Barbara and I have been watching a series on Rick Joyner’s Prophetic Perspectives entitled “The Founders Series.”  Here, historian David Barton and Pastor Brad Cummings are rehearsing the Christian foundations of our Republic, the United States of America.  Dating from well before the first colonies, the two cite the conditions in Great Britain and Europe that motivated persecuted Christians to emigrate here to begin with.  It is remarkable to learn of the character of these people, and of those who are responsible for forming the freest nation on earth, virtually every aspect of which was derived from The Holy Bible. 

Barbara and I have watched in both awe and in sadness as the presenters have chartered the course of America’s founding, during which time they are also explaining what has happened to us since.  Our illustrious history has been largely erased by those who are anti-God and anti-Bible.  And here we are now, a nation with yet a form of religion, but having denied its power; a mainly secular people, a country where the One who gave us our freedom has been, for the most part, banished from the public square.  

While there have been forces at work to this end since the beginning, still the United States was, until the last 50-60 years, a Christian nation.  As we sat at dinner last night, we both recalled what was a more or less innocent time when the two of us were growing up.  Christianity, or at the least a remnant of it, still pervaded our land.  But all that is gone now, and, as Barton and Cummings have pointed out, so much of the responsibility rests at the foot of the church.  

I cannot tell of the details, but Barton cited several major incidents where the church backed away from challenges it should have fought and won.  The result was–and I have been aware of this for some time–a church much divorced from public life, more or less confined to its four walls and leaving such culture-shaping things like science, art, and government to the secularists who happily took control.  There is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum.  What we as Christians vacate, Satan and his cohorts will readily occupy.  

We now live in what some have called a “Post-Christian Era.”  While I am not so sure this is absolutely so, it is mostly so.  Still, I think the church is alive and well in the U.S., but there is no doubt as to who is in control–speaking in the natural.  There is no question as to whose voice is the loudest, and it is not the church.  

I say that the church is the hope of the world; specifically, the church is the hope of the United States. It seems to me that in what has been rightly deemed “The Cycle of Nations,” the U.S. is on the verge, perhaps irreversibly so, of falling back into bondage again.  And, as it is written, “to whom much is given much is required,” what is to come, unless abated, will be far worse than what our forefathers came here to escape.  

For sure, Christ Jesus is our hope–but who carries that message?  The church.  

It has been said that you can’t legislate morality; but I believe you can.  But it has to be by moral legislators that morality is embedded in a nation’s laws.  This was very much characteristic for most of our country’s history.  And how do legislators become themselves moral?  As men and women who first of all are disciples of Christ, who then become our leaders.  This, of course, is true for the justices in our land as well as those who occupy the office of Chief Executive.  

I feel funny writing such things as I am at the bottom of the scale as to knowing our nation’s Christian history–though I am likely far more educated on it than a vast majority of my fellow brothers and sisters.  I admit that I have more or less shunned any involvement in what we would call politics–perhaps government would be a better word.  I vote, yes; but even then, aside from national elections I have not paid much attention to what goes on on a state or local level.  So it is that I am a guilty party; it is I, along with my brothers and sisters, who have allowed things to deteriorate to the degree they have.  It is I who have been largely silent while a tiny percentage of Americans, perhaps 3%, have shaped culture in the negative.  

I am not advocating anything in particular; meaning, that I should run for public office or that the church should some how abandon her primary mission of proclaiming the gospel.  To the contrary, what I am saying is that the church should rise up and be who and what God has called her to be.  And that, my friend, is “the pillar and support of the truth.”  She, like her Lord, has “come into the world to bear witness to the truth.”  Her voice–mine, that is–should be the loudest, the more predominant, the most pervasive.  We are called to “expose” or “reprove” the evil works of darkness, not allow them to run roughshod over people whom Christ died for.  

The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God; it is this that changes the hearts and minds of men.  Yet changed, these are the ones–you and me–who are to go on to teach in our schools, own businesses, sit as judges, legislate in the halls of Congress, establish orphanages and hospitals and universities.  It was this way once, and an entire nation was “discipled”–it was.  And it needs to be again.  

Our first job is to share this gospel, to participate in the salvation of others.  But there is more.  We must teach these to obey Jesus Christ.  But there is more.  When evil rears its ugly head, we must be the first to reprove it, to call it what it is, and call those out who are advocating it, as well as those who are captivated by it.  But there is more.  We are to speak the truth in love……all the time.  We are to be truth-tellers, bold ones.  While the truth can be, and often is, very uncomfortable, it must be told.  If a thing be wrong, someone–meaning us, Christians–must say something.  

I understand that not all will be saved, but they can be swayed.  

There is the struggle of the ages going on as I write; not only here, but in all parts of the world.  In the end, we win.  In the meantime, we must keep the upper hand.  There is no doubt that the other side has the upper hand at this present period in history, at least in the United States.  And we may have to go through some stuff to get back on track.  Recognizing the fight we are in should encourage us to be who and what God intends and what I have been writing about:  The Triumphant Church in Our Time. It is she–or, we rather–that are the hope of the world.