We took North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson and his wife, Yolanda, to Des Moines last Monday to speak to 217 Iowa pastors and spiritual leaders. He may be the best we’ve seen over the last 15 years at delivering our message to evangelical pastors while at the same time being highly proficient in connecting with them.
If the Lord will have it, we’re taking Robertson to the 10 battleground states for 2022 and 2024 to interest pastors and spiritual leaders in entering the public square by running for local office: city council, school board, county commissioner and so on.
If America is to make it through, it is imperative that every church in the country will have a pastor, deacon, elder or congregant running for local office in 2022, 2024, 2026 and thereafter. Jesus’ ekklesia kingdom assignment must be accommodated, moving it from inside the four walls of the building back into the public square.
Ed Silvoso writes, “Three major institutions shaped the life of the Jewish people: the Temple, the synagogue, and the ekklesia. The first two were religious. The third was secular.
“Jesus did not state, ‘I will build My temple’ or ‘I will build My synagogue’, the two most prominent Jewish religious institutions at the time. Instead, He chose a secular entity first developed by the Greeks when He said, ‘I will build my Ekklesia’ [Gr. ekklesia – called-out ones] ‘and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against [them],’ Matthew 16:18.”2
Robinson’s spiritual anointing seems to have come from God’s promise that “the eyes of the LORD run to and fro” in looking for men and women who will stand, in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him (see 2 Chron. 16:9).
We find ourselves altogether in an equally troublesome and delicate situation in America. Although a nation founded “for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith,” as the Mayflower Compact declared on Nov. 11, 1620, present-day America, in its disregard or rejection to live up to that solemn avowal, holds that there’s no longer any need for God.
And in having produced a ribald and tribal culture, obstinate in disobedience, this refractory, incendiary nation seems to enjoy the subsequent desecration and defilement unreservedly. In the words of Solomon in Proverbs 2:14, they are “rejoice to do evil, and delight in the perversity of the wicked.”
Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox spells out that “The wicked not only do evil for the sake of its supposed rewards, they positively enjoy it.” He then adds, “Foolish, self-destructive behavior is rooted not in dullness or simple ignorance but in a constitutional distortion of moral vision, a twisting of values.”
America switched from being a Christian nation to becoming a secular nation in the 20th century.
Robinson’s election on Nov. 3, 2020, was historic, as he became the first Black Republican lieutenant governor in North Carolina’s history. As long as he speaks truth to power and does not back down, he seems likely to remain front and center.
A former North Carolina Southern Baptist church president texted, “Just felt led to reach out and tell you that there is a BUZZ in North Carolina like nothing I’ve ever seen over these Monday gatherings. Pretty cool to watch God work through ARP [American Renewal Project]. Everywhere I go, people are asking about Mark Robinson and how we are managing to get such big crowds for a Monday lunch event. The answer is, ‘It’s a God thing.’ Grateful.”
Robinson will have a true test on his hands as craven establishment Republican chieftains and lieutenants prompt him to “tone it down” and to become more “malleable” and “homogenized” as he navigates his way to power.
Watch a portion of Robinson’s message to the North Carolina Republican National Committee Convention delegates last Friday at this link.
Robinson’s meteoric rise might well be the result of the American culture’s dramatic downfall. His refusal to bow down to liberal media and political elites sends a clear signal to the biblically faithful Gideons and Rahabs now entering the public square. The message? Stand up, do not be intimidated, speak up for God in the public arena and watch what He will do.
The French mathematician, physicist, religious philosopher and theologian Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) propagated a religious doctrine that taught the experience of God through the heart rather than through reason. His classic work Pensées (French for “thoughts” or “reflections”) has a description of what happens in situations such as Lt. Governor Robinson’s appearance and effect on the political scene: “When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving … When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving; but if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point. We must have a fixed point in order to judge our course.”
With the dumbing-down of America, jurisprudence has been compromised. U.S. Supreme Court decisions are no longer based on the historical, moral and cultural legal concepts constituted by America’s founders in the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead, they are based on what a majority of nine Supreme Court Justices can agree to on any given day. Their alleged wisdom has turned virtue into vice, making baby killing in the womb justifiable, and homosexual intercourse and marriage worthy of explicit approval.
There is clear evidence of the legal system’s downward convergence:
— Removal of prayer to Jehovah God from public education in 1962 [Engel v. Vitale].
— Removal of the Bible—after 300 years of America’s meteoric rise—from public schools in 1963 (Abington School District v. Schempp).
— Removal of the Ten Commandments from public schools, courthouses and government buildings in 1980 (Stone v. Graham).
— Constitutional right found to exterminate unborn babies in 1973 (Roe v. Wade).
— Constitutional discovery found to exalt, normalize and codify into law homosexual intercourse and same-sex marriage in 2015 (Obergefell v. Hodges).
— Aggrandizement and “special rights” for homosexuals and transgenders in 2020 (Bostock v. Clayton County).
No longer is the intrinsic connection between morality, good government and freedom first and foremost, as was put forward by America’s Founding Fathers. Secularized law has now become a mode and method of coercion, the state’s heavy hand to inculcate secularism’s vulgar values, ideology and theology into the culture, looming large over America’s population.
“Freedom requires a firm refusal of what is false, what is bad, what is excessive, what is ugly and, above all, what a person is not and should never try to become. When everything is tolerable, nothing will be true; and when nothing is true, no one will be free.”
American Christendom needs to repent of its idolatrous views regarding the state, and its “butts, buildings and budgets approach” to Jesus’ kingdom assignment in Matthew 16:18. Jesus’ ekklesia assignment belongs in the public square!
The inverted world that Christians generated by abandoning the public square over the last century comes to the surface when things like this become commonplace: “A person who might try to protect a preborn child from death spends the night in jail, while an abortionist who murdered the helpless child goes home and sips martinis next to his fireplace.”
A Gideon stands in North Carolina. May other Gideons or Rahabs also stand as for God “to show Himself strong.” {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
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