Politics
But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. (2 Peter 2:1-2)
This passage tells us to expect false teachers in the last days. These teachers will bring in “damnable heresies” and will “bring upon themselves swift destruction.” The sad thing is many will follow them, and because of these false teachers, the “the way of truth shall be evil spoken of.”
In this next passage, great sorrow or distress (woe) is pronounced upon those who, among other things, “call evil good, and good evil.”
Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as it were with a cart rope: That say, Let him make speed, and hasten his work, that we may see it: and let the counsel of the Holy One of Israel draw nigh and come, that we may know it! Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink: Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him! (Isaiah 5:18-23)
I think it is obvious that these two passages describe our day very well. There are false teachers in the pulpits of this land, in our education system, in the news media, among our politicians, and among political pundits.
In the early twentieth century, the progressives tried to become mainstream in America. They were soundly slapped down by the American voters. They did not go away, they just quietly slipped into the background and started infiltrating our schools and our media. They understood that if they could influence the thoughts of the people, they could eventually take over the nation. They have done their job very well and we are seeing the results today.
This was only possible because of the liberalism in the pulpits of America. The decline really started in the nineteenth century when our preachers started going to Europe, especially Germany, to further their education.
Theistic rationalism, which actually has its beginnings in the eighteenth century, is a hybrid of natural religion, Christianity, and rationalism, in which rationalism is the predominant element. By the middle to late part of the nineteenth century, it pretty much dominated the Protestant schools of Europe.
Natural religion is a type of theology that derives its arguments for the existence of God from reason and the ordinary experiences of nature. It is distinguished from revealed religion, which derives its arguments from Scripture. Nature has many things that show the truth of revelation, but it is not the basis of revealed religion.
Man’s reason is the primary basis of the arguments for or against the existence of God in theistic rationalism. In other words, rationalism makes man’s reason the primary source of knowledge and the test of truth. In essence, it replaces God’s revelation with man’s reason.
The principle of calling evil good, and good evil, is not new. Those who sought to destroy our Baptist ancestors, especially the Albigenses and the Waldenses, used their goodness to condemn them. The wickedness of those who did all they could to destroy our ancestors said:
“If an individual is found who neither curses, swears, lies, commits adultery, murders, possesses himself of another’s goods, nor revenges himself on his enemies, they say he is a Waldensian, and deserves to be punished.”
Isn’t this exactly the attitude of the left today? This attitude has permeated the Democrat Party. This is not to say that all Democrats hold this view of things, but the majority of the leaders in that party do.
The Democrat Party supports almost every kind of debauchery. They are for killing babies in the womb, legalizing drugs and prostitution, abhorrent sexual conduct and relationships, taking away our freedoms of speech and religion, taking away our constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and I could go on and on.
The Democrats have convinced many of our youth that capitalism is bad, and socialism is good. They don’t tell them that capitalism is what made America great and that socialism has destroyed every nation where it has been implemented. Margret Thatcher said that socialism works until they run out of other people’s money. It would be hard to find a more true statement concerning the nature of socialism.
Socialism ignores the nature of man. In theory, it sounds good to say that everyone contributes to the pot, and everyone takes out what he or she needs. If man was not selfish by nature, this might possibly work. But, man is selfish by nature. He will contribute as little as possible and will take out as much as he can.
Capitalism, on the other hand, rewards those who work hard by allowing them to benefit from the fruits of their own labor.
Say ye to the righteous, that it shall be well with him: for they shall eat the fruit of their doings. (Isaiah 3:10)
The capitalistic system rewards the efforts of those who apply themselves, whereas the socialistic system rewards the lazy. There is much more I could say on this, but my purpose is not to deal with the pro’s and con’s of these two philosophies, but to show why we are in the state of corruption we find ourselves in today.
America was founded on the precepts of the Bible. Our law is based upon the law of God as summarized in the Ten Commandments. Rationalism has made man’s opinions the standard and has dismissed God’s precepts as archaic and outdated. The result is, there is no objective standard by which we are to live.
We teach our young people that we, as humans, are nothing more than evolved animals. We then wonder why they act like animals.
We teach that everything is relative, and there are no fixed rules to follow. Every person has the right to make up their own rules and decide which “truth” they want to follow. We then wonder why there is so much rebellion and why everyone thinks they have the right to do whatever he or she wants.
Our pulpits have failed to feed the flock with the Word of God. Fear of offending has caused preachers, even in fundamental Baptist circles, to soft-peddle the truth. They have also failed by making most of the preaching about reaching the lost. It is true that the lost must be reached, but the main purpose of the church is not evangelism, it is building the saints so they are prepared to reach the lost.
And he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ: (Ephesians 4:11-12)
I suggest you read the rest of the passage to get a more complete understanding, but for the sake of keeping this from getting too long, I will just deal with these two verses.
The body of Christ is the local church. I am not taking the space here to prove this, but you can get my book on the universal church on Amazon.
The edifying of the body of Christ has two aspects. The first is the perfecting of the saints. The pastor cannot do all of the work of reaching the lost by himself. It is the duty of each and every Christian. The lost will not, and cannot, be reached if they don’t see something different in the lives of Christians. Christianity grows the best under persecution because the Christians prove they really believe what they say. It is seen in their willingness to suffer, and even die for their faith.
Another aspect of perfecting the saints is teaching them doctrine. How can they reach the lost if they can’t give a good answer for what they believe? How can they convince unbelievers of the truth if they can’t articulate it?
When our young people go to school and are taught evolution and relativism, how can they remain strong if they don’t know why they believe what they believe? The left has risen up as a formidable force because, first of all, they were not taught the truths of the Word of God. Secondly, realizing that our pulpits were not teaching doctrine to the young people, the left know that they could control the thoughts and attitudes of Americans by infiltrating the education system and the media. They have done a good job, and we need to start fighting back by teaching the deeps truths of the Word of God. We need to instill the precepts of God in our children so they cannot be fooled by the lies being taught in our schools and by the media.
Let me wrap this up by telling you what motivated this article. It is totally beyond me how a Christian can vote for someone who holds to those principles of the Democrat Party. I know that there are some politicians in the Democrat Party who are pro-life and don’t support some to the evils promoted by this party. However, there is a biblical principle that they are violating.
Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. (1 Corinthians 15:33)
You can’t hang around bad folks and not be tainted by their evil. I have experienced this principle personally. As a young Christian, I went into the Army and didn’t smoke or drink alcohol. I thought I could go to the club and drink Coke with my lost friends and maintain my purity. It took some time, but I finally became just like them and took up drinking and smoking. It wasn’t until many years later, when I changed by companions, that I was able to overcome these bad habits. Even then, it was not easy.
There are enough Christians in America, who say they believe the Bible to sway any election. More than seventy-five percent of them don’t even bother to vote. A large part of them who do vote, don’t vote on biblical principles, but on what they think the government will give them.
There is no politician who is perfect. Most of them are not saved and don’t really know what the Bible says. There are, however, many who have relatively righteous convictions. We need to seek them out and vote for them.
Party affiliation is also an important issue. The way our government works makes having the right party in control extremely important. In the most recent election we ended up with a divided government. The Democrats in the House will do everything they can to stop the Republicans from doing what needs to be done for our nation. They will slow down the improving economy, and maybe even reverse it. National security will undoubtedly suffer. Unrighteousness will surely increase throughout the land.
The reason more was to done to turn back the evils imposed on us by the left is there are too many RINOs in the government. This term means Republicans In Name Only. We didn’t get health care fixed because of one such Republican. We didn’t get funding for the border wall because weak RINOs were unwilling to stand up for our security.
I could go on and on, but this has already gotten longer than I intended. The bottom line is, preachers, don’t be afraid to speak about political issues from the pulpit. Christians, educate yourselves about the issues and vote for those who will support biblical precepts. Not voting is supporting the opposition.