We happen to live in a time period in history that no matter where you live in the world you can turn on the television and surf international networks and see what is happening all over the world! America, by the reason of its diverse prosperity, has become the place to which people from all over the world desire to move to. It is perceived to be a utopian paradise! However, let me assure you, by pointing you to a few realities, that it is not a paradise, while knowing at the same time that there certainly are wonderful things about this nation that I was born and raised in. One aspect of the country which keeps it from being a utopia is the fact that political tensions are on the rise between two factions of the American people. How did this happen? What caused it? I hope, with the help of God’s Holy Spirit, to lead you down a sad path to where we are today, revealing the multiple branches that grew off of a main tree of deception.
For a few years, I was a contributing independent op-ed journalist for The Christian Post which was one of the largest Christian newspapers in the world. As a biweekly contributor on average, I was asked to be a contributing author to a special book that they published called “Our Right to Believe” in 2020. I was honored with a third chapter placement out of 25 other Christian Post journalists. In this book, still available on Amazon, I chose to focus on the spiritual and subsequent moral decline of the churches in England that compelled this group of English Christians to eventually leave England. However, they first tried moving to the Netherlands for 12 years—then came to believe that the Netherlands was a proving ground by God, as they also became concerned about how their children were being indoctrinated by the Dutch culture. The Pilgrims then prepared for their higher calling to go and start what they believed would be a brand-new country, most emphatically a Christian nation. The pastor of this large group was named John Robinson, and being inspired in prayer, he felt this new settlement was going to be called the “New Jerusalem”. Reverend Robinson, having to consider that the majority of his church would be left behind, chose William Brewster, the senior elder of their congregation to travel to the New World on the Mayflower and act as their spiritual leader on this arduous journey to religious freedom.
The first settlers coming to this new world of New England were preceded by other settlers who were already here. However, when they arrived, they discovered the sad condition of others who had traveled here for fur trading and other commodities. Their true biblical Christian faith in England had been mocked and rejected by the people converted in a post-European revival under reformist Martin Luther. He had discovered and resurrected a truth found in Hebrews 10:38 “The just shall live by his faith” and nailed his famous 95 thesis to the Whittenburg chapel wall. Luther, a former Roman Catholic priest, essentially, with this proclamation, exposed what he felt was the same type of religious practice of the evil scribes and Pharisees of Jesus day! His prayerful revelation liberated tens of thousands of people bound by in some cases ridiculous religious works and eventually attempted to lead them to a very real personal relationship with Christ through faith.
The original Pilgrims, as they are most frequently called, were mocked by the “religious” crowds of that day, who the Bible refers to as people “Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof”. 2nd Timothy 3:5 (NKJV) They mocked them calling them separatists. As I continue with this article, I will attempt to show how these same personality types not only characterized the same individuals who persecuted Jesus but are the same type of people who are causing a lot of the chaos in America today, both objectively and subjectively!
The Bible says “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.” James 1:27 (NKJV) Therefore, the Word of God does describe a true religion! It also in many places indicates that false religions do exist. Every one of the New Testament writers warned about false prophets and teachers. How then does a nation, that was formed on the foundations of Christianity, full of love, peace, unity, and a priority to care for their fellow man, end up in such moral corruption and moral economic decline?
I think it took years to hit me between the eyes and wake me up to just how evil people can be and then another few to be willing to accept the fact that they can do and be that, all the while believing themselves to be either religious or the children of God. However, the most painful of all for me was to recognize that there were some of these character types in my own family! Churchgoers, givers, do-gooders, reasonably intelligent, community activists, and the list could go on, yet making decisions that had absolutely nothing to do with God or His will! These were prayerless people who had prayed a quick prayer and been told that they were now Christians! As I watch the choices that they made, listened to their priorities, and monitored how many converts they won to the faith, I could plainly see that something was missing. It’s the same thing that Jesus discovered that the scribes and Pharisees were missing, and that thing is God!
Call me mentally challenged if you will but to me, a relationship with God through Christ is one where God does desire to communicate with His children. As Luthor trumpeted when he discovered it, the process is an act of faith and is a process that does not suggest prayer, it demands it. Jesus was a man of much prayer, sometimes even praying all night, and as a result He could comfortably say “The Son can do nothing of Himself but what He sees the Father do!” John 5:19 (NKJV)
When I was first called into youth ministry it was a fantastical experience in that it was so far-fetched in my mind that it took a while to convince myself that it was real. A friend had to tell me “Nolan, God is calling you into the ministry” My first response was “No way!” When I finally did, through a lot of prayer, realize that yes, that is what God was saying to my heart, I realized His calling was to youth ministry. Then in a very short time I realized that youth ministry is by far the hardest of all ministries to be effective in. You have to deal with a culture that is constantly changing, around adults who are not! I first thought “Praise God, the only thing I know about teens is that I used to be one! Then I thought out loud, “yes but Lord, you can teach me” and in my prayer life I quickly learned the need to hear from Gods internal still small voice. I also eventually learned that other people who were calling themselves believers were not hearing from Him. I have to admit I was a complete idiot because I had just assumed that they were. I also quickly found out that people calling themselves Christians would become annoyed when I dared ask how much they prayed or if I asked why they were not hearing from God the same things that I was! It wasn’t long until I was being mocked the way the pilgrims were in 1620 or that Jesus was in his day. As a result, very very many times the money to do a particular youth project came directly out of my pocket. I finally realized that the people who were not helping me after I had prayed and prayed about a decision, were not praying themselves, or were praying so very little there was no way they either could or wanted to be led by God in anything.
If that is the case how do the churches operate and pay their bills and carry out any acts of benevolence or win anyone to the faith that they believe in? Please understand we are talking about people who are not spiritual in any positive biblical sense. Large numbers of them are told to “repeat a prayer after me” or in some cases although the leadership may be sincere some just mouth a conversion prayer with no repentance or change in their hearts. I theorize that there are untold numbers of people in America calling themselves Christians who have never truly had any transformation in their lives. Jesus referred to some similar character types as wolves in sheep’s clothing and they end up being the ones who resist and fight the most those who are led by God’s leading and have sought and asked for and are subsequently full of God’s Spirit. Then I noticed they are the same type of people who opposed Christ and they are the very same type of people who opposed the Pilgrims, mocking them and calling them separatists, and here is the clencher, they are opposing the Holy Spirit within them all! The famous Evangelist Charles Finney a former lawyer who historians refer to as the “Father of Revivalists” stated. “If you have much of the Spirit of Christ do not be surprised if you are opposed by some of the leading people in the church!”
These people and these lukewarm churches are forced to develop earthly or worldly means to raise money. They use high-power marketing techniques. They have fund drives with matching promises that to me are an insult to any normal person’s intelligence. For one example, quietly, behind the scenes, they find a large donor, or one just comes forward, who already promised to give such and such an amount. Then they say to that donor, “Why don’t you take $1000 of that money and say that you will match the first 1000 dollars that comes in with your one-thousand-dollar gift” They hype it up and have fun with it and people get all excited saying I will give $25 or I will give $100, almost like a television game show, to get other people motivated to give. Why? Because they probably have never once prayed about where they were to give money or how much. These same individuals mock those who do seek God’s direction in their giving. In the end, it’s all just ok because now so many people have been doing it that way for so many years that it’s just accepted. Is making a fun game out of giving wrong? No but living a life where people choose a practice of religion and a prayerless life is! There are far too many ways that people are manipulated, using what the Bible calls fleshly means. That is to say, that man thought it up. Man built it up. The man counted it up. Then it went to man-led programs that are not led at all by the Spirit of God.
So then what in the world is going on in America? A land that was founded by a large group of praying people who did believe that God spoke to people and did believe that God spoke to their hearts confirming that with scripture. A group of people who made an amazing voyage on a well-worn ship who thought that it was possible to avoid the fleshly, earthly, man-made religious practices of either England or Rome. How can a country that by large numbers has been for decades considered a truly Christian nation by both beliefs and practice end up with such two opposing philosophies of government? How could such huge numbers of people get to the place where they embrace and teach certain lifestyles that the Bible clearly condemns? America arrived where we are at by the very same process previously mentioned, with growing numbers of people who have never been converted. These are people who have never been truly born again, who are willing to trade their souls for moments of fleshly pleasure, who have no inner convictions between right and wrong, between righteousness and sin, between humility and pride. The very types of people the Pilgrims left to get away from are running the show now in America. The very type of people who sent Jesus to a Roman crucifixion because of His righteousness and holiness are also the type of people who are demanding abortion on demand, sometimes up until the last trimester and are embracing God-dishonoring sexual relations and extremes morally too perverse to mention.
It was 1979 when this country boy from East Smithfield Pennsylvania left his vocational college town of Williamsport Pennsylvania to move to Jacksonville Florida. My life had shown a radical decline from the Southern Baptist Church in the north that I was saved at as a nine-year-old boy. Now as a young man in the middle of the Saturday Night Fever dance craze, I had left behind while living in Williamsport a weekend night job as a bartender and a doorman in the hottest local dance club. You see, I was one of those young men who had been introduced to a repeat after-me salvation prayer and though I prayed every night, however, it was often silently as I was lying next to a woman that I was not married to. With my move to Florida, I had told myself that I had to clean up my life, and no doubt it was God the whole time! I was undoubtedly moved by the prayers of a truly Godly lineage whose family tree went back to my 9th great grandfather William Brewster, according to Ancestry.com, the spiritual elder and leader of the infamous crew the Pilgrims of the Mayflower journey to New England in 1620. In moving to Jacksonville however, unfortunately, my unconverted nature led me to seek out and visit the most frequented club on the St Johns River downtown called Diamond Head.
It was not long after arriving that night that I was approached by a beautiful young woman who asked me if she could buy me a drink. She then asked me what I did for a living. Somehow those types of meetings quickly move to that question. Because it just would not be impressive to tell her I was working in local construction, I told her I was a writer, not yet published, but I failed to mention that part. She responded by saying “I am too” and handed me her card. She said have you ever heard of Alan Collins from Lynyrd Skynyrd Band? Alan Collins is my brother! My heart leaped! Lynyrd Skynyrd was my favorite band, and their song “Free Bird” was my favorite song! What ended up being God’s plan was that his sister, whom I ended up dating for a brief period, was just beginning her new walk with God and introduced me several days later to the Holy Spirit, someone that my church upbringing had not introduced me to. Powerful and wonderful new experiences flooded my life and soon this same Holy Spirit began to deeply convict my heart about my immorality. My immorality was not the one making all of the headlines today. It was one hardly any modern church preaches about anymore; it was the sin of premarital sex or what the Bible calls fornication. I to this day remember soaking that green shag carpet of my ’70s apartment with my tears of repentance as God revealed to me that fornication was actually stealing something from someone who was not my wife, and was even adultery if I was with someone who was separated from her husband and not yet divorced. As a young preacher now called and moving forward in the 80’s it was not long until I realized that the then church did not want to hear anything about fornication being such a serious sin. That same rebellion in the American church has brought us to where we are morally as a nation today.
This most recent trial against former President Donald Trump has weaponized the justice system in an attempt to discredit and possibly disqualify him from becoming the next president. I believe that in my life it was just yesterday that it hit me that the liberal left has no interest in proving Donald Trump guilty of any crime, but only wants to drag into the public eye explicit details of his adulterous activity with porn star Stormy Daniels, in order to go after the evangelical vote. These liberal warriors, promoting unchecked anti-biblical immoralities, are paradoxically the non-biblically converted intelligent, educated modern-day scribes and Pharisees. These paradoxes that in a twisted way far too complex for many evangelicals to grasp are shouting “Should we crucify Barabbas or Jesus?” in an attempt to get evangelicals to choose the liberal Barabbas type. Liberals are intellectually aware of the well-known ideology of the evangelical habit of killing their wounded and choosing the tall good-looking Saul over David for King because of David’s exposed imperfections. As I stated in a recent post, “Show me one king over Israel or any form of spiritual leader who was ever perfect? Joshua is probably the closest because his imperfections have for some reason been omitted from the Holy Writ. The modern media would have a hay day if they were covering his life and would want to know why he chose to hide out in the apartment of a prostitute named Rahab on the walls of Jericho. We must remember, as was stated in a well-known quote by Evangelist James Robinson, “God chooses imperfect people to do His perfect will!”
In conclusion, what in the world is happening in America? Someone has pushed the reverse button on history AGAIN! This country has gotten to a place where it sin-loving people are following the Apostle Paul’s prophecy that in the last days, men would be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. We are willing to trade a ten-second sexual release for a place of right standing with God, in compliance with the command of His Word, which declares “Pursue peace with all people with all men and holiness without which no man will see the Lord” Hebrews 12:14b (NKJV) If there were to be a group of Pilgrims today, they would be looking for another country to move to escape the persecution and the immorality of the godlessness around them. Unfortunately, many citizens of America have simply isolated themselves in their temporary residences in their “Netherlands” of their own making, waiting for the day when they can travel to the true New Jerusalem in the golden city in the sky, all the while grieved by the cultural influences on their own children of the godless culture around them. Their types of the Pilgrim’s original pastor John Robinson, and their fearless elder William Brewster types are leading them in isolated pockets of true biblical Christianity await the return of their “Savior in the Sky”, the Lord Jesus, whose escorting angels on His ascension stated “Men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into Heaven? This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven will so come in like manner as you saw Him go into heaven.” Acts 1:11(NKJV)
These people are typically but not necessarily highly educated. They are often highly intelligent but not wise. It would be one thing if that was the reason that these people could gain some level of success, but, as Jesus pointed out, the ones who do not want to be under anyone’s authority are under the influence of the spiritual world of darkness. If they had truly accepted Jesus’ sacrifice for their sins as the Bible teaches, then His Spirit could live in their hearts and as a result they could sense when others have prayed and when others are being led by God’s Spirit and they could agree with what God wanted to do. Sadly, they have not, so sadly they cannot! Unbeknownst to them they are being led by an imprisoning spirit, because they are grievously unaware that any number of different kinds of evil spirits can be inspiring them.
One day the scribes and the Pharisees were accusing Jesus of being born out of wedlock, accusing Him of not knowing who His natural father was. His response to them was “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” John 8:44 (NKJV)
In many people’s thinking the spiritual world is an unprovable reality. Faith is required to even begin to experience the things of God. Christ spent more time warning and or dealing with the spiritual world of darkness than he spent teaching about the Kingdom of Heaven. I tell people that the deeper things of God can only be experienced by those who fully surrender their lives to Christ and seek to be full of God’s Holy Spirit according to His promises. To put a huge qualifier on this paragraph, Jesus said to the church of Thyatira, “Now to you I say, and to the rest in Thyatira, as many as do not have this doctrine, who have not known the depths of Satan, as they say, I will put on you no other burden.” Rev. 2:24 (NKJV) The moment anyone fully repents of all the sin that they are aware of in their hearts and prays as if they are pleading daily to become full of the Holy Spirit, the unseen world of light and darkness and the formally unrealized battles become perceivable to them.
So in conclusion, why then is America in such a mess when truly godly people laid a sure foundation for a biblically Christian nation, although even originally knowing that they must love and accept people of all different cultures? Just as in Jesus’ day, and in the days of the pilgrims in England, people who do not know God in any personal way. People have either never been born again or had left behind their faith as in the parable of the sower, choosing instead to follow the cares of this world, and are now open to being influenced by the evil forces of darkness, thus becoming the enemies of all true righteousness. They become the ones who fight the truth the most. They become the ones who love sensual pleasures of multiple capacities. Then, as God knows about the human fleshly nature, one is never enough. Sex with one woman is never enough, and women’s sex with one man is never enough to the tryly unconverted. Jeremiah said “The heart is deceitful above all things, And desperately wicked; Who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9(NKJV)
After World War II, America started a rapid moral and spiritual decline, mostly fueled by millions of young couples and the teachings of not-yet-proven psychology that promoted the doing away of the physical punishment of children for wrongdoing. Next came tolerance of premarital sex and the eventual acceptance of almost all forms of sexual experience. The truly born-again Christians, still in the millions at that time in this nation, set out to resist. Pockets of revival under such evangelists as Billy Grayham challenged the next generation to rise and stand firm for God’s righteousness. But little by little, the lukewarm churches that resembled Laodicea in the book of Revelation became the accepted norm. Little by little the churches that passionately preached the fiery message of repentance and the reality of Hell became less and less. Now the people are being mostly indoctrinated by television and movies by the millions and have left their forefather’s faith for the life of various pleasures.
Psalms 12:8 (KJV) says “The wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted!” The reason that the vilest men are exalted is because we live in a nation where the people prefer the vile over the godly in heart. King David, although a confessed adulterer and murderer, repented before God and God restored him and called him a man after God’s own heart. You see there is a difference between a good-hearted man who makes some big mistakes and someone who is deeply evil to the core. The deeply evil man will spend his whole life inspired and led by evil and corrupted by money and power. The good-hearted man, though he sins grievously even a few times, will, as the Bible declares “For a righteous man may fall seven times and rise again, but the wicked will fall by calamity.” Proverbs 24:16-18
Our divided nation right now seems to be divided about 50-50 in its’ thinking. It is not truly about the Republicans vs the Democrats, or the Liberals vs the Conservatives. Right now, it is getting down to two men who will run for president in November. One man, Donald Trump, a successful multi-billionaire and former president, has made some mistakes in his life. The incumbent, Joe Biden, our current president, has stood behind a move to try to show the American public these moral indiscretions that Donald Trump committed several years ago and use that to try to stop people in America from voting for former president Trump. In actuality President Biden, as previously stated, I believe is trying to expose these things to stop the Evangelical Christians from voting for Trump. Those behind President Biden know the weakness of the existing Christian world is to be overly judgmental and to shoot their wounded. However, what discerning truly praying people must decide and propagate is that Donald Trump is a man of a good heart who has made some mistakes yet has stood up again. Then is Joe Biden such a man? Or is one of them destructive in their nature? Is one of them tearing apart existing godly moral values that line up with the Word of God, destroying our country from within, endorsing lifestyles that God destroyed with His wrath the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, but yet never destroyed any cities for lesser sins. The destruction of these two cities was referred to by several Biblical characters including Jesus Christ. Which man is good and which man is evil? Which ways are the ways of God and which ways are the way of evil? You see, World, that is what is happening in America right now, and if you decide to come here, get ready to be right in the middle of that. I assure you this is no utopia. What looks like heaven is rapidly turning towards leadership aligned with Hell. What may seem to be a land fulfilling your dreams and making an easy life for you may be the worst decision for your children that you ever make. WE PRAY NOT WE HOPE NOT! But Americans must wake up and rightly decide which side of the fence they are going to stand on.
On Nov 3rd, 2020 I went up to my home church to pray as I often do. This was different though. The numbers were coming in on the news about the election that day and my heart was deeply troubled. As I began to pray, I began to pour out my heart to God, laying prostrate on my face beneath the big wooden cross that hangs behind our pulpit. I said “God in Jesus’ name, I feel in my heart that something terrible is happening. Please God, please let your will be done, please speak to the American people to vote for the person who would be your best choice to lead this great nation that you founded through prayer.” It was then that still small voice that is inaudible, that only those who truly know God’s experience, spoke to my heart and said; “Nolan, this nation has just voted in a grandfather president!” I began to cry out, as tears ran down my face, and my heart was broken, I prayed, “No Lord no! Please don’t let it be so!” But it was. All of those who are spiritually mature enough will understand this. Yes, Daniel’s words are true. “He removes kings and raises kings” Daniel 2:21b. God does this either because He knows He wants to bless a nation, or He knows it best to turn that nation over to its own foolishness, and in their multiple failures and self-destruction He hopes that many will turn and cry out to Him! God does everything by His ETERNAL love, with ETERNAL purposes, to help all people everywhere to make ETERNAL choices for not only themselves, but for the generations to come….