The following article was found at the Roys Report. You can read the complete article here: Church
Tomorrow, the future of our American Republic is at stake and it’s up to Christian voters to save it.
At least that’s what some evangelical leaders are telling us.
Pastor Jack Graham—a member of President Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board—warned his flock on Sunday that “the foundations are cracking” and “freedoms are being taken away.”
Graham also lamented that “tyrannical” politicians are “silencing and shutting down the churches.” And he stated that he believes what’s happening both in the U.S. and abroad is “apocalyptic in nature. Read the book of Revelation.”
Similarly, Robert Jeffress—one of Trump’s most vocal supporters—told Fox and Friends that our vote determines the spiritual and moral future of America: “By our vote, we choose our leaders. Our leaders choose the policies we live under. And those policies determine the moral and spiritual direction of our country.”
Given the dire straits the U.S. is facing, many have asked me why I’m not similarly addressing the election. Do I not recognize the critical condition our country is in? Do I not care if Christians turn out en masse to vote? Am I unconcerned about Tuesday’s results?
None of those things are true.
I have already voted and believe it’s the duty of every Christian to do the same. I also think America is facing an alarming moral crisis—perhaps even graver than Graham and Jeffress believe.
However, where I differ with Jeffress, Graham, and many evangelicals is my belief about the primary cause of our crisis—and hence, the solution to that crisis.
As I tweeted last month, I am less concerned about winning the White House than I am about purifying the church. Politics is downstream of culture. And culture is shaped by the health (or sickness) of the church. I pray for this country. But I pray most passionately for Christ’s Bride.
This is why I invest the majority of my efforts serving as a watchdog on the church, rather than as a watchdog on the government.
I am not against Christians being politically active. I encourage political involvement and have spent my share of time at pro-life marches and political rallies.
But my political concerns are secondary to my concern for the health and welfare of the church. That’s because I don’t believe for a second that our political policies “determine the moral and spiritual direction of the country.”
I am less concerned about winning the White House than I am about purifying the church. Politics is downstream of culture. And culture is shaped by the health (or sickness) of the church.
As the late Chuck Colson noted in Against the Night, the government is powerless to reform moral virtue once virtue has been squandered.
“(W)hile government has a worthy task to perform, and depends for its success on citizens of character, it can do little to create them,” Colson wrote. “By upholding a standard of justice and enforcing the rule of law, the state does provide a limited form of moral education. . . . But humanity’s deepest motivations, its strongest virtues and blackest vices, escape the control of government. Any government.”
This is why God instituted the family and the church. These are the only institutions capable of transforming the human heart and molding the character of individuals. Yet for at least the past 40 years, evangelicals seem to have lost this perspective.
In 1985, author and evangelist Tim LaHaye—then chairman of the now-defunct American Coalition for Traditional Values—stated this false view of salvation-by-the-state with shocking clarity.
Speaking to Christianity Today, LaHaye lamented, for example, permissive laws allowing the widespread distribution of pornography. He then claimed that “the only way to have a genuine spiritual revival is to have legislative reform.”
This is completely backwards! The only way to have lasting legislative reform is for the people of this country to experience genuine spiritual revival!
This is completely backwards! The only way to have lasting legislative reform is for the people of this country to experience genuine spiritual revival!
The reason there’s a demand for pornography, for example, is not because of bad legislation, but because of the depravity of our own hearts.
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