The Scourge Of Racism
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One of the most impressive things about the Man, Christ Jesus, is that He is absolutely serious about living to please and do His Father’s will.1 He is the loving Son of God and acts like it; living as a true Disciple of His Father (Isaiah 50:4-6; John 5:19-23, 8:48-49, 10:30-39, 12:48-50)! Sadly, the same cannot be said for many professed Christian men that relate to the Father and the Lord Jesus mostly from a detached distance. In my book, “The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics,” I teach with the Lord’s leading that aspiring strong men of God in His image are loving sons of God and Christ’s disciples forever!2 As I write in this edited 2010 Commentary, living the faith in real life is about living these roles out now, in spite of the hardships, criticisms and persecution that it provokes.
Originally Published July 2010
I have lost count of the times I have been persecuted with the occasional open, but mostly subtle verbal assaults I receive for seeking to live out biblical Christianity in real life. No longer to my surprise after over thirty years, the persecution I receive is primarily from professed Christians who have found ways to rationalize and justify compromises with or just to boldly corrupt God's Word. I am knocked as the proverbial "goody two shoes"3 that makes all of the contemporary, go with the flow folk including even members of my own family angry because I will not get with the program (Matthew 10:34-39). After all, everybody is doing it. Um, where have I heard that before?4
I take a hard look at the lives of my critics and find absolutely no evidence whatsoever that they have more joy, peace and experience of God's genuine blessing in their lives than I do. Instead, what I do find is a whole lot of heartbreak and needless sorrows because contrary to the narcissistic lie made popular on much of Christian television, God does not exist just to make us happy, healthy, wealthy and whole. But even worse, so many have actually invented their own god and jesus that allows them to do anything they want including sin without consequence.5 As a result, many professed Christian lives and homes mirror those of people that have not professed Christ.
As He made His way toward the city of Jerusalem just days before His crucifixion, the Lord Jesus saw it and wept over it. He grieved because the religious leaders and people were doing everything they could to bring peace to the nation, but they were rejecting Him who was their peace. The end result would be Jerusalem’s and their destruction as occurred in 70 AD (Luke 19:41-44). With the Lord's heart I weep today for many professed Christians and fellow pastors that are doing the same exact thing Israel was with their made up and corrupted forms of Christianity. In the process, they reject the Jesus of the Bible and destroy themselves.
Christianity is not a religion or set of spiritual and moral principles to live by if you like them. It is the authentic, in time response of the living God to our need for deliverance from His righteous wrath toward our rebellion. For what compared to eternity has been a brief historical period, He has given us time to repent and believe on His Son, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins, was buried and raised to life so we might be forgiven and reconciled back to God. Those that do so, become the adopted sons of God who zealously love Him and begin an incredible journey that overflows with the gracious blessings of our Father even in times of difficulty (Galatians 4:6).
Christianity does not make all of our problems and troubles go away. Indeed, as His disciples, we are guaranteed to have tribulation and persecution as we pass through this life on our way to glory (Luke 9:20-26; Acts 14:21-22; 2 Timothy 3:12). However, the Christ of biblical Christianity gives us the spiritual resources to face and overcome this world's troubles through faith in Him (John 16:33). As a result of the very real costs of devotion and suffering for His sake in a fallen, hostile world, the Lord challenges those that would be His disciples to count the cost before signing up to follow Him (Luke 14:25-35).
The aspiring strong man of God in the image of Jesus Christ takes the words, instructions and commandments of our Lord to heart. With a sold out heart in all zeal he seeks to please Him and do His will. He does not twist and corrupt His Master's program to fit his own. Instead, he lives out his faith in and applies the truth of God's Word to every life circumstance he faces. Love, marriage, parenting, extended family, other relationships, the job, athletic fields, politics, social issues etc. are all arenas he lives out his biblical faith without compromise or corruption. Is that you, sir? Please stop calling yourself a Christian if it is not and you are unwilling to repent (Matthew 7:21-23)! The risen, living Christ continues His cry among American churches, "Who is on the Lord's side?"
1 See my January-February 2017 three-part series, Jesus, Son Of Man (and especially part-two posted February 5, 2017 ), under the category, The Cause, to explore
this point further.
2 The book is available at all major internet booksellers, by order at your favorite brick and mortar bookstore or in the Strong Man Store.
3 This is actually the first instance I used this derogatory phrase in commentaries or blog posts since 2010. I decided not to remove it after having already used it in the
January 28, 2018 post, Character Is Required Of Christian Men, under the category, Instruction, because it fully captures the words and attitude of no small number of
those toward me I have encountered over the years from among professed Christian religionists especially.
4 Read the August 26, 2018 post, Worldly Peer Pressure, under the category, Call To Repent.
5 See and/or download the sobering free one page document, The Gods Of Cultural Christianity in the Strong Man Store.
The Holy Spirit is absolutely critical to the life and perseverance of Christians in these latter days as He has been from the beginning. All that God allows going forward separates the wheat from the chaff; the faithful from the unfaithful so that immediately before the full outpouring of His wrath upon the disobedient, the surviving tested, faithful and true Christian remnant are glorified with the bypass of death to experience instantaneous transformation to immortality (1 Corinthians 15:51-52; 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)! They proceed from life to life by the agency of the Holy Spirit who indwells them and through whom they persevered in hope to that glorious moment.
Be reminded again in this edited 2012 blog repost the Lord led me to write that Christianity and the Christian life is no mere religion of manmade invention. God has marvelously revealed the divine reality and Kingdom through the life and work of His Son, Jesus Christ; work that saves and baptizes men into the life giving, dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit (John 1:1-34)! With all thanksgiving and praise, I rejoice in the triune God for having become a partaker in the divine nature and what that has meant for me in a journey that approaches forty years (2 Peter 1:2-4)! I am not worthy of this highest of honors to contain in this earthen vessel the exceedingly great treasure of the great “I AM,” (Exodus 3:13-14; John 8:48-59, 2 Corinthians 4:7, NKJV). Bless our God this Thanksgiving, you saints!
Originally Posted July 29, 2012
It is not just for some small and insignificant reason that the apostle Paul commands members of the church at Thessalonica, “Do not quench the Spirit,” (1 Thessalonians 5:19, NKJV). The Holy Spirit is the Christian’s source of new birth (John 3:1-8), eternal, spiritual life (John 6:63), instruction (John 14:26) and power (Acts 1:8) in Christ. Among the analogies of the Spirit’s presence and work in the believer are “rivers of living water” (John 7:37-39) and “fire” (Acts 2:1-4)! The Spirit of God is as elemental to the spiritual life of a Christian as oxygen is to the body. No Holy Spirit, no sign of divine life or salvation (Romans 8:5-9). This is also made clear in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics.
As I was taught from the Word by the Holy Spirit in my spiritual infancy, so, I have faithfully taught: the Christian life is a supernatural life that He leads, controls and empowers! The Holy Spirit must do this or we cannot be Christians much less fulfill the will and instruction of Christ that His disciples do the miraculous works He did and in greater number (John 14:12-14). The Lord instructs His apostles (minus Judas Iscariot) that obedience out of love for Him would pave the way for the Holy Spirit to be sent to them as a Helper (John 14:15-17, 16:5-15).
The Holy Spirit equips us to do the will of Christ. If we abide in Christ by faith, we will live and bear fruit in our service to Him through the Spirit. The Father will even prune us to bear more fruit. But if one will not abide--having quenched the Spirit and being fruitless, the Father cuts him as a withered branch from Christ the true vine and he is thrown into eternal fire on the day of judgment (John 15:1-8; Revelation 20:11-15).
All of the foregoing being true, how is it that for the majority of history after the close of the apostolic period, increasingly, the religious educated elite have attempted to dam up the living water and quench the fire of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers and the churches contrary to the apostle Paul’s command? They have done this with high sounding academic pronouncements and writings that in effect render the Holy Spirit a back seat participant and servant of the activities of outwardly pious, but flesh driven men practicing religion. They declare the Spirit does not talk to men, do miracles through them or still empower all of the New Testament listed spiritual gifts anymore.
This gives another insight into why many Western churches are stagnant, declining and dying with this kind of teaching going on. As I recently wrote, it is to the glory of God that the Third Person of the triune God has worked around human religious folly to accomplish His mission in the Gospel anyway (see Praise For The Almighty God, September 13, 2015 under the category, “Glory To God!")!
Moreover, in a grand display of mercy, the Holy Spirit has also periodically (and strategically) in history poured out renewing fire on the churches in the wake of anointed preaching by men such as Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in what were called Great Awakenings nearly three centuries ago. And while there may have been some other breakouts of revival here and there since including the 1906 Azusa Street event in Los Angeles that has given rise to the fast growing Charismatic Movement with its accompanying spiritual sensationalism and abuses, parching spiritual drought and cold deadness otherwise grip so many of the churches large and small today.
No human effort can remedy this; only Holy Spirit empowered renewal can bring about the drought busting rains and rekindled fire of revival Christians and our dying churches need. It is time we begin to earnestly seek Him in all confession, repentance and heartfelt petition (Nehemiah 9:1-37; Psalm 51:1-17; Acts 4:23-31).
In being revived, you will be able to understand the prophetic urgency of the strong man of God message and cause. In being revived, surely you will rise up from your religious diddling and aspire to become strong men and great women of God. In being revived, now you can see again the awesome greatness of our God in battle array ready to work through us in all signs, wonders and displays of power to engage and frustrate the enemy as did our Lord instead of the other way around! In being revived, you will understand all of the New Testament spiritual gifts are intended by God to enable His sons to serve His purposes in the Church until Christ returns.
After the many weeks of posts calling His wayward sheep to repentance and warning of their peril in His continuing judgment without it, the Lord would have me deliver a word of encouragement to all of us His imperfect, but faithful remnant. Just because we may not in the Holy Spirit’s convicting work have a felt need for repentance from some egregious transgression, sin or iniquity, the faithful know our stuff is not perfect before the Lord. This is as the apostle Paul also honestly assesses about himself while asserting and exemplifying the determined heart of the Lord’s faithful in Philippians 3:12-16; even every aspiring strong man and great woman of God in His image!1
Indeed, our Ministry’s latest Strong Man Of God Online Rally, Return To The Lord, is a help to all Christians not just those who have strayed from Him purposely in disobedience and rebellion.2 By way of reminder, according to Webster’s Dictionary faithful is defined as “Supportive: loyal; worthy of trust or belief; consistent with fact.” This suggests faithful persons are devoted, steadfast, trustworthy and reliable. God is perfectly faithful as is His Son, Jesus Christ (Deuteronomy 7:9a; Hosea 11:12; Matthew 17:1-5; Revelation 1:4-5, 3:14, 19:11-16)! God commends fallen men like Daniel and Moses who were faithful to Him, but only His Son was perfectly so (Daniel 6:1-23, 9:20-23; Hebrews 3:1-6).3
To be faithful in God’s eyes is first and foremost to love Him with obedience to His Word which like Him, is faithful (Deuteronomy 7:9b-11; Psalm 119:86a, 138)! Consistent with the forgoing, the Lord Jesus Christ charges all of His followers to display our “love” for Him by keeping His “commandments,” (John 14:15, 21-24, NKJV). There is no exception for any disciple on this; all professed disciples of Christ are to be faithful to Him in love through obedience even to the death following His example (Matthew 10:16-39, John 15:9-11; Philippians 2:5-8; Revelation 2:10, 12:11). Also, we are expected to be faithful in all of our service to the Lord (Matthew 24:45-51, 25:14-30).
As clear as the definition and biblical instruction are, many unfaithful professed Christian Americans still dishonestly insist they are faithful. Some of these, of course, are self-deluded “talkers” following their own way and calling it Christian as religionist impostors and de facto apostates (Titus 1:10-16, NKJV). The largest number of unfaithful professed Christians and most dangerous to the faithful now, and going forward because of deceit are those who obey the Lord and His Word only in some things while claiming an equal standing and reward with them He exposes, condemns and warns of His rejection in advance (Matthew 7:13-29; Luke 6:43-49; Revelation 22:12-17).4
Unfaithful professed Christians are so in an unfaithful time with wickedness of every kind and “evil men and impostors” growing “worse and worse” as foretold (2 Timothy 3:1-13, NKJV). Even so, the Lord would have His faithful be encouraged since this is not the first time in human history this state of affairs has existed. King David in Psalm 12:1-7 called on the Lord concerning the shrinkage of His faithful and was assured of His action as the unfaithful rebels in their wickedness dramatically increased.5 Truly, he closed his Psalm giving a precise report of our times when he wrote: “The wicked prowl on every side, when vileness is exalted among the sons of men,” (Psalm 12:8, NKJV).
The priests and people of the returned from Babylon Jewish exiles were giving up on serving God to join the unfaithful because it seemed to them His actions to check the wicked were non-existent since they were calling “the proud blessed,” watching the evildoers do their thing and “even tempt God” without consequence (Malachi 3:13-15, NKJV). Many professed Christians feel the same way today and are walking away from the faith. However, the faithful, “those who fear the LORD and who mediate on His name,” encourage one another in the knowledge of their God whose ear is attuned to and has a “book of remembrance” written of them (Malachi 3:16, NKJV).
They knew as should every faithful Christian that God was testing all through judgment to reveal the content of their hearts and separate out the righteous for Himself (Malachi 3:17; 1 Peter 4:12-19).6 They also knew and appreciated as should every professed Christian that God’s apparent present inaction toward the wicked is His longsuffering grace and forbearance at work to save among the willing for His day of salvation, reversal and reward as He has done with us (Malachi 3:18; 2 Peter 3:1-9).7 Finally, knowing God’s perfect character the faithful remnant among the returned exiles of Israel as should faithful Christians knew God does not idly threaten, but will fulfill the day of His fiery wrath in vengeance and destroy the wicked (Psalm 58:9-11; Malachi 4:1-3; 2 Peter 3:10-18).
1 As the Lord leads, I teach aspiring strong men and great women of God in the image of Christ in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics about His requirement of humility He constructs in us which means we are always keeping it real about our current imperfection. You can pick up a Hard or Soft Cover Edition of my book as well as companion Strong Man Of God Men’s Group Study and Great Woman Of God Women’s Group Study in the Strong Man Store, among internet booksellers and brick and mortar bookstores.
2 View the 30 minute video on our Strong Man Of God Online Rally YouTube Channel at https://youtu.be/uxU9KD4_kuY.
3 As great as Daniel and Moses were in their faithfulness to God, neither man was without sin before Him (Romans 3:23). The glory of God is perfection which not even faith- fulness by a sinner can attain as a saving work. Only Christ came into and left the world perfect! Daniel, Moses, all other Old Testament saints and now, us under the New Covenant are saved by grace through faith alone (Romans 3:21-31). His faithfulness is displayed and constructed in us by the Lord after being saved (Romans 8:29; Gala- tians 5:22-23)!
4 This latter group includes a great many pastors, elders and other leaders among the churches as well as in Christian media. A grave example of their rebellion upheld by deceit is support for and putting women into leadership over men as pastors, teachers, worship and ministry leaders in open defiance of the Lord’s written commandments and instructions (1 Corinthians 11:2-16, 14:34-40; 1 Timothy 2:8-3:16). Read my two-part post beginning September 14, 2014, Partial Obedience, under the category, Call To Repent. Without repentance now, they will not escape God’s severe punishment!
5 See especially the opening paragraph of the June 5, 2016 post, The Day Of Vengeance, under the category, Bible Prophecy.
6 Read the two-part post beginning June 7, 2020, Days Of Separation, under the category, Bible Prophecy. Faithfulness is and will continue to be painful as some of the faith- ful God in sovereignty will allow the wicked to martyr as in the recent mass shooting at the Nashville Christian school and some He removes from the earth through death in various other ways before the even greater foretold evil times arrive (Psalm 116:15; Isaiah 57:1-2; Matthew 24:9-22).
7 God knows how hard it can be in an unfaithful time to discern between the righteous who are faithful to Him and the wicked professors of faith who are not from whatever cause. This difficulty will end forever in the day of His salvation!
I am reposting this blog and those that follow the rest of this month for the original, still relevant reasons I stated back then. I did not name any specific group that held to the idea that God gives predetermined men the faith they need to believe the Gospel and be saved forever, but do so now to sound the alarm as this group (splintered as the rest of professing Christianity) in the main is attempting to pass off their theological system as biblical. Calvinists trace themselves back to European reformer John Calvin and have taken his original teachings to places it is not clear he would have gone in the development of their theological system with the acronym, TULIP.
As the Lord has led, I have been writing a lot about His testing of saints and sinners. Christians new to the faith especially have to be asking “why does God need to test men since He already knows what is in our hearts?” The question is valid with multiple answers in which I will focus on Christians and our faith momentarily. In general, though, while God knows our hearts, we often do not. Also, we easily deceive ourselves thinking we are better and stronger than we are. God tests men’s hearts to prove the content He knows of that we may be judged accordingly, see our true state and repent or praise Him for His work in us (Psalm 7:9-17, 17:3-5; John 3:16-21)!
The teaching gift’s aim with the leading of the Holy Spirit is to give men the ability to explain and make plain the Word of God for the simplest hearts. Quickly straying from the reform intent of Martin Luther, European Protestants set aside the simple Gospel and the precious teachings of salvation revealed to the apostles by the Holy Spirit in Scripture and began inventing all manner of heretical and complicated schemes they attempted to support with Scripture. In that free for all and volatile environment Catholics and Protestants were killing folk who did not hold to their respective theological positions. Even so, the schemes and divisions have just kept coming to this very hour.
This post was originally made as an illustrative application of a two-part 2012 blog entitled, “The Faith That Saves” under the category, The Faith.1 The faith of my Christian slave forefathers that came forth out and in spite of the mesh of oppressive confusion bound up in Christianity the religion of men practiced American style,2 is a last days marvel of immense proportions. Clearly, the deliberate providence of God was at work to draw them to Himself (John 6:44-45; 12:32), but also in His foreknowledge, the fertile heart ground for the seed of His Word to bear fruit unto faith when preached in truth was in them (Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23; Romans 10:6-17).
My West African forefathers as with all other Gentiles were not punished for having no faith at all, but faith that was misplaced for example, in ancestor worship, idols and other false deities (Acts 17:16-23; 1 Corinthians 12:2; Galatians 4:8). Having been failed by those departed or not gods that could not help and with no hope from any other source, slaves that did, responded to the Gospel and the true God with the same and even greater devotion of faith than they had previously accorded what was false in their native land (Acts 17:24-34). Truly, only God could have orchestrated this marvel since as I have written, the oppressed received the means of freedom from their oppressors!3
Now, in God’s equality, it is time for the Christian descendants of America’s slaves to return the spiritual favor (Matthew 5:43-48; Romans 12:17-21). For we will need to look to and draw encouragement from the legacy of faith our Christian slave forefathers that endured one of the most brutal forms of slavery in history left us, while also urging all other professed American Christians facing a hostile and soon to be oppressively violent nation in rebellion against God to do the same (Hebrews 10:36-39; 1 John 5:4-5).4 Reflectively reading this edited 2012 repost is a good place to get started if you have not already.
Originally Posted June 17, 2012
I extend a heartfelt “Happy Father’s Day” to all the men who have taken that role and responsibility from God seriously. My book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics is an excellent resource for gaining a basic and biblical perspective on being a father. I invite readers who have not obtained a copy to do so for yourself or one of the males in your life that is or will soon be a father.5
On this Father’s Day--as I have done previously through other forums, I write briefly on the celebration of Juneteenth which falls on June 19th each year. Juneteenth is a black American commemoration of the end of slavery by way of celebrating the June 19th anniversary date in 1865 when Texas slaves learned a full two years after that President Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation setting them free.6 Typical of most American summer holidays there are parades, speeches, concerts, picnics and very importantly in this post-Christian era, worship services. It is here that I briefly join in the celebration and honor the faith of my Christian slave forefathers.
Presented Christianity by colonial whites mostly as a religious means of calming and controlling hearts that were not comfortable with the idea of perpetual servitude, the rigid, high-brow form of religion was not embraced in large numbers by African slaves. However, with the coming of the Holy Spirit fired preaching and worship fervor in the Great Awakenings and Camp Meeting Revivals of the South, conversions by slaves to the Christian faith exploded as the new American nation moved toward Civil War over the trafficking in human souls.
The mostly Western uneducated slave believers in Jesus Christ left their descendants and the world a legacy of persevering faith displayed in songs of hope called “Spirituals.” Embodied in their “Spirituals” was hope in the promise of physical deliverance found in the Bible proclaimed clandestinely by slave and some sympathetic white preachers. Many died waiting for the promise of God in His Word as have many of the saints from ancient times (Hebrews 11:8-16). They waited for physical freedom through faith in the God who did the same for Israel when He brought them out of Egyptian bondage by Moses (Hebrews 11:23-35a).
In the process, my Christian slave forefathers endured being spoon fed a corrupt form of Christianity that attempted to justify the evil brand of bondage they experienced including the demoralization of their souls, brutal whippings, the tearing apart of their families, rape of their daughters and sharing of their wives with slave owners and other white men bent on oppressing them in perpetuity (Hebrews 11:35b-40). Such was their simple, child-like, persevering faith in the God who remembers the oppressed according to His Word (Psalm 103:6; Luke 4:16-19). This faith is also resident in the heart of every aspiring strong man of God in the image of Christ!7
And so, God did in His mercy remember my Christian slave forefathers who had been faithful in their long wait on Him for physical freedom.8 While there would be bitter opposition and battles to secure the reluctant sharing of the rights of citizenship still to come, the day the slaves heard they were free was a day of great celebration; for those who had specifically waited on the Lord--breathless joy! Therefore, it is fitting that black Americans and all the inhabitants of the earth commemorate the day our people were set free lest we ever forget. Moreover, may we always include in our celebration, worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who perpetually honors simple, child-like, persevering faith placed in Him.
1 I made an edited repost of part one of this blog on April 6 and part two on April 13, 2014. I stand by every word the Lord led me to write not consciously operating
out of any preexisting theological position or presupposition (there being a resemblance to any unintentional). I am a Biblicist; not caring in the first instance what
sinful, mortal men including myself think, feel or believe, but what God’s Word in totality actually says to inform my doctrine!
2 Read the two-part, August 2016 post, Christianity The Religion Of Men, under the category, Instruction and Christianity The Religion American Style posted Sep-
tember 4, 2016 under the category, Call To Repent.
3 Read the three-part Commentary, The White Man’s Religion in the Journal Archives of the FSTVEP.
4 At whatever point you may choose beyond Scripture to believe the evacuation of living saints by translation occurs, you still must stand and endure by persevering
faith until it happens (Matthew 24:29-31; Mark 13:24-27; 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
5 The book is available at all major internet booksellers, by order at your favorite brick and mortar bookstore or in the Strong Man Store.
6 This Juneteenth 2019, be among those that hear the summary retelling of the black American experience from slavery to the present in the roll out of the From Sla-
very To Victory: One Man’s Journey Webcast!
7 Such was Harriet Beecher Stowe’s vilified fictional character, Uncle Tom, in her American Classic, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Read Uncle Tom’s Cabin Revisited on
the FSTVEP Web Site, an article the Lord led me to write restoring Uncle Tom as the actual aspiring strong man of God in the image of Christ the book intends.
8 They waited for physical freedom to follow the spiritual freedom they already had in their souls by salvation through faith in Jesus Christ (John 8:31-36)! Learn more
on the Freedom Page at the FSTVEP Web Site.
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