The Battle For The Soul of the United States
The Battle For The Soul of the United States
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Preached by: Carolyn Sissom
This Memorial weekend as a nation we pause to honor those who have given their lives for the freedoms of the people of this nation and many nations of the world.
We also honor the Americans who are fighting terrorists in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the armed forces who are standing on foreign soil in other nations of the world.
On September 11, 2001, America met evil head-on when nineteen Islamic fanatics’ commandeered four American airliners and piloted two into the World trade Towers and a third into the Pentagon. The fourth airliner, headed for a target in Washington DC, was retaken by passengers and crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. It was our first taste of the hatred of jihad as preached by radical Islamic clerics.
Why would anyone hate us so much to kill innocent people? The answer is written over and over in the pages of history. This week a Christian writer wrote a message and posted it on the internet of how Christians lost the cultural war? Basically he wrote that Christians should stick to religion and leave the government to the politicians. This, of course, is not scriptural. Throughout the Bible the prophets were sent to prophecy to the Kings to turn their hearts back to the Lord and to His eternal purposes. All the wars and conflicts of the ages have been about Christianity, the Jews and the Holy Land.
The reason the Islamic Jihads hate the United States is because we are a Christian nation and we are an ally of Israel. We believe the prophetic Word over the world that is written in the Holy Bible. “The conflict is about the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of the Jewish people. The Palestinian Authority doesn’t want a portion of Jerusalem, but rather all of Jerusalem. They do not simply desire to occupy the West Bank, but all of Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. It is not a matter of “land for peace”, it is a matter of using any means possible to rid the Middle East of the Jewish population altogether. They do not wish the subjugation of the Jewish people; they wish their destruction. This is the agenda of the terrorists, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and all of the nations of the Hashemite Kingdom...
Yasser Arafat condensed the Arab-Israeli-U.S.A. conflict into the most succinct statement of all when he said: “We shall oppose the establishment of this state to the last member of the Palestinian people for if ever such a state is established it will spell the end of the whole Palestinian cause (the obliteration of Israel).”(Mike Evans)
The very real present danger to our nation is not the attacks of the Islamic Jihads though that is a sure danger. The danger we face is from satan’s stronghold from within through the attacks against America’s spiritual and moral foundation to destroy Christianity. Despite the false prophecy of Barrack Obama that this is not a Christian nation, I believe that 47 percent of American adults attend church in a typical weekend and 71 per cent believe in God. These people believe that He is the Creator, Sustainer, Savior, Deliverer, Healer, and all powerful, all-knowing, perfect King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Why then has the Christians of the United States surrendered the leadership of their nation to politicians who are dictating to us immoral and ungodly laws?
1 Timothy 4: 1-2 “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teaching comes through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron.”
We know the present administrations agenda. This has been made clear when Obama traveled abroad. He threw Christians and the Untied States under the proverbial bus for his international political ambitions.
A favorite past-time of the morally decadent is to try to bring God down to their level. Taking the constitutional edict that “all men are created equal,” they have applied it to religion and have declared that all religions are the same.
Sin has been banished from our vocabulary, and from preacher’s sermons. The cross of Jesus christ has been reduced to costume jewelry (the gaudier the better). The blood of Christ has been counted as worthless. Religions that once elicited horror, satanism and witchcraft, are accorded equality with Judaism and Christianity, and are in fact, featured in the religion sections of the newspaper.
Most can remember the classic painting of Jesus standing outside a door waiting to be allowed entry. That portrayal of Christ on the outside, waiting to fellowship with His creation, has never been more powerful than it is today. Prayer has been excised from schools, suits have been filed to force congress to remove “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance, displays of the Ten Commandments have been removed from public buildings, and the motto, “In God we Trust” is in danger of extinction. Teachers have been forbidden even to carry a personal Bible in view of students. Christian literature has been removed from library shelves. Religious Christmas carols have been banned from school programs and “spring break” has replaced the Easter vacation.
Battle after battle has slowly stripped Christians in America of their rights.
When the first Continental congress set out to write the document that would govern the fledgling United States, not one time did they adopt the words, “separation of church and state?” It’s not there!
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In the twenty-first century, the courts of our land protect perversion while chastising the church. The recent passing of the Hate Crimes bill is one such law.
Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Why has this once brave nation allowed the marketplace and the political arena to be stripped of everything Godly? The problem is not with Obama. He is just a politician who is capitalizing on the signs of the times. Why has abortion flourished? Why has God been taken out of schools, while the distribution of condoms is allowed? Why are Kindergarten children being taught sexual orientation? Everything anti-Christian is promoted, and Christians are ridiculed.
Even when I grew up, it was not socially acceptable to speak of Jesus at social events. Well, it didn’t take and I speak of Jesus no matter where I am. The desire to fit in has reduced the average Christian to a spineless jellyfish afraid to speak up for fear of derision.
Many churches once strongholds of everything good and right, have become just another club where people gather to socialize. They, too, have fallen prey to the corruption of the secular and have become watered down versions of their former self, palatable to all and effective for none. Christians have become indistinguishable from the nonbeliever down the street. Researcher George Barna had this to say about Christianity today. “The primary reason that people do not act like Jesus is because they do not think like Jesus. Behavior stems from what we think---our attitudes, beliefs, values and opinions.”
This is it there are two minds, The Mind of Christ and the spirit of anti-christ. I am sorry you cannot be in both camps. You will be spewed out of His mouth.
We must guard our bibles. There are new translations coming out who call sin good. One is “In the Good as new version. In the King James Version, 1 Corinthians 7:2 reads, “nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every many have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. In the Good as New version, that verse read, “My advice is for everyone to have a regular partner.”
There are churches who have become launching pads for political candidates rather than a sanctuary of redemption. Organizations such as the national Council of Churches cater to the secularist agenda rather than truly representing Jesus Christ.
Evangelicals are being persecuted with scorn and mocking. Well, this will just make us humble and meek. If we refuse to be knocked down by scorn and mocking, it has no power over us. Scorn was the first devil to fall at the cross. All Christians should be immune to it. If we cannot stand up to Scorn, then we still have fleshly pride.
We know that much of the church is apostate and is content to sit idly by and watch a world doomed for hell, while placidly waiting for the remnant to be rapture. The church has abandoned the “Great Commission” in favor of “the Great Omission,” taking on many of the characteristics of the church in Laodicea as described by the Apostle John:
“So because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold---I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing” but you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.”
I had a pastor tell me one time using a voice of scorn and mocking, “Carolyn no one can every accuse you of being lukewarm.” I count that as a medal of honor. He meant it as contempt.
I charge the Clergy and all Ministers of the Gospel to rise up, stand tall, take up your Cross and follow Jesus.
John W. Chalfant, author of Abandonment Theology, describes it this way:
“Clergy and their followers have been teaching, preaching and saturating the media and their church members with the doctrine of surrender and political non-involvement. They are not teaching us to surrender to christ through obedience to the commandment of god. Rather, they tell us that America is finished, that the collapse of our heritage our freedoms have been predetermined within a definable near future time frame and is therefore beyond our control.”
Dr. Francis Schaeffer in The Great Evangelical Disaster: “Here is the great evangelical disaster---the failure of the evangelical world to stand up for truth as truth…The evangelical world has accommodated to the world spirit of the age…To accommodate to the world spirit…is nothing less than the most gross form of worldliness…We must say, with exceptions, the evangelical church is worldly and not faithful to the Living Christ.”
The desire
for acceptance has replaced the hunger to draw close to
Christ. Doubt has
replaced determination, fear has overcome faith, conformity to the Word has
been replaced with conformity to the world and the voice of one “crying in the
wilderness” has been replaced by celebrity-seekers. Christians
The good news is that as in the days of Jeremiah, there is a righteous remnant. Not all Christians have bought into the secular, liberal leftist agenda. It is because of these men and women, unnamed giants of the faith, prayer warriors all, that there is still hope.
This week we saw four men arise in the governmental arena with some gumption. We have not seen any gumption from Evangelical leaders except Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh. This week Dick Cheney, Michael Steele and Alan Keyes came forward. They seem to remember that we are "One Nation Under God" and that is a commission and a charge.
We have men and women who have fought and died for our liberties. Let us as Christians be willing to do no less for our Faith. "The answer is humility. "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time" (1 Peter 5:6) We like the aspostle Peter after his denial of christ, must become broken before the Lord in order to find forgiveness and restoration. Integrity must triumph over deception; the desire to do what is right must overcome the desire to conform to the world." (Mike Evans)
Carolyn Sissom, Pastor
Eastgate Ministries, Inc.
www.eastgateministries.com
Scripture from K.J.V and text paraphrased and quoted from The Final Move Beyond Iraq by Mike Evans with quotes from The Great Evangelical Disaster by: Dr. Francis Schaeffer and Abandonment Theology by: John W. Chalfant. Comments are my own.