Can we not recognize how un-right behavior is destroying our society, and that to fix it we can’t just bemoan what others are doing in a Social Gospel but each of us must individual change our ways? The history of mankind according to God is that, like D.L. Moody grasped, he deals with individuals, average or even sub-par individuals whose only claim to fame is being a conduit for Almighty God’s word and actions on an individual basis. How do Christians who believe in Jesus Christ not get that??
Individuals make up families which make up communities which make up nations including the Kingdom of God. As an individual Jesus the Christ won dominion over the world back from the enemy into the hands of humanity.
That’s the point!! We humans who choose to link up with God are designated drivers of the world.
And The End of this world can’t come until God’s ministers are prepared for the transition of power under our leadership. This is a completely different concept from millennialism or premillennialism because it is partnership with Almighty God, not a human-driven process.
Surely we understand this on the lesser level of human government. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, his existing staff made it possible for him to immediately take over the government.
Concurrently with writing this post, President Trump has been refusing to cooperate with a peaceful transition of power. This raises serious concerns for the ability of the incoming leaders to maintain the stability of the American government.
Democrats are growing increasingly alarmed as Mr. Trump repeatedly…suggests that he might not accept the results if he loses…
“He’s clearly accelerating his effort to set up a challenge to an outcome that is unfavorable to him…”
“Fundamental to democracy is the peaceful transition of power; without that, there is Belarus,” Mr. Romney wrote. “Any suggestion that a president might not respect this Constitutional guarantee is both unthinkable and unacceptable.”
Surely we understand that on the far more higher plane of existence we mere mortals need to develop our spiritual abilities. Read a few of the Dresden Files books if you are drawing a blank here.
In God’s kingdom, we are meant to transform into the likeness of our Savior by following the same process he underwent – submitting our will to the will of the Father. And it’s not any more comfortable than a drug addict trying to kick a heroin or methamphetamine habit.
It is no different from any child developing social skills and self-control through mastering self-will through ever higher levels of practice, practice, practice. As one of my son’s high school teachers explained, “You decide if you want to work at a fast food restaurant or in a profession by how you apply yourself now.” You have to give up the comforts of sleeping in, staying up late to watch captivating television programs or play video games, and partying with friends. You have to withdraw into your own wilderness to study and acceptance rejection of family and friends who resent your changes. And frankly, only a small percentage of humanity does develop increased levels of ability and knowledge we call professionalism.
I had to quit going to prayer meetings, and every time someone asks me to pray for someone’s affliction, I have to bite back my response. “Please pray for God to….” How about you personally put yourself out to take a meal, spend time comforting and exhorting the afflicted, provide some financial support? God is not a vending machine! Christianity has devolved into a Name it and Claim it magical process even by the most devout.
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God…
For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office…according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith; Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering: or he that teacheth, on teaching; Or he that exhorteth, on exhortation: he that giveth, let him do it with simplicity; he that ruleth, with diligence; he that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness…Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord; Rejoicing in hope; patient in tribulation; continuing instant in prayer; Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality. Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not.” (Romans 12:1-14)
“And Jesus answered and said unto them…all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet…(Matthew 24:6)
“Comes to pass” describes a circular wheel passing over and over again, as in a printing press or a hamster wheel on which we are stuck until spiritual leadership muscles up.
But there is no sign of that happening in our comfortable Christian world. In addition to the painless exit promised by the Rapture doctrine, a fundamentally racist entitlement exists in far more ways than the inviolable separation of Gentiles from Jews, transparently so in the Bible Belt where Dispensationalism rapidly took root and flourished.
- The Southern Baptist Convention was formed in 1845 by pro-slavery churches splitting from the northern Baptist Abolitionists.
- Neoslavery, like Neo-nazism, and widespread violence against Blacks, Jews, and Catholics in particular and anyone who supported social equality for Blacks, infested the South not only through White Supremacist elements like the Klu Klux Klan but society-wide, during Reconstruction. It continued through the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950’s-60’s to present day Black Lives Matter raising social awareness of police prejudice against young Black males.
- The Eugenics Movement was born in early 20th century America “demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos…Elitists, utopians and so-called “progressives” fused their smoldering race fears and class bias in coordinated action intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, and Jews.
- The Nazi Holocaust of the 1930’s-40’s was not Hitler’s brainchild. “Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He…was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side…the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America” which had demonstrated successful implementation of segregation, marriage laws, forced sterilization, and “many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own…In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “It is better for all the world, if…society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes’s words in their own defense…”
Theologically hidden though it may be, historically it is of supreme significance that the biblical interpretation of the relationship between the Jews and Gentiles figures prominently in the two major Christian theological viewpoints developed at the turn of the 20th Century.
Barth’s practice of…constructing theology with the Bible on the one hand and the newspaper on the other, as he put it—buttresses both the logic and the delivery of his theological system. His development as a theologian was deeply connected with the historical setting that encircled him…
His life spanned both world wars, and he was one of the Church’s most vehement voices against Hitler and Nazism. Living in Germany at the time, Barth served as a primary author of the Confessing Church’s defining document, the Barmen Declaration. The goal of this declaration was to connect Christian truths with necessary action against the Nazi regime. In 1934, Barth refused to give an unconditional oath to Hitler and was…expelled from Germany. Barth returned to Basle where he continued to denounce Nazism and exhort the Church to actively respond to the atrocities and injustices being committed. He joined the Swiss Armed Forces as a declaration of his passion for the cause.
According to Barth, the anti-Semitism of the National Socialist regime precluded it from being considered under the Romans 13 umbrella of God-established authority. In Barth’s words, “he who rejects and persecutes the Jews rejects and persecutes Him who died for the sins of the Jews—and then, and only thereby for our sins as well. He who is a radical enemy of the Jews, were he in every other regard an angel of light, shows himself, as such, to be a radical enemy of Jesus Christ. Anti-Semitism is sin against the Holy Ghost. For anti-Semitism means rejection of the grace of God…”
And racism is still a big part of Christianity today.
The fact remains that the Eugenics movement in the United States is alive and well…Over $300 million of taxpayer money goes to family planning programs that are intentionally used to suppress the birthrate in low-income, minority families…much of it ends up at Planned Parenthood, America’s number one abortion chain. It is no secret that Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger, was a self-proclaimed eugenicist.
Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That’s no coincidence…The relationship between holding racist views and white Christian identity is actually stronger among more frequent church attenders than among less frequent church attenders
Seven symptoms of racism in church.
If you dare, take a free on-line test to gauge your implicit racism.
Antisemitic racism, blatant or so ingrained that the holder is utterly oblivious to it, is the icing that makes the delightful Dispensationalist dismissive “let them eat cake” so utterly irresistible.
Kingdom Come 