One of the things you will hear from Worldview Warriors on a regular basis is the mindset of being a victim versus being a victor. I cannot tell you how many times I hear our president, Jason DeZurik, pressing this matter. Our culture wants nothing more than to make certain people perpetual victims and others perpetual damned.
A key component of Marxist ideology, particularly through the recent popular “Critical Race Theory,” is the marking of certain people based on a combination of race, economic position, AND religious/political affiliation as “oppressed” and “oppressors.” It is worth noting that the biggest factor here is more religious and political affiliation than actual race or economic status. In Critical Race Theory, the white evangelical is the oppressor because it was that demographic that ruled the slaves and who invaded from Europe. This completely ignores the Arab slave trades, the black slave trades, and the Chinese slave trades, let alone that whites were enslaved just as much. The reality is that no people group has ever escaped the issue of slavery; every people group has engaged in slavery, and every people group has been enslaved at some point in their history. But these teachings only emphasize white slave masters and black slaves, never acknowledging anything else, because that would end their influence. Because of the sins of the past, the white evangelical today, who has nothing to do with that, is still an oppressor because we are living on the oppression of years past. And the black person is a perpetual victim because they were held as slaves in early American history – again, ignoring actual historical context through the ages.
So, we have the blacks and the Hispanics who, because of their low status compared to the whites (according to these policies), need the help of the socialists with grants, scholarships, and hiring diversity exclusively on the basis of skin color and for “reparations,” because clearly, they cannot actually make it on their own. And the whites cannot do anything to make up for sins they never committed because even if they confessed to the ancient sins of the past, they are only doing it to protect their “white privilege,” so they are the abject evil that must be destroyed at all costs.
What is going on here? Among many other things, what I will focus on here is a group of people who, on their own self-declaration of being “experts,” are putting labels on people that define them as they want. And because they are “experts” (who made them an expert? They did.), they are to be trusted. So they label anyone they want, however they want, to fit their agenda. If they chose a certain group to be this, they label them as this and never let them escape from said label. It’s much like the caste system of India. Once you are born into it, there is no escape from it. The point I am trying to drive here is that this world system seeks to label you and never let you out of that label. And that labeling is to make you a perpetual victim and a perpetual slave to their ideals. They follow Georg Hegel, who said, “No man can surpass his own time, for the spirit of his time is also his own spirit.” And for anyone who lives in this world, that is absolutely true.
But as Christians, we are not ordinary people. We are not to be defined by this world; we are to be defined by God. And as Christians, we are more than conquerors. We are not to settle for defeat because some self-deciding people want to play God in our lives. We are to defeat them and overcome them. And I am not merely talking about politically. My very testimony was aptly described this way by a Facebook friend recently: “The ceiling the world put on me became my floor.”
When I was six years old, experts said I would never be able to run, barely walk, and to expect no improvement. I had to have physical therapists walk me through every action I knew at the time, including kicking a soccer ball. Yes, I had to have someone physically take my leg through the motion of kicking a ball because I could not figure out how to do it by watching. When I was 15, I learned two things without a physical therapist: hacky-sack and fencing. And 27 years later, while I don’t do the hacky sack thing anymore, I am still fencing and coaching. While never at an elite level, I have finally become respectable. When I was 18, I was told I would never drive, never go to college, and never live on my own – all things that I have done and am doing. When I was 12, I had no reading comprehension, and while I could recognize words, I had no idea what they were saying. I am a writer (obviously, by writing this post) and an author of five books, with number six soon coming, not to mention my 600+ blog posts. That’s just a sampling. Where every expert said I could not do it, I did it. And people who have gotten to know me have learned that once I set my mind to something, get out of my way because it is going to get done. How did I do all that? Not by my own strength and not by the wisdom of this world. But by and through the power of God.
The world is turning darker and darker. Politically, Trump is nearing the end of his ability to stave off the wicked agenda of the left. And the Church chose to rely on Trump to save them instead of repenting of their sins and turning to Christ. Because they put their hope in a false savior, they will get a false salvation. The most we ever got from Trump and could get from him is a short reprieve from the tightening of the noose. But will we lie down and moan and groan that we are losing the battle? Or are we going to rise up and take the battle where it truly is and hit the enemy in the teeth? Are we made of chocolate (as I wrote about last week), pathetic, weak, softies that melt at the slightest hint of oppression? Or are we the warriors God designed to fight this spiritual battle, to overcome the labels thrown at us, and to stop being victims with no escape and become victors? God saved us to be victors – to overcome sin and to overcome the world.
As Worldview Warriors is firing up again, we will seek to teach this next generation how to fight and how to overcome in Christ and to be someone this world can try to label but can never subdue or control. Don’t be a victim. Be a victor. Don’t let the world dictate your ceiling. While you may have the reality of right now, let that be your floor and let God take you where even wings and Red Bull could never take you.
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One of the things I have learned about spiritual warfare and living in society is that the enemy plays dirty. The enemy of the soul plays a dirty game. Why? Not only because cheating helps him win, but he knows he cannot win a fair fight. His game is deception and subtlety. He was a liar from the beginning, and it is pure naivety to think he is going to play by the rules. He plays dirty, he cheats, he lies, he does not honor codes of ethics, and he has one agenda: to steal, to kill, and to destroy.
The enemy also is a brilliant strategist and plays the long game as well as the short one. He knows how to play generations as well as individuals in the moment. And there is one target he loves to get more than any other: children. As the lion goes after the weak, the slow, the old, and the young in the pack, not after the strong ones, so Satan goes after our weak ones. He targets the children, the wives, and the widows, and he uses the poor and defenseless to get easy prey. Ever notice how when the government and the media go after taxing the rich, they don’t actually go after the rich? The rich are either party with them or strong enough to stand in their way.
As an educator, one of the things I see in the system is the purpose and intention to get children to believe what the “elite” want them to believe as early as possible. Evolution is a classic example. Instead of letting kids actually figure out the science from the start, the idea of millions of years and the theory of evolution are thrown at toddlers through Sesame Street, Dinosaur Train, Dr. Seuss, and everything else. The details aren’t given until later, but at that point, the idea of “millions of years” has been so driven into us that we have a difficult time separating the Deep Time story from the actual evidence.
The tactics used to teach evolution are the same tactics that were used by Hitler to reach the youth of Germany and the same tactics used by Castro to reach the youth of Cuba. The pastor’s wife of my previous church was raised in Cuba, and she remembers being a six-year-old girl when the Communist takeover took place. The new teachers asked the children to pray to God for a piece of candy, and obviously, no candy showed up. They then had the kids pray to Castro for a piece of candy, and of course, while eyes were closed, a piece of candy was put on each desk. I should not need to further explain what was going on there. Hitler was well known for similar tactics. When a man approached Hitler and said he’d never support him, Hitler simply retorted, “You will pass away. I already have your children.” And he did. The “Hitler Youth” was not a mere propaganda piece but a political tool to eliminate opposition.
Another part of the tactic is to blame the opposition for what you are doing. I see this one everywhere, and it’s primarily used on Christians. Pro-evolutionists make a point and purpose of saying that Christians are indoctrinating their kids and needing echo chambers when they think we aren’t letting them have a voice (by that, they mean dominate it all and never give an account for what they do). Yet, who are the ones who need echo chambers and practice indoctrination? Around 90% of students go to public schools where they only hear about evolution, and 90% of churches and denominations are not teaching the Biblical side of creation; they teach the evolutionary side. So, who is actually indoctrinating, and who needs the echo chambers? Creationists actually tend to know the evolutionary side better than the evolutionists themselves. And the evolutionists, especially the “ex-Christian” types, can hardly get a thing we say right. Don’t fall for that.
But evolution is just the “gateway drug.” Flowing out of it has come the real heinous junk we are seeing today. Evolution is what has opened the door for certain people to deny that God actually did create people as “male” or “female;” because we evolved, we can be whomever we want to be. The whole gender identity crisis is targeting these youth and starting with preschool books. Yes, there are preschool books out there to start teaching these tiny kids about sexuality and to prepare them for receiving and engaging in such activities. Parents who get word about this are rightly outraged, and school board meetings are being regularly hounded by parents who are livid that these are being allowed in the school libraries. The books for middle school and older get much worse with pictures and very detailed pornographic descriptions of sexual activity engaged by kids as young as 10 or 11. The “system” has gotten so many kids away from their parents for so long through schools, sports, and other activities, though there’s nothing wrong with these individually. Both teachers and counselors are speaking to kids outside of the influence of the parents, telling kids NOT to tell the parents. This is why we are seeing these issues. School board members have been caught on a hot mic saying they don’t listen to any of the parents’ complaints.
Pornography is one of the deadliest “drugs,” and Satan is so crafty that he will get a toddler who looks at another naked baby as a seed to start planting deeper and darker sexual thoughts. With smartphones today, the moment a kid gets access to the internet, it will be a very short time before he or she is exposed to pornography for the first time. Just one look can start it, whether through exploring a web page, a link by a peer, or on social media. I read one story of a 10-year-old boy who was found watching porn on his phone by his mom. The kid said it started with exploring the web, and soon, naked men came up, and one thing led to another, and the kid was grieved that he could not get the images he saw out of his head. It starts young, and we need to be alert and ready to guard our kids from the start. Have those discussions with them, even at younger ages, about good stuff and bad stuff so they can learn to recognize, “Hey, that is wrong.” No amount of sheltering them will prevent their exposure, but if we can train them to reject it when they are, it will save them from a whole lot of peril.
Again, the enemy fights dirty, and one of the key tactics in all this is the removal or neutralization of the “father” of the home. When the Industrial Revolution shifted jobs away from the home and the farm to factories and white-collar businesses, it also removed the father from the home to raise the kids. Since they no longer lived on the farms where there were always things to do, the kids got bored, needing centralized school, and mom began to work as well, requiring daycare for the kids. As a result, parents are no longer actually raising their kids; the programs are.
The schools do not speak to Dad very often when dealing with kids but instead, they speak to Mom. This reminds me of the Garden, where the serpent bypassed Adam and went to Eve. Unless Dad is very active, involved, and intentional about raising his kids, the only thing he will be in the home is the money maker (which is good, however, he won’t be the active father). And the kids, needing a father figure, will go to where they can find one, be he a coach, a teacher, or find that role in a woman or in a gang. This is no knock on kids who legitimately don’t have a dad. However, in every institution God sets up, Satan sets up a counterfeit to usurp or replace. Instead of a father, there is school. Instead of a church, there are gangs and peers of grade/age level segregation. Instead of a proper nuclear family, there is anything that whoever wants to fulfill whatever lusts they want. And instead of a father for authority, there is either the mother or all their activities. Again, there is nothing wrong with extra-curriculars, but parents, you are responsible for running the home, not the kid and their schedule.
Remember, all these tactics, and I’m just giving a brief snapshot here, are to get at you and get at your kids. Satan desires to either destroy them, neutralize them, or recruit them to fight for darkness. We’ve been so accustomed to a comfortable lifestyle that few of us realize what kind of battle is going on, and we’ve essentially raised a white flag and gone into hiding rather than rise up and confront this. That is what we have done for the past couple of generations; the net is set and ready to be sprung. The fight that we have refused to fight as a whole generation would have been nothing if we stood up when we had the chance, compared to the battle we are about to fight if we want to get out of it.
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The more I learn and am involved in life, I see the book of Genesis everywhere, including in pagan cultural icons. It one thing I love about God: you can’t escape Him. Even though many of the images and pictures of Genesis that remain in culture are certainly corrupted, the mere idea of such things had to come from somewhere; that somewhere is the actual history that Genesis records. What things? Let’s explore.
The Chinese language itself embeds the account of Genesis directly into its language. Here are some examples: “boat” is built from "eight people in a vessel." “Covet” is built from “two trees” and “women.” “Create” is the combination of “speak, dust, life, walk, and mud.” Where would that idea come from? The only logical answer is the history from Genesis. No, the Chinese people did not read Genesis and get the idea from there. They actually got it passed down their lines that literally trace directly back to Japheth, one of the survivors of the Flood, whose descendants populated that part of the world.
Don Richardson was a missionary to the tribes of Ira Jaya and Papua New Guinea. In his books Peace Child and Eternity in Their Hearts, Richardson noted how in many of these tribes, there not only was a knowledge that a true God was out there, but that their origin stories had a lot of similarities to what Genesis says. The skeptics point to the Flood similarities between Gilgamesh and Noah as evidence that Genesis got its ideas from Babylon, but how did the other cultures all around the world get the same ideas? It wasn’t from local catastrophes because local catastrophes don’t do what these myths come close to doing. Even with exaggeration, it would never compare. The only logical conclusion is that all these tribes heard from their ancestors about the same events.
But it gets more interesting. I am a video game player. I won’t call myself a heavy gamer, but I still play. I recently noticed a variety of Genesis references in a number of the games. Tales of Symphonia was originally released for the Nintendo GameCube, and today it is released for the Switch. The story centers around the “Tree of Mana.” There is a series of games called the Mana series because they have titles like “Secret of Mana,” “Legend of Mana,” “Dawn of Mana,” and others. But this “mana” has a source: a tree. In all these games, this legendary tree is so big, strong, and mighty that is known to be the source of life. Mana itself in these games is symbolic of life and the building blocks of life. And it hit me where they got this idea from.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Switch) centers around the “World Tree” where the “Architect” dwells and where one can reach “Elysium.” I am not sure about the etymology but this “World Tree” or “Tree of Mana” has another name: Yggdrassil. The list goes on. All seem to have one thing in common: a reference to the Tree of Life from Genesis. It’s not the same thing, but the idea of a tree bearing the source of life and being primarily inaccessible through most of the game sure has some striking similarities.
These games do not pull from Christian themes very much. They purpose to not represent Christianity specifically, though some games do play on somewhat Catholic themes such as Tales of Symphonia where the world is run by the “Church of Martel” headed by a “Pope,” or Final Fantasy X where the world worships “Yu Yevon” with their own priests calls “maesters.” Some games like Xenoblade Chronicles have “gods” as the primary villains, but I notice that each of the gods that play villains never demonstrate to be like a true God, but a corrupt being that only has great power, but not limitless power.
There are movies and games that reference Noah and the Flood. The movie 2012 was a disaster flick about the end of the world as predicted by the Mayans (not really, that’s just when their calendar ran out of space), and to save life, the governments built “arks” from a “global flood” that wiped out everything except Africa. The game Astral Chain is about the last remnants of society living on an island called “the ark,” and then the final boss is named Noah. Again, this is a corruption of the account, but where would one get the idea of an “ark” that would save mankind from a disaster? It does not make sense unless there truly was a historical event in which a man named Noah did save all life via an ark from a worldwide aquatic disaster.
There is the Garden of Eden itself. I already referenced to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which centers around the search for Elysium – paradise, where the Architect lived so they could find out what was wrong with the world as life was dying. There was even a movie that came out a few years ago called Elysium where there was an ideal, perfect utopia, only to find out that underneath was where all the garbage lay and the outcasts who didn’t play to the ideal system. In both cases, the dream world turned out to be a farce and a façade.
Even the time-traveling adventure game Chrono Trigger, considered one of the best video games ever made, centers around Evolution’s history as seven heroes seek to defeat a world-destroying parasite named Lavos. In one of the side quests, the characters debate how they got on the adventure, and they suggest that some “entity” wanted them to see all those events and resolve some regrets. Even in the evolutionary worldview games, there still seems to be some notion of a God out there and the history that is recorded in Genesis 1-11. Again, it is corrupted, hardly resembling the real thing, and often attempting to overthrow or discard such systems, but the mere mention or fact of these things out there shows that God hides the truth about Him in all these different cultures so that no one has an excuse.
This brings a whole new meaning to how it is Jesus who lights up the world, and that every person is given some light. Some games follow the religious aspects, and some games reject them and seek to show the overcoming of such things, but the fact is that God and the history of Genesis 1-11 are embedded into every culture, including in video games and movies. They can’t escape God even if they tried. Even if they make the Christian symbols the bad guys, they cannot escape God. When I started making these connections, I began to worship God and how amazing He is, and I hope you do too.
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he·don·ism
/ˈhēdnˌizəm,ˈhēdəˌnizəm/
noun
1. the pursuit of pleasure; sensual self-indulgence.
Philosophy: the ethical theory that pleasure (in the sense of the satisfaction of desires) is the highest good and proper aim of human life.
When I was a child, I was blessed to go to Church every single week. As I got older, I also attended a vibrant youth ministry every single Wednesday evening.
Admittedly, it has taken me many years to realize that while church attendance was and is very important, and I encourage it, that’s not really what influenced my life. Back then, what really influenced my life more than anything were friends and the government-run school I attended. I believe it is time for many of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s to admit what way of life and lifestyle many of us really were disciples of. It’s time to admit many of us were trained up and put on the road to hedonism.
I am not saying in every circumstance, but in many, many ways, we were directed toward hedonism being the way of life we should pursue. I encourage you to pray about this. Think about and remember the music, movies. Think about the fact that in the government-run schools we were educated in frowned immensely on not talking about the God of the Bible and not teaching His good and right ways. What was promoted and taught? The philosophy of hedonism. I encourage you to pray and truly seek out God’s counsel on this.
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning;
for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.
- 1 Corinthians 15:33-34
As I look back on my life, I realize how much I listened to and allowed the ideas of humans to influence my life instead of hearing and obeying God’s ways to live in this world that He has given to us. Just one example in my life is in regard to the meaning of the word love. The Bible is clear that love is long suffering and love is kind, and it does not envy, nor is it self-seeking (1 Corinthians 13). A friend of mine “counseled” me in the meaning of the word and “helped” me to see that love could mean something else. This person encouraged me to see that loving someone could be having sex with another person I desired to be with that wasn’t my wife to “show” her how much I “loved” her, even though we knew that the Bible taught something completely different. Sadly, I began to see the “wisdom” in this new thought. In essence, this person was trying to convince me to live out the philosophy of hedonism, that “pleasure is the highest and proper aim of human life.”
Think about much of the music children and teenagers were exposed to in the 1970s and 1980s:
“Pour some sugar on me”
“Girls, girls, girls”
“Shook me all night long”
“Talk dirty to me”
“When doves cry”
Those of us who grew up listening to songs like these know what they are about. You’re not an idiot and neither am I. These songs and many songs like them are all about hedonism. It is my belief that it is time for those of us who grew up in that time and indulged in hedonism, and possibly still are, need to confess our sin, ask for forgiveness, and repent – turn away from this way of life.
I think if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see things in our society and even in the Church now have only gotten worse.
I greatly encourage you to begin to strive to live out for Jesus Christ in all that you do. Begin to raise your children in Godliness and not in the ways of the world anymore. As Christ followers, we need to take Romans 12:2 seriously.
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
- Romans 12:2
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Following up from last week, there is a problem when our preachers do not teach us how to distinguish the holy from the unholy. One of the central messages of the Bible is to live differently from everyone else. A severe problem with modern evangelicalism is that we are so focused on Jesus dying for our sins, which yes is an absolutely central thing, that we do not look at other central issues. A few months ago, I wrote about other central messages in the Bible. One of them is that we must live differently from the world and its culture. It is not enough to just say, “I believe in Jesus.” We have to live in obedience to Jesus. I’m not calling for legalism nor perfection, nor am I saying that “Jesus started the salvation process, but it is up to us to keep it.” Jesus said that those who He knows are those who obey Him, not those who merely claim His name.
The Sermon on the Mount is considered the most profound and life-changing sermon ever given, especially to the original audience. Jesus corrected many false teachings that the Pharisees had put on the people, and He took the Law and showcased its original purpose. Anyone can hate an enemy, but we are to love them. It’s not enough to restrain yourself from choking the holy snot out of them; even that desire is murder. It’s not enough to refrain from having sex with someone who is not your Biblically married spouse; just the picturing the act in your mind is committing the adultery in your heart. We are not to worry about our food, health, clothing, or shelter. We are instead to focus on God and let Him provide for us. We are also to test what we hear because not all teachers are genuine, and they actually seek to devour us. All of these ideas have one central theme: you are to be different from everyone else around you, not just the worldly peers, but even your religious peers. So many youth in youth groups are totally lost because they compare themselves to those who are just as worldly and ungodly as those outside the church. And before someone says, “Who made you holier than thou?” Well, as my former pastor said once, “We need people who are ‘holier than thou.’”
The more I have read the Bible, the more I see this theme of how we must be different. God told the children of Israel over and over again to drive out the Canaanites because of how readily and easily they would lead Israel astray. Over and over again, God said, “Don’t live like them.” Many people today do not like Leviticus 18 because it shuts down all forms of sexual deviancy. But most who read that chapter tend to miss the last third of it. After God describes the sexual sins, He told Israel that the Canaanites were committing these sins. God was giving Israel the promised land partly because they were special but also because Canaan was wicked. But if Israel committed those sexual sins, God would remove them from the land as well. It wasn’t just the idolatry. Idolatry and sexual sins are often interlinked.
“But that’s Old Testament. We are not under the Law.” Really? Let’s look at the New Testament then. It’s still the same message. Romans 12:2: Do not conform to the world, or to the pattern of this world. James 4:4: Friendship with the world is enmity with God. The book of Acts actually goes into depth on this very issue. Acts 15 is the second “church fight” recorded in church history. The Judaizers wanted the Gentile believers to get circumcised, and the Gentile believers replied that the point of that was for you to be separate, and you aren’t doing it yourselves. The Apostles convened to discuss this. Their decision was that the Gentiles were not to be required to be circumcised because that went with other laws that the Judaizers and the Jewish believers were never able to keep anyway. That said, there still needed to be separation, so they commanded the Gentile believers to have nothing to do with idols, to restrain from blood, to restrain from strangled animals (in their fight for life, animals being strangled would produce adrenaline that would affect the meat, so it was often used in idolatrous practices to get “power”), and to avoid sexual immorality. There still had to be separation from the world. While the Jews were separated from the rest of the world due to their language, culture, laws, etc., and while today we no longer need to follow the ceremonial or Israeli-kingdom laws, the moral laws still apply to us as Gentile believers, and we still need to be different from the world around us.
God’s commands to live differently are accessible. They are understandable. They are clear – so clear that we tend to not like them because they stop our sinful desires from being able to do what they want to do. God’s expectations for us to live are clear. They are not ambiguous; they are not mean-spirited; they are not “limiting”; they are life and life abundant. They are not some distant, vague, and unknowable thing. They are near to us, and to the born-again believer, they are dear to us. Jesus said His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. God commands are not a burden to the believer. They are a joy. God’s word is not some unrelatable book to some distant tribe no one knows anything about, but it is a treasure to our heart that we cherish and love. Yes, it draws some thick lines, but those are for our benefit, to guide us into true freedom and a productivity and action that we could not dream of being without.
Live differently. That will mean you will stand out, stick out, and have a target on your back in a world that loves mediocrity and for no one to rock the boat. But nobody who just mingled in the world ever did anything of any value. God wants us to be different. We are in this world, but we are not of this world. We live here temporarily in enemy territory, seeking to save souls from destruction before God comes to wipe it all out. If we remain attached to this world, when God comes to destroy it, we will go down with it. Do not get attached to it lest they pull you down with them, which is precisely what they desire.
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After the very evil reign of King Manasseh of Judah, his son Amon took over the throne. While King Manasseh had followed the good King Hezekiah (who followed the evil King Ahaz), sadly Amon did not continue the trend of alternating between good and evil reigns.
King Amon’s brief reign is documented in 2 Kings 21:18-26 and 2 Chronicles 33:21-25. He only reigned as king for 2 years, even though he was just 22 years old when he became king.
In the short summary of his reign, he is directly compared to his father King Manasseh: “He did evil in the eyes of the LORD, as his father Manasseh had done. He followed completely the ways of his father, worshiping the idols his father had worshiped, and bowing down to them. He forsook the LORD, the God of his ancestors, and did not walk in obedience to him” (2 Kings 21:20-22).
The apple did not fall far from the tree with King Amon. Even though prophets warned the nation under King Manasseh’s reign that God would completely wipe them out if they did not change their ways, King Amon continued all of the idol worship and sacrifices to idols that his father promoted. He did not obey God, and neither did the people under his leadership.
The parallel account in 2 Chronicles says that “But unlike his father Manasseh, he did not humble himself before the LORD; Amon increased his guilt” (2 Chronicles 33:23). King Amon just kept making things worse for himself and for the people of Judah.
But, just 2 years into his reign, King Amon suffered some immediate consequences for that. His officials assassinated him, right there in his palace! The Scriptures do not state the reason for this assassination, whether the officials disagreed with King Amon and his idolatry or if they simply wanted to make a power grab. There was “behind the scenes” drama going on between Judah and the Assyrians, so the officials may have been involved in that.
But right after King Amon’s officials assassinated him, they experienced immediate consequences for that action – the people of Judah rose up and killed them! So if it was a power grab, they didn’t get to experience that power. This all turned out very good for the people, though, since they made King Amon’s son Josiah the next king (even though he was only 8 years old), and he was one of the very good ones who brought the people back to following God.
Scripture does not record the feelings and motivations of the officials or the people of Judah in this situation. But, perhaps the people were smarter than their king, and they knew that idolatry was not the path they should be following. Perhaps they knew that the king had to be taken down, and then for good measure, they took down the people who assassinated the king too! This was clearly God working in the hearts and lives of the people of Judah, as they needed to get away from the idol worship that was rampant under King Manasseh and then King Amon.
How does this apply to us today? Take a look at national politics here in the U.S. today – and even in the last 10-15 years for that matter. Are our leaders more like King Hezekiah or King Manasseh and King Amon? Is our leadership following the one true God and encouraging the people to do the same? Or is our leadership encouraging following idols and false gods and encouraging the people to do the same?
From my perspective, it is definitely the latter and not the former; our government officials seem to be following the path of the evil kings of Judah much more than the good kings. Not only am I not seeing any encouragement to follow God from our elected leaders, but there is an active discouragement of following God. People are encouraged to worship idols, especially the most prevalent idol in our society today – the idol of self.
The transgender movement is one of the “popular” manifestations of the idol of self today. It says that you should pay no attention to how God created you to be, whether male or female; only pay attention to what you feel like. It encourages people to do whatever will draw the most attention to them and their own personal “courage” and “bravery” in the face of the “adversity” of people “misgendering” them. Transgenderism is one way that people are bowing down to the idol of self and encouraging others to do the same.
The idol of self is also seen in the social media culture of today. Social media is primarily about focusing on self and developing an audience of people who want to follow (and perhaps worship) you. Yes, social media can definitely be used to point people toward God and His Biblical teachings, so it is not all bad. But far too often, social media is about promoting and giving glory to oneself rather than promoting and giving all glory to God where it is rightfully due.
Some of the corruption of our government leaders and organizations has been revealed in recent days that they have been censoring the speech of those who disagree with them – those who believe in God’s created order of things and that God should receive the glory rather than His creation. This is simply active idolatry; people wanting the power that only God should have. They want to control others and “play God” rather than encouraging the liberty to which God has called us, where every person is equally valuable in God’s eyes and we all deserve to be able to speak out to honor and glorify Him.
Learn from the short reign of King Amon and pray about what God would have you do to bring Him the glory that He – and only He – deserves. Do not fall into the idolatrous trap of our society today, but continue to rely on the only real source of truth, the Word of God.
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What I am writing today is something that I started chewing on as a result of recent teachings by one of my church elders. As the Lord has been dealing with him, he has been investigating what is going on in the American home. What he’s been finding is something I believe we have all known all along, but we have struggled to put our finger on it.
It is difficult to have any remote knowledge of today’s culture and not acknowledge that something is seriously wrong with the nuclear family unit in our culture. More children are raised in broken or non-traditional homes (traditional being a mother and father in proper marriage) than ever before. It seems that the government and the media are seeking and pushing to put the final nails in the coffin of “traditional marriage” with all this LGBT+, transgenderism, gender fluidity, etc. But how did this happen? We are recognizing this is a problem now, but what enabled this madness and insanity to even be thinkable? It’s not just the failure of morality. It is the failure of a proper view of the nuclear family and the home.
The role and function of the home drastically changed in the last 150 years, and this can be traced directly to the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution initiated factory production, the explosion and initiation of modern technology, and all but ended the United States being an agrarian society. With the advent of factories, fathers no longer merely operated their own farms but instead left the home to go work at the factories. Initially, the families traveled with the fathers, but soon labor laws and such separated the children and wives from the husbands, and this changed everything.
Fathers were no longer home most of the day, and they worked in factories instead of farms. In fact, many of the factory owners would buy large pieces of land to build homes for the workers. Families not longer had work to do at home, and children were now bored. Schools were not very common at this time. Kids were educated at home and despite a lack of “formal” education as we know it today, they were not uneducated. They could do far more than read and write – Greek and Latin, not just English. But during this time, parents were starting to gather together to hire teachers to educate their kids while they did their jobs. The public school system was birthed out of this situation.
This situation also developed a lot of technology which would quickly and rapidly replace manual labor. Children would go to school and come home where there was little to do because the homes were built for the mere purpose of housing workers for the factories. As technology increased, radio and television entered the picture. So did professional sports as transportation options increased from your typical horse. What did this do? It made entertainment the main activity when not at work or school. It has been that way every since.
Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the home was a center of production. The entire home – the parents and the kids – were all involved in not merely working the farm but producing things that could be shared with society. Here, having a lot of children was important not only for mere survival for more hands to do the jobs, but each were viewed as an asset. This is one of the reasons why Scripture tells us that children are a blessing, and a quiver of children is a father’s crown.
But now, what has happened is children are seen as a liability, as an expense, and worse, as stealing from the enjoyment and pleasure that you could have without them. Today, parents long to get their kids out of the home and into schools or sports. Teachers long for the breaks to be rid of the kids, too. But the home is no longer a place of production and is instead a place of consumption. The home is used for ultimately three things: eating, sleeping, and consuming.
A side effect of the transformation of the home as being a place of production to a place of consumption is a total breakdown the family. Dad is at work, and when he is at home, he is there to consume sports and beer and rest. Don’t believe me? Watch any sitcom or commercial in the last 30 years. The man’s job is to work, then drink and do sports. Provide for society and do nothing in the home. Take notice that all these factory jobs did something else: make work to provide for society out there and have no value to the home itself. Most of our jobs today are completely irrelevant to our home life.
So, with dad always out away from home and with home being nothing more than just a place to eat and sleep, dad gets tired of home and his wife and kids. Being away from home most of the time and with home being only a place for consumption, the wife is no longer satisfactory, and thus adultery is now an option. But with the home being a center of consumption and pleasure, that also turned and made marriage just about sex and pleasure.
It gets worse because this culture has carried into the church. As the home goes, so goes the church. As the home became a center of pleasure, so became the church. Most people look for a church that meet their needs, and by needs we are talking about the American culture of pleasure and consumption. What can this church offer me? Music, preaching, youth program, etc. Many complain about their pastors because they “are not getting fed,” despite doing weekly small groups and daily Bible reading. What is the problem? Consumption and pleasure instead of productivity and offering your skills and gifts to edify and build the church.
What my church elder is challenging us to do is to examine our lives and our homes. We can’t throw away all the technology, but what steps could we take to move our home from a place of pleasure and consumption into a place of productivity? This is not limited to those who are married with kids. I am single, and I am chewing on this. How can I as a single man without a family make my home to be a place of productivity, for a place where I can edify and build the church? Part of what I can do is the writing I have been doing. But I know that is not enough. So I am chewing on what else I can be doing to be productive and to make the most use of my time. However, we need to be watchful for the notion of being too busy serving God that we completely ignore being with God. That is for another discussion.
What can you do? How can you make your home no longer a center for consumption (though there is nothing wrong with enjoying the fruit of your labor) and into a place that wisely uses the resources we have been given? I am processing what I need to be doing or what I can do better. Let us all pursue this.
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In his sermon “A Cry Against the Wickedness of American Youth,” David Wilkerson said something like this: “Woe to the church when the prophets of God will not come.” He was talking about when a man who truly has the word and the heart of God refuses to come to a church because they know that church does not teach sound doctrine and is full of death. We often hear about churches who refuse to invite a sound preacher. Leonard Ravenhill was known for saying, “I preach in a lot of places once.” He gets invited to speak, and he gives a message that exposes that church’s sin, and that church doesn’t invite him back. That’s bad enough, but if a good preacher refuses to come to a church, that’s because that church has a reputation for being bad and God has already put His sign of judgment upon it.
Today, we hear messages where over and over and over again, God is a God of many chances and no matter how broken or messed up we are, God will receive us and love us. There is a lot of truth to that, but it is nearly universally unbalanced because God’s patience has limits. God’s mercy has limits. I know that is hard to hear. God has His hands out. With one hand He is beckoning us to come to Him; with the other He is holding back His wrath. The day will soon come when both hands will drop. At that point, it’s “Game over!” When God does not send His messengers to a church, there is a reason and it’s not good.
Who are the prophets of God today? Now, I want to make clear that I am not talking about prophecy as predicting the future. I’m not talking about the position of prophet as used throughout the Old Testament; I am talking about those who have the ministerial gift of being a prophet. A prophet in this sense is someone who is naturally receptive to the spiritual realm and is able to hear from God on what He has to say about a given situation. Now, I am also not talking about anyone who goes around proclaiming themselves to be prophets or prophetesses. I’m talking about those who speak the truth, are not concerned about their reputation, say what needs to be said, and reveals what God is saying about the matter.
Leonard Ravenhill was one such prophet. He had the heart of God and while he was kind and gentle in person, when in the pulpit, he became like fire – not a warm, comforting campfire; but rather a cleansing, purifying fire. Paul Washer is another. Voddie Baucham and Steve Lawson also come to mind. While I love listening to Eric Ludy, Todd Friel, Adrian Rogers, and others, I would not quite put them in this particular category, not because they are wrong but because they have a different role. Adrian Rogers was a teacher, not a prophet. Todd Friel is a “sheep dog,” but not a prophet in this sense. Eric Ludy is an exhorter. These are all important, but I’m emphasizing prophets here.
What would cause these people to reject a call to come preach at a church? I know many who would take advantage of preaching at a place they knew was pagan to present the truth. But would Ravenhill, Washer, Baucham, etc. accept an invitation to come preach at a known heretical church? Washer gave his “Shocking Youth Message” prior to really becoming known. Ludy’s first sermon was about holiness in relationships in a conference and the guy that followed him said, “Well, I’m not here to preach about holiness.” Wilkerson said he was invited to conferences to be the “let’s get serious” guy, while everyone else preached the fluffy stuff. The prophets know whether an invite is legitimate or whether it is a trap, and often, they don’t go to those meetings. The Bible has some of these accounts too.
King Saul sought the knowledge and advice from God on what to do, but after disobeying God twice, God rejected him. Samuel wept over Saul and God even told Samuel to stop praying for Saul. The prophet, Samuel, never saw Saul again. He did not go back to give him another chance. Even when Saul tried to summon Samuel to get a better word from God, Samuel just pronounced the final doom upon Saul. Saul was a case where the prophet refused to come to him or give him a word.
Ahab had at least four chances to repent. He was the worst king of them all, and yet in four instances, God gave Ahab the chance to repent from his sin. He refused to listen, so God sent a lying spirit to convince him to go to war and he would be slain. Even in this case, Micaiah the prophet was summoned but he refused to give him the message right way, because he knew Ahab was going to listen to the false prophets anyway. Why Jehoshaphat, who knew God, still went with Ahab is something I don’t get.
Jehoshaphat also joined Ahab’s son, Jehoram, and they got lost in the wilderness with no water. Jehoshaphat asked for Elisha for help. Elisha told Jehoram that he wouldn’t even talk to him if not for Jehoshaphat being with him. Let me make this clear. There comes a point where man sins so frequently and so often and repeatedly refuses to listen to God that in the moment of desperation, God will not answer. This is one of God’s promises He makes multiple times. The only reason why God was so patient with the wicked kings of Judah was because of His promise to David, not because of His patience with them. Jehoram would have died in the desert if Jehoshaphat was not with him. But Elisha asked Jehoshaphat a key question: “What are you doing with these guys?” This was Jehoshaphat’s key blunder, and it had serious consequences because Jehoshaphat’s daughter-in-law was Athaliah, daughter of Ahab and Jezebel. Bad things happened under Athaliah.
Judgment comes to the house of God first, and one of the first judgments we see is the removal of sound preachers. How will people know if sound preachers are being removed unless they are in Scripture regularly and continually themselves? So many people get their theology from the preachers they listen to rather than from Scripture itself, nor are they checking what they are hearing with Scripture. As a result, they will never know if their preacher is actually pointing them a different direction than the Bible.
When the good guys are not welcome, that is evidence that a church/ministry is in judgment and has drifted long from the truth. When the good guys refuse to come to a church/ministry because of its reputation for ungodliness, then you can be certain that said church/ministry has already been judged by God as unredeemable. They are dead, and no amount of truth will resurrect it. When that happens, get out of the sinking ship or go down with it. Find a church that is still preaching the truth, supports those who also preach the truth (not idolizing them), still calls out sin, and always and continually points toward Christ as the standard. But beware of those who preach of themselves, preach of self, seek self, and whom the good guys refuse to support. They will do you no good.
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Spiritual warfare is a topic that is rarely addressed correctly. It is often either over-emphasized or under-emphasized. But it is a reality. My upcoming novel Call to Arms has spiritual warfare as its central theme. It is written in the style of Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness, and I can easily say that Peretti’s book had a profound influence on my life, even before I read it. What really triggered my sense of the spiritual reality came all the way back in elementary school when I was on the mission field. Several of the short-term mission teams put on a skit about spiritual warfare going on behind the practice of witnessing to a lost soul, and the skit has an angel and a demon engaged in a sword fight. This was clearly influenced by Peretti, and needless to say, that left a seed in my heart. I have been interested in sword fighting ever since (I now have 24 years involvement in the sport of fencing). I have also had a spiritual sense, a level of discernment that many tend to have academically shoved out. I am not going to proclaim to be a spiritual warfare guru or anything like that, but I am a veteran in the battle. And I have joined a ministry in which this war is our focus, hence the name Worldview Warriors. We are in a battle, and this blog post is about that war.
As Christians, we face three major enemies that war against us and seek to derail our faith. Those three enemies are the world, the flesh, and the devil. The world is the culture of sinful man in its rebellion against God. It is the general mindset of society as a whole. Only for a brief time in American history did any culture actually have a general favor towards genuine Christianity, and now that is most certainly gone. It is not just fading but gone. The United States today hates true Christianity. Don’t believe me? Try speaking about 6-day creation or a global flood in public. Try proclaiming that God created people male and female. Try proclaiming that that marriage is to only be between one man and one woman and that sex is only for the marriage bed and not to be defiled. If you want to be “counter-cultural” today, be a vocal conservative Christian. You will see that you are indeed in a spiritual battle against the world. You are also going to find that the world’s culture has so deeply entrenched itself in the church that your greatest foes on these issues will be from within the Christian community. The ones I have had the fiercest fights over are those who profess to be Christians.
The second enemy our sinful nature – the flesh, the old self. This is typically our biggest and our most difficult enemy that we face because that old self doesn’t like being put to death. The way we battle the flesh is through our three major enemies: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. I don’t have the space to cover this in detail, but do a study on the three temptations of Jesus. Those are the categories of temptations that man faces and all of them appeal to “health, popularity, and wealth” – temporal things that will come and go. All of them are aimed at taking trust off God.
The third enemy is the devil and his demonic minions. Because my novel Call to Arms deals with this theme, I am going to focus on it. I will be up front in that my personal theology has changed and matured since I wrote this book initially 15 years ago (see last week’s post for more on that history). At the time, the church I went to was rather charismatic with relatively strong Word of Faith leanings (but not to the point of calling it heretical). I had previously been to a Christian Reformed church, but we didn’t agree with their doctrines enough to become member. Now, I am much more “reformed” in my theology. I bring this up for a reason. The charismatics go overboard with experiences and frequently throw out concrete, sound doctrine as they do so. But the Reformed tend to do the opposite and be so academic that they fail to address very real situations dealing with the spiritual realm. When it comes to the demonic, we are dealing with spiritual entities. Now, we aren’t dealing with “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” stuff that is just hyped-up junk, nor are we talking about some of the crazy people that think they can go to a mountain top and pray away the demons of that realm. But the demonic realm is most certainly a real thing that cannot be ignored. It should never be put in the spotlight too much, but never ignored.
One of the things that drove a key plot point in Call to Arms is an encounter I had with a co-worker during my final few weeks of working at a grocery store. The story would take me an hour to tell in person, but the key thing was that as I witnessed to this guy, I ended up stirring up a demonic stronghold that had been lying hidden in his life. I witnessed to him and gave him the Gospel, but in the end, I could not drive it out, nor did he desire to seek and follow Christ. The whole encounter would have impressed Stephen King, so I used it as a key plot point for my book. I am a firm believer of a T-shirt I have that says, “Be careful what you say or you might find yourself in my next novel.”
That said, the battle with the demonic needs to be exposed, but also not glorified. The occult is real, and demons are indeed real. They only need just enough light to expose them, but not put on a pedestal. Where they primarily work is not through occultic practices, but most successfully through ideas and philosophies, especially in academia. Many people will confuse this with the world. But it is actually both. Satan is the god of this world. He directs the philosophies and the mindsets of the institutions and the arts so that they influence the majority of the population. He was known to be the minister of music before the throne of God, so it would be no surprise for him to use music as a major means of getting ideas through a culture. And then the flesh, desiring the things of the world, takes the bait – hook, line, and sinker.
I will close this post with this point: the BEST way to battle all three of these foes all at once is to seek and pursue God to live a holy lifestyle. If we put “self” to death on a daily basis, then the flesh will not be “alive” to desire the temptations of the world. If the flesh does not take the bait of the world, then Satan does not catch us as his fish. He’ll still make war against us. He can cause some very annoying things to happen. But be careful about blaming him for every inconvenience. He is still God’s “messenger boy” and can’t do anything beyond what he has permission to do. So instead of blaming the devil for our problems, if we instead ask God what we need to learn in such a situation, suddenly the power of temptation disappears.
Call to Arms releases in just over two weeks. Please check it out and get your copy on September 12 in paperback, hardcover, or Kindle. The story is engaging and compelling, and you will not want to put it down.
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Now that we have examined what sin is, what sin does, what it costs, what it is not, and what happens when we get it wrong, we can now look at the proper response to sin. We’ll first look at the instinct God has instilled into all mankind from the start: shame. Let’s look at the origin of shame.
Adam and Eve were created naked in the garden, and they had no shame. It never entered their minds that they were naked. But then they ate from the tree. Suddenly, they realized they were naked, and they were ashamed. I want to make clear that public nakedness is the ultimate form of humiliation and shame in the Jewish mindset. Adam and Eve were naked and now were ashamed of it. Nakedness is a huge theme throughout Scripture, and this is a Gospel issue – a CENTRAL Gospel issue.
Being naked means that you are fully exposed. Every little bit about you is revealed. What triggers you, what set you off, what motivates you – everything is exposed. Physical nakedness is just a picture of spiritual nakedness in which you are exposed before God. Prior to sin, there was no shame. Nothing wrong, nothing to hide, nothing to fear. But now they knew they were naked, and they felt shame, exposed, guilty, dread, regret, and all the emotions that come with it. Shame makes you feel little and strips you of your power.
There are various accounts where the shame of nakedness appears throughout Scripture. It was a common practice of ancient nations when they conquered their enemies that they would parade their captives naked to showcase their dominion over them. David had to deal with a case of such humiliation. After conquering various nations and establishing his throne, he wanted to offer a gift to the king of Ammon because they had housed David’s family while he hid from Saul. But he thought David’s envoys were spies and sent them back with their beards cut and naked from the hip down. It was a big mistake because David came with his wrath upon them. The seven sons of Sceva also suffered a similar humiliation attempting to exorcise a demoniac by riding on Paul’s ministry. They got their tails kicked and fled both bleeding and naked.
The ultimate humiliation in Scripture was Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus, bearing the crown of thorns, the very physical symbol of sin, was crucified and publicly hung stark naked. He was fully exposed, and the wrath of God was poured out upon Him. Jesus endured not only one of the cruelest forms of execution known to man, but He also had to deal with the greatest shame of forced public nudity.
There are two primary responses to the shame that comes with sin. I’ll focus on one for this post and the other one next week. The two responses are self-justification and brokenness. The first is showcased clearly by Adam and Eve. But brokenness is best showcased by King David in Psalm 51. Self-justification is how sinful man responds to the shame of sin. Brokenness is how the believer responds to the shame of sin. Let’s examine the sinful man’s response of self-justification.
Adam and Eve did three things once the shame of their nakedness was revealed. They first covered up their sin. They sewed fig leaves together, having nothing else in sight, to cover themselves. Now think about how silly this is. They were naked this whole time. Now they had fig leaves covering their intimate parts. What greater way could you say, “Hey! Lookie here!” They were announcing to the whole world that they had done something wrong. And don’t we see this over and over again? Parents, don’t your kids do this all the time? They want to hide from the wrong they did, yet they so easily give themselves away that they did something? They make it so obvious too.
The second thing they did was hide. They hid from God. At first, they were open and exposed before God, but now they ran and hid like cockroaches when the light turns on. Again, it was another giveaway that they had sinned. How obvious do you want to be that you sinned?! I know we can laugh at this, but we really aren’t any different; we do this all the time, and it’s so stupid. We can look at Adam and Eve and say, “Come on, just confess. You’re already busted.” Yet how many times do we do the same thing?
The third thing they did was shift the blame. God dragged them out and confronted them. Adam blamed Eve for giving him the fruit, and then he blamed God for giving Eve to him. Eve blamed the serpent. Neither came forward and confessed their sin before God. But they did confess to doing the deed. They did say “I ate,” but neither said, “I am sorry. I disobeyed You.” But I will give them this credit that there was one thing they did not do. They did not lie about it, though that wasn’t far down the road. Cain lied to God’s face unfazed when confronted about his murder of Abel just one generation later.
One thing that is key to notice when sinful man attempts to self-justify himself against the conviction of the Holy Spirit and the shame that comes with sin is that the conscience becomes worn out and ultimately seared. Look at today. I still remember the days when both homosexuality and woman who had abortions felt great shame. Today, they boast about their sins publicly as though they are daring God to do something about it. But that shame has not gone away. Those in the LGBT arena face some of the greatest bouts of depression we’ve seen, comparable if not greater than soldiers in combat. Why? The answer is simple: because their chosen lifestyle can’t do what they were seeking. They KNOW something is wrong, but sinful man cannot and will not accept the fact that it is their sin that is causing their shame – not the Christians who call out such sinful lifestyles. The same is true with abortions. So many women (and men too) are utterly devastated every time they see a child that is the age of a child theirs should be. It’s extremely shameful. While many have so hardened their hearts that they don’t care how evil they get and will continue that path no matter the cost, some are seeing the emptiness of sin and the death that it produces. We as the church need to be there to support and pick up those people by showing them the true response to sin.
The first proper response to sin is brokenness. I am only going to introduce it here now, but I will go into detail on it next week. Brokenness is the admission and recognition of what your sin is and the understanding of the weight of it. Brokenness leads to confession of sin, which will then lead to repentance from sin. When this happens, and we put our faith in Christ, we will be clothed with Christ and our nakedness will be covered.
While salvation is offered to us freely, there still needs to be a response on our part for it to apply. Jesus’s ministry can be summed in this phrase: “Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” That was His message. But we cannot and will not repent unless we are first broken over our sin and confess it to be what it truly is. With repentance comes salvation – salvation from the penalty of sin, salvation from the power of sin, and soon salvation from the presence of sin. And with that comes the ultimate judgment and defeat of sin once for all. Stay tuned for the answer to this whole problem of sin over the next few weeks – the answer found in the Gospel of Christ.
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Philippians 4:4-9
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.”
Many people have inquired about why I am not posting on Facebook recently.
Approximately three weeks ago, I was contacted by Facebook. Because of the reach of my personal profile, I was told that they were contacting me and others like me with a similar number of followers on Facebook to help “stop the spread of misinformation” and to protect my Facebook profile from “malicious hackers” and “bad actors” by monitoring my account. In essence, I was informed that I needed to agree to allow Facebook to censor information I post if I want to continue to use Facebook.
It is beyond obvious to me now that these phrases are nothing more than code used by Facebook for controlling their users' thoughts and influence as well as stopping information that they don't like. I have been on Facebook since 2007 and have always tried to post true and factual posts and comments. Early on, I had a lot to learn. If I ever posted things that were false or incorrect, at least to my recollection, I corrected those posts with truth and at times apologized when necessary. I think this is just one reason why this comes as such a kick to the mid-section for me.
Over the past 15 years, much ministry and growth of the Kingdom of God has happened. I have been blessed to meet many people over the years and have had the incredible opportunity to learn from many of those people, and I have grown a lot. I praise God for that, and I have many of you to thank as well. This is not just including my Christian brothers and sisters, but also those of you that are non-believers. I do hope and continue to pray that someday you will come into a right relationship with Jesus Christ, the Creator of the Universe, and I hope that is your decision someday soon. Those of you striving to follow Jesus Christ, I greatly encourage you to continue to “work out” your salvation every second of your time here on earth. I am very thankful for all of those, over the years, who have been a part of helping me and our ministry, Worldview Warriors, to equip and expand the Kingdom of God in this way. You are appreciated.
I will continue to do ministry with Worldview Warriors through the radio, internet, conferences, and other events. I will also continue to publish books through the ministry. Worldview Warriors and those connected to the ministry, as far as I know, will keep doing ministry as they have in the past as well.
As for social media, I have started a path of trying to figure out all my options and what the future might look like for me and the ministry. As of right now, Worldview Warriors, Worldview Warriors Publishing, Do Not Keep Silent, Worldview Warriors Fastcast, New Morning Praise, The Way Forward is Back, and the Senedot Stripes will continue to have pages on Facebook. You can also find information about Worldview Warriors at www.worldviewwarriors.org and information about the main radio station I am on in Northwest Ohio, 90.1 FM, at newvision.fm. You can listen to New Morning Praise every Monday-Friday from 6am-8:30am. You can also listen on Sunday nights from 7-9pm to Do Not Keep Silent, www.donotkeepsilent.com. Both of these shows are on 90.1 FM.
Some of you might be wondering why I used Philippians 4:4-9 to start out this post. The truth of the matter is that as believers in Jesus Christ, we are to rejoice in all things. That doesn't mean we cannot be sad, frustrated, or upset, but we must check our attitude and rejoice in all things.
Again, it has been quite a ride on Facebook for me personally, and please note that Worldview Warriors will continue to do ministry and not much should change with the ministry. My family and I, on the other hand, have much to consider and pray about as we move forward. Ministry will still be happening, and I do want to thank everyone who has been a prayer and/or financial supporter over the years. We hope you will continue to support the work God has called us to in order to advance the Kingdom of God here on earth.
If you'd like to donate to the ministry, you can do so online at www.worldviewwarriors.org or via snail mail at:
Worldview Warriors
PO Box 681
Findlay, Ohio 45839
As I finish this post, if you are willing and able, I would ask that you please consider sharing this post on whatever social media you are using to help get the word out about what is happening, not just to me on a personal level but to others as well. I would greatly appreciate the help in getting the word out.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
For almost two years now, I and others with the team of Worldview Warriors have been lovingly warning, patiently waiting, and staying self-controlled with our tongues and actions through the attack on this nation’s foundational beliefs (many based on Biblical truths) and on true Christianity and the Christian worldview. For those desiring the truth, it’s beyond obvious what is now going on in our society. We believe we have been speaking out the truth in love and living it out through our actions, not only to those outside of the Church but many inside the Church who also claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. We have been attacked by many outside of the Church and even some of those inside of the Church.
As a young man back in the 1990’s, I literally chose to go the wide path that Jesus speaks of in Matthew 7. I wanted nothing to do with this God I had heard so much about in my youth. I did not want to follow His ways. Sadly, I dishonored my father and mother back then, but I am thankful that they loved me through it all. To this day, they are my heroes! I love them both so much. So, what helped me realize that I needed a Savior and needed to follow the Lord of the Universe?
Two things:
One, the natural law or special revelation that Almighty God, the Creator of the universe, has put into place. This was and is a very good teacher. God has put this into place to teach us that some things we do have bad consequences and other things have good benefits. This is natural law. Those consequences are there for a reason, and so many people these days seemingly want to get rid of them and put more and more human laws into place. After all, all truth is found in the Lord Jesus Christ, as I began to learn and experience.
Two, my friend back in the 1990’s, Danny Castro, loved me with the truth. He loved me where I was at. Without him loving me like he did, I would probably be in a grave right now and burning in Hell, for that is where the wide path leads – death.
I am here today because of these two things: truth and love.
Since that time in the 1990’s, I have been on quite the journey of understanding the Lord and His ways more and more. I have been trying to “work out” my own salvation, to become mature and complete not lacking anything in the Lord. Do I and our team here still have a lot to learn? You bet we do, just as all people do. Two things I have certainly learned about is the importance of accepting that God Almighty is sovereign, and His providence is real. He’s not just real and in complete control, but He’s active in His creation. Providence (the action of God) can be seen everywhere if you’re just willing to be open to it. He is also incredibly loving and gives each human being free will to do as he or she pleases.
The true freedom and liberty that Almighty God offer are just incredible. When we surrender our lives to the King of Kings is when true liberty in Christ begins to manifest. I greatly encourage everyone reading this to be open to this incredible liberty He offers, not just for you but for others as well. After a year of being discipled by my friend and pastor, Larry Bertsch, he has helped me to realize and accept the very fact that none of us are God; God is God, and He can be completely sovereign while still giving His creation free will. I don’t understand it all, and that it is okay. Why? Because God is God, and I am not.
Friends, I encourage you to stop trying to control others with the fear and shame you put on them. Let God be God, and let the special revelation He has put into place be a good teacher. Think of the times it has taught you. I encourage you to strive to let it teach others, and let Almighty God be the judge.
Life (Existence is Futile) by Klank
You call this life?
It’s not living.
Another phase
Next step
Who’s guess?
What’s next?
Gotta figure out what to do
Another year
Seasons turn
Wheel spinnin’
Gears burn
Won’t believe the hell I’ve been through
You call this life?
It’s not living.
Broken down
Face first
Pushed aside
Eat dirt
Just another day in the life
Bigger bills
Smaller gains
Rents due
Hunger pains
Gotta be something more to life
You call this life?
It’s not living.
With all of that said, we have all been through and experienced 2 years of some serious change. I think we all need to realize that “normal” is not coming back. It’s time to move on. The future is unknown. As believers in Jesus Christ, we have an incredible opportunity to show people the way, the truth, and the life. As citizens of both heaven and the USA with inalienable rights, we have an incredible opportunity to show people how to live freely and freely in Christ. People can either surrender to Him or not. That is up to them. Christ has set us free! This means we are really free. Now hold on to your freedom and don’t ever become slaves of the law again.
Yes, friends, that is for us! That is for you. Now is the time to show people how to truly love others. It’s time to call all of this out for what it really is: idols. They are everywhere.
Let’s be honest with ourselves and with others about how many idols we have made in this nation. So many people are following them and believe that giving power to these idols is actually living. Many seem to believe that mask wearing and vaxxing are the way out of this, even to the point of forcing others to do this. Now, if this virus didn’t have over a 99% recovery rate, I probably wouldn’t make this connection, but the truth is that is the real percentage. We are told to follow the “science,” when in fact many of us are looking at the numbers and are realizing what we were being told by servants in our nation was nothing more than a lie. The truth is that the recovery rate is that high.
If someone might be hurt from this virus, then by all means that person should take care of themselves. Forcing everyone else to live a certain way because of what might happen not only is foolishness, but it is just like bowing down to a 90-foot-tall idol in the book of Daniel in order to not rock the boat. It is the same spirit, friends, the same mindset we’ve been seeing in our society today. Idols are everywhere. Living freely in Christ is not looking fearfully at a virus with over a 99% recovery rate or to a vaccine that, like it or not, seems to not be working in my opinion. I’ll call the vaccine what it looks like to me: an altar to mammon.
With all of the counterfeits and heretical ways of love out there, now is the time to show people that enabling them in their sin through godless government programs and godless government solutions window dressed in “godliness” is not the way. These are idols, too, and I believe most of us know it. Being apathetic toward people choosing to sin and calling it fine is not wise. Being apathetic to those trying to force Christians to accept sin as good, right, and true is not wise either. We absolutely need to continue to love people. We need to continue to show them how loving and freeing the life God has given to them can be, through our liberty found in Christ. But we also need to be shrewd like Jesus Christ taught and lived.
We see this so many times, but it seems many of us have either forgotten this or just weren’t taught it. We see in John 10:39, “They tried to take Jesus again, but he escaped from them.” Jesus chose to be wise and was shrewd in dealing with people who wanted to attack or take Him away and just argue with Him. He chose to not entertain people in their foolish arguments and foolish mindsets. He would just leave and move on. And as Peter so boldly proclaimed in Acts 5:29, “We must obey God, rather than people.”
Get out of the rat race and trying to keep up with the Joneses. Yes, this is all connected. Idols, idols, idols. Stop being okay with being a cog in the machine of the world. Find liberty in Christ! Let’s get back to living. It is for freedom that Christ has set you free. Go live your life. I encourage us all to stop serving idols. As for me, my family, and the Church, you call this life? This “new normal” is not living.
Writer’s note: I am not against proven vaccines or taking medicine to travel. I am discussing this current vax, so please don’t read into what I am absolutely not saying.
Go check out other writings from Jason:
Are Your Actions Following Jesus Christ?
Get Your Mind Out of Your Phone
Lead Me, Follow Me, or Get Out of My Way
Just Cheat a Little
The story with this is satire, but not these pictures; these pictures are real and actually happened. You call this life? It's not living. It's time to live in the freedom we find in Christ.
This is straight up judgement, friends – judgment over something that is not a sin. Please stop guilt tripping people and let's live our lives.
This forum is meant to foster discussion and allow for differing viewpoints to be explored with equal and respectful consideration. All comments are moderated and any foul language or threatening/abusive comments will not be approved. Users who engage in threatening or abusive comments which are physically harmful in nature will be reported to the authorities.
