Blog

by Charlie Wolcott

Our nation is being brainwashed via a method called the Hegelian Dialectic Process to forget our past, to embrace a new standard of morals which are in total contrast to what the Bible calls for, and to embrace state run operations on nearly every area of our life. Our foundations have been destroyed, so what can we do? What can we as believers do about all this? Since the Bible has been rejected as a source of authority nationwide, how can we use it to call people back to what we once were?

Before we can address things politically, we must first address where we are spiritually. It’s not just the nation that has lost its history and its moral foundations, but so has the American “church.” If the Christian is to make a change in our society politically, we need to make a change in our lives spiritually. We must return to the faith that was handed down. The Gospel hasn’t changed; we’ve changed. As a result, the extreme majority of Christians today don’t even know what the Gospel is. I’ll be honest, I didn’t really know what the Gospel was until around the same time I joined Worldview Warriors 6 ½ years ago and I was not only raised in the church, but on the mission field no less. God was doing an amazing work in me during that time and it’s been an awesome journey. Then, I was what you could call a “casual Christian.” My faith lived on in cruise control. Since that time period, I woke up. I still have a long way to go, but I realized that there was so much more to this life we call Christianity than what I knew for so long.

Our churches today have many professing Christians. If you ask someone what religion they are, many will say, “I’m a Christian.” But if you dig deeper into that and ask them how it works or what it means, the answers will be vague, unclear, general, and not concrete. They claim the label because it’s simply part of their culture or their morality. But that is not Christianity. We instead need to be confessing Christians. Eric Ludy has a short sermon/video about "Two Churches" and it will be worth watching before you continue.

First, the image that comes to mind when I hear “confession” in regard to modern Christianity is a mere profession of faith. It is someone saying little more than “I agree with 4-5 doctrines of Christianity, I have said a prayer, and I have declared in front of my church that I am a Christian.” But that’s not Biblical confession. In the simplest form confession is saying the same thing that God says about something. But it means more than that. According to Ludy, the Greek word “homologeo” is a “reflection upon the word.” To “confess,” Biblically speaking, means to reflect the Word of God, to be in agreement in both word and deed, and with Jesus Christ. Anyone can make a proclamation of faith; that’s easy. To confess Christ is another issue.

Near the beginning of the movie Tortured for Christ, Richard Wurmbrand and his wife were sitting in a major conference with all the big church leaders of Romania to welcome in the new Communist regime. Preacher after preacher after preacher proclaimed how their churches would work with the Russians, how their church practices would not be affected, and how the Russians would support the churches. Sabina Wurmbrand told her husband that they were spitting on the face of Jesus and encouraged her husband to speak up. Richard said she may not have a husband if he did so, because he was telling her this was exactly how it went in Russia during their revolution before Communist atheism was enforced. Sabina said she’d rather have a dead husband than a coward husband. Richard stepped up to the microphone and proclaimed the true Gospel. The pastors present who didn’t have the guts to speak up, but didn’t speak in favor of Communism, cheered and clapped while the whole thing was broadcast on the Romanian radio.

Wurmbrand was a confessor of Christ. He spoke up when it wasn’t popular. He spoke up when he knew he would become a target and on the ‘wanted’ list by the Communist government. He saw the dialectic process going on as it was happening, explaining to his wife during that conference what was happening. Pastor after pastor spoke and dedicated their churches to the promotion of the state, whereas Wurmbrand confessed Christ as supreme over the state. He was a confessor of Christ.

Now my reader may ask, “Did he succeed in stopping the taking over?” The answer is obvious: No. But he succeeded in giving the true believers hope and courage not to cave when every other so-called believer kowtowed to the state’s demands lest they be put in prison. I need to make something clear. We CANNOT save the world. Satan owns it. The world’s way of thinking, the culture, the system, etc., is ruled by the god of this world. Russ Miller describes how he was on a college campus and during a Q/A session, someone made a very disparaging and insulting comment towards Christianity and the audience roared with laughter. After the audience quieted down, Miller asked if he could make the same comment towards a Muslim or a homosexual. Would the audience still laugh, or would he be kicked out of the campus? Dead silence. Then he said the reason why he could do that was because academia is run by the god of this world, Satan, and he doesn’t need false teachings to battle each other. He only needs them all to battle the truth. Again, dead silence. Miller is a confessing Christian. We here at Worldview Warriors are confessing Christians. We aren’t going to mince words nor cave to fear. We are going to confess the name of Christ even when it not kosher to do so.

Our job as Christians is not to save the system. Our job is to save people FROM the system. Every believer has one of three roles: go into the pit to rescue the lost, hold the rope for those going into the pit, or train and help those who came out of the pit to go back and repeat the process. Not many are doing those roles. I’ve come to see my role as the third one: to help equip and train those going into the pit and to help those who’ve come out in how to live a Christian life. I still need to go into the pit myself and I need to help hold the rope too, but when someone gets out, they need someone who can help them learn what to do with life outside the pit.

In the video link above, Eric Ludy points out a key difference between the professing Christian and a confessing Christian. The “professing Christian” is the one who identifies as a Christian and may be saved but listens to the state in where, when, and how he can practice his faith. He is a “caged Christian” like a caged bird. The “confessing Christian” is the one who boldly proclaims Christ and defies any order to slow down, shut up, and stay in your cage. They prefer to follow God’s orders over man’s orders. Now, I’m not calling for a defiant uprising against any governmental authority. Peter and James were still respectful to those they said they would not obey, as were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they refused to bow before the golden image. However, those who are confessing Christians are going to be as Richard Wurmbrand; when everyone else around you spits on the face of Christ due to political correctness, they will stand up and proclaim Him in defiance of the system that seeks to rid themselves of Him.

But Wurmbrand knew that making a stand would come with a cost. Next week, I’m going to share a burden that’s been on my heart for a couple of years but has been reignited recently, and it is likely to be one of the most difficult subjects for me to address in our comfortable American culture.

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