Dr. Jim Garlow (born in 1947) did his doctorate in history at Drew University, earned his Master of Theology and his Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary, respectively, and was awarded bachelor and master’s degrees from Southern Nazarene University.
In a recent meeting with national clergy leaders, he informed his audience that he simply wanted “to do a clarification, a subpoint;” one that was not all that critically important.
“A friend of mine lost a lot of weight and she became a runner,” he said. “Many people criticized her for being so gaunt and thin; she finally looked at them and said, ‘You’ve just never seen healthy.’
“Now the reason I’m saying that is—here comes the zinger; I’m going to sound defensive so fasten your seatbelts—at least three times, but who’s counting, I’ve been called ‘political’ in this meeting,” Garlow added. “I’m not political; I’m biblical. But you don’t recognize it. I’m governmental and biblical because God is.
“Everybody understands that the Bible speaks to the personal issues of life, nobody argues that,” he explained. “Everybody understands that the Bible speaks to the family issues of life, nobody argues that; everybody understands it speaks to the congregational church issues, nobody argues that; but if you dare bring up government, you’re labeled. ‘Oh, he’s the political guy.’
“And the enemy loves that because as long as you ostracize that and marginalize it: ‘Well, he’s the political guy’; ‘That’s just political stuff’; ‘You don’t want to be political’; ‘We don’t want to be identified with the Republican Party, now, do we?” Garlow said. “That would be terrible to be in their back pocket.’ … as long as we play that game, the enemy is delighted; he controls that dynamic.
“The pictures on the wall over there, James, you’re pumping the water, you’re feeding [kids], that’s because government has violated Scripture,” Garlow said. “You’re addressing it in that realm, and you should, we have to, but I’m trying to say let’s go for the top level of government to get them in line with Scripture so that people aren’t starving.
“I sat with the ambassador of Tajikistan, and I said, ‘Sir’—it’s a Muslim nation, he’s a Muslim, I’m Christian, he knows that I’m a Christian, and I say ‘40% of your population is unemployed,'” he added. “He said, ‘Yes.’ ‘That breaks my heart; that’s hard on a nation. I come here bringing biblical principles of government for how your nation can operate and economic principles that bring prosperity to the people’.
“He’s happy to see me,” Garlow said. “He doesn’t say, ‘Oh, you’re political.’ He didn’t cast me aside. This is why we’re in the mess we’re in, and the enemy is happy for us to have our prayer meetings and fasts, as long as we don’t act.”
How did a nation “Founded for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith,” as the Mayflower Compact declares, arrive at the point of the ill-fated undoing of the once biblically based American culture? There are several fateful factors involved, with secularized education as a critically important one.
A.A. Hodge (1832-1886), the principal of Princeton Seminary and professor of systematic theology warned a few months before his death in 1886, “I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education, separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief and of anti-social nihilistic ethics, social and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.”
He went on to predict that America’s public school system would be the engine and “instrument for the propagation of Atheism.”
Present-day education perfectly depicts the appalling situation Hodge foresaw 136 years ago. The radical Warren Court (1953-1969) simply became the instrument of evil—with the banishment of prayer to Jehovah God in Engel v. Vitale in 1962 and dismissal of the Bible from public education in Abington School District v. Schempp in 1963, which spawned atheistic education “separating Jehovah God from public education, and then rending Biblical Christianity from the public square.” Equally instrumental in this was American Christendom’s defiance of Jesus Christ’s ekklesia kingdom assignment from Matthew 16:18.
God’s instruction in Proverbs 4:7 that “wisdom is the principal thing” means that wisdom, as Bruce Waltke clarifies, is the starting point, the first principle, the chief thing. Yet, in stark contrast to utilizing wisdom as their first principle, liberals lay down the law on secularizing state and culture through public education by pushing for a culture devoid of religion and intentionally separating the intellect from the spiritual. All as part of a Faustian bargain, secularism’s barefaced deal with the devil.
With the demise of the once biblically based culture, America’s secularized state now deems itself almighty, omniscient and omnipotent, declaring to possess pseudo-sapiential powers as a license to forcefully dictate its rule and authority over “We the People,” the rightful owners of America.
In quite the opposite of being advised by the wisdom of God, the state has begun mandating when the church can meet as well as how it must worship. Aside from exacting controlling authoritarian influence over church house, schoolhouse, statehouse, courthouse and movie house, the state also goes all-out on its odious censorship of free speech in coordination with its amen corner of Big Tech, Big Pharma and big media leading the responsive amens of the misdirected general public.
Add to this the dissonant rabble of consonants and other unhallowed sycophants, and we’ll understand how secularists succeeded in seizing the intellectual, educational, economic and vocational levers of power and influence over the nation.
Despite all this, Gideons and Rahabs are beginning to stand!
Take for example North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson, who embodies Solomon’s maxim from Proverbs 29:25 (NIV) that “Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.”
He demonstrates this in the rough and tumble of the public square, as well as under the klieg lights of religious secularism, by showing conclusively that, as William McKane put it, “Trust in Yahweh, if it is thoroughgoing and comprehensive, is incompatible with fearfulness, because whoever relies for safety on Yahweh [knows he] is safe indeed.”
In 1 Kings 18:44b we read that Elijah’s servant saw “a little cloud about the size of a man’s hand … rising from the sea.” He was hopeful of great things to happen. With Gideons and Rahabs beginning to stand, so should we! {eoa}
David Lane is the founder and leader of the American Renewal Project.
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