Time to act but where's our leader?

Mike Huckabee today is calling for moral and spiritual renewal of the nation, since we're now beyond anything that can be fixed in the normal ways, such as by elections. I'm certainly for that, since I've been blogging about wanting revival and how we need to go about it for days now.

Huckabee also mentions the Christian businesses that are being targeted by gay rights activists for refusing to provide any kind of service that supports gay marriage or any other part of the gay agenda. The latest is the Christian wedding chapel in Coeur D'Alene, Idaho, that refuses to marry gay couples. They can go to jail or pay a big fine.

I kind of wish Huckabee would do what he did about the Houston problem: call for pastors and a bunch of us to bury the Coeur D'Alene court in sermons against homosexuality. Not just sermons, not just Bibles, but sermons specifically against homosexuality, gay marriage and so on. And it wouldn't hurt to include some American documents such as the First Amendment and anything any of our American forefathers wrote against homosexuality as well, which I made the subject of a post a while back.

In other news:  Eric Metaxas responded on Fox News to the Houston massacre of the First Amendment's freedom of religion by saying the whole nation should be freaked out by it, and "if there was ever a time for throwing the tea into the harbor, this is it." In other words we are now facing the same kind of tyranny and deprivation of our rights and freedoms that brought about the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution, AND IT'S TIME TO ACT.

Well, sound the trumpet, guys, and tell us how to act! If the trumpet gives an uncertain sound how are we to know what to do? How do I throw tea into the harbor?

1 Corinthians 14:8: For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?

I'd make the suggestion myself that a few thousand of us get on our knees and pray our hearts out for a solution to these problems. Or a few hundred. If we can't be a David church maybe we could be a Gideon church.

Hey, guess what! George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were "Homophobes" and "Haters"

And they weren't even Christians! Today's Gay Rights bullies are as un-American as you can get!

I mentioned Chris Pinto's radio program on this subject in the previous post, but he got much of his information from a website called Apologetics Press on the attitude of the Founders to homosexuality.

A pernicious plague of sexual insanity is creeping insidiously through American civilization. Far more deadly than the external threat of terrorism, or even the inevitable dilution of traditional American values caused by the infiltration of illegal immigrants and the influx of those who do not share the Christian worldview, this domino effect will ultimately end in the moral implosion of America. Indeed, America is being held captive by moral terrorists. The social engineers of “political correctness” have been working overtime for decades to restructure public morality.

The Founding Fathers of these United States would be incredulous, incensed, and outraged. They understood that acceptance of homosexuality would undermine and erode the moral foundations of civilization. Sodomy, the longtime historical term for same-sex relations, was a capital crime under British common law...

...In the greater scheme of human history, as civilizations have proceeded down the usual pathway of moral deterioration and eventual demise, the acceptance of same-sex relations has typically triggered the final stages of impending social implosion. America is being brought to the very brink of moral destruction.

But none of those other civilizations had the Biblical basis we have, which makes us more morally culpable, but also gives us the possibility of rescuing the nation that no other ever had. Oh if only we could wake up and have a drastic housecleaning, a drastic selfdenying repentance of everything we KNOW is against God's word, and fast and pray in prodigious numbers for as long as it takes to persuade God to come down and turn us back from destruction.

Gay Agenda a "high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God" and needs to be pulled down by a revived Church.

Watching America being destroyed from within keeps driving me back to revival as the only possible solution.  Which amounts to saying that God is the only possible help but He isn't answering prayers for revival these days, as I've noted before.  Either He's determined on judgment as the only righteous response to our condition, or we aren't meeting His conditions for revival.

I keep hoping the latter because that at least gives us the opportunity to ponder what conditions we aren't meeting and whether we could meet them.  The ones I listed in an earlier post are probably not the full list.  In fact I can hardly believe I left out the gay agenda, because there are churches that have capitulated to that too.  The nation is suffering from every kind of Political Correctness and the Gay Agenda is the latest and most aggressive version of it, but I've been thinking of the nation's ills as those the Church is to tackle after we've cleaned up our own act.  How can we rally against violations of the First Amendment freedom of religion when we're full of offenses against God within our own ranks?  Problem is all the ills of the nation are to be found in the churches as well.    We even have "gay churches."   And all churches that call themselves by the name of Christ need to be addressed by the Church at large, meaning denounced in many cases.  I don't know if God would give just a certain collection of repentant cleaned-up churches a revival but if the point is to turn back the evils in the nation, God's judgment on the nation, I don't know how far that would go anyway.  To be effective it would have to be contagious and change minds all over the country.  Genuine revivals do have that effect, but could it happen on the scale we need it to happen?

The main symptom of God's judgment is the ineffectiveness of the churches.  The Wimp Factor as I called it a while back, our inability to act.  Not only the churches but conservatives in general, witness Congress.  It was nice, sort of, to see some pastors in Houston confronting their anti-Constitutional major, and also nice that pastors and others responded to Mike Huckabee's call to send her sermons and Bibles.  Seems to show there's still a pulse in the Church.  But it's a pretty weak pulse.  The call wasn't even for sermons against homosexuality, but that's what has to be confronted by God's word.  I wonder how many were on that topic?  My guess is not many.   Because of the Wimp Factor.

Yes, we're afraid of the gay rights people.  They're a nasty aggressive bunch.  We don't like being called "haters" and "bigots" and "homophobes" which is the tactic of Political Correctness invented by Cultural Marxism aimed at bringing down America.  And they can get nastier than that under certain circumstances.   That's why I liked the idea of pastors across the nation committing to preach specifically against homosexuality in one voice in response to the mayor's move against the Church, for strength in numbers.  It's easier to preach on a controversial subject if you know you are backed by thousands of others.    I still wish something like that had occurred.  If the sermons they sent her were against homosexuality that would maybe have a similar effect but since there is silence on that subject I assume most of them weren't, maybe all.

Chris Pinto had a very interesting radio show recently, The American Founders on Homosexuality, which makes it clear that the founding of this country included a view of homosexuality as sin, and abominable sin at that.  That's the view of the Bible and whatever individual founders may have believed about traditional Christianity, most of them were steeped in the Bible and accepted its moral judgments.   Some of the original colonies had the death penalty for homosexual behavior.  George Washington had to dishonorably discharge a soldier for attempted sodomy.  There was certainly no attitude of tolerance toward homosexuality in those days, but a couple of centuries later we're now bullied into accepting it as a normal sexual preference.

For years we've been subjected to Gay Pride parades which are in themselves a disgusting display that is hard to tolerate, but even the police are required to support the event.  We watch all this happen and don't do much, just let it all roll over us.  Well, what CAN we do?

It's like we're bound and gagged.  If one person speaks up a dozen opponents shout him down with all the PC epithets.  And now if a Christian business refuses to fill an order for something that supports the gay agenda, particularly gay marriage, they are getting sued and fined.  This is a horrendous violation of the First Amendment, a horrendous miscarriage of justice, but it's like we're so used to the reversal of good an evil, or so stunned by it, or so afraid of being targeted ourselves, we let this evil triumph.

But again I'm taken back to the need for revival.  The main reason we're paralyzed has to be that we're deep in sin ourselves, as I've started to outline.  I'm adding tolerance of the gay agenda to this list now, and certainly eliminating churches from any call to revival that endorse homosexuality as a normal lifestyle, ordaining them as preachers and so on.   Also churches that allow women pastors need to be eliminated.  Revival only comes to a biblically pure church, I'm sure of that.  It usually starts with moving people to repentance, but these are huge offenses against God that don't need some special touch of the Holy Spirit to make us aware of them. 

How many churches are free of all those offenses?  Well if you don't count my own concern about the Bible Versions and women not being required to cover our heads in church, there may be some that are free of such offenses.  Again, could we seek revival just for those churches? 

If we don't have revival, if we don't have a waking up of the churches, if we don't get some boldness against the incredible accumulation of sins in America and the west we're just lost, absolutely lost, there is no hope.

Gay Agenda Preach-It-Down Sunday

I'm hoping pastors all over the country are getting the word out about Michael Brown's suggestion that they preach on homosexuality tomorrow, in solidarity with the Houston pastors whose Constitutional rights are being threatened by their current mayor, for preaching and otherwise promoting God's truth about homosexuality.

While any individual pastor might feel intimidated in spite of himself because of the aggressive tyrannical litigiousness of the Gay Rights people, it should help if a majority dedicate a Sunday to a concert of preaching on the same subject all at once, not to mention that that much concentration on a single issue could reach God's ear in a very effective way.

This is the first idea I've heard that gives me any hope whatever for dealing with the horrors of the times we are living through. The Church has seemed to be helpless to do anything about any of it. Our individual voices get muffled in the roar of Political Correctness, and of course intentionally suppressed as well.

AND LOTS OF PRAYER TOO: Although Christians pray about all these things, as individuals, in prayer meetings, in Bible studies and so on, nothing much has been happening.

THROW OUT THE ECUMENICAL ABOMINATION!

Why is nothing happening? I've written on what I think is a major dampening effect on our efforts to move the nation to repentance and move God to give us revival, and the main one is Ecumenical Prayer Gatherings in which Christians pray together with members of other religions, with Roman Catholics for instance, with Muslims, Jews and any other groups traditionally understood to be anti-Christian in their beliefs. George W Bush included Romanists, Muslims and Jews in his prayer for the nation after 9/11 held in the National Cathedral, which could only have increased God's judgment on the nation. All ecumenical prayer gatherings since then on behalf of the nation can only have added to it, and yet these are absurdly continued year after year after year despite a glaringly obvious lack of success, and even obvious negative effects. The most doctrinally perfect gospel-oriented prayer by a member of such a group can't stand up to the God-denying effect of including unbelievers in the group. He won't hear us. We need to throw out all the idols and that means scrupulously NOT praying with unbelievers.

Some wonder why on earth Islam's popularity and influence keep rising after their attack on us, but we still go on practicing exactly the sort of thing that is guaranteed to bring God's judgment on the nation, and Islam is most certainly one of God's instruments of judgment. Where in scripture does God approve of the People of God praying with the followers of Molech or Dagon or Baal? It is hard to understand why Christians don't recognize this problem.

That's the first thing we need to repent of in my opinion. We need to be purified of all such idolatrous deviations if our prayers are to reach God's ear.

Then we need to acknowledge the other sins we are guilty of and the nation is guilty of. With a sincere desire to clean up our act God will also show us individually what we need to repent of, and as we obey individually and corporately the channels of prayer will get clearer and clearer. I know whenever I make a serious effort to pray more, one of the first things that happens is that He shows me where I am not faithfully obeying Him.

One thing I particularly like about this idea of pastors preaching in concert across the nation is that it gives us a powerful way to focus on the sins that are crippling the country and bringing down God's judgment. It could be the answer to our felt helplessness as the devil just keeps rolling on and over us all. If we want revival we have first to finger the sins that need correction, and good solid preaching backed up by prayer against each of the sins we are able to identify. What a powerful voice we should have if thousands of churches join together in one voice, one mind and one heart. He is in the midst of us when we gather together in His name.

I know it's a wild daydream that the churches could agree to a preaching and prayer agenda to deal with all the sins of the nation, but I'm going to let myself hope and pray for such a wild blessing anyway.

But first how wonderful it would be if some churches followed Michael Brown's advice just for tomorrow, and preached on God's view of homosexuality in one impassioned voice. Just for tomorrow. I'll write more about my daydream eventually I'm sure.

I do want to highlight this blog by Larry Kutzler , whom I know from Jan Markell's ministry, who calls for the resignation or impeachment of the mayor of Houston, and on good grounds. She's shown she doesn't have the interests of her constituency at heart, but her own personal private interests and those of a small contingent who share the same narrow interests, as she works to deprive a large segment of the population of Houston of their right to freedom of religion. This is one way the preaching and praying could go for what I'm calling Preach-It-Down Sunday.

Gay Agenda Watershed issue for Christians

A discussion that I brought up at EvC about incidents where Christian business owners refused to take photographs of a gay wedding or make a wedding cake for such an event, because they would not put themselves in the position of validating something the Bible calls sin, the prevailing opinion came out loud and clear:  Biblical Christians are no longer welcome, this is a matter of "civil rights," homosexuals are an oppressed class and Christians are among the oppressors, or perhaps ARE the oppressors. 

Christianity is regarded as a "bronze age" mentality which is being transcended by more modern progressive thinking, and they are all very happy about that.  If they don't want to off us right away, they like the idea that we will simply die out (little do they understand the power of the word of God).  The level of vitriol directed against Christians there these days seems to me to be above and beyond what I've seen there before, but in any case it's scathing and implacable.

Even some "Christians" there share that point of view, the idea being the usual idea that "Christian love" is violated by taking a stand on the Biblical definition of homosexual acts as sin and that marriage is a God-ordained institution given to unite the sexes.  So I followed their logic with the simple observation that Christians who do take such a stand will therefore have to be punished by a society that thinks the way they do, and here's the sort of answer that got:

One way or another if we want to stand for our Biblical beliefs we'll have to take some kind of punishment.

Is it really a "Biblical belief" that you can't sell cakes to gay people for their event?

Is this in the Bible or are you concluding this based off of an already existing dislike of gays?

(And then read this poster's following post too, where he ratchets up his accusation to quite the hysterical accusatory pitch. You feel the hate? Kind of like what the Nazis did to set up the Jews it seems to me, with their lying plays on emotion.)

See how they think? See how Christians are being set up to be persecuted in the last days? Unbelievers who don't know any better can't help but misconstrue what's going on and Christians are going to be the ultimate targets. Perhaps other groups too who refuse to give in on this, but certainly Christians first and foremost.

So let's answer this charge. There's no point in answering it there because they refuse to believe me about most of what I have to say, which is evidenced by this question whether the objection to gay marriage is REALLY based on the Bible: aren't I just lying REALLY because isn't it just my own dislike of gays? That's how they think. I can't take that sort of treatment any more, really can't. But I'll give it an answer here:

I'm as fallen as anybody else in my unregenerate state, I'd probably be just as likely to defend "gay rights" as they are if I hadn't been born again and didn't know what the Bible says.

And to answer the first question: Yes, the whole point here is that Christians don't want to do anything that treats sin as acceptable, which would be denying God and His law. Yes, making a wedding cake for a gay wedding, or taking official photographs of such an event, would be felt as such a denial of God. Yes. And as I already said there, there is no objection to their buying a cake out of the display case and using it however they want, but hiring the baker to make a cake specifically for such an event would be to engage the baker's conscience against his Biblical beliefs.

That thread at EvC brought up all kinds of anti-Christian opinions. But here's one in particular I'd like to answer, where the poster is saying we Christians are just going to have to adjust to changing societal norms:

Just like Christians of the past had to adjust to societal acceptance of interracial marriage, ending slavery, women voting ...

My answer to that there was that this is bad history, that none of these things violate Biblical standards, and that any Christians who held such views were in the wrong, AND that it was Christians who led the charge for those rights in those cases.

None of those things violate Christian standards, but the Gay Agenda does. And as I've said before, it is clear this particular issue is being set up to be the watershed issue that leads to the persecution of Christians. I don't know how far it will go but I do believe we are in the last days of the last days and I suspect it's going to be THE issue that cuts us out of society.

And how could I fail to take note of the fact, as I've reported earlier here, that the Pope, the head of the Antichrist system, seems to be gearing up to support this gay agenda that may be the excuse for such persecution of his old enemies, us Bible-literalist Protestants.  The Office of the Inquisition is still very much in force and just waiting for the opportunity to go into action.  Watch and see. Ten years? Twenty? Tomorrow? I think a lot sooner than we can imagine, unless God wakes up His people.

Last point: Those "Christians" -- and I put it in quotes because I'm not entirely sure they ARE Christians, but if they are they need to listen up -- those who side against us "fundamentalists" (meaning "literalist" Bible believers) on such an issue as the sinfulness of homosexuality and the God-ordained institution of marriage, along with the other issues so challenged at EvC such as the clear reading of the first chapters of Genesis as incompatible with evolution (no death before the Fall) or an ancient Earth (count the years of the genealogies from Adam to the Flood) need to realize that Christians are called to die for our beliefs when punch comes to crunch. Wake up.  Better to lose your head than your immortal soul. 

Popespeak: jesuitical papal gobbledygook: Gay rights on the agenda?

So it looks like "gay rights" -- the normalizing of homosexuality and the legalizing of gay marriage -- is shaping up to be a pivotal issue drawing around it many of the major end times players.

This issue is even involved in the Ukrainian conflict, as one of Putin's objections to the Ukrainian push to become part of the EU is the EU's promotion of the gay agenda. This of course doesn't make Putin right, but it underscores the prominent influence of this political agenda.

World Vision had a new policy on gays  (That page shows what a hot topic it is too) , until some Christian leaders put pressure on them and they backed down.  Won't be any surprise if after some time elapses we find them reinstating the policy. 

And now we have this masterpiece of doubletalking Popespeak in a Newsmax Story [Later: Wondering why the Pope got such prominent treatment at Newmax, I looked up the publisher, and no surprise: he's a Catholic.]:
 Pope: Church Should Tolerate Some Civil Unions

The Catholic Church could tolerate some types of civil unions as a way of protecting healthcare and property rights, Pope Francis said.

"Matrimony is between a man and a woman," the pontiff told the Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera in an interview published Wednesday and translated by the Catholic News Service.

But moves to "regulate diverse situations of cohabitation [are] driven by the need to regulate economic aspects among persons, as for instance to assure medical care … It is necessary to look at the diverse cases and evaluate them in their variety."

Nearly incomprehensible Jesuitical gobbledygook here, suggesting that perhaps some important RC doctrinal change is in the works which is being tested before launching?

Am I getting it that the Pope thinks the RC Church should tolerate homosexual sin under some circumstances?  That's what "tolerating some types of civil unions" implies, isn't it?   The focus here is all on the "civil union" in comparison with "matrimony" but what happened to the Biblical condemnation of homosexual acts as sin?  Even the traditional RCC condemnation of homosexual acts as sin for that matter.  That's not discussed at all.  Just "diverse situations of cohabitation" whatever on earth that is supposed to refer to.  And "the need to regulate economic aspects among persons..."   All this pompous awkward language is obviously designed to HIDE the fact that the only context in which we ever discuss "civil unions" is the political push for gay marriage as a right.  What "diverse cases" are there to consider?  They're ALL about homosexual relationships.

...Francis also defended the church's response to the clerical sex abuse scandals.

He said the crimes had left "very profound wounds," but noted that beginning with Pope Benedict, the church has done "perhaps more than anyone" to tackle the problem.

"Statistics on the phenomenon of violence against children are shocking, but they also clearly show the great majority of abuses occur in family and neighborhood settings," Francis said.

"The Catholic Church is perhaps the only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility. No one else has done more. And yet the church is the only one attacked."

How many read such stuff and can't see through it?  It's scary to think anyone could.  Does "violence against children" convey the actuality of sexual molestation of children by RC priests?  And he lies when he implies that Pope Benedict did anything but cover up the offenses, which many suspect is the reason he retired from the papal office.  And if all that isn't enough lying, then he claims that statistics "show the great majority of abuses occur in family and neighborhood settings."  Oh really?  Well, maybe, if you mean the parish priest is the guilty party, the parish priest who visits the families.  "The only public institution to have acted with transparency and responsibility?"  Well, since no other public institution is guilty of molesting children that I know of, no other public institution has any reason to act transparently as the guilty institution ought, and the RCC has been shown over and over again to have covered up the crimes of their priests.

KEEP IN MIND:  It is the RC Church that has COMMITTED the crimes against children, sexual molestations of both boys and girls.  And over and over it has been reported that priests guilty of these crimes have simply been moved to new parishes where their crimes are not known. 

The RCC is guilty of covering up their OWN crimes.  Transparency and responsibility?  "No one has done more?"  But who SHOULD do more?

Francis also brushed off those who believe he is a superhuman being. "To portray the Pope as a kind of superman, a type of star, strikes me as offensive. The Pope is a man who laughs, weeps, sleeps soundly, and has friends like everybody else. A normal person," he said.

Um, Francis, you really need to read up on the official RCC doctrine of the papacy. You are "God on earth" and rightful ruler of the whole world. Oh I know you know that, you just don't want to let anybody else know it yet.