It's A Battlefield, Not A Waiting Station

Following the Civil War and up until the late 1970’s the trend throughout the Church was to isolate itself from the social and political problems facing the American culture.  The Church scorned politics, education, literature, the arts, and culture in general as irrelevant to the spiritual life of the believer and to withdraw from problems outside the narrow confines of the local church, the family, and personal ethics. The scriptural basis was not to be “unequally yoke with unbelievers.”

I have listen to many sermons that ridiculed education, spoke of the arts as sinful, and that politics was filled with corruption and sin and to be avoided at all cost.  The result was the Church did not take the social and cultural responsibility to influence these areas.  We have failed our commission, because we are afraid of the battle with evil.  So we will just maintain our position and wait for Jesus to come and take us off the battlefield.

This attitude has allowed a transfer of authority to non-Christians.  It gave educational institutions the unquestioned authority to promote humanism, remove prayer from schools, allowed the arts to move away from religious influence and politics to basically remove the historical place of Christianity from our government and society.

What makes this all so ironic is the major institutions of American humanism have been built with taxes paid by Christians and Christians ignored what was happening because they would not be around when the country went to hell.  They would be gone!   But they are still here, now what?

I have heard from the time I started attending church over fifty years ago that Jesus was coming back at any moment.  It worked great for the “altar call”, you could leave here tonight and miss going home with Jesus.  The emotional appeal worked, many times, the altar was lined with those who didn’t want to be left behind if Jesus came back tonight.

The problem is it was a psychological tactic that worked on the emotions of the seekers.  Today, it will not work.  People both in and out of the church have been duped by the modern day prophets.  Millions have been made on books, lectures, movies and seminars on scaring people to accept Jesus Christ based on some “end of the world prediction” and many are not buying the Church's explanation of the "end times".  Even Church members are turning to secular science and myths.  Why?  To many false-prophets.

It’s time the Church stop using tactics on its members who make-up the body of Christ and psychologically  take the war directly to the enemy.  It is time to fight an offensive campaign against evil. Do I believe Jesus could come at any time?  As God the Father is in charge, He can make that decision at any time—He is God.  But as a Christian I should stop acting and living like he can come back at any time.  Why? Because Christians are the reason our country is in the mess it is in.  We have been so “heavenly minded we are of no earthly value.”

We need to stop complaining and blaming and get involved in areas of influence in education, politics, the arts, and literature. We are the salt, let’s start acting like it. Stop acting like Jesus is going to remove you from the evil in this world and help fulfill His mission to “destroy the works of the devil”.