Pastor John,
Allison and I were blessed beyond expression watching Saturday and Sunday meetings (while in our Las Vegas hotel). Your new discoveries about Christianity are refreshing (and harrowing).
I began writing this email BEFORE your Saturday teaching, while in flight. Now it is more relevant!
As I browse through YouTube, all too frequently, I’ve noticed an intriguing trend: Many of the new outspoken “conservatives” who are rallying for a return to Judeo-Christian morality (and sanity) in our culture are Catholics. I found that to be curious.
Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, and Candace Owens are the front-runners, along with two articulate Jews—Ben Shapiro and the eloquent and wise Dennis Prager. Tucker Carlson, too, could be on that list, as an Episcopalian, whose own personal Bible study has reignited his enthusiasm for his faith (May God help him to find JESUS and not rejoin himself to Christianity.)
I find it interesting that the ones who are most actively leading the charge against cultural hypocrisy, political duplicity, and bankrupt morality happen to be Catholics. None of them know the real Jesus, as they presume. None of them have the holy ghost, as far as I know. Yet they are actively voicing their perspectives to expose the evils in society, often mocking their opponents (sometimes with same sarcasm they resent in their opponents).
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Religious people are beginning to take a stand against the influence of the onslaught of the current madness. But, aren’t Catholics part of the same problem? After all, they would persecute God’s people too, just like the secular culture does. Conservative religious Catholics could censor our spiritual activities just as easily as the Left is censoring (cancelling) the freedom of speech of their opponents on the Right. While it might be gratifying to see them making reasonable arguments for truth and sanity and justice, freedom, and a return to decent morality, that “great whore” is still very much a part of the world. I don’t trust it/them. It’s like what you have said before: it could be just as dangerous for conservatives to be in power, as it is for the leftists to be in power, politically, that is—dangerous for US.
Thankfully, we can give it all up to Jesus, and use our weapon of prayer to influence God’s ear, and not be moved by or take sides with the seemingly hopeful activism of the religious conservatives, even though we might agree with their viewpoints on several issues. This world is NOT holy. And those without the Spirit of God are not holy; whether liberal or conservative; articulate or moronic; white or black; Jew or Gentile; religious or atheist; etc. et. al.
We wouldn’t be comfortable in a theocracy if it were Catholics that were ruling over us. I would wager that even those who are right-leaning Catholics would still inflict harm on holy children of God if we didn’t bow to their god. (And we know who their Lord actually is.) Cruel persecution of children of God has happened in the past, and history tends to repeat itself when power corrupts men’s minds, whether or not they wave a banner for “truth.”. . it is seldom God’s truth.
Isn’t it fascinating that those who proudly affirm their affiliation with what you call “the Roman empire in drag” (Christianity), fighting against the evils of our culture, are themselves adherents to an evil institution, without even realizing it?
Brad
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Yes, Brad it is. The cultural madness we see now is all a setup, to make people welcome the Beast, who will be a law-and-order guy. The world will love him, but Jesus is saving us from being seduced into socio-political action. The answer, and the ONLY answer, for the whole world, conservatives and liberals alike, is the holy Spirit that Jesus purchased for fallen man with his blood. We do not honor his sacrifice by resorting to earthly kinds of warfare.
If it is true that “he who takes up the sword shall die by the sword”, then it is also true that he who takes up a gun, or a rock, or the ballot box, or a political action committee shall die by those things. They are all earthly weapons, and the weapons of our warfare are spiritual – but mighty, to the pulling down of strongholds, vain imaginations, and anything else that exalts itself again the way of Christ.
Whoever walks in the Spirit and resists the pressures of carnally minded men to do something their way, is mighty in God’s sight – and in the sight of every person who knows Him, though they be few.
Pastor John