HOW MUCH MORE OF THIS DO YOU WANT TO TAKE?
I BELIEVE that is the question YHWH is putting to His people at this time. Much has been made of the serious issues facing Christians in early 21st century Britain: religious “hate” laws, same-sex marriages, positive discrimination in favour of non-Christian religions, the de-structuring of our Christian heritage, aggressive secularisation. In short, the annihilation of Christian Britain and the headlong rush towards the New Inquisition. That this is coming, even the most Pollyannish among believers can no longer deny. Pathetic attempts by jellyfish “leaders” to promise Christians will desist from proselytising (who do they speak for?) and “affirming” other faiths’ rights to worship demon spirits will not stave it off. Such capitulations are a covenant with death.
It is time to draw a line in the sand. It is time for Christ’s warriors to take the field. Now, I didn’t say soldiers. This is not a job for those who like to shine their brass buttons. This is an assignment for the killers. It will take a certain kind of ruthless believer. The root meaning of ruthless is “without compassion”, In other words, this is no time for mushy, woolly thinking. You will need to leave your Jesus sandals at home and put on your stomping boots. You will need to leave your WWJD bangles behind.
It is critical to face up to things like a man. Ladies, that means you too! We have to face things fair and square.
There are people out there who want to destroy our Christian heritage and monopoly. If you agree with them that we shouldn’t have a monopoly anyway, then you have swallowed their poison. The whole message of the Bible is that God favoured a people and chose to give them privilege and dominion. He did this by picking one man and cutting a covenant with him. That man was Abraham and if you are outside of him, you are nothing covenantaIly with YHWH. If you are in him, you are a privileged person and favouritised by the Lord. Paul summed up the multifaceted blessing of Abraham by saying he is “the heir of the world” (Romans 4: 13). God is a monopoliser. Being in Abraham is being in the monopoly. And you are a partaker of this if you are in Christ.
That said, here is the rub. And the blindingly obvious question: Why are we letting people like Tony Blair and his cronies run things around here? To take the view that we are powerless is to call the Lord Jesus a liar.To Him is given all power and authority in heaven AND EARTH (Matthew 28.18). Did you read that? Jesus doesn’t just have the rulership of heaven; He reigns supreme on earth. Now there are Christians who will fight you when you say that. They will fight for the devil’s right to rule the earth. And call you a heretic for saying Jesus is Lord. Right now. Not just at the end of history. Why do they choose to believe that? Because if you start proclaiming Jesus is Lord, you attract enemy fire. Even someone saved for five minutes has sense enough to suss that out. So what happens? Theology gets invented to reduce Christ’s Lordship to the end of time so that these people don’t have to get persecuted by suiting up in their body armour and obeying the Master in subduing the nations. Because that’s a job for warriors. Not wimps.
Now if you believe Jesus has power over all flesh (John 17:2) and is the Supreme Ruler of earthly potentates (Revelation 1:5), do you think he is happy for you to go on being the devil’s punch-bag down here? What kind of Jesus do you believe in if you believe that?! NO!!! You are here to change things around, dear brother or sister.You are YHWH’s instrument of change. “But how?” you may ask. By prayer and proclamation is the answer!’ Take that thermonuclear device out of your cute wee Bible bag with the Footprints logo (bless you) and start firing it at anything that looks like the devil! And quit using it against your pastor! Now, I’m not being trite. I’m being serious. The best thing that could happen for most Christians today is to quit watching Omega Code/Left Behind movies and roll their sleeves up for a fight. The Word of God is our God-given weapon of dominion to subdue all opposition, human or otherwise.
And understand this if you don’t like the direction our politicians are taking us, quit whining about it and hoping Jesus comes back soon. Grow a spine. And then get in your voting booth. I don’t mean that shrine to the god Demos you worship in every four or five years, I mean your prayer closet, warrior of Christ. If you don’t like your politicians, kick them out! Some of you reading this know the people we have seen removed by prayer. But we need more people praying. And I want to say this: if you don’t want Blair in Number 10, take it to his Boss. Take it to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords and tell Him (and I say this reverently, demand of Him) that Blair and his cronies be replaced by godly men. If you can’t do that, what are we here for? I tell you we have what we have because we are too slothful in prayer and proclamation. And because we have believed the devil’s PR agents, some of whom can be found in pulpits and at a Christian bookstore near you.
Prayer is not giving God your shopping list or whingeing “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” to the Lord. It is letting God the Holy Spirit in you tell God on the Throne what to do down here. By that I mean true prayer is God praying through you to get His will on the earth. How will you know you are entering into what I am talking about here? You will find yourself saying some bold, astonishing things to the Lord. You will demand of Him that His will be done and you won’t be nice or subservient about it, either. That’s real praying. Some of you know what I am talking about. This kind of praying takes warriors. Quit with that “We are worms” business. God didn’t put the seed of a worm in you. Or a beggar. You are not writing to Santa here. You are telling – not begging – the God of heaven to rend the heavens and get down here right away. Why are the heavens brass? They aren’t is the answer. God is waiting for someone to come along and call Him out of heaven, that’s all.
“God can’t be bossed about” some theologian will say. But this is not about bossing God around. This is about letting God IN you “loose”, I tell you – only the violent man can get God to move. YHWH is thrilled when such a man (or woman) gets to being so bold as to tell Him we ain’t going to take it any more. Are you that man or that woman? Are you going to keep taking it?
“Politics has no place in a Christian’s life”others will say. A variation is “Christians shouldn’t get involved in politics.” To such knuckleheads we can attribute the impotent condition of the Body of Christ at this moment in time. The correct attitude is “Unbelievers have no place in politics,” Take this view and two things happen: firstly, your world view changes from one of pathetic helplessness to dominion and victory. Secondly, you begin to understand the Bible much more. Because there are no secularists running for office in heaven. And we are to pray the same condition here on earth (Matthew 6: 10)
If you think these are strong words, then understand that this is no time for mamby-pamby Christianity. Isn’t it ironic that we are about to enter real persecution by a corrupt State in the U.K. for the first time in hundreds of years but at the same time we are selling Bibles in cutesy pink or two-tone? “Oh we don’t want that old black Bible, we want to be trendy.” Listen, that old black Bible held this nation together through its toughest times. I am well aware that the colour of your Bible cover isn’t important. What is important is that the present obsession with relevance can often descend into outright men-pleasing. Interesting that the Greek for man-pleaser means “man-courting”. Surely the world will love us if we have a nice pink Bible cover rather than that old black one? So far they are marketing the pink covers to the ladies only but who knows what can happen. After all, it is trendy for young “men” today to wear pink t-shirts. Can you see it? “This year’s must-have accessory for Christian men – a nice pink Bible to go with your nice pink t-shirt.” No wonder the devils are laughing and God is puking (Revelation 3:16). No, they won’t respect you because you have a fluffy Bible cover. They will just think you are ridiculous. Now if you think this is a diatribe against Bibles that are anything other than black, you missed the point. The point is that we are jumping through hoops to please a bunch of people who are hellbent (I mean that literally) on eradicating our witness and wiping Christianity off the face of the earth. No amount of dressing trendy or gelling your hair is going to change that.
The believer is not meant to fit in to society. The believer is meant to define society. Society is to be created by the godly. God has given His Law-Word; we must obey and build our society around His commandments-Don’t start calling this legalistic, either. Heaven is run under the unopposed will of God. Earth is to follow suit. The Christian is God’s agent to bring this to pass. If it is unthinkable that an atheist be in a position of authority in heaven, why do we tolerate such people on earth? Pray them out! Pray them all out! Ask God to raise up the godly to political office in our nation. Don’t relent until He does, That’s how to change society. You won’t need to pack your suitcases and pray for the Rapture if you do that. Of course, we also need to speak out. That doesn’t mean dispensing moral lectures, either, or exhorting people to go back to “the good old days” No, it means proclaiming the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all the earth. The Faith Movement has brought the revelation of You can have what you say into the thinking of Christians. But this isn’t just so we can confess new cars and nice clothes for ourselves, it’s so we can turn the world the right way up. Which is to bring all things under Christ’s headship. Recently we have seen Muslims go berserk over cartoons mocking Mohammed. There’s a lesson here for us Christians.
And it’s this: how offended do we get when our Lord is denigrated or ridiculed? We ought to be at least as ticked off as the Muslims. Proclaiming Jesus is Lord and praying God’s will on earth should be the thing that consumes us every hour of every day. Not in some wild-eyed lunatic way but in faith and in the anointing of the Holy Spirit. I watched a news report on Muslims protesting about the offensive cartoons and one held up a copy of the Koran and said repeatedly. “This is our victory.” Do we Christians have the same zeal over our Bibles? Do we have the same confidence? These people really believe they will conquer Europe. Are we going to let them? If you are reading this and you have your bags packed for the Rapture train, go unpack them and tell the Lord you’re not leaving here until everywhere you look you see a footstool for Jesus to put His feet on! That’s the mindset of a true Christian, glory to God.
If you are Christ’s you have been sent here to take an unconditional surrender from every creature you encounter. You have been commissioned to bring men and women to the place where they bow the knee and confess Jesus as Lord. Every rebellious spirit – human or demonic – which refuses to confess the Lordship of Christ must be expelled. Society is for the godly.
This is something understood by the Reformers, the Puritans and the Pilgrim Fathers. There is no pluralism or multiculturalism in the godly nation. That this sounds so extreme is an indictment of how much Babylon is in the “Church” today, The greatest sin of so-called Christianity in the 21st century is blending in. Blending in is Babylon. The danger is not that the Church has swallowed post-modernism, it’s that post-modernism has swallowed the Church. All worldly mindsets and philosophies must give way to the greatest reality-God and His Word. Heaven and earth will pass away with all its junk. But the Word of God will endure forever. We are not called to be passive observers of this. We are called to be active participants in it.
There has been some fancy theology cooked up over the years to mask a big yellow streak running down our backs. Second Coming junkies abound because of one thing: cowardice in facing and obeying the Great Commission. It’s much easier to believe Jesus is coming soon and we are out of here before it gets too bad than it is to say “No matter how tough it gets, we are going to pray and preach till earth is Jesus’ footstool.” That takes guts. And it grieves me to say it but guts are in short supply in Christian circles. My brethren, these things ought not to be so. I will give you the same advice I always give: believe in your dispensational, pre-millennial theology if you must. But live like a post-millennialist. If I am wrong, you can say I told you so. But if I am right, you won’t live with a crick in your neck looking for the Rapture chariot. And you will be a builder and a planter for the Kingdom.
FINAL NOTE: Mustville reading is Myles Munroe’s Understanding The Purpose And Power Of Prayer. This is, in my opinion, the best handbook on prayer ever written. It is simply awesome. Get this book to absorb the spirit of what I am saying here. Dr Munroe’s definition of prayer is: “Prayer is earthly license for heavenly interference.” This is a mind-blowing statement that captures the reality of what we are called to be and do as believers: give God the permission and be the vehicle for His will to be brought to pass on planet earth.
PREACHER [U.K.]
