Not politics, not prayer, not seeking revival. We need light on our sins and repentance.

Some time ago I pretty much gave up on politics. I used to get involved, posted quite a bit on various political issues, especially the rise of Islam that we've seen even after they attacked us on 9/11. That in fact was one clue that events aren't making any sense, that things are out of control and no matter what we do to raise the alarm about dangers to the country the dangers seem to increase.

Finally it really came home to me in truth that it's all in God's hands. I mean, you "know that" but usually you don't REALLY know that so you go on looking for political solutions anyway, at least doing what you can to get the word out, until you REALLY know it. I was even saying the truth before the truth really came home to me: the reason the nation is in so much trouble, the reason nothing we do is working, the reason the forces of destruction keep on bulldozing their way over everything the country once stood for, is that God is judging us. You can't fight God. If God has set His face against us there simply are no political solutions.

So I became more focused on understanding all the ways the nation is under judgment. At first the obvious looms largest: abortion is a big one for instance, the push for "gay rights" another. But then you start wondering how legalized abortion happened anyway, how we got so far down this road to perdition. Oh you can identify causes here and there. Marxist influences loom large and they got very big in the 60s, and those of that mentality are now in power. But really, how could all that have happened so easily? Why have those who oppose it been so helpless to do anything about it? Now on top of Marxism we have Islam increasing in power. Terrible paradoxes.

But the fact that we are falling under leftist and anti-Christian influences means the church had already been effectively silenced. For that to happen at all means the country had already lost its Christian identity. Certainly God judges all nations, pagan and Christian, but "judgment begins at the house of God" and that now seems to me to be the place we should be putting all our attention. I think we have to face that it's the church that has let down the nation. All we seem to do as Christians is complain that the nation does what unbelieving nations are likely to do under the influence of fallen human nature. We complain about the legalization of abortion, we complain about the push to legitimize homosexuality, and so on. We complain and we do what we can to combat such legislation. But as I'm saying here, it isn't working. The church has no clout any more. Hatred of Christianity is getting very strong. "Hate speech" laws are closing in against us. The question is "Why?" Why is the church so powerless?

Sometimes I'll just figure that it's time Christians in the West experienced the kind of persecution Christians all over the world have experienced for millennia. And persecution is good for the church too. It sifts the wheat from the chaff like nothing else. And it strengthens true believers in the spiritual powers we need to make a difference in this world. And if we can't get any further than that in our understanding, at least that's some kind of progress in the right direction.

But we COULD be asking WHY it's happening this way, why we've lost our spiritual power in this world. We should stop blaming it on nonChristians. We should stop pursuing the hopeless route of politics, the life of the flesh, of the fallen human nature, and focus exclusively on God who is the source of everything we need to make a difference. Oh we pray too, of course, but something is just not right, our efforts are just not accomplishing anything. Our focus is wrong. We helplessly watch while more and more dangerous things come against our nation. We get Obama for instance. People seem to have lost their ability to judge things rightly altogether. The nation is acting like the mythical lemmings rushing to certain death.

So I've pulled back from all that in the last few months. My focus is now on trying to understand where the church has gone wrong. I keep finding various ways it has gone wrong that need correction before God might smile on us again, what Biblical principles we have been violating. I have to suppose I've only started to recognize just a small portion of what's been wrong, and keep seeking more light.

I sincerely believe that the fact that women stopped covering our heads some time back in the early 20th century is one reason God has turned His face from us. That's a violation of His Creation ordinance and an insult to Him.

I also have been coming to believe that the proliferation of Bibles based on untrustworthy Greek and Hebrew texts that came out of Liberalism and Rationalism of the 19th century has eroded our spiritual power. There are some hints that make me shudder to think about, that on a supernatural level the expunging of so much of God's word by heretics has actually erased names from our Book of Life.

I suspect that the decline in modest dress is also partially involved, which is why I've got a blog laid out to pursue that topic when I get around to it. And I still haven't got around to thinking through the topic of nonresistance, or Jesus' command not to resist evil, which the church has certainly violated even sometimes to the point of a near-idolatry of military force. Violence of any kind against enemies is utterly contrary to the Spirit of Christ, who told us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek. We're to die to ourselves, and literally die if it comes to that, not kill or threaten anyone.

Where are the "rivers of living water" the Lord Jesus promised believers? I've also spent quite a bit of apparently futile time on seeking revival. We aren't going to get revival until we have reformation, until we recognize where the church has been going wrong and repent of it.

Leonard Ravenhill was a man of God who knew God's power, and yet he prayed and prayed and prayed for revival, and wrote books exhorting Christians to seek revival, as the greatest need of our time, but he died without seeing revival and we've seen no revival since his death either.

We aren't having revival because we haven't faced our sins yet. We haven't even identified them. We aren't even looking for them. I was disheartened to find out about Ravenhill how much support he gave to Billy Graham, Graham who is a notorious supporter of the Roman Church and devoted to a destructive ecumenicism. I was further disheartened to find out that he didn't definitely oppose the Bible versions although he did seem to believe the KJV is the best. A W Tozer also fell for the versions I believe. I think these things may be a clue to why Ravenhill died without seeing revival. Ravenhill and Tozer were great Christian men with a prophetic bent. If they could be deceived, what makes any of us think we can't be?

God will not bless His people if we have such sins in our midst. Even the best of our Christian preachers seem weak and ineffective these days, sometimes even defending people and ideas they should be confronting instead. We need to wake up and consider that yes indeed we CAN be deceived. We CAN be taken in by clever wolves among us. Who the wolves are is not all that easy to identify. We have to ASSUME that we have many things wrong and submit our beliefs to God's light a lot more often than we do so that He can lead us out of our error. THEN maybe we can hope to have revival. But I don't think we can hope it at all in our present state. A.W. Tozer said that if we did have revival in our present state -- he was writing over forty years ago and it's worse now -- it would be the worst possible thing because it would confirm us in a multitude of errors. He said it better than that but that was the basic idea. But really God won't give us revival anyway in our current state, which is a great blessing. There will be counterfeit revivals of course.

Oh Lord help us. Wake us up. Show us the paths out of our present darkness. Lead us to understanding and repentance and restore us to Your favor that we might overcome our paralysis and have the rivers of living water You promised us.

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I know this is just a long ramble, but I hope it's coherent enough. I suppose as usual I may come back and make changes after it's posted to clarify this or that, sorry for any confusion.