If you only had another 30 days to live, you would pray much for your children.
—Charles Spurgeon
Every couple of centuries, a version of Christianity emerges that looks like Christianity, walks like Christianity, but isn’t Christianity.
In 1517, for example, Martin Luther—an obscure German professor of theology nailed 95 Theses that bravely confronted the evil practices, discrepancies, and deviations from the purity of the gospel to the doors of Wittenberg's Castle Church. Going toe-to-toe with the pope and the religious leaders of his day, Luther’s indignation would rivet and rock the foundations of politics, church, and power across Europe for years to come.
Let’s us this as our parallel.
Every generation has collided with a broken religious system that looked visibly functional and healthy but was inwardly rotting with astounding decay. In the New and Old Testaments, this is where the story almost always picks up. It is this sickness that churns a restless inner civil war inside a soul that burns with white heat intensity for the honor and glory of God’s great name. For Elijah, his spirit was stirred to the depth with indignation & sorrow, bringing him front and center—before King Ahab and his wicked wife Jezebel.
Moses against Pharaoh, Daniel against Nebuchadnezzar, and Isaiah the prophet against Israel’s corrupt leaders.
King Herod threw John the Baptist in prison for calling him out on his affair with his brother Philip’s wife.
The false prophets opposed Jeremiah for contradicting their prophecies of peace.
While the Pharisees and religious leaders were the most bitter opponents of Jesus, who confronted them for being hypocritical, prideful, and misrepresenting God.
Students: The sacredness and weightiness of this task is not lost to me. My shoes are off. The feet HE made, on the ground HE made. My spirit prostrate before HIM. Nothing between us. No pretenses. No guile, no mixed motives, and no fancy words.
I tread softly.
HE is God. I am clay.
What should you make of the world around you? How should you frame the events of our time? It would be my deepest regret to not have articulated with CLARITY and URGENCY what I know I must pass down to you—my children; God’s little lambs. For no thought is as maddening or as vexing as knowing that a venture, a business, a channel, a lyric has been carefully crafted with your downfall in mind. To delay you, to derail you, to distract you, to mislead you, misguide you, and destroy you.
Though the LORD’s honor will always be my chief aim, this love He has for each of you, is also mine.
God is too holy. And when the sacred oil is polluted and defiled with filthy flies, our love and zeal for Him is bound to outpace our deepest sighs and heavy hesitations. It’s time to thrust the spear of Phinehas; to light up Samson’s foxes into the standing grain of the Philistines; to break down the altar of Gideon’s father—but let’s do it in broad day light.
Right here in the open.
For HIS glory!
Even if it be, ONE MAN AGAINST A NATION.
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