It looks like God just took the MAGA movement for his own:
Hours of worship and the gospel delivered to 2 packed stadiums and 100 million (!!!) streams. Many viewers aren’t Christian. Many speakers are political or media figures suddenly given the kick that they needed to openly proclaim the gospel.
I’m also praying for the radical salvation of the other side of the political aisle.
Merry Christmas everyone!
The past few days I’ve enjoyed these two sermons, which do wander a bit but also get pretty nerdy about the details about Jesus’ birth. Here’s a condensed version of what they make the case for, for all the other bible geeks out there:
But! December 25th is a relevant date:
So Christmas is the celebration of God subjecting Pagan rituals to himself and turning their tribute to himself, and of the Magi’s gift giving.
God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
Genesis 1:28
The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And his disciples heard him say it.
In the morning, as they went along, they saw the fig tree withered from the roots. Peter remembered and said to Jesus, “Rabbi, look! The fig tree you cursed has withered!”
“Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “Truly I tell you, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in their heart but believes that what they say will happen, it will be done for them. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive them, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins.”
Mark 11:12-14,20-25
I’ve had a speculative theory recently, not contradicted by any scripture that I can think of, but maybe impossible to confirm as well. Here’s the theory: God gave mankind dominion over the earth; when Jesus cursed the fig tree, or when he talks about commanding mountains to throw themselves into the sea, he obviously has the divine authority to do so…but could he also do so merely as a perfect man? Is Jesus’ statement about faith to move mountains not just about the power of faith but about the authority we have? Is that the level of spiritual power that we have been bestowed with? Think about this for a moment – it could explain a lot. It would explain why people who believe in “affirmations” seem to have some success with them, or why everyone’s seen or been that person with a bad attitude cursing everything around them only to have everything continue to get worse. Or think about how many people have steered entire nations or world history with just the power of their words – Churchill and Hitler…Lincoln…so many of our founding fathers…was the power of what those people said just from their arguments, or did they have spiritual force behind their words for better or worse?
We’re Christians. We believe in the spiritual – God, angels, demons….and yes, spiritual power behind the things we say. How much spiritual power did God give mankind way back in Genesis?
But here’s the thing – it doesn’t even matter. We’re Christians: above and beyond whatever amount of spiritual power you believe God granted us in the beginning, Jesus promised in his ascension that all authority on heaven and earth has been granted to him and that he is with us to the end of the age. That’s ALL authority, and it’s on our behalf.
Both of our previous two presidents have joked about using the administrative state to punish the other side. And each time the other side has been rightly outraged. Someone with that level of authority should not speak casually about abusing it. Let me reiterate a previous statement. ALL authority has been granted to Christ, and he will grant whatever we ask in proper faith. This is way higher than the level of authority the president has. Do you realize you speak with this authority? Do you realize the power behind your words? Bless the things you should bless in your life. Be very careful with the things you curse (although there is a biblical place for cursing, but that’s for another time). Do not treat lightly your words or make jokes you should not. Your words carry the power of the Holy Spirit – or at least they should. Treat them as such.
Yes, we are supposed to love. But that doesn’t mean forgetting that we have enemies.
Just as there are many antichrists, but also an antichrist, there are many Marks of the Beast. Any sign that places political fealty ahead of allegiance to Christ is a Mark of the Beast. Yes, this includes virtue signaling over one’s vaccination status. But it also includes pretty much every other type of virtue signaling. And none of that means that what one is virtue signaling over is the Mark of the Beast.
Taking the Lord’s name in vain doesn’t just mean what most people think it means. The more important meaning is to not misrepresent God’s position on a matter. This applies to all sorts of things that Christians take stances on, but I think most of all when Christians take a stance on political issues. Be very careful when doing so. Sadly, you see all too many people side with political correctness and claim that positions contrary to what Christians throughout all of history have believed are now what God believes. That’s not to say that the church has always been correct about everything…but I wouldn’t be so quick to discard conventional wisdom without going through significant examination on how those positions came to be.
Where I do think that the Christians have often erred on issues is not in what the moral position is, but in how it should be enforced in society.
One of the things I’ve heard the more academic atheist types discuss occasionally is simulation theory, specifically the idea that we’re all in a simulation of some sort. The amusing thing to me about this idea is that it’s almost a scientific theory way of ending up at Christianity – in fact, I’ve written about Christianity’s view on cosmology here, and it’s pretty close. Of course, what Christianity has that simulation theory is lacking is an understanding of who is running the simulation, and what the purpose of the whole experiment is – and here’s the answer: we’re the entire reason for the simulation. This whole grand reality we all live in is an experiment in trying to raise up people who seek and love God.
That also raises up the interesting question of what happens when the simulation ends – for any or for all of us, it’s the same thing. At a certain point, our run in the simulation is done – and the Bible also promises that at a certain point the simulation will be done for everyone. What happens then? Well, what we’re promised is that we don’t end – God brings an immortal part of us out of this simulation into his higher level reality. And what happens then to that immortal part of us that he’s preserved is up to us. In our simulation, he is letting evil exist, but in his reality, everything impure and evil is not tolerated, and is cast out. So the choice is really with you: do you choose to embrace God’s reality, or not?
I’ve been goaded a bit by a recent sermon to think about the tendency of many, including myself, to conflate patriotism/American nationalism with Christianity.
Point taken – our allegiance is to Christ, first and foremost, and we shouldn’t let any notions of nationalism hinder that.
20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some.
With that important point made, I feel like there’s also an important counterpoint to be made, in the interests of standing up for truth and history, and that is America’s unique relationship with God. It is a heritage that we shouldn’t just discard. (Just a bit of warning, if you try searching for some of the rest of this stuff online, it’s easy to fall down a rabbit-hole of Mormonism, they’re heavily into this stuff – but as with my opinion on the rest of Mormon beliefs, I think it’s a mix of things that are true with some weird things layered on top.)
America, unlike any other country in history I am aware of through back to ancient Israel, is based on covenants of fellow citizens to each other before God. I will give just a few examples:
In addition, there are numerous times when God has shown his faithfulness strongly to these covenants, especially at some our most important crux points:
All of this is to say that America’s foundations are specifically built in covenant with God and the people and causes of our founding were supported by God. Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America discussed how religion was intertwined with everything in the country, and the founding fathers themselves wrote constantly that the key to preserving a Republic would be the morality of our people. Currently, we live in an era post-sexual-revolution, of mass-abortion, and where society is not only increasingly secular, but oftentimes blatantly hostile to the very notion of religion. I am not so certain God’s favor still rests with us, and I don’t think we should repeat the Israelites’ mistakes of assuming that the prior favor with our country would carry over forever despite our sins.
Christian Musings 