Strong Man Of God Blog

          Picking up where I left off at the end of last week’s post,¹ it is very sad indeed, that the Lord Jesus Christ must bring severe judgment upon His Church to punish sin including that of racism.  Concerning racism, His end as well during the course of His judgment is to potentially move proud and stubborn professed Christian conservative white evangelical men to love their brethren of color and vice versa as He has commanded in His Word (John 13:34-35).²  The love Christ commands is not any old kind of human origin, but unique to the Triune God and apparent when displayed (1 John 4:7-16)!  Born again Christians are equipped with God’s love and only fail in it through sin.

          As is widely known, we sinful human beings are creatures of conditioning and habit.  Despite the plainly written commandment of Christ repeated by Him and His apostles that those of us who become His “born again” followers are to love each other as He set the example (John 3:1-8, 15:12, 17; 1 John 4:20-21, NKJV), coming to salvation in freewill just as we are it is easy to resist being transformed by the mind “renewing” work and “regeneration” “of the Holy Spirit” comfortably clinging to the way we have always operated in culturally conditioned and habitual sinful thinking, attitudes, manner of speaking as well as deeds (Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 5:16-26; Titus 3:1-8, NKJV).

          The foregoing would have certainly been the experience of any number of authentic European Christian colonists that came to this land with the culturally ingrained arrogance of racial superiority along with those in largest number practicing a counterfeit manmade form of Christianity that embraced and fostered it toward the indigenous peoples they encountered and later, West Africans brought in.  This would help to explain how loveless racism so easily manifested itself and remained intact in toleration and practice by the vast majority of professed white American Christians for over four centuries to this hour including among those identifying as conservative evangelicals.

          Bitterness as a reaction in the truly saved objects of white racial bigotry and discrimination can and do offer up the same resistance to the Holy Spirit’s renewing work bringing Him grief as well (Ephesians 4:30-32).  All of this suggests intentionality to abandon one’s own sinful way however derived to fully submit to the will of Christ taught in Scripture and empowered by the Holy Spirit as a matter of new conditioning and habit (Romans 8:1-14, 12:9-21; 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, 5:17)!  When we submit to the Holy Spirit, now, the unique and awesome love of God is able to display, fill and be the controlling influence in our hearts; enabling us to love God and one another as Christ wills. 

          As the apostle Paul makes plain, the love of God is the uppermost Christian inner quality and outworking motive for service (1 Corinthians 13:1-3).  It is infinitely superior to and better than sin tainted, naturally selfish human love.  He teaches the love originating from God “suffers long and is kind;” it “does not envy” nor “parade itself” (as in narcissistic exhibitionism), “is not puffed up” (arrogant), “does not behave rudely” or “seek its own.”  God’s love “is not provoked (easily incited), thinks no evil” (keeps score as grudges); “does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth.”  It also “bears,” “believes,” “hopes” and “endures all things;” “never fails…,” (1 Corinthians 13:4-13, NKJV).

          If it is true “love never fails” as the great apostle writes, then, the allowing of loveless racism to arise, take root and endure centuries within the American Church is the failure to love with God’s love of guilty professed white Christians as the original fathers, embittered objects and the descendants of both until now!  For far too long professed Christians from every stripe have couched racism mostly in terms of rights, privileges, advantages and opportunities granted or denied in discrimination.³  But Christ too, from the beginning and consistent with His New Testament teaching frames racism as the failure to love as He exemplified in all disobedience and sin requiring repentance for His forgiveness!⁴  

          Thus, conservative white evangelicals in the lead can keep on making racism mainly about acts of discrimination supposedly slowly diminishing as evidence of progress or understand Christ is concerned first and foremost about the blatant disobedience to His command for Christians to love each other as God displayed in Him (Romans 5:6-8).⁵  The same goes for Christians of color as objects of racial bigotry and discrimination who cultivate bitterness as their chosen response rather than forgiveness with loving rebuke if the opportunity presents itself (Matthew 18:15-35).  However, destruction awaits either party since loving one another as Christ loved us is not optional; an entering “by the narrow gate” and “difficult” “way” leading to “life” “few” “find,” (Matthew 7:13-14, NKJV).⁶

1 Read the November 5, 2023 post, The Little Book, under the category, Bible Prophecy.

2 See the September 24, 2023 post, Racism In Christ’s Church A No-No, under the category, Instruction.

3 Flying in the face of God’s love the apostle Paul describes, this explains why guilty selfish hearted professed white Christians are not eager to engage with their brothers of
   color  in  Christ because of the fear of having and unwillingness to share.  I write about this reality keeping it real with young black Americans in a November 29, 2015 post,
   When The Glory Comes, under the category, Glory To God!

4 Here  is  where  the  rubber meets the road as far as biblical Christianity centered in the love of God through relationship with Him is concerned versus the dead efforts and
   works  of  counterfeit  manmade  Christianity  as  religion.  The  love  of God the apostle Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 cannot, has not and will not be displayed by
   spiritually  dead  Christian  religionists because it is actualized by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5).  If you do not have the love of God in you as a professed Christian, the Lord
   calls you to repent to be saved or return to Him.  Watch our ongoing Strong Man Of God Online Rally, Return To The Lord, on YouTube to learn more.

5 As I write in The Scourge Of Racism, loving each other as Christians in the Self-denying example of Christ is exceedingly more than toleration (see book pages 47 and 59)!
   Also,  with  a  “fervent love” for each other, acts of discrimination that harms a brother in Christ are quickly reduced (1 Peter 4:8, NKJV).  The book can be purchased in this
   Ministry’s Web Site Stores including the Strong Man Store, all major internet booksellers and brick and mortar bookstores.  View the short book trailer.

6 Among  this  few  are  aspiring  strong  men of God in the image of Christ I am blessed of the Lord to write about in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics.  It is
   available in the Hard or Soft Cover or E-Book Editions in the Strong Man Store, all major internet booksellers and brick and mortar bookstores.

          The Scourge of Racism is purposely a short and to the point book since it was the extension of a shorter newsletter article.¹  However, I have kept the content short even in its update at the leading of the Holy Spirit because He has patterned it after “the little book” in Revelation 10 (NKJV).  Time is also short and professed Christians do not need a lengthy treatise on what we already know to be the history and reality of the sin of racism in the Church.  We need what God has provided through me in this little book: a direct, truthful and prophetic confrontation with the problem of racism in the Church and what He wills to resolve it complete with a warning of the consequences for refusing to obey!

          The seventy-eight page little book the Lord led me to write, of course, does not compare in scale of magnitude weight to the prophetic content of the “little book open” in the hand of a “mighty angel” that appears to the apostle John.  So weighty is the book’s content, the angel cries out as “a lion roars” and in response “seven thunders uttered their voices.”  John understood them, but Heaven forbid him to write down what they said (Revelation 10:1-4, NKJV).  After hearing the angel solemnly swear by God the Creator “that there should be delay no longer” in bringing about His foretold future, John is instructed to take “the little book” from the hand of the angel (Revelation 10:5-9, NKJV).²

          Obeying the voice that spoke to him from Heaven, the apostle of Christ “took the little book out of the angel’s hand and ate it.”  In similitude to the prophet Ezekiel’s experience, John too, found the Word given “was as sweet as honey in” his “mouth.”  Unlike Ezekiel, however, John’s stomach became “bitter” or upset from the Word following the sweetness it had in his mouth as the voice from Heaven had warned him.  Then, he was told, ‘“You must prophesy again about many peoples, nations, tongues, and kings,’” just as Ezekiel was sent with His message to Israel (Ezekiel 2:6-3:4; Revelation 10:10-11, NKJV).  Revelation 11:1-22:5 is the prophetic content of the little book John ate.

          While far less weighty in scale than the content of the little book given to the apostle John, the little book I was led by the Holy Spirit to write to the Church of Jesus Christ in America is no less important since it is His message.  Indeed, the words on the front cover of my little book from the Lord, “Perhaps A Terminal Appeal To The Church” are there to convey the seriousness and urgency of its instruction and exhortations in these latter days when prophetically significant events are suddenly and rapidly occurring such as what happened in Israel October 7^th.³  Hear me or not, as a called and gifted watchman/prophet to the Church, I serve at the Lord’s pleasure (Ezekiel 33:1-9)!

          Truly, professed Christian white, then black leaders and adult men of other hues who call themselves conservative evangelicals within His Church are the first audience for the little book the Lord gave me because they are supposedly “people of The Book.”  For most of the last four centuries conservative white evangelicals--devoted to evangelism, the largest in number and loudest on select moral issues, have been a dominant force in the American Church.  Even so, the sin of racism has not been a pressing moral issue for them and has been left largely in place with only some occasional impotent lip service addressing it in recent times because it is so widely tolerated and practiced.⁴

          That a sin so wretchedly obvious as racism could be openly advocated in history and in many cases clung to by guilty men professing such devotion to Christ, demonstrates how with “craftiness” and ease the deceiver does his work in willing selfish hearts.⁵  For just as Satan drew Eve away from God’s commandment through the lusts of her heart and mind, so, he has done among men that regularly spoke (and speak) otherwise sound words, but their minds on racism were (are) “corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ,” (Genesis 3:1-6; 2 Corinthians 11:2-4, NKJV).  That simplicity being the truth in the Gospel, fidelity to Him and “the whole counsel of God,” (Acts 20:17-27, NKJV).

          Because racism is sin and not just a moral or social justice issue men can get to when they please or deem it important, the Lord with longsuffering over the centuries has been seeking for those tolerating and practicing it in His Church to repent!⁶  Repentance from the sin of racism is not negotiable as no sin is that Christ died for on the cross at Calvary (1 Corinthians 15:3).  In the little book He gave me to eat, I write with the sweetness of joy in the righteousness and truth of God’s Word concerning the sin of racism as well as the hopeful outcomes if conservative white evangelicals in the majority pay heed.  There is also the sadness of knowing it will have finally taken the Lord’s severe judgment to move these men to do right in His sight--if at all--as the curtain falls on this age.

1 The  Scourge  Of  Racism,  Copyright  2023,  ODCM  Publishing  Division,  Portland,  OR, p. 7.   Purchase  the  book  in  this  Ministry’s  Web  Site  Stores  including  the
   Strong Man Store, all major internet booksellers and brick and mortar bookstores.

2 Read the February 6, 2022 post, The Divine Delay, under the category, Bible Prophecy.

3 See the October 29, 2023 post, Hear O Israel And The Church, under the category, Bible Prophecy.

4 Read the September 24, 2023 post, Racism In Christ’s Church A No-No and the related one on October 8, 2023, Racism A Reason For Church Judgment, both under the
   category,  Instruction.  In  the latter post, I quote leading white conservative evangelical, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr., from his book, The Gathering Storm, Secularism, Culture
   And  The  Church,  Copyright  2020,  Nelson  Books,  Nashville, and do so again here regarding his observation about many contemporary churches (and by default, their
   leaders): “These churches have sacrificed biblical fidelity on the altar of cultural relevance; they are willing to discard biblical Christianity in order to be ‘on the right side of
   history,’” p. 192.  This is exactly what conservative white evangelicals have also been doing with the sin of racism until now!

5 For  this  cause, the Bible holds up how Christ, the Strong Man of God, got the victory over Satan and Christian men that aspire to be strong men of God in His image, can
   get  it  too!   I  eagerly  write  about  Him  in  my  book,  The  Strong  Man  Of  God:  Back  To  Basics.   It  is  available  in  the  Hard or Soft Cover or E-Book Editions in the
   Strong Man Store, all major internet booksellers and brick and mortar bookstores.

6 One  reason proud professed Christian white men resist thoroughly repenting from the sin of racism before the Lord is they believe they are doing blacks and other minori-
   ties  a favor we do not deserve at their expense.  However, the favor being done in repentance is by the Lord as He extends undeserved forgiveness of sin to the guilty!   I
   urge you, sir, to watch our ongoing Strong Man Of God Online Rally, Return To The Lord, on YouTube to be reminded how sweet it is to be forgiven by God.