So...What ?

 A Sunday-school teacher 40 years ago told us about the "So...what ?" principle of studying.  Read the Bible, he said, with the question "So...what ?"  Scripture's words have immediate personal applications for our lives: ask yourself what those are.

The verse of the Bible always in the forefront of my mind is John 14:6, where Jesus proclaims He IS Himself "...The Way and The Truth and The Life."  Believing He is Who He said He IS  has absolute, total, implications: that in every situation of life we must follow truth, for there is no other way of following Jesus

Truth not just propositional: Truth in its fully-"Life" context, what we'd call reality.  Or rather, since Jesus IS All of it, "Reality."  Every unreality offers us "alternative facts" (as Donald Trump's press-secretary put it) that all things in heaven and earth are other than the way God created them: and offers us, as satan offered Eve, a different way than His.

"Truth in the innermost being" (Psalms 51:6) must pour out in all our "issues of life" (Proverbs 4:23): it is the measure Jesus set for His followers.  Any who love Truth will pursue Truth, obey Truth, and live Truth in every way.

The question for the American Church today is why Truth is not every Christian's criteria in ALL things ?  How can a Christian ever follow the lies of consumerism, or the empty deceit of fame and wealth, or the propaganda of the world's myriad false ideologies and "life-styles" ?  How can any Christian ever follow politicians' lies...as so many do ?

Jesus is The Truth.  He promised the Spirit will lead us into All Truth...if we will follow Him... and The Truth will make you free indeed.

Amen.

Testimony: Against "Christian Conservatism"

 

We should probably all look askance at the divisiveness of Christian denominations and “movements,” in view of Jesus’ prayer that the UNITY of His followers be a witness before the world of His Oneness with the Father (John 17:20-21).

But most Christian factions have at least been rooted in Christian tradition, often naming themselves after Christ, or a Christian doctrine or practice, or a historic Christian leader.

Until today.  “Conservative Christians” manifest proud divisiveness by the political identity they choose.

Tell me: has politics EVER been a vehicle of Truth, Who Jesus IS ?  Did Jesus teach, or should Christians believe, that politics is a way to be saved from the evil in the world…much of it created by politics ?

In the name of Jesus Christ, I here testify that “Conservative Christianity” is a false ideology, perpetrated by the “father of lies.”

Amen.

 

Discerning Prophecy I: Premise

When we talk about discerning Biblical prophecy, the question is never what words are on the pages of the Bible.  Those words have been “in print” for thousands of years.  We have no reason to be unclear about what God has said.

We’re always told it’s an essential discipline to read God’s word, the Bible, regularly: rightly so.  But Jesus emphasized even more “hearing” God's word: grasping in our spirits what God means by His words, and wishes us to understand.  He frequently exhorted His followers with commands such as “He who has ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 13:9).  He indeed makes hearing the substance of our relationship with Him: “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them…” (John 10:27).

There can be no question what God has said.  But there is often great confusion, even contention, about what God means by His words, especially His words of prophecy.  It’s not unusual to find dozens of different interpretations of any given Biblical prophecy, each purporting to be what God wishes us to understand from His words.

That fact itself tells us that the enemy, “the father of lies,” is working hard right now to keep us from truly hearing what God is saying.  If God intends we understand a specific meaning in His prophetic words, all other interpretations of His words are false, and serve the enemy’s purpose.

There have been many outright “false prophets," of course, who falsely claim God is the author of the words they teach.  Mohammed and Joseph Smith are well-known examples.  God says there are extremely serious consequences, for the prophet and the people who receive his word, to "prophesy falsely in My Name," as Jeremiah 23 attests.

But equally dangerous, and much more numerous, are those who interpret God's authentic prophetic words in scripture to mean something other than God means.  It seems that many of today's "teacher of prophecy" authors and broadcasters offer Christians false interpretations of Biblical prophecy; and must therefore be deemed “false prophets” and "false teachers."

In His great teaching about the "last days" (Matthew 24) Jesus repeatedly warns His followers that there will be a proliferation of false prophets and false teachers at that time: which many of us believe is this time.  His repeated command to His followers is "...do not believe them" (Matthew 24:23, 26).

The critical question for Jesus' followers, especially those of us who believe we are living in the last days, is how we can discern false prophecy and teaching.

Amen.

Not Left Behind

 Carl Sandburg's poem "The People, Yes" quotes the story of the ditch-digger who heard the world's richest man had died, and asked "How much did he leave ?"  He was answered, "All of it."

It's a manifest truth: what we have, we ultimately leave behind.

The one thing we ultimately never leave behind, and never can, is what we are.

"Letter to the American Church," by Eric Metaxas

I recently read the book Letter to the American Church by "conservative" author and media-personality Eric Metaxas, and felt led to challenge his deceptive argument in this letter.

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Dear Mr. Metaxas:

                I’d hoped your Letter to the American Church might be a desperately-needed call for the American Church to repent.

                Those hopes were raised by the words of your introduction, that “…the monstrous evil that befell the civilized world precisely because of the German Church’s failure is likely a mere foretaste of what will befall the world if the American Church fails in a similar way at this hour.”

It was deeply disappointing that your call was for the American Church to repent its silence (as you claim) against the evils of “Marxist atheist philosophy…in economics or in any other sphere,” and sexual deviance.

                So it’s impossible to credit the prophetic parallel you purport to find between today’s American Church and German Christians of the 1930s.  Did German Christians need speak out against Marxism and homosexuality when their violently anti-Communist rulers, espousing traditional “German family values,” had silenced Marxists and homosexuals, and removed them from German society ?  Wasn’t German Christians’ sin rather their silence against the evil deeds of those rulers ?

                Jesus spoke of the enemy forces on earth as “children of the devil,” whose spiritual paternity is manifest in their doing satan’s desires, lies and murder (John 8:44).  You quote those words of Jesus (p. 77): and I have to think you’d agree that Germany’s rulers in Bonhoeffer’s time merited Jesus’ characterization.  Wasn’t the disastrous moral failure of German Christians their silent acquiescence, even collusion, in the lies and murder of the political faction that had seized power in their nation ?

                Jesus also categorically defined “murder” as violent words of contempt against others (Matthew 5:21-2).  You’re surely aware that a faction in America today has made such murder, and egregious lies, its chosen political identity.  Surely you're well aware that a great many American Christians silently acquiesce and collude in, even loudly proclaim, the doctrines of that faction.

                I’d urge you to consider that fact is the most-telling prophetic-parallel for American Christians in this day.  And urge that the desperately-needed call for the American Church’ repentance must be that it reclaim its identity in Christ, and turn back from being a slavish political “demographic” for today’s “children of the devil.”

 sincerely,  Steve Hicks

America's City on a Hill

 Ronald Reagan frequently quoted his feel-good characterization of America as ”a shining city on a hill," including in his Presidential farewell speech.

He took the words from John Winthrop’s address to the Puritans embarking for New England on the great emigration fleet of 1630,  But as throughout his political career, Reagan's comprehension of principles was shallow, and his purpose manipulative.

Winthrop's speech, “A Model of Christian Charity," called on Puritans to build a Christian society in their new home, modelled on Jesus' words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5: a "city on a hill" whose godliness would be an example to the divided nation they left behind, and "a light to the world" (Matthew 5:14).

The only way we can be what Jesus calls us to be, Winthrop told his fellow emigrants, "...is to follow the counsel of Micah [6:8]: to do justly, to love mercy, and walk humbly with our God."  He continued,

"We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and our community in the work as members of the same body.  The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us as His own people.  For we must consider that we shall be as a city on a hill.  The eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world...till we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going."

The Puritans fell short of Jesus' commands for a Godly life, as we all do.  But the "Model" Winthrop set before his fellow emigrants put before America's following generations the Pilgrims' certainty that Jesus' teachings were the only basis for a Godly society, and that obeying Him was the only way God would be pleased to bless this new land.  

If we believe Jesus is Lord of all, as the Puritans certainly did, His commands for a Godly society are still the "model" for men of our time, and every other: even those for whom it is only an ideal of what makes a "good" secular society.  Massachusetts, which grew from Winthrop's colony, indeed adapted that ideal for their secular polity, constituting themselves a "commonwealth," rather than a  "state," in our new nation.  The "-wealth" in that form of government is "weal," the ancient English word for "well-being:" and Massachusetts' secular governing principle to this day is the shared well-being of its people.

When Puritan-descendant John Adams wrote Massachusetts' constitution a century-and-a-half on from Winthrop's day, he described that principle as "...a social compact, by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall shall be governed by certain laws for the common good."

The Puritans' uncompromising faith was that Christ's teachings were those "laws;"; and they would have been horrified at the thought that "the people" should be their source.  But the Puritans' vision for their "city on a hill" was indeed (to secular understanding) a "commonwealth."  A famous example is that, following age-old English custom, when Winthrop's company moved to the Shawmut Peninsula and founded Boston, they set aside 50 acres as grazing-land held in common by the community: and it remains "Boston Commons" today, a public park belonging to all of Boston's citizens.

(I have to wonder if Reagan was aware that the Puritan leader he so admired was imbued with such "socialist" ideas ?  But of course Winthrop would have considered his "Model" the Spiritual communitarianism of the first Christians in Acts 2:44-45: a scripture Reagan may not have been familiar with.)

The Puritans' failed to live up to Jesus' commands that Winthrop set before them.  We all do; which is the human reality for which God offers the honest...any who will admit to themselves and God their failure...the grace of repentance and forgiveness in Christ.

John Winthrop would never have questioned that Jesus' "Model" of a Godly society "got it right."  He was at the same time too fervent a lover of Truth (Who Jesus IS) to not admit, confess and repent that the Puritan colony fell short of being the "city on a hill" Jesus commanded.  He did so in his writings in later life.

But Ronald Reagan invoked that image for a very different purpose than Winthrop's:

"And how stands the city on this winter night? More prosperous, more secure, and happier than it was 8 years ago. But more than that: After 200 years, two centuries, she still stands strong and true on the granite ridge, and her glow has held steady no matter what storm."

Reagan's nod to Jesus' commands came at the end of a valedictory in which he claimed America had risen in the previous 8 years (not coincidentally, his term in the White House) from recession, over-regulation, and the self-doubt of the Vietnam era, Reagan claimed too that America was once again respected throughout the world: he claimed a foreign leader at a summit-meeting once asked him the secret of the "the American Miracle."

I'm always very suspicious of self-congratulation, my own or anyone else's.  Christianity teaches the discipline of rigorous self-examination: (I Corinthians 11:28, II Corinthians 13:5, Galatians 6:4, and I Thessalonians 5:21): that God demands of us unrelenting vigilance against self-deluding pride, without which we cannot recognize our failures, repent of them, and be forgiven.

From his writings we know Winthrop regularly practiced that discipline for his own life, and the life of the colony under his charge.  And my understanding of Biblical truth is that all of us who honestly self-examine will find we fall short of God's command of righteousness, always.

Reagan's "shining city on a hill" is of the contrary spirit, a celebration of what he regarded as America's rightful pride in its greatness (restored, he said, under his administration).  He credits those words to Winthrop, rather than Jesus: and characterizes Winthrop not as Jesus' follower (which Winthrop himself doubtless considered the whole point); but as what Reagan extolled as a "freedom man."

Reagan saw in his "shining city on a hill" no sins to confess: no slavery, no massacres of native Americans, no Vietnam: and he doesn't.   A more honest President had held out to us in America's darkest days a vision of our nation that mirrored Winthrop's deep Christian consciousness of God's will and God's way; that America is "the last best hope" for human government on earth, and that our unrepented sins would destroy America, and that hope.  But self-congratulation, not repentance, was Reagan's purpose.

"...a final word to the men and women of the Reagan revolution, the men and women across America who for 8 years did the work that brought America back. My friends: We did it...We made the city stronger, we made the city freer...

"And so, goodbye, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America."

It grieves me that even decades later many Americans still buy into Reagan's shallow, self-serving, vision of his “shining city on a hill;” a fictionalized ideology rooted in "American Exceptionalism" more than in reality.  And I think we should be terrified that, because so many Americans believe the lie that God will bless an unrepentant proud nation such as Reagan urged us to be, America has never been in greater mortal danger than in our time.