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We Cannot Remain Silent in The Face of Evil

Today’s American church shows alarming parallels to the German church of the 1930’s. The so-called “christians” of the German church remained silent in the face of evil and one has to wonder if had they had had more Diedrich Bonhoeffer’s would the incredible evil of Hitler ever been unleashed?

When the train cars filled with dissidents would pass through town, those in the German church during Hitler’s reign would simply sing more loudly so as to drown out the cries of those in the boxcars heading to their gruesome deaths. “Sing with us they would say and do not worry about all the other issues out there. They do not concern us. Our job is to focus on God, and to pretend we can do so without fighting for those He loves, for those whose lives and futures are being destroyed before our very eyes.”

Diedrich Bonhoeffer was one of those dissident voices during the reign of Hitler. He called the German church to be God’s church in their time. He said that those who call themselves Christians have an obligation to God to get “political” if necessary and to take a bold – and likely dangerous – stand against their own government. The Germans and the world at large failed to heed his warning.

As believers, we all encounter ambiguous situations. But adopting a secular worldview, in whole or in part, is not “loving your neighbor.” Living as a courageous Christian who stands for the truth and extends an arm of love to others while never sacrificing the principles of God’s Word is what it means to “love your neighbor.”

Jesus was not crucified for what he did. He was crucified for what he said. Jesus was divisive. He challenged the practices and prejudices of the establishment of the time. He openly confronted the leaders of his day for their lack of spiritual substance. He was loving, BUT he was not considered nice to those who disagreed with him. While love (grace) and truth are optimal, are you more likely to be obedient to God through truth without love or love without truth?

And what if Jesus does not return for another 100 years or maybe 1,000? What life will we leave our children, our grandchildren? I for one am not willing to simply kneel and acquiesce. Even David, after kneeling and praying, stood up and picked up a rock.

“Live like Jesus is coming back tomorrow but be deciding like He is coming back in 1oo years.”

That is occupying the culture until He comes.”

Satan is VERY powerful right now. Worldview, culture, and politics are inseparable, and for anyone, especially church leaders, to say Christians have no business getting involved in any of those is doing a terrible, terrible disservice to God’s Children. If we do not get involved and influence culture and politics, then who do we leave it to? Answer: Satan and his minions.

Other questions we should all ponder:

Had you been living in the early 19^th century America; would you have said it was a sin to help slaves escape to freedom after the Dred Scott decision that said Blacks were mere property and could be owned and sold like chattel? Would you have instructed fellow believers to patiently wait and pray for the Supreme Court to reverse itself – while leaving millions of their fellow brothers and sisters in slavery?

Had you been living in the 1920’s and ‘30s, would you have told fellow believers to stand down and simply pray while certain Americans deemed unfit to reproduce were forcibly sterilized simply because the Supreme Court said the practice was constitutional in their 1927 Buck v Bell decision?

Had you been living in the 1940’s, would you have told fellow believers to stand down and pray while innocent American citizens of Japanese descent were forced into internment camps causing many to lose their homes, businesses, and families – all because the Supreme Court said it was constitutional to do so in their 1944 Korematsu v United Sates decision?

Had YOU been living in 1944 Germany, would you have encouraged your fellow believers to simply stand down and pray while millions of Jews and other political dissidents, including many Christians, were rounded up and placed into internment camps where they were forced into slave labor and worked to death or were gassed and had their bodies cremated in massive furnaces?

How many millions of lives would have been saved had the “Church” stood up as one and forcefully denounced and spoke out against the unconstitutional Supreme Court decision on abortion?

The evil that has fallen on the world in general and America specifically has, for countless generations, persuaded many in the American Church to believe that to fight this evil is to abandon the “Gospel.” This is not only pure nonsense but supremely deceptive and is a satanic lie designed purely to silence those who would speak out in truth.

Where did we ever get the idea that we should not express any number of things too loudly? Where did we ever get the idea that we should not be at the forefront of criticizing the Great evil of Communism? Who decided that being too political means not being Gospel-oriented?

The truly faithful have always been called to speak the truth and to fight against injustice of any kind. We are obliged to courageously bring our faith to bear on all issues.

So those who want us to behave as if there is nothing to worry about and to think that we should avoid fighting this evil at every corner are mistaken.

Can silence be construed as condoning something? Yes. Romans 1:26-32: Even condoning sin, is sin.

In the Old Testament God sent prophets to call the people of God to actually be the people of God. Scripture appears to be clear that when God’s people did not act like God’s people, God sent His prophets; but if the prophet’s warnings went unheeded, judgment fell. We are on that same cliffs edge right now.

Christians have allowed this collapse by remaining silent, but we can no longer afford to be silent.

For Christians, love of neighbor DOES NOT MEAN obeying the commands of false worldviews (Matthew 22:34-39).

For Christians, love of neighbor DOES MEAN you do what God commands, not what the world demands, and from that God-obeying stance, reach out to others in grace and truth.

On the final day, is God going to be more concerned with whether you were loving or is He going to ask if you were obedient to the truth?

The lesson from Bonhoeffer’s life and the Holocaust is that we cannot remain silent in the face of evil.

Every action we take has one of two effects: either it helps bring down a foretaste of heaven or it helps establish a hell on earth. Either we are a part of the world’s brokenness or we are helping God make the world righteous by working with him to change it. Either the reign of God is being established or the reign of Satan is being advanced. So, every time you nod your head to a lie, you are helping to create hell on earth. If you are choosing between being divided by truth or united by lies, ALWAYS choose division by truth.

The Great Commission and the Cultural Commission are Inseparable

Culture is a decidedly human phenomenon, arising out of our creation by God in His image and likeness. It is essentially a relational activity. We either build or tear down, there is no middle ground.

Unfortunately, in our highly pluralistic culture, those of us who claim to be Evangelical, Born-Again Christians with a Biblical Worldview make up a paltry 6% of the American population.

This is why having a Biblical Worldview is so critical.

If you do not recognize evil, judge it, or confront it, you will be incapable of fighting it.

The failure to understand the capacity of evil in man is what has brought us to this brink of chaos and tyranny.

Maybe we have lost our influence over the culture because the church has focused solely on the Great Commission of saving souls and has neglected to save/build the culture as the Cultural Commission [Genesis 1:26-28] commanded.

“Let’s think about what this means for each of us. We were redeemed from sin. But is that it? Redeemed just to wait for heaven and life to come? We are, also, redeemed for something. As Christ’s ambassadors, we have the privilege of carrying out His work in culture. Christians tend to make much of Christ’s resurrection (past) and His second coming (future) – but they forget that He is alive and active all around us right now.” ~ Chuck Colson, Colson Fellows Biblical Worldview Foundation

If you were in a small boat, unaware of the deadly Rapids a mile downriver, and a local on the bank of the river failed to tell you, his silence would be scandalous! In fact, in some countries, his silence about the dangers ahead would be a crime called – “non-assistance to persons in danger.”

Christians know things non-Christians do not; like Heaven and hell and their eternal consequences. Could our being “judged” by the fools of this world be far less painful than being judged by Christ in the next if we neglect to warn of the dangers ahead?

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Propaganda – from No Reason To Hide by Erwin Lutzer

Every mainstream media outlet and some alternative ones present some form of propaganda.

But generally speaking, it is the left (aka Marxist progressives) who are in control of the narrative.

Leftist news outlets and politicians’ goal is to make us weary of standing up against their bizarre ideas of sexuality, race, and justice.

If they can cause us to lose heart, they know it will be easier to get us to submit and tell ourselves “The wolf is at the door; just let him in.”

But, before we resign ourselves to giving up, we must understand that the battle is often won or lost through an assault on words which is ultimately a war on ideas.

The radical Marxist left wants to use words not just to win the debate but to cancel debate altogether.

They want to destroy the influence of those who disagree with them. They want to use propaganda to limit and control our thoughts

(Aka)Gaslighting:

The purpose of propaganda is to reshape peoples worldview (views of reality) by redefining reality.

The long-term goal is always about power.

The ultimate goal is to make them obedient to the dictates of a leader or group of elites who tell us they are committed to “what is best for the people.”

Eventually, people will suspend their judgment, set aside what they know to be true, and join the “masses”. i.e. Herd instinct.

Propaganda makes lies credible.

When we are not open to the possibility of being wrong, propaganda is more readily able to accomplish its purpose.

Jesus repeatedly said, “He who has ears to hear, let hear” (Matthew 11:15). He was saying that there is no one as deaf as someone whose heart is not open to truth.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-four after spending time pondering the rise of communist Russia and Hitler’s chilling control of Germany.

The Encyclopedia Britannica summarizes the book 1984 in this way:

Its depiction of a state where daring to think differently is rewarded with torture, where people are monitored every second of the day, and where party propaganda trumps free speech and thought is a sobering reminder of the evils of unaccountable governments.

To do this, lies must be sweetened to make them easier to swallow.

Humans do not always need words for feelings, but we do need them for thought, especially complex thought. And that is why Big Brother is at war with language. He wants to make it less useful for examining ideas by reducing the power of words to the barest expressions. Newspeak is his tool for keeping his subjects permanently inarticulate.

Word control is intended to bring about thought control.

Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, described a totalitarian state:

A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors, and schoolteachers.

The goal is for people to love their servitude and accept the controlling narrative, which is designed to limit what they say and what they are allowed to think.

Isaiah wrote in Scripture: “Woe to those who call evil good”. You can only call evil good if you rename the evil; to say it differently, good words must be used to camouflage the evil. But, to call evil good is only half the task; the other half is to call that which is good evil. Language must be manipulated to accomplish this.

In a nutshell, Propaganda is telling people what they want to hear, then giving them what you want to have. The goal is to make a lie to appear to be true. Also known as gaslighting.

To paraphrase Voltaire, “Those who can make you believe the bizarre can make you commit atrocities,” And if people can be made to believe a lie, they will live as if the lie were the truth.

George Orwell called this verbal sleight of hand Newspeak.

A revolution can be brought about only when you have slogan that is hard to speak against (and of course you need an enemy to hate). Slogans like Climate Change, Black Lives Matter, Social Justice… They all sound like something everyone can and should support, but when you unpack what they really mean you discover it involves the restructuring or more accurately deconstructing the whole order of society.

Take social justice. When you unpack what it really is all about is gender identity, Critical Race Theory, socialism and equity.

Propagandists are very adept at slogans. They say one thing but really mean another.

When Hitler starved children he called it “putting them on a low-calorie diet.” Killing Jews was “cleansing the land,” and euthanasia was “a compassionate use of medical therapy.”

Remember: Propaganda is telling people what they want to hear, then giving them what you want to have.

The radical Progressive Left does not use language to describe reality, but rather to create a “reality” they want you to believe and accept.

Orwell wrote in his book 1984, “War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.”

In this same book, Mr. Winston was expected to say 2 + 2 = 5, it was not so much an attempt to convince him of this, but rather, to get him accustomed to speaking lies and doubting his own judgment. If he could speak lies, he could live by lies. Remember Common Core? How many of our children have been brainwashed by this lie (not to mention their parents as well?

Big Brother’s goal is a population so dependent on the government it is willingly controlled.

Do you remember during the George Floyd riots seeing a reporter with burning cars and buildings in the background, saying that the demonstrations were “largely peaceful.” So riots can be described as “peaceful,” looting is “redistributive justice,” and those who break the law to enter the US are not illegal immigrants but “undocumented workers.” And a criminal is “a person who has issues with the law,” which implies the real culprit is the law itself.

The left is using words to attempt to reorder reality when they tell us “That man you see competing in sports is actually a woman.”

The university that will not allow a conservative to speak on campus does so in the name of tolerance. And the mother who kills her unborn child is simply making a healthcare decision.

They tell us drag queens are artists who should be welcomed to libraries to speak to children. “Drag is art,” writes Jaden Amos, who reports for NPR.

When the goal of language is not truth but ideology and power, the totalitarian state has already arrived.

Many universities and colleges have policies narrowing the realm of permissible speech, reducing students to silence and ultimately ignorance due to a lack of critical thinking skills.

The reason for this madness is NOT to elevate the conversation, but to silence it. The goal is to produce students who graduate with ideological conformity; those who do not comply are intimidated and canceled.

The left is very intolerant of the three C’s that shaped America: Christianity, the Constitution and capitalism.

Research by the Cato Institute reported that nearly half of the students aged 13-22 said they stopped speaking up in the classroom because of the prevailing atmosphere of intolerance and political correctness.

The goal of the Progressive Marxist Left is to imprison the mind. Eventually, people will not be able to object to any radical leftist ideas no matter how bizarre because there will be no vocabulary for doing so; the words will have been banned.

The debate is no longer about ideas, but about bigotry and hate.

The left wants to pass hate speech legislation to shut down the expression of conservative ideas on the pretense that they are hateful and cause harm. In a strange twist of irony, the left will sometimes even justify violence as “free speech.”

Anywhere Communism/Socialism/Marxism has been installed, Gulags and death ALWAYS follow.

Russia used the tactic of labeling dissidents as mentally deranged. In effect the government says, “Challenge our idea, and we will declare you mentally ill and need to be locked away in an insane asylum.”

The radical left says, “You disagree with me? See a therapist.”

In propaganda, ideology controls the “facts” rather than the facts controlling the ideology. Therefore, “facts” are carefully selected to fit the narrative.

Take Canada as an example of our future here in the USA where even true statements can end up being banned. “Not all truthful statements must be free from restriction,” said Canada’s Supreme Court justice Marshall Rothstein.

Propaganda does not just control what is being said, but also what is not being said.

Look at how the media covered the Kyle Rittenhouse story. He was vilified as a racist because he was white (even though the three people he shot defending himself were themselves all white). He was labeled a “white supremacist” and belonged to a militia and “carried a gun across state lines.” All of which were lies propagated by leftist news media.

Contrast this with the story of Darrell E. Brooks after he deliberately drove his van into people who were celebrating a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin in December 2021 killing six people. Some news outlets never even carried the story and within days it all but vanished from the news.

Rittenhouse shot three people in self-defense; Brooks deliberately killed as many people as he could. But his story died because it could not be exploited for racial or political purposes.

So propaganda does not just control what is being said, but also what is not being said.

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The Feminization of Man

I cannot speak to what is happening in Europe and Scandinavia, but I don’t doubt the subject of this interview because I see the same thing here in America.

I am involved in several causes that are intended to battle the corrupt and inaccurate worldview of the progressive leftists and the ones doing most of the heavy lifting are women.

It is because the male species in America, and it seems the world over, have lost their courage [I come from an era that calls it “their balls”]

One of the great gifts you can give yourself is courage.

Sometimes it takes courage to remain silent but more times than not it takes more courage to speak out when you know that what you are going to say is unpopular.

Finding men and women who are good is easy; finding good people who also have courage is unfortunately rare.

Courage is the unwillingness to put up with and support lies and the liars who tell the lies.

Truth is the one thing courageous people are willing to defend ALWAYS

Find Your Voice:

Have the courage to stand up to lies and speak truth.

Find the courage to share your thoughts not because you think it will change the minds of people who think differently than you but to show people who already think like you that they’re not alone and maybe inspire others to find theirs.

What are you willing to defend?

You either love truth or love lies – which are you?

Progressive leftism needs to constantly foment, hate, fear, resentment, oppression, class/group inequality, and ingratitude.

The left needs you to be ungrateful.

Without the order of a Biblical Worldview, you get chaos.

In a remarkable interview Danish journalist Iben Thranholm said this about the disappearance of Western manhood: Dear European Men: You Are Pathetic Pussies. This is a Danish woman’s conclusion.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/05/paul-craig-roberts/the-feminization-of-western-men/

Thranholm says that Western men have been feminized and Western women defeminized. She says feminists have destroyed men, who are now raised to be women. Consequently, there is no one to protect white women from the sexually aggressive immigrant-invaders brought into all European countries by the anti-white European Union, an enemy of national sovereignty that wants the destruction of European ethnic nationalities.

Iben Thranholm says Western men have been deprived of strength and confidence by feminism. All over Europe, white women of European ethnicity, French, German, Danish, Swedish are raped openly in public by the privileged people of color welcomed in by scum like Merkel, the corrupt French governments, the bought-and-paid-for Italians, the dumbshit British, and the white men just look away and walk on by. Not only has feminism deprived men of any sense of obligation to their women, they are scared to death of being arrested for offending a person of color by interfering with his rape of a white woman. Indeed, in Scandanavia women are not only afraid to leave their homes, they are afraid to report their rape, because the police might charge them with a hate crime for claiming rape by a protected person of color. In Sweden the protection of Swedish women is so nonexistent that it is becoming a right for a person of color to rape a Swedish woman.

IT IS BETTER TO BE DIVIDED BY TRUTH THAN UNITED BY LIES!!

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Choose Courage

One of the great gifts you can give yourself is Courage.

The Greek word parresia (παρρησία) is used 31 times in the New Testament. It means boldness, confidence, courage, and fearlessness. All words found in the Bible that relate to the concept of parresia.

Jesus spoke with parresia like no one ever had. He spoke with courage because He only spoke Truth.

His disciples said, “Ah, now you are speaking PLAINLY (παρρησία) and not using figurative speech!” (John 16:29 ESV)

Jesus answered him, “I have spoken OPENLY (παρρησία) to the world. I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple, where all Jews come together. I have said nothing in secret. (John 18:20 ESV).

Because Jesus spoke with parresia, He inspired others to find their own Voice and speak in courage as well.

Now when they saw the BOLDNESS (παρρησία) of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished. And they recognized that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13 ESV)

Parresia (παρρησία) is the truth spoken without shame. Unfortunately, parresia is in low supply, not just amongst our culture but sadly, in our church as well. The American church no longer influences our culture. Rather sadly, too many of our churches are influenced instead by the political correctness of progressive Marxism.

Parresia (παρρησία) is what the church needs to effectively preach the gospel and once again place its influence on our culture.

How important is Truth?

Scripture tells us to “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:11, ESV). Paul tells us (in Ephesians 6:14) that truth is the very first thing we should put on. When Paul mentions truth, he is clearly talking about the truth of Scripture (e.g., Ephesians 1:13; 4:25; etc.)

What truth is:

Truth is universal. It is true for all people, all places, all times, all cultures
Truth is absolute. It is not relative.
Truth is timeless. It is true yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
Truth is objective. It is not based on feelings or opinions. Truth is discovered, we don’t make it up or create it.
Truth corresponds with reality, to the way things really are. Truth is ‘telling it like it is’.
Truth is based on God. Only God provides an unchanging, universal reality upon which truth is based.
Truth is knowable, unarguable, and self-evident. God has made us and the world in such a way that truth can be known.

“Here is the great evangelical disaster – the failure of the evangelical world to stand for truth as truth. There is only one word for this – namely accommodation: the evangelical church has accommodated to the world spirit of the age.” – Francis Schaeffer

We desperately need a “Church” which stands strong on truth; that will not knowingly support a lie.

“If we are not preaching the gospel well enough for the non-elect to reject it and us, then we are not preaching the true gospel.”

Sometimes it takes Courage to remain silent but often times it takes more courage to speak out when you know that what you are going to say is unpopular.

Finding men and women who are good is easy; finding good people who also have courage is unfortunately rare.

Find Your Voice:

Have the courage to stand up to lies and speak the truth.

What are you willing to defend?

You either love truth or love lies – which are you?

Progressive leftism needs to constantly foment, hate, fear, resentment, oppression, class/group inequality, and ingratitude.

The progressive-left needs you to be ungrateful because happy people don’t vote LEFT.

Without the order of a Biblical Worldview, you get chaos.

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