As our culture increasingly rejects God and moves toward Public Atheism, it is progressively removing all symbols that point to Him. A week ago, the “MIA/POW” table in the Ohio VA clinic in Akron included a Bible, which has been a military tradition for generations. However, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, headed by Mikey Weinstein, complained that it violated the U.S. Constitution and the Bible is now gone. Weinstein has been on a personal vendetta to remove any hint of a Christian presence from the military. He has virtually stripped it from the Air Force Academy and not much is left in the others. In its place, Weinstein has entrenched his agnostic/atheistic worldview. Rather than fight, the Ohio clinic administrator, Brian Reinhart, simply caved and removed the Bible on his own. This is the increasingly acquiescent pattern as our country bows to its Covenant of Tolerance and becomes ever more intolerant to transcendent Truth.
As public atheism rises, the Remnant will be increasingly forced underground. It is a new role for us, but we will need to learn more and more how to impact our culture through personal relationships. I think that is where we should have been working all along.
Fifty years ago next month, just prior to Easter, Time magazine ran its infamous “Is God Dead” cover story, stating how science and a secular worldview were unseating America’s religious foundation. A few months later, John Lennon, on the eve of the Beatles assault on America, declared that “Christianity will go…it will vanish and shrink…we’re more popular than Jesus…”
It is easy for us today to think that Time and Lennon’s prophecy are coming true. But several things have to be kept in perspective. Lennon is gone and Time magazine is in its death throes.
In 1776, Voltaire boasted that he would destroy Christianity and in the 1800’s, Robert Ingersoll declared he would have the Bible in the morgue within 15 years. Instead, both Voltaire and Ingersoll lie in the morgue. From the Greek writer Porphyry to the Emperor Diocletian to the terrorists who are killing thousands of Christians each year, the attack on Christianity is not new. The war began in the garden and came to a crescendo at the cross.
But it didn’t end there.
And it isn’t ending here.
Yes, we in America are seeing signs of a culture that is embracing Public Atheism and the numbers show that we are declining. But don’t misunderstand what is happening.
There remains a huge Remnant in this land and we remain for a reason. By now, we should look like France or the Netherlands.
But we do not.
There is a winnowing that is going on.
Don’t be overly distraught by the stripping of God from our public square. Don’t despair over the rise of a “Neo-Christianity” that is increasingly more about the individual and one’s own religious pleasure and comfort. Don’t be confused by the number of supposed “evangelicals” that are supporting a vulgar and immoral man.
We are in a battle that has been fought by our forefathers for thousands of years. And, it also appears to me that this is part of a great sifting within the Body of Christ.
We have been preserved for this time.
If we need to go underground, then we will do so. If we have to return to slowly impact our culture through personal, one-on-one relationships, then I think we will have been forced back into His original desire anyway. If we are forced to encourage one another in smaller groups, then that might well be for the best.
Do not be dismayed, dear Remnant. The giants in the land are nothing in His sight. We are here by His providential hand and we will stand...by His might and by His strength.
Be of great cheer!
Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.
P.S. If you can, pause to pray for Repentance, Tuesdays, Noon Eastern
Comments