SPECIAL FOLLOW UP ON THE PROMISE TO THE PHILADELPHIAN REMNANT: THE TRUE CHURCH’S WAR AGAINST REBELLION (WITH VIDEO)

1. THEOLOGY

SCRIPTURE. “But KEEP ALERT at all times [be attentive and ready], praying that you may have the strength and ability [to be found worthy and] to ESCAPE all these things that are going to take place, and to stand in the presence of the Son of Man [at His coming] …

I know your deeds. See, I have set before you an open door which no one is able to shut, for you have a little power, and have kept My word, and have not renounced or denied My name. Take note, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan, who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie—I will make them come and bow down at your feet and make them know [without any doubt] that I have loved you.

Because you have kept the word of My endurance [My command to persevere], I will KEEP YOU [SAFE] from the hour of trial, that hour which is about to come on the whole [inhabited] world, to test those who live on the earth.” – LUKE 21:36; REVELATION 3:8-10, AMP

KEY TERMS:

• “KEEP ALERT!” ‘Agrupneó’ [ἀγρυπνεῖτε]: “From a primitive word meaning, ‘to be sleepless, to remain awake;’ also, ‘to be vigilant, watchful.’” NOTE: “The verb describes ‘Active, Deliberate Wakefulness.’ Itis more than simply remaining physically awake; it is a Disciplined Attentiveness of mind, heart, and will toward God’s Purposes. Its four New Testament uses describe distinct but related SPHERES OF VIGILANCE: (1) Personal Readiness for Christ’s Return; (2) Persevering Prayer; (3) Spiritual Warfare; and (4) Pastoral Care.”

• “ESCAPE.” ‘Ekpheugó’ [ ἐκφυγεῖν ]: “To flee from, to avoid; to break free or decamp [depart suddenly!].” NOTE: “The verb translated ‘Escape’ in the eight New Testament occurrences communicates: ‘A decisive, often miraculous Deliverance from danger or judgment.’ It may describe literal flight from physical peril or spiritual deliverance from DIVINE WRATH. ‘Each context highlights the absolute necessity of God’s INTERVENTION or OBEDIENCE to His Word for True Escape.’”

• “KEEP YOU SAFE.” ‘Téreó’ [τηρήσω]: “To guard from loss or injury; keep one’s eye upon or watch over; implies a Divine fortress.” NOTE: “Strong’s Greek 5083 appears seventy-one times, weaving together two main spheres: (1) Active Loyalty—believers ‘Keep’ what God has revealed; (2) Protective Custody—God or human authorities ‘Keep’ persons or things under guard. ‘The contexts range from intimate discipleship in the Gospels and Epistles to Cosmic Judgment scenes in Revelation, showing a seamless Biblical Theology of Covenant Faithfulness [Obedience] and Divine Preservation.”’

QUOTATION. “‘Of course it’s dangerous! But it’s a lot more dangerous for all of us if we don’t do it.’ Even in a conquering army there are casualties. Safety is not the issue when we look at the Great Commission. ‘The Purpose of the Church cannot be to Survive, or even to Thrive, but to SERVE.’” ― BROTHER ANDREW, Secret Believers: What Happens When Muslims Believe in Christ, 2008; edited

COMMENTARY. “‘That we are not appointed to Wrath,’ could be taken in a number of ways, but Paul has in mind what he had already mentioned in chapter 1, ‘The Wrath to Come.’ In assuring the Thessalonians that they will miss out on ‘the wrath to come’ (‘The Tribulation’) Paul sets up a clear Opposite here. He points out that suffering ‘the wrath to come’ is NOT in store for those who have Salvation. In other words, those who have Everlasting Life will not experience The Tribulation. This comes only after he’s explained the mechanism that Christ will use to Rescue Believers from ‘the wrath to come.’ He then finishes by saying, ‘That whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.’

Here he seems to be admitting that he honestly doesn’t know if he or they will still be physically alive by the time of the Rapture. This was written around 50 A.D. And Paul had already known eyewitnesses of Jesus’s resurrected appearances that had passed away⁠8. ‘The Reassurance is in the fact that whether the believer lives until Christ comes, or dies before then, they will avoid ‘the wrath to come’ and be with Christ forever.’” – LUCAS KITCHEN, “Saved from the Wrath to Come vs. Saved from Wrath,” Free Grace, ret. Feb. 20, 2026;edited

II. TEACHING: THE FIRST WAR

“For God has not DESTINED [‘tithémi’ (ἔθετο)-‘ordain, purpose’] us to [incur His] wrath [that is, He did not select us to condemn us], but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died [willingly] for us, so that whether we are awake (alive) or asleep (dead) [at Christ’s appearing], we will live together with Him [sharing eternal life].” – 1 THESSALONIANS 5:9-10, AMP

But as with any Marriage Covenant, beloved, we must WAGE WAR against this Present Darkness to hold on to it!

When I discovered the of German theologian ERICH SAUER, I discovered a treasure trove of understanding of the Ancient Origins of Evil that ignited the very Battle of the Ages in which we all find ourselves engaged.

Or, inexcusably, sitting on the sidelines.

His two-volume treatise, The Dawn of World Redemption (1951) and The Triumph of the Crucified (1951) presents a sweeping Purview of The Great Story of God, Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation. His work is breathtaking.

On the darker side, Sauer lived and wrote during the ascendency of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, and for a time was caught up in the German Delusion, but after the War revised his work to remove the alignment with Hitler’s views.

While I may be criticized for still regarding his writing favorably, I have yet to find a more brilliant pen with the eloquence of Sauer to describe the very Panorama of God’s Design for Humanity. So here we go.

• CREATION. “The General Question WHY God created a World at all no one is able to answer. As the Absolute One, the ‘Blessed God’ (I Tim. 1:11), He exists on His own account, eternally suffices for Himself, and needs no other who should exist for His sake. He is indeed Love, and Love by the necessity of its nature needs a Beloved, another ego, to which it can lovingly reach forth. But the Ego was already eternally present in God. In the Son, the Divine Love enjoyed, without beginning and without end, full unfolding and unceasing satisfaction: ‘Thou hast loved me before the foundation of the world’ (John 17:4). Therefore, the only thing that can here be said is: ‘God has Created the World because He WILLED to create it!’”

• EVIL. “‘And yet! Into this Universe, which was appointed to the highest, which the Creator had called that it should become a vessel to reveal His Glory, there has entered A BREACH!’ The United Harmony of the Spheres is destroyed by a Harsh Discord. Sin has appeared, and criminally set itself against the holy, loving Plans of God to reveal Himself. Through the Sin of Mankind this Lower Earth is devastated (Gen. 3: 17, 18; Rom. 8:20), and, in the Heavenly World above, as the history of Temptation in the Bible premises, ‘A FALL’ had taken place among the Angels prior to the Fall of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3: 1-7; 2:15). Yet how this was possible, and why God permitted it, no one can say. The Origin of Evil remains for ever a Mystery. Even the few hints that the Scripture gives are no more than suggestive.”

• CONSEQUENCES. “The Beginning of Mankind has been compared to a sunny morning. Coming out of Eternity, Time, as it were, was holding Happiness in its hands. In the Blessedness of Paradise God had united Heaven and Earth. ‘But then came Sin!’ As a Tempest black as night it broke in devastatingly and drove all this morning splendour out of the history of time. Thenceforth the Earth stood under the Shadow of Death. ‘Severe were the Consequences of the Divine Judgment.’ By his Disobedience Man had denied the Sovereignty of God and had thrust the Lord of all from the throne of his heart. ‘Sin is Mutiny against God, Revolt against the Highest, Rebellion of the individual will of the creature against the Divine Universal Order.’ The human ‘I’ now stepped into the place of the Dethroned God and became the King on the Throne.”

• REDEMPTION. “Of ABRAHAM’S long life of 175 years (Gen. 25:7) we know extraordinarily little. Almost everything deals with the expected seed. But it is this that is of the highest significance. Before Abraham’ there had indeed been Announcements of the COMING REDEEMER: Of the ‘Crusher of the Serpent’ (Gen. 3:I5), of the Rest-Bringer(Gen. 5: 29), of ‘Yehuvah’ [Who Was, Is, and Will Be],’ the God of Shem (Gen. 9:26). But all this came in very veiled form and extremely seldom-according to Biblical Chronology only these three times in the course of almost twenty-five centuries! ‘But now, with Abraham, the expectation of the ‘SEED’ became the all-prevailing and Chief Thought’ (Gal. 3:16)…[Thus does] Abraham exist for the sake of Christ!’”

DK NOTE. All of this Grand Super History to draw us swiftly now into the Present Hour, what C.S. LEWIS rightly called it, “THE LAST BATTLE” for all Mankind. That is where we are, beloved, Stationed by The Christ in right position to wage our ‘Last Great Struggle’ for the souls of men in order to ensure that ‘SOME are snatched from the Fire’ that is already lit (Jude 1:23).

III. APPLICATION: AMERICA’S SPIRITUAL WAR

“‘I have come home at last! This is my Real Country!’ I belong here. This is the Land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now…Come further up, come further in!” ― C.S. LEWIS, The Last Battle, 1956; edited

THE CHOICE. To put it very bluntly after living through and studying the last ten years of American and Church history, the Last Days American Christians are drawn down by God’s Hand to a Final Decision:

Worship Christ or Worship Antichrist.

The Operational Definition of that Choice is this: Worship the ‘True Christ’ of the Scriptures or join nearly 90 percent of the White Evangelical Church and Worship Donald Trump, effectively, the ‘Beast of Babylon.’

One Road leads to Paradise and Eternal Life with the Jesus Christ. The Other Road leads to Perdition and the Lake of Fire with Antichrist and the False Prophet.

“The DEVIL, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone wherethe BEAST and the FALSE PROPHET are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever…

He who OVERCOMES [‘nikaó’ (νικῶν)-‘conquers, subdues,  prevails’] shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” – REVELATION 20:10; 21:7-8, NKJV

MESSIAH VS. MAGA. I recently discovered and subscribed to a wise theological analyst who I have cited once before. DR. TRIPP FULLER is Host of Homebrewed Christianity Podcast since 2008 and holds the Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion & Post-Doc in Religion & Science. His timely article for today’s discussion:

“MAGA and the Post-Christian America: A Meditation on Power, the Cross, and the World We’re Choosing” (Mar. 2, 2026; edited).

• PREFACE. “I wrote and recorded this essay before Trump began bombing Iran. Trump entered the Republican nomination process in 2016 by attacking Jeb and the Bush administration for their wars abroad. He was championed as the ‘No new wars’ candidate. During Obama’s administration, he repeatedly suggested that he would attack Iran to distract the country and get the ‘rally around the flag’ popularity bump. Now we are here, attacking Iran without a vote in Congress or even a case made for the attack. We are still waiting for the Trump administration to release all the Epstein files, something he signed into law. Trump is enacting the very Vision of the World that his advisor, STEPHEN MILLER, voiced. It was Miller’s line that inspired this essay.”

• EPIGRAPHS. “The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak suffer what they must.” (Thucydides, The Melian Dialogue, c. 411 BC). “God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”(Paul, 1 Corinthians 1:27). “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching Spiritual Death.” (Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam,” (1967).

• SHADOW. “I’ve been sitting with something that troubles me deeply. It’s a quote from STEPHEN MILLER, one of the chief architects of Immigration Policy in the Trump Administration. He said: ‘The Real World is governed by Strength, Force, and Power.’ Not Ideals. Not Principles. Not Compassion or Justice or any of the lofty words we learned in Sunday school. Strength. Force. Power.”

• RESPONSE. “Now, I could react to this the way we’ve all been trained to react in our exhausting culture wars—with outrage, with a quick dunk on social media, with the satisfying feeling of having identified another villain. But I’ve grown weary of that Game. It generates heat but very little light. And I suspect it’s part of the Disease rather than the Cure. So instead, I want to sit with Miller’s words [Matthew 12:37]. I want to take them seriously. I want to ask what it means that a prominent leader in a movement that claims to represent Christian America is articulating a Vision of the World that sounds, to my ears, not very Christian at all.”

• REALITY. “Let me be fair to Stephen Miller. He’s articulating something that many people feel, even if they wouldn’t say it so bluntly. There’s a sense, especially among those who feel displaced or disrespected by cultural change, that the world doesn’t run on niceness. ‘That power is what matters.’ That the strong survive and the weak get trampled, and anyone who says otherwise is either naive or lying. This isn’t a new sentiment. It’s not even a particularly partisan one. You can find versions of it across the political spectrum, in the boardroom and the locker room, in foreign policy debates and schoolyard arguments. “Nice guys finish last.” ‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world. The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.’”

• FASCISM. “The theologian REINHOLD NIEBUHR, writing in the Shadow of Fascism, would have recognized Miller’s sentiment immediately. And he would have begun, surprisingly, by admitting that Miller is not entirely wrong…Niebuhr distinguished between TWO TYPES of people. The ‘Children of Light’ are ‘Moral Idealists’ who understand that we ought to seek Justice and Cooperation—but they are often ‘Foolish’ because they underestimate the power of self-interest and the persistence of conflict. The ‘Children of Darkness,’ by contrast, are ‘Wise’ about the Mechanics of Power—but they are ‘Evil’ because they recognize No Law beyond their own will. ‘Miller speaks the Language of the Children of Darkness.’” DK: That very ‘SPIRIT’ that is now fully governing America since the Church has collapsed, beloved.

• FOUNDATION. “The British historian TOM HOLLAND, not a Christian apologist, has helped me see just how ancient this Abyss is. Holland argues that the values we consider‘Western’—Human Rights, the Dignity of every person, Care for the weak, Suspicion of power—are not natural. They’re not self-evident. They’re not universal truths that any reasonable person would discover through reason alone. ‘They’re Christian!’ More specifically, they’re the result of a Revolution that began with a Crucified Peasant in an obscure corner of the Roman Empire and slowly, over centuries, rewired the Moral Imagination of the West. Before that Revolution, Holland shows, the World operated on very different assumptions. In ancient Rome and Greece, it was simply obvious that the Strong should rule the Weak.”

• LEGACY. “Over centuries, this Revolution worked its way into the fabric of Western Culture. Not completely—the Church has always been compromised, always entangled with power, always falling short of its own Gospel. But enough to change things fundamentally. We got Hospitals—originally Christian institutions designed to care for the sick who couldn’t pay, which would have baffled the Romans, who saw no point in wasting resources on those who couldn’t contribute to society. We got the concept of Universal Human Rights—rooted in the Christian claim that every person, regardless of status or ability, bears the image of God. We got the Abolition of Slavery, driven largely by Christian activists who insisted that you cannot own someone made in God’s image. (Yes, Christians also defended Slavery. The story is complicated. But the Moral Logic that eventually undermined it was also Christian).”

• PIVOT. “I want to focus on a specific moment, because I think it reveals something important about the shifting moral landscape. It was July 2015. DONALD TRUMP, then a presidential candidate, was speaking about SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN. He said: ‘He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.’ THE CROWD LAUGHED. I need to sit with that. John McCain endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He was tortured repeatedly. He refused early release because it would have meant leaving his fellow prisoners behind. Whatever you think of his politics, his suffering was real, and his rejection of special treatment was honorable by almost any moral standard. ‘And he was being MOCKED [ridicule in derision]!’ Not for a policy position. Not for a vote. For being captured. For suffering. ‘For, in the World’s eyes, losing.’”

• FAUST. “Now I need to speak carefully, because I’m speaking to Family. I grew up Evangelical. I know the hymns, the potluck dinners, the altar calls, the genuine warmth and sincere Faith of so many people in that world. I also know the fears—and they are real fears. ‘There is a sense that The Culture has turned hostile.’ That your children are being shaped by forces that mock everything you hold sacred. That you’re losing your country, your voice, your place at the table. I understand why, in that context, a STRONG MAN looks appealing… When we embrace the language of ‘Winning’ and ‘Dominating’ and ‘Crushing,’ are we still recognizable as followers of the One who said, ‘Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you’? I fear we’ve made A TRADE we don’t fully understand. We’ve Traded our birthright for a bowl of political stew. ‘We’ve gained Protection—maybe—but we’ve lost something more precious: The Integrity of our Witness, the Coherence of our Message, the Beauty of the Gospel. We said we wanted to SAVE Christian America. I wonder if, in the process, we’ve forgotten what made it Christian in the first place.’”

• ABYSS. “I need to introduce you to an unlikely prophet: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. Nietzsche was a fierce critic of Christianity. He called it a ‘Slave Revolt in Morality,’ an Inversion of ancient values that elevated weakness over strength. He looked at the Christian God dying in European culture and saw—what, exactly?…’Nietzsche understood—better than many believers—what the DEATH OF GOD would mean. If the Christian Moral Framework collapses, he warned, there will be wars such as the Earth has never seen. The Twentieth Century would be a time of Nihilism, of Meaning draining from the World, of Humanity stumbling in the Dark.’ He was writing in the 1880s. Within decades, Europe would tear itself apart twice, with a body count in the tens of millions.”

• ERRATUM. “The Actual Nietzsche broke with his friend Richard Wagner, in part, over Wagner’s Anti-Semitism. He wrote that Anti-Semites should be ‘expelled from Germany.’ He mocked German Nationalism as the posturing of ‘beer-soaked mediocrities.’ He called the State ‘the coldest of all cold monsters.’ Hedespised the herd mentality of mass movements and would have viewed Rallies and Tribal Loyalty Oaths with contempt. His infamous ‘Will to Power’ was not a call to Political Domination. It was primarily about ‘Self–Overcoming’—the artist’s struggle with resistant material, the thinker’s battle against easy answers, the individual’s lifelong fight to become who they truly are. ‘When Nietzsche praised Strength, he meant the Strength to Stand Alone, to Create, to Resist Conformity—not the strength to crush others underfoot.’”

• VULGARIZATION. “So when Stephen Miller says the ‘Real World’ is governed by Strength and Power, he is not channeling the Real Nietzsche. ‘He is channeling the Vulgarized Nietzsche’—the Nietzsche of the dinner party and the talk show, stripped of subtlety and irony and reduced to a bumper sticker. He is channeling Nietzsche’s sister’s Nietzsche. He is speaking the language of those who raided a philosopher’s corpse for slogans. ‘Here’s the bitter irony: Miller is also confirming Nietzsche’s Darkest Fear.’ Nietzsche worried that when the Christian Moral Framework collapsed, what would replace it would not be the Heroic Individual creating New Values. ‘It would be the Herd stampeding toward whoever promised them Power. It would be the Mob—Directionless, Resentful, looking for a Strong Hand to tell them who to HATE!’”

• REMNANT. “‘The WAY OF JESUS has survived every Empire that tried to crush it. It has also survived every Empire that tried to co-opt it.’ It outlasted Rome. It outlasted Christendom. It will outlast whatever this is. Because the Way of Jesus is not a program or a platform, it’s a Path. A Way of Being in the World that trusts the Logic of the Cross over the Logic of Caesar. A Community of Misfits and Failures who have discovered that Weakness can be a gift, that Enemies can become friends, that Death is not the final word.I’m not calling us back to some Golden Age. There never was one. The Church has always been Compromised, always entangled with Power, always falling short. But there has always been A REMNANT. ‘A Faithful Few who remembered the Real Story. Who fed the hungry and visited the prisoners and welcomed the stranger. Who stood with the powerless against the powerful. Who believed that The Lamb who was slain is worthy to receive power and wisdom and strength.’”

IV. LAST THOUGHTS

‘Beloved, the Church has seen ‘The Enemy’ and God has shown us that he is US!’

If our Pastors and Teachers and Theologians and Prelates cannot see and confess to this, then they and all their flocks shall be lost forever. For-ever!

I have labored with all my might and all my resources to awaken even a tiny portion of the Evangelical Church leadership, thus far to no avail.

But to be fair, it could well have been my angry vehemence toward them for having not listened. But when I see the wholesale Prostitution of the Gospel – for that is what it is – I can no longer speak in whispers. But let me close on a Kinder, Gentler Note for once. Perhaps it will provide Salve to many historic, deep, and festering wounds in the American Church.

FULLER’S PRAYER.  “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, We confess that we have preferred the Crown to the Cross. We have loved Power and called it Faithfulness. We have baptized our Fears and called them Convictions. ‘We have followed the Strong Man and forgotten the Suffering Servant.’ We have built Walls when you called us to build Bridges. We have blessed Bombs when you called us to be Peacemakers. We have worshiped Whiteness and called it Christianity.

Forgive us.

Teach us again what we have forgotten: That Your Power is made perfect in Weakness. That the Last shall be First and the First shall be Last. That the Meek—not the Mighty—will inherit the Earth. That there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, ‘For we are all One in You’.

Give us the Courage to follow You, Even when the crowd is cheering for Caesar. Even when the Empire offers us a seat at the table. Even when the Cross looks like foolishness and defeat. Even when our own Tribe calls us Traitors.

Bind us to one another across every divide: Red and Blue, Black and White, Rich and Poor, Citizen and Stranger. ‘Make us the Beloved Community we have glimpsed but not yet become. We don’t know what’s coming. But we know Who goes with us. And that is enough. Amen.”

SELAH.

MEDIA

YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/cgfQOrQmc0U