My wife Cindy and I, spent last weekend in Los Angeles with North Carolina Lt. Governor Mark Robinson and his wife, Yolanda. As a quick reminder, we hosted 13 North Carolina pastors’ luncheons across the state featuring the Lt. Governor in 2021, where 2,700 North Carolina pastors and spiritual leaders participated.
Of the 50 North Carolina pastors and spiritual leaders who, on May 17, 2022, ran for local office across the state, 25 won their primary, meaning that 25 will be on the Nov. 8 ballot.
We are planning to organize another round of North Carolina pastors’ luncheons in 2023, in order to recruit an additional 50, or even 75 North Carolina pastors and spiritual leaders to run for local office in 2024. This obviously will provide the best and most direct counterweight to cultic secularism’s heavy-handed manipulation of American culture and society.
A Christian counterweight is urgently needed. As Baptist theologian James Robert White expresses it: “History teaches us that enduring works of Christian insight flow forth from times of persecution and attack. As secularism rushes toward its inevitable totalitarian solutions, Christians need to think deeply concerning the issues that now confront us.”
Cultural theologian and Christian apologist Dr. Joseph Boot’s latest book, “Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government,” calls attention to the threat to freedom: “The current reality of the church’s submission in the West to the cult of the state [with its] surrender to unprecedented lockdowns and illegal interference in church gathering, the collapse of civil liberties, the total control of education, expanded abortion, euthanasia, no-fault divorce law, the definition of marriage and family, homosexuality and transgender issues [is clear].
“Because of the steady triumph of pagan humanism in the West, the modern world has seen the re-emergence of many archaic oddities, one of which is a self-anointed elite class—the intelligentsia—a secular substitute for pastor and priest.”
To reinforce this point, a simple reading of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 shall be a boon for those obedient, and a bane for those disobedient to God’s law and the covenant relationship with Him:
- You shall have no other Gods before me.
- You shall not make for yourselves an idol.
- You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God.
- Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.
- Honor your father and your mother.
- You shall not murder.
- You shall not commit adultery.
- You shall not steal.
- You shall not give false testimony.
- You shall not covet.
In 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court removed the Ten Commandments from public schools, courthouses and government buildings in Stone v. Graham. In a 5-to-4 per curiam decision, the Court found that the requirement that the Ten Commandments be posted “had no secular legislative purpose” and was “plainly religious in nature.” The Court noted that the Commandments did not confine themselves to arguably secular matters [such as murder, stealing, etc.], but rather concerned matters such as the worship of God and the observance of the Sabbath Day.
The ruling tied in with an earlier decision in the 1963 Abington School District v. Schempp case, in which an 8 to 1 vote led to the removal of the Bible from public education. The U.S. Supreme Court thereby established secularism as America’s official religion, based on the calculated but improvident view of secularism as being “neutral” and “non-religious”. Justice Potter Stewart [1915-1985] was the only one not fooled by the argument, rightfully asserting that the decision did not lead “to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.”
The calamitous outcome of the secular religious creed of man as his own god and moral arbiter, by now is clearly visible in present-day America’s steep moral decline and its wholesale diversity of perversity. Nihilism and hedonism set the discordant tone in today’s nation.
At the time when it still was One Nation [for each and every person] Under God, early America belonged to Christ alone. This will be confirmed by studying the state Charters and Constitutions of the original 13 colonies: Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland … as they established a Christian nation throughout the 17th and 18th century.
The American founders understood that “fear of the Lord” above anything else is the prerequisite for acquiring knowledge and wisdom, as pronounced in Proverbs 1:7 and Proverbs 9:10. The Hebrew word translated into “awe” in the Bible is yirah. It often directly translates into fear, like “fear of the Lord,” but it’s better understood as meaning respect, reverence and worship. Respect for and obedience to God’s Word has been discarded completely over the last 75 years, resulting in such absurdities as secular education theories and the transgender reversal of biological laws.
Last Tuesday, Sept. 15, we hosted our first Texas pastors’ event and our goal is to hold 20 Texas pastors’ luncheons across the state in 2023. There are 13 congressional districts in North Carolina and 36 in Texas. For reaching an equivalent of our North Carolina success in 2021, hosting 20 Texas pastor luncheons in 2023 may lead to 125 to 150 Texas pastors and spiritual leaders running for local offices across the state in 2024.
Cultural transformation is coming, thereby displacing the standard way of the last 100 years of measuring success in American Christendom with its buildings, budgets and butts configuration. It entails a new model for apostolic leadership, where pioneers develop a multitude of leaders instead of merely feeding flocks of sheep. The new standard for measurement thus becomes: “How is the culture in my community doing?”
Gideon’s and Rahab’s are beginning to stand. {eoa}
David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.
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