Jerald Finney
Copyright © September, 2009
Let me preface this article by saying that I believe God desires America and every Gentile nation to operate under Him and His principles (I explain this fully in the book mentioned below). In order for a nation to so operate, she must be led by knowledgeable, active Christians who walk in the Spirit according to wisdom, knowledge, and understanding. Most Christians in America have not so walked. As a result, our individuals, families, and then churches fell, followed by our nation.
The steps in the downfall of any nation are religious apostasy, moral awfulness, and political anarchy. America is well into the third stage. The blame belongs to pastors, Christians, and churches, not to the lost. The lost cannot get things right. Likewise, carnal, baby, or misled Christians cannot get things right.
As many of you know, I have many times forwarded the Wake-Up Herald because of the tremendous insights or information imparted therein. However, I take strong issue with much of what is in this issue of the Wake-Up Herald (see below). Men like R. J. Rushdooney, Gary Demar, Gary North and other “dominion theologists” have led American Christians down the wrong path for many years.
Since American Christians have followed and promoted lies for many years, America has gone downhill. However, and more importantly, American churches have sunk deeper into heresy, many into apostasy, with each passing year. An army of Christians, following incorrect biblical teachings such as those of Rushdooney, have led the way. They have fought to bring America back to God, but they have fought without true knowledge, understanding, and wisdom. I believe that Satan is very pleased with the efforts of the vast majority of Christians in America.
The leaders of the movement – as well as many of the followers – for the most part, have been following the lie that the church and state working together will bring peace and unity to America and to the earth and thereby will usher in the kingdom of heaven to the earth. Of course, most of those Christians who have been working for this goal have no idea of what they are doing – they are just doing because they truly want to serve God. Sadly, they have not put on the whole armor of God and they are working in the flesh rather than in the Spirit with knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.
R.J. Rushdooney as with all dominion theologists, has incorrectly divided Scripture concerning the issues of church and state or civil government. I have covered the biblical teachings on government, church, and separation of church and state as well as the American application thereof, in God Betrayed/Separation of Church and State: The Biblical Principles and the American Application. That book, and others I and others have written, may be ordered from the “Books” page of churchandstatelaw.com. Just as one cannot understand Rushdooney’s statements without a complete understanding of his church-state theology, I cannot counter Rushdooney’s absurd statements quoted below in a short article, but the truth is presented in God Betrayed and also on a radio broadcast (with less detail than the book) I am now doing (see the next paragraph).
I have also prepared broadcasts that follow the outline of God Betrayed/Separation of Church and State: The Biblical Principles and the American Application. Those may be listened to by going to the “Audio Series on God Betrayed” page of this website. These broadcasts systematically analyze the subject of “Separation of church and state: the biblical principles and the American application.” Section IV of the series gives the true history of the First Amendment, not the inaccurate history presented by dominion theologists and blindly followed by many premillennialists and others. I give hard facts that cannot be denied; facts that most Christians have never read or heard.
Despite Jesus’ urging, the Pharisees and Sadducees refused to look at the evidence – including the historical evidence, facts, and history – in the Scriptures that would have proven to them that Jesus was the Messiah. Most modern day “Bible believing Christians” likewise have their eyes closed to true biblical teaching (concerning history, law, and theology), as well as the application of those and also history, law, and the application of Bible teaching in America.
Before we can get America straightened out, Christians must get their churches straightened out in every way. In order to straighten our churches out, individual Christians, families, and churches themselves must begin to walk in the Spirit according to knowledge, wisdom, and understanding in all the principles in the Word of God. One cannot hope to get America straightened out without first getting themselves, their families, and their churches in line with the Word of God.
God has called me to the ministry of helping churches who love the Lord and want to to please Him by operating according to New Testament principles instead of according to the principles for the Jewish religion laid out in the Old Testament. Most American churches have chosen to dishonor God by becoming state religious organizations through incorporation, corporation sole, unincorporated association, 501c3, etc. Many of those who have tried to honor God in this area are dishonoring Him in other ways. Ignorance (many times wilful), fear, pride, and greed dominate most of our Bible-believing churches.
I am involved with this issue because God called me into this ministry. I could be living a much quieter and materially richer life if I discarded the knowledge, understanding, and wisdom God has revealed to me through intense study over the last few years. However, such a life would not be peaceful since I would be refusing to serve my Savior according to His leading.
If those of you who have been following the same lies I followed for many years choose to continue in your futile efforts to return to the status of a nation under God, keep working. Churches, as they continue to operate in a manner displeasing to our Lord, will continue to sink deeper into heresy and apostasy, the number of people saved as a percentage will continue to decrease, churches will continue to become more dead spiritually, and America will continue to decline as it has for many years in spite of all the efforts of well-meaning “Christians.”
The following verse, although directly addressing the Jews, applies (although not perhaps to their salvation): “For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” Romans 10:2.
After we as Christians get ourselves and our churches straightened out, then maybe we can make a difference in America; that is, if it is not too late for America.
END
From: “Herbap@aol.com” <Herbap@aol.com>
To: Herbap@aol.com
Sent: Tuesday, September 1, 2009 11:08:35 AM
Subject: Dechristianizing America – Part Four — The Wake-Up Herald
The Wake-Up Herald
And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. Romans 13:11-14
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Robert McCurry, Editor & Publisher
September 1, 2009
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Dechristianizing America Rampage
Part Four
De`chris´tian`ize v. t. To turn from, or divest of, Christianity.
ram·page (rmpj) n: A course of violent, frenzied behavior or action.
“I am asking you to play your part, … to join in remaking this nation.” –Barack Obama In a Jan. 19, 2009, pre-inaugural speech. The Irish Examiner.com
Funny, isn’t it? If Christians talk about reconstructing America , putting all things under Christ, or exercising dominion, the media pundits panic and you hear all sorts of hysteria about “theocracy” and “Christian Taliban.” But when God-rejecting leftists talk about “remaking America,” and actually set about doing it—well, then it’s only “hope and change.”
The totalitarian reconstruction of America proceeds at a dizzying pace. It is, in Robert Knight’s words, “the rapid, brick-by-brick installation of a radical government-directed social order that will have dangerous implications now and for generations to come”. And, “Before our very eyes we are seeing government become Provider, Judge, and Possessor of All Authority. In short, government is becoming a secular god to which all will be called to kneel—or face sanctions”.
Robert Knight, Fighting for America ’s Soul: How Sweeping Change Threatens Our Nation, pp 9, 10.
“Tyranny … was in its origin secularism, a rule founded on man-made laws,” R. J. Rushdoony wrote. “This secularism is the religion of humanity, the most oppressive, dangerous, and persecuting of all cults, because it has no law beyond itself as a check to its lust for power.” ~The Nature of the American System ( Vallecito , CA : Ross House Books, 2001 ed.), 73.
Yes, we are talking about tyranny—an unprecedented, all-fronts campaign to transform the United States from a constitutional republic of free men and women into a socialist anthill controlled by an all-powerful, all-intrusive federal government. This has been in the works for a long time; but since the inauguration of Barack Obama, it has been raised to a whole new level of intensity. Robert Knight, Ibid
The Basic Problem
“What then is the basic problem? Not only is every Church a religious institution, but every state or social order is a religious establishment. Every state is a law order, and every law order represents an enacted morality, with procedures for the enforcement of that morality. Every morality represents a form of theological order, i.e., is an aspect and expression of religion. The church thus is not the only religious institution; the state is also a religious institution….The real issue is not between church and state, but is simply this; the state as a religious establishment has progressively disestablished Christianity as its law foundation, and, while professing neutrality, has in fact established humanism as the religion of the state.
When the religion of a people changes, its laws inevitably reflect that change and conform themselves to the new faith and the new morality. There has been deception on the part of the courts, by their profession of religious neutrality, as they have substituted one religion for another, humanism for Christianity. The basic reason, however, has been the theological collapse of the churches, and this has been true of all of them….This theological collapse led to the untenable belief in religious neutralism and to the surrender of Christian schools for statist education.
As a result humanism became the established religion of state and school, and, by infiltration, of the churches as well….Christianity is quite logically progressively excluded from state, school, and church and has a weak and scarcely tenable position in modern life. It (Christianity) probably lacks extensive and organized persecution in most countries because orthodox Christianity has become progressively weaker and less and less relevant.”
R. J. Rushdoony, Christianity & The State – pg.7-8
Anti-Christian Worldview
It is a worldview that is anti-Christian to the core. “When man, instead of God, becomes the measure of all things,” Knight says, “man will be worshipped at the same time as human life is cheapened … other human beings, such as unborn babies, can be seen as impediments to personal happiness.”
If there is no God, no judgment, no life after death, there remains only the here and now, with each one of us in existential isolation; and whatever you’re going to get, you’d better get it now. But ultimately the only ones who profit are the rulers of the state.
“The reason government wants to control health care,” Knight explains, “is that the government would assume literally the power of life and death over American families. Just the threat of withholding medical care is enough for many people to surrender other freedoms to the government. Such a system also reinforces the idea that government is God.”
Irrelevant Churches
America’s Christian heritage is both rich and deep. What most historians and educators refuse to acknowledge, our forebears understood clearly: it was mostly Christians and churches that formed and shaped the new land that became known as the United States of America .
For example, when discussing the brave exploits of the passengers on board the Mayflower, people seem to have forgotten that the voyage was mostly the endeavor of a single church congregation. And don’t forget that it was Pastor Jonas Clark’s male congregants who withstood British troops at Lexington and fired the very first of the shots heard ’round the world. The famous French historian, Alexis De Tocqueville, credited the pulpits and churches of Colonial America with inspiring America ‘s successful War for Independence and subsequent prosperity much more than its institutions of learning, halls of Congress, or industries of invention. From the very beginning, America ‘s Christians and pastors were intricately involved in the establishment and building of this republic.
It is no hyperbole to say that without the influence, sacrifice, dedication, blood, sweat, and tears of America ‘s early Christians, this country would not exist.
But what do we see today? We see pastors and church congregations who are, for the most part, totally ignorant of their own heritage and history. They have little or no understanding of the principles of Natural Law–something America ‘s founders knew almost by second nature (no pun intended). They seem to know next to nothing of the Biblical principles of liberty and government. All they seem to be able to do is regurgitate some mindless interpretation of Romans 13–an interpretation that could have been written by King George III or even Adolf Hitler.
Read my column regarding Romans 13.
Ignoring the great examples and exhortations of both Testaments, today’s Christians seem to have lazily latched onto a modern-day “divine right of kings” philosophy, through which they have become the pathetic slaves of arrogant and pompous political wolves dressed (barely) in the sheepskins of legitimacy.
Where are America ‘s watchmen on the wall? Where are the great stories of courage and commitment demonstrated by America ‘s founders that once emanated from church pulpits? How is it that today’s Christians know more about sports celebrities than they do America ‘s heroes? How is it that these lying, conniving, con artists called politicians can sucker church members as easily as they do the un-churched? How is it that Christians do not seem to recognize the devilish doctrines of socialism, fascism, elitism, or globalism for what they are? How can they be so easily manipulated? How is it that these corrupt politicians–who vote to kill unborn babies, merge America into internationalist and global entities, strip Americans of their God-given natural right of self defense, promote homosexual marriage, or allow America to lose its identity, culture, and heritage through unbridled illegal immigration–remain in “good standing” with any number of supposed “Christian” churches?
Even though there are more churches in America than anywhere else in the world, the pastors and Christians of this country have, for the most part, become completely irrelevant to preserving “the blessings of liberty”–or even fundamental Biblical principles, for that matter.
Churches used to be respected as lighthouses in communities: places free from the jaundiced juxtaposition of political correctness and avarice. Today’s churches are filled with both. Where once churches stood as guardians of truth, they have now become progenitors of error. Where once preachers stood in the similitude of Elijah and John the Baptist, they now grovel in the image of Joel Osteen and Rick Warren. Sunday Schools were once bastions of Bible teaching; today they are glorified coffee shops and playgrounds. The modern Christian home cannot even disciple its own children: how can it then be expected to “make disciples of all nations”?
I repeat, the modern American church has, for the most part, become irrelevant.
It is little wonder that more and more people are losing interest in the organized church. Instead of finding Christian love and kindness, they find the same kind of gossip, slander, petty bickering, favoritism, and selfishness that they might find at any office water cooler. Instead of hearing a prophet of God declare the Word of God, they hear a milquetoast minister meekly musing the latest self-help book.
The complete irrelevance of today’s organized church in America to the preservation of Christian liberty and constitutional government is especially disconcerting to those of us who still have freedom’s fire burning in our souls. Where do we go for respite and instruction?
I tell you the truth: there are hundreds of thousands of patriotic, freedom-minded Christians all over America who have had it “up to here” with these spineless social clubs called churches! They are tired of petrified pastors groveling before corrupt politicians and businessmen. They hunger for truth, and they are not finding it in most organized churches.
These people are not looking to be entertained or pampered. They do not care about social standing or making “business contacts.” They don’t care which church has the “most exciting” youth program, or how many softball teams it has. They want a church where the pastor isn’t afraid to speak truth to power and take a stand for liberty. And, unfortunately, such churches are getting harder and harder to find.
In fact, I submit that the true church is not “emerging”; it is “submerging.” As in totalitarian regimes all over the world, where there are basically two types of churches: the organized State-approved church, where people who worship the State go to put on a religious show; and the underground church, where real Christians go to worship God with honest, like minded believers.
The “underground” church in America is not totally underground–yet. But the schism is taking place rapidly.
Chuck Baldwin , August 25, 2009, Covenant News
“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Prov 29:2
Wake-up, Pastors! Wake-Up, Christians!
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The Wake-Up Herald is published by Robert McCurry. The publication is designed to exalt the true God of the Bible, the Lord Jesus Christ, and inform, inspire, and challenge its readers regarding biblical truth and real-life issues. The contents are the sole responsibility of Robert McCurry and do not represent or speak for or on behalf of any other person or group. There is no subscription charge. The publication is a ministry of faith and dependent on the contributions of its readers. Contributions are not tax-deductible. Send all correspondence to: Robert McCurry, 605 Moore Rd Newnan , GA 30263 or herbap@aol.com Remove? Send reply with “remove” in Subject line.
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