restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations

                

Americans Face Joshua’s Choice: Whom Will We Serve?

 David Alan Black 

Schopenhauer once stated, “All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third it is accepted as being self-evident.”

As I see it, many of the truths brought out by proponents of limited, constitutional government (Charley Reese, Chuck Baldwin, Ron Paul, etc.) have already passed through Schopenhauer’s first and second stages and are being accepted today as “self-evident” by thousands of Americans across our troubled land today. Those who have searched these truths out for themselves have experienced each and every phase Schopenhauer describes as the truth conflicts with a lifetime accumulation of ideas and beliefs that fail to withstand the test of truth. For many of us it has been a painfully hard pill to swallow as an awareness grows and it eventually becomes obvious that we have been duped and coerced in a thousand different ways into contracting away our God-given rights in exchange for a pottage of “privileges.”

The recent firing of Roy Moore in Alabama is an eye-opener on how good, law-abiding, Christian citizens can succumb to a totalitarian, Babylonian system of government. Falsehood and political manipulation have become the norm. “Separation of church and state” has come to mean that God cannot be acknowledged. “Government assistance” has come to mean control of the population. “Pluralism” now means that men may no longer differ in their views. “Choice” has come to mean death.

I believe most strongly that the only way forward is by a call to an absolute loyalty to the headship of Christ and to the leadership of the Holy Spirit in all areas of life. This cannot help but bring with it the recognition that loyalty to any human leadership inevitable tends to replace this in a sinful way. We Christians too often put second things first. That is, the church has one primary duty—the glorification of God. However, there is always a tremendous demand for loyalty to human leadership of organizations and movements, or even to the organizations or movements themselves. We must constantly warn one another never to give final authority to any one man, nor even to principles about Christ, but only to the person of Christ.

Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer once said that our efforts as Christians to impact culture fall into three concentric circles. The outer circle is what he called the apologetic circle, which is defensive. The middle circle, which is inside the outer one and more central, is the intellectual statement of the doctrines of the Christian faith in a positive way. The innermost circle is what he called the spiritual circle—the personal relationship of the individual soul with a personal God.

No doubt many of us have struggled through the years with keeping these circles in their proper place, and the Lord is always so gentle in giving us encouragement that He knows we need at just the moment we need it. I will only say that this website is part of a growing body of ministries in our land that have come to see the importance of all three circles in restoring America to her biblical and constitutional foundations. We realize that the battle is not against flesh and blood, and that real participation in the battle has to be through the practical moment-by-moment leading of the Holy Spirit and with spiritual weapons. In other words, the spiritual is the central, the most important thing. External results will be valid only insofar as they flow from the reality of a right relationship with God.

Christians face, at this hour in our nation, Joshua’s choice: Whom will we serve? Will we serve the false gods of liberal do-goodism, or the Lord God of Israel? Sadly, we have put our faith in political parties and in individual men to rid our country of our moral decadence. We have exercised faith in the unfaithful, trust in the untrustworthy, and hope in the hopeless. But this can and must change.

May we declare today, in our house, in our nation, that we will serve the Lord of Life, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

November 18, 2003

David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com. He is currently finishing his latest book, Why I Stopped Listening to Rush: Confessions of a Recovering Neocon.

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