America - The Modern Golden Calf

AMERICA 
THE MODERN GOLDEN CALF

My heart grew heavier as I read this article. In 1975 I was born again and God had used a Billy Graham broadcast to help me see who Jesus was. I have been to several Billy Graham crusades and I have met others, including preachers and missionaries, who came to Christ through his preaching and ministry. But as I grew in the Word I began to realize that some of his associations were unbiblical and were a part of a continuing compromise. He would quote the Pope and join forces with the Roman Catholic Church, and he would endorse such heretics as Oral Roberts and Robert Schuler. At first I used to think it was in order to reach people with the gospel but later I realized that Billy really had some obvious doctrinal weaknesses. He even said he now believed a sinner on some island who never heard of Jesus could still be saved just by believing there is a god.

But Billy Graham never endorsed politicians and basically became a friend to almost everyone. Be it conservative or liberal, he was invited to the White House for prayer. Of course he would also pray for God to help America win wars, just as he did with the latest President Bush. But he began to get involved with certain moral issues such as gay rights and traditional marriage. His son, Franklin, not only was a rabid patriot but was seen publicly as being anti-Obama. Franklin would further blur the lines between following Jesus and following America. It is all so sad and not only reveals a level of Scriptural compromise, but it has led to a state of apostasy in today’s evangelical church that lives in America. As only God can, God is using the candidacy of Mitt Romney as a mirror to the church.

Today we have our cults and our branches of Christianity that have led many astray. The Emergent Church and the Purpose Driven teachings and Your Best Life Now lies continue to impact the religious culture and the visible church as a whole. Many churches who still do not espouse such movements will not warn their people about these false teachers. The entire spiritual war rages in open view and attacks the Person of Christ and His precious gospel, and yet preachers remain silent? And many of these same preachers will speak about politics and morals and marriage and prosperity but shut their lips as it pertains to this slide into apostasy.

But in the last 20 years I have also come to realize something very clandestine and clothed in what seems like earthly righteousness but what is in reality heavenly treachery. This issue of nationalism has been a Trojan Horse which has brought in damnable heresies and all kinds of deceptions regardless of how well intentioned or how “orthodox” the preacher may be. In the last 20 to 30 years its intensity and scope has taken a quantum leap and has grown exponentially within the western community of faith. It already had a stronghold within the liberal mainstream denominations, but it spread rapidly throughout evangelicalism at large.

This has now become an unspoken doctrine, and although you may not find it in a church’s statement of faith it lives with strength in its belief system and practice. Nationalism is not just your run of the mill idol worship. Idol worship comes in many forms. Some believers love cars, some love houses, some love singers, some love preachers, some love sports and sports teams, and there are many and varied expressions of idol worship in the western church. All of them compromise the spiritual life of an individual believer, and some even become departures from the faith like the prosperity movement. But what is absolutely astounding is how idolatry in the form of nationalism has found its way right into the church and is now embraced by orthodox, liberal, and cult alike.

And this kind of compromise has now taken wings and has affected almost every area of evangelical thought and practice. America has become the latter days golden calf and millions upon millions who claim to follow Jesus now bow before this idol. And they pledge allegiance to this idol, and in a stunning display of apostasy, millions pledge allegiance to this golden calf even in the sanctuary on July 4^th services. Millions of professing believers file into a place reserved to worship the Risen Christ on July 4^th and they sing songs to America as if it was a god! Blasphemy of blasphemies!! Horror of horrors!!

And tens of millions of people not only do not see anything wrong with this, but they embrace it as divinely approved! Can there be any greater deception? And with this kind of deception the church leaves its gospel calling and labor of love, and works to preserve America and return the culture to its imaginary moral roots. Do we assume that the generation of the founding fathers were sinners on a lesser scale than what exists today? Do we assume that the words of the Spirit that says God has concluded them all in unbelief and that there is none righteous, no not one do not apply to the original thirteen colonies? What kind of mental illusion have we created and why have we created it? It is obvious that we view America as an object of our love and affection and seek to crown it with all kinds of accolades regardless of there veracity.

And because we have made traditional marriage and capitalism and being anti-abortion the tenants of this new gospel, we now join hands with unbelievers to establish this new kingdom. And not just run of the mill “conservative” unbelievers, but members of cults. And not just members of cults, but with a presidential candidate who is a priest in good standing within that cult and who has given many millions to support that cult as they deceive people around the world. And there are two basic reasons for this kind of support that stem from nationalism:

A love for money and a hatred for Obama.

And armed with those practical expressions emanating from the unclean spirit of nationalism, evangelicals by the millions will flock to a voting booth which represents the fallen cesspool of politics and they will vote for Mitt Romney. That probably includes the 94 year old Billy Graham. All in order to form a “more perfect union” while at the same time besmirching the perfect kingdom to which we are exclusively called. It is an amazing feat of deception by the wiles of the kingdom of darkness. If you could sit in an air balloon hovering 20 miles above the United States on November 6th you would see over a hundred million people streaming to local places of worship called voting places which are in effect the local churches of humanism.

And sprinkled in that colossal mixed multitude will be child molesters, gay people, abortion providers, pornography sellers and producers, adulterers, thieves, murderers, drug users, wife beaters, cultists, throngs of Christ rejecters, and oh yes, millions of professing believers. And many of those believers will never witness to someone about Christ, but they will rise early to vote. Some never pray and others attend church rarely, but they will rise early and vote. Some never read the Scriptures, but they will rise early and vote. And as you watch from your balloon, do you see God in all that? If you do, then your view of God and His Christ is your own and not the revelation of Scripture.

I have said all this because the time is now to come out from among them and be separate. You must not allow people whom you respect and admire and even love to keep your from a personal Berean journey to discover whether these things are true. You must not allow anything to compromise your devotion to Christ, and you must see nationalism for what it is. This spirit has imprisoned the church and has become so strong that now men like Billy Graham will endorse cult members and remove any material from their internet sites which would be deemed offensive to that cult. Now I ask you, just how strong must a deception be for men to do something like that? And if that kind of Christ-denying compromise was around for the last two thousand years in the church, there would have been very few martyrs. This spirit of nationalism is now a full blown spirit of apostasy and is part and parcel of the end times deceptions.

Although I am a nobody, no one has accused me of being too rigid and legalistic. Read my views on the scope of redemption as it pertains to possibility of a gay person believing on Christ. I stand firmly on the side of grace. But curiously many other preachers and teachers who take serious exception to my views in that area practice nationalism and patriotism and spread falsehoods about the origins of the country and the spiritual purity of its founders. And most of them pledge allegiance to an idol. My point being that I try not to be graceless and a self absorbed legalist and heresy hunter.

But it is time to call nationalism for what it is. It is a spirit of apostasy, albeit sophisticated and multi-layered, it is apostasy none the less. By overt suggestion it teaches that God can create a nation that allows for all kinds of gods to be worshiped and He calls it “Christian”. And people who say they believe the Bible endorse that kind of open falsehood? Yes, but that just reveals the depth and scope of this widespread deception. And while we were doing sentry duty to guard against the Rob Bells and the Joel Osteens and the Rick Warrens, the enemy has come in and sown the tares of deception of nationalism that are bearing much wicked fruit within the church. And Rob Bell, Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren enthusiastically embrace this deception as well and yet we will not even stop to consider the implications of that?

We criticize Graham and others as they join forces with infidels but we join forces with Bell and Osteen and Warren in patriotic endeavors? But we cover our sin by suggesting that God suspends His Word when it comes to patriotism? The hypocrisy and duplicity are incredulous. But do not misunderstand me, I was once just as blind as the next. I sang “I’m Proud to be an American” in church. So my mission is not to hold myself or anyone else up as an example except as examples of God’s grace. And it is in that grace alone I exhort you, I beseech you, I beg you to study and pray and even fast and ask God to open your eyes in any area in which you have been blind.

I pray you will. And if you do, I know He will.