transactional – they vote for him and he shapes the country to their liking.’ They hold their nose and vote for policy over character. Other evangelicals of course love the man himself. They see Trump’s enemies as God’s enemies. ‘In their eyes he can do no wrong and he really was robbed of the 2020 election.’ These off-the-scale opinions tend to get the press coverage.”

I will present my Closing Thoughts in the next, final section.

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

Now when I first read Mr. Manderson’s essay, I presumed that he was offering a Critique of Trump Christians, but I was wrong, beloved! No, he was indeed moving cunningly just below the horizon to present an ‘Apologia’ for staying with Trump! And lest you believe that Trump & Company are indeed a bunch of clowns who don’t know what they are doing, consider TRUMP’S MUSE:

“Now the serpent was ‘more crafty (subtle, skilled in deceit’) than any living creature of the field which the Lord God had made.” – GENESIS 3:1, AMP

So far, Trump has outmaneuvered the entire Republican Party, over two thirds of the White Evangelical Church (I personally think it’s much closer to that 80% that we have seen for nearly a decade now), Jewish Israel, the Europeans who largely wrote him off at first, and a massive chunk of the world’s Authoritarian-Anarchist column.

In alliance of course with ‘friends’ like Russia, the Saudis, North Korea, China, and other antagonists of Western Democratic values.

TWO AUDIENCES. Given these political and spiritual realities, I argue once again that the true Remnant Church should aim its Efforts for Rescue toward: (1)‘Lapsed Christians’(as opposed to Apostate Christians who are no longer rescuable having fully abandoned the Faith); (2) ‘Lost Unsaved,’ especially the hurting, the broken, the orphans and widows, the oppressed and the poor, and the infirm.

Thus the Words of JUDE THE APOSTLE in the last Letter before the Book of Revelation thrusts our attention to our Last Commission. NOTE: Jude’s Epistle is sometimes referred to as “The Letter to the Apostates.”

“But as for you, beloved, remember the [prophetic] words spoken by the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ. They used to say to you, ‘In the last days there will be scoffers, following after their own ungodly passions.’ These are the ones who are [agitators] causing divisions—worldly-minded [secular, unspiritual, carnal, merely sensual—unsaved], devoid of the Spirit. But you, beloved, build yourselves up on [the foundation of] your most holy faith [continually progress, rise like an edifice higher and higher], pray in the Holy Spirit, and keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously and looking forward to the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ [which will bring you] to eternal life. ‘And have mercy on some, who are doubting; save others, snatching them out of the fire; and on some have mercy but with fear, loathing even the clothing spotted and polluted by their shameless immoral freedom.’” – JUDE 1:17-23, AMP

So, we end where we began: The operant Word-Command here is “SAVE!” Taken from the Greek term, ‘Sózó’ [σῴζω], translated as: “To deliver, protect or preserve [from great danger, harm, or death]; to heal or make whole (again); to keep safe; ‘To Rescue from Destruction;’ i.e., to deliver from the penalties of the Messianic Judgment (Joel 2:32); to save from the evils which obstruct the reception of the Messianic deliverance.”

That is why I do what I do, beloved. This is the Commission of the Circuit Ride, not very unlike the Great Commission of Matthew 28. The primary difference is that I am laboring for this:

‘To prudently Rescue both the Secularist AND the Christian from an Apostate Church!’

CODA. I now much more clearly understand that any Revival will only take place among a minority of those who call themselves “Christian,” who themselves ‘Return’ its historic Definition laid down by JAMES THE APOSTLE:

“Pure and unblemished religion [as it is expressed in outward acts] in the sight of our God and Father is this: to visit and look after the fatherless and the widows in their distress, and to keep oneself uncontaminated by the [secular] world.” – JAMES 1:27, AMP

This is the very Command of the Lord of Hosts, thanks be to God. Selah.

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/tV-fN9MBhZo