Can American Christians be aroused?

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, persecution, christian testimony, history

Will it come to this? A law proposed in California two years go would require the persecution of Christians who own businesses if they do not promote the "rainbow agenda" of wokeness. Fortunately, it was not enacted. Don't think that Invertors* will not try again.

You, reading this, may be someone who considers "Woke" to be some cool trend, the "thing to be". The leaders and promoters of Wokeness have a very different idea: Control of the masses, for whom they have enormous contempt. Wokeness is extortion, it is evil, and it is the latest weapon of totalitarians in the United States and throughout the West, to subjugate everyone to their control.

Persecution of Christians and Jews simmered along at a low level for about a hundred years in America. It is now exploding. The arson of church buildings is one glaring symptom of this disease.

Christian writer Eric Metaxas recently published Letter to the American Church, in which he likens the modern trends to those existing in Germany in 1932, and the lassitude of American Christians and Christian leaders with the inaction of the German pastors 90 years ago. Mr. Metaxas wrote a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the prophet to German Christians, who was martyred by the Nazis. His exposition is based on what he learned while researching that book.

The author wastes no time getting to his point: "The German Church of the 1930s was silent in the face of evil; but can there be any question whether the American Church of our own time is guilty of the same silence?" I will proceed mainly by annotating certain quotes from the book.

The author writes to the "American Church." I understand what is behind the terminology, but the theology of most varieties of Christianity is flawed, so I prefer the term American Christians. Biblically speaking, there is no "American Church", nor "German Church", etc. With that in mind…

The tragedy of American Christianity is that nearly all have bought into the pernicious notion that we must not be "political." Indeed, many states have laws that deny the right of preachers to speak on political subjects or to publicly take any political stance. Many Christians piously (sniffingly) pronounce, "We just pray, we don't…" speak out, vote, or whatever. The proper term is Cowards.

We are called by God to stand for His righteousness and against evil. Evil is afoot today. Do we dare? In the Introduction, p10, we read

If anyone would feel that believing God has chosen the American Church for such a vital role somehow smacks of an egotistical nationalism, they have already bought into the Marxist and globalist lie that America is nothing special…

One may think a prophet is proud, and even say, "How do you know what God wants?" A proper prophet is humble, not arrogant, but knows for sure what God has said. Again and again in the books of prophecy in the Bible God tells a prophet, "I will make your forehead flint," to enable the prophet to withstand criticism and opposition. No proud person can withstand determined opposition, only a prophet, one submissive to God's sending, can do so. In Chapter 1, "What is the church", pp14, 18:

Where did we get the idea that we shouldn’t be at the forefront in criticizing the great evil of Communist countries like China that brutally persecute religious minorities in ways that bring to mind the Nazis themselves?

…it is an inescapable and painful fact: if the churches in America are not free to speak on any topic and in any way that they choose—and if they voluntarily go along with this view—then no one in America is truly free, and America herself has effectively ceased to exist.

Not only should we be speaking out against Chinese persecution of Christians and other religious minorities, and not only should we denounce such persecution elsewhere, such as in Burma, we must even the more denounce it in America, or we, or our children, will indeed one day be thrown to the lions. The Woke in particular are enemies of the right to speak freely. Their attitude is that only the Woke have the right to speak at all. This is the most anti-American, and Antichristian, sentiment there is.

God judges evil, and He judges those who are complicit in evil by their silence, as we read in Chapter 6, "The spiral of silence", p60:

God is no respecter of persons, and if we believe we are exempt from His judgments, we will learn the hard way that we are mistaken.

Bonhoeffer wrote, "Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act. God will not hold us guiltless." (quoted on p58) Do you prefer to "not get involved"? To serve God is to be involved. To be uninvolved is to be not Christian. That doesn't mean we all have to volunteer at homeless shelters or preach on street corners (but doing those things more than they are now done would be a very good thing). It means that, when you encounter evil, speak up. If you see a group beating another, perhaps you are afraid to kick a few butts and break it up: Then call 911. Several times if necessary. Always mention that weapons are involved; the police will come faster. Is that a lie? A lie to save a life is no sin. The few good Germans who hid Jews in their homes in the 1930s lied to the SS. God will reward them.

Of course we know (most of us) that our good works do not earn us a place in God's kingdom. But "if we have faith that will bring us to Heaven, we will inevitably do good works." This is from Chapter 8, "The church paralyzed", p77. Jesus called His disciples to be "the light of the world." The world was very dark when I was in the Jesus Movement in the 1960's, and darker when I began to meet with a proper local church in 1972. It is much darker now.

We call our God a God of love, and He is. But there is such a thing as tough love, as we read in Chapter 10, "Speaking the truth in love", p92. Some Christians overdo things, pushing others away with their "truth", but

The opposite of this is an equal problem: to show so much "love" that you are misrepresenting the real love of God, and are forsaking God’s truth in the process.

God warned certain prophets that if they neglected to warn the wicked, who then died in their sins, the blood of the wicked ones would be counted against the prophets. Dear silent Christian, does this describe you? Whose blood is on your hands because of your silence? Do you fear to "offend" someone? The teaching of the Cross is offensive, even called a Scandal (1 Corinthians 1:23). Without it, all perish forever.

Later on p77 the author writes of two off-balance attitudes, that of the "fundamentalists" for whom "truth" is everything (even though most "fundamentalist" "truths" are incomplete or misleading!) and of "progressive" Christians who take the facts of the faith so lightly it seems they have no faith. I would add those who speak so much that "God is love" that they forget there is a Hell for those who persist to their grave in denying God.

In Leviticus 11 we read of the clean and unclean animals. Ignoring bugs and even birds for the moment, we see two characteristics of a clean mammal such as a sheep, goat or deer: It has a cloven hoof (also called a "straight foot") and it chews the cud. It must have both characteristics to be clean. The swine is pointed out as being unclean because, though it has a cloven hoof, it does not chew the cud. Camels and rabbits are pointed out for the opposite defect: they chew the cud but have paws rather than cloven hooves.

Proper Bible expositors apply these things in typology to two opposite kinds of Christian practice. We may call one Rule-Followers, and the other Experiencers. A large number of denominations are so much into rule following that they deny any value to experience. They explain away entire chapters that include the word "gift", even distorting scripture to say that such things are no longer with us. An equally large number of denominations are so into gifts and experiences that they mostly ignore righteousness and truth in any area that might require self control. God wants His people to have both a righteous walk according to the truths found in the Bible, and experiences in our human spirit that frequently refresh us with personal contact with God. Such experiences may include ecstatic prayer and "tongue speaking". That's Biblical. The sad fact is that the rule-followers are unhappy (except for a certain self-righteous glee when they see sinful others), while the experiencers are seldom righteous, falling into besetting sins that make the rule-followers gleeful with unholy Schadenfreude.

Let us go on. There is a telling simile near the end of the book, which I will pull forward for this point. The appearance of a genuine prophet among us will often cause many to "clutch their pearls and lift their skirts and express their horror at it." (p135). Prophets are rather "wild". Guess what, so was Jesus. Do you sort of skip past the portions in the Gospels that describe Jesus twisting reeds into a whip, lashing the money-changers in the Temple, and overturning their tables? Is this Jesus too wild for you? John the baptist was wild. He wore a camel-hide cloak and ate locusts and wild honey. Elijah was described as "a hairy man", and probably not only for having a big beard. Real prophets are scary. They are supposed to be. In Chapter 14, "Justifying ourselves", p121:

But the goodness of God is a wild and unpredictable goodness, infinitely far from the pious and “religious” tameness so many of us have mistaken for the real thing.

Very near the beginning of my Christian life I realized something and I began to tell others, "God doesn't want a religion, He wants a relationship." Few accepted such a word. Those that did, I later encountered among the genuine local churches I encountered in 1972. On p.124 the author quotes Bonhoeffer, that perhaps we need a "religionless Christianity". Yes, we do. This was considered heresy in the 1930s, and is still considered heresy today by many. The fact is, there is only one true religion: Judaism. The Christian church was never supposed to become a religion. The Christian faith is not a religion. Religion is practices and rules, a checklist that you can hang on your wall, but you cannot do it. A robot could do it, but you cannot. Faith is a relationship with a divine Person, Jesus Christ. Having this faith has several characteristics:

• You get great fulfillment from reading the Bible, particularly reading aloud.
• You love other believers.
• You find yourself helping others you might have ignored before you knew Christ.
• Whether prayer on any particular day is easy or difficult (it will be both!), you touch the joy of the Spirit when you pray.

There are others, but that is a good beginning. But what do we see on the "Christian landscape" that is American Christianity? Almost 10,000 denominations and other named groups; there are only about 8,000 verses in the entire New Testament! Peter preached of Jesus, "There is salvation in no other, for neither is there another name under heaven given among men in which we must be saved." (Acts 4:12) And Paul wrote, "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" (Galatians 3:3). Names glorify the flesh.

Some Christians ask, "Which denomination is the right one?" The answer is, "None of them." A genuine local church is not a denomination. Terms in the New Testament such as "the church in Ephesus" are not names, but descriptions, naming the locality in which the believers live, and nothing more. 

In 1932 Bonhoeffer appealed to the 12,000 pastors of German congregations. The term "pastor" is a misnomer. The Greek word just means "shepherd" or even "caretaker", and doesn't refer to a church leader, but to any believer who is caring for another believer, leading that one to know God better. In a proper church with 100 members, there is not a "pastor" but 100 shepherds. A church does have elders (always multiple, always), and elders teach, but the commission of any teacher, according to Ephesians 4:11-12 is to perfect others, that is to teach them to teach. A younger brother asked once, "How could I become an apostle? I'd like to travel to care for the churches." I answered, "Pick out an apostle and follow him around, such as brother so-and-so," naming a very useful brother we both knew. The genuine apostles I have known were always eager to train and perfect younger ones in apostolic functions.

To whom would a modern Bonhoeffer appeal? He would appeal to all serious believers, "Drop your differences. Denominationalism is the Devil's masterpiece. Get together to denounce evil in your midst. Teach your fellow believers to recognize the totalitarian impulse in every ambitious person, and rebuke it. Drive out of your congregation anyone who insists that Woke ideology be accepted or, worse, practiced." He would further say, "Tear down the signboard that has a blasphemous name upon it. Dis-corporate the denominational corporation and re-incorporate if you must, with no distinctive, religious name. Find like-minded believers and groups of believers and fellowship with them. Ignore different practices that are not heretical or idolatrous. God hates division." Let us raise up real churches, not social groups that may or may not teach the Bible. Such churches just might have the spiritual power to drive away Wokeness. At least for a time.

In Revelation 12 we read of a universal woman who bears a male child "who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron." The great dragon waits to devour the child (so it isn't Christ, who was born in a stable). The woman is helped by God to avoid the dragon and flee "to the wilderness" on "great wings as an eagle". Many good Bible teachers in America consider that this "wilderness" is the U.S.A., or North America, which is defended by a great ocean (the wings) on either side. But there is a warning in this passage. The term "wilderness" just might be literal. Will America survive as a thriving, prosperous, free nation all the way until the Lord's return? Will it become a literal wilderness, so wild and unruly that it affords the fleeing "woman" (persecuted Christians) a place to hide?

Let us strive to fulfill in our lives what we find in Psalm 69:6,

Do not let those who wait on You be put to shame because of me,
O Lord Jehovah of hosts;
Do not let those who seek You be humiliated because of me,
O God of Israel.

On one hand, the Woke must be resisted, and in particular, poked fun at. As in Psalm 2, "He who sits in the heavens laughs." On the other, Wokeness is only the latest salvo in Satan's war on Christian faith and expression. Don't expect it to wither away so easily. When the end times are truly here, Wokeness or something like it will seem to prosper and overcome everything. Even then, let us remember what God said to Elijah when he thought he was the only righteous man left in Israel, "I have left Myself 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed unto Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him." 

My words are few, and may have little effect. Please get this book and read it, prayerfully.

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*Invertors: those who invert the truth, based on Isaiah 5:20,

Woe to those who call evil good,
And good evil;
Who put darkness for light,
And light for darkness;
Who put bitter for sweet,
And sweet for bitter!

These days, such Inversions include saying that men can give birth; or that "gender" is "assigned" at birth, when in reality, the sex of a child is OBSERVED at birth, based on physical characteristics that are determined by biology.