Silence in the face of extreme danger is cowardice and treason.
About two weeks ago, Iran successfully test-fired a ballistic missile that can reach all of our bases in the Middle East and Europe, as well as the nation of Israel. It is bad enough for Iran to do this since the Obama Administration-hailed nuclear agreement was enacted in January. However…
This is the third time.
Three times since January, Iran has thumbed its nose at the feckless world community, and openly continued testing its weapons of war. To add insult to injury, one of the missiles that was fired in March had the phrase “Israel must be wiped out” written on the side of it in Hebrew. The missile testing ban (in place since 2010) was lifted by the U.N Security Council as a part of the nuclear deal, being replaced by a resolution “calling on” Iran not to participate in missile testing. It would seem that the idea is, if we ask nicely, they’ll stop testing.
So how’s that working out for everyone?
Our active military forces have been diminished to their lowest point since prior to the end of World War 2. While our enemies mock us, terrorists attack us and our allies, and our economy continues to languish, President Obama and national leaders are busy wringing their hands over transgender bathrooms. It is no wonder that the American people — both Republican and Democrat — are choosing outsiders to overthrow establishment and career politicians. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan doesn’t know if he can support the Republican party’s nominee, political outsider and businessman Donald Trump. Speaker Ryan might want to take a page from history: In 2014, Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ignored the will of the people and lost re-election to Tea Party candidate Dave Brat, in spite of a 30-point lead in the polls, and outspending Brat 40 times over.
The good will of the American people has reached a tipping point. People are fed up and disgusted with a Congress that has done little-to-nothing in the face of the disarming of America, ISIS terror, the lowest middle class income in 18 years, the worst conditions for minorities in 3 decades, $19 trillion in debt, the attack on the 2nd Amendment (gun rights), the erosion of religious liberty, and Islamic aggression.
Where is the hope and change we were promised?
In 2008, then-candidate Barack Obama ran on a platform of hope and change. So where is it? Why have we diminished ourselves in the name of progress? Why are we no longer respected by our friends, and feared by our enemies? Our nation is in grave danger and we need a turnover and turn-around in Washington DC.
We need reform now.
- When Bible-believing American churches are rendered mute by political correctness and cowardice, and Biblical standards are waived for cultural compromise, we need a change.
- When a political candidate is applauded for declaring that “deep-seated cultural codes, religious beliefs, and structural biases have to be changed” to accommodate abortion-on-demand, we need a change.
- When the rights to privacy and safety of women and young girls is forced to take a back-seat to the “rights” of a man dressed up like a woman, we need a change.
- When Christians are being slaughtered in other countries while America stands silently by and does little, we need change.
No amount of new community centers will help when daddies are not home, and the family unit is continually undermined. No amount of legislation can satisfy the corruption and degradation of the human heart. Political correctness and “common core” are not substitutes for the values of Judeo-Christian ethics and common sense. Liberalism, like any disease, will progress until it kills the body… there is no such thing as enough. Liberalism is slow-motion suicide for any nation.
Yet…
In spite of the dark clouds, I sense an uprising of Americans who are fed up and will pray, act, and bring our nation back from the brink. I see a movement that understands the beliefs that truly did make America great. I hear the voices that echo the call to freedom — physical and spiritual — that can put us back on the rails of goodness, truth, justice, and sanity. Judgment is at the door. Our God is a God of love, compassion, and patience. However, He is also a God of truth, righteousness, and justice. In Romans 2, Paul warned the Christians in Rome…
Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who “will render to each one according to his deeds”: Eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God. ~ Romans 2:4-11
America cannot continue to follow the unrighteous path she is on without severe consequences. We say we are one nation under God, but our actions don’t show it. In the face of so much disdain for His Word, God has given us time and again to repent and return to Him. This could be Americas last hope. Amos 5:15 says…
Hate evil, love good;
Establish justice in the gate.
It may be that the Lord God of hosts
Will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph.
We His people must not be silent. We must declare His goodness and mercy to this generation. We must refuse to back down in the face of compromise. We must decide if we will establish justice at the gate, or face judgment at the gate.
It’s up to us.
Many people who read my blog are leaders in either church, community, or business. There are so many different styles and philosophies when it comes to leadership, with countless books, seminars, and self-help videos on the subject. Just typing in “leadership” on YouTube yields over 4.2 million results.
There must be a culture of mutual honor, respect, and teamwork. You cannot be an effective leader from a high and lofty tower. Former President Theodore Roosevelt once said, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” A businessman in my church once told me that “I don’t ask anyone to do something I either haven’t done, or wouldn’t do myself. The people who work for me will do anything for me for one simple reason — because they know I will do anything for them.” Treating people with respect, honoring their time by being prompt and on-time, being forthright and honest, approaching each task with a well-thought-out plan, being conservative with criticism and liberal with praise, letting each individual know how important they are to the organization — all of these things help to build an atmosphere that goes beyond teamwork… it creates the atmosphere of family.
There must be disciplined financial principles that include healthy revenue streams, careful spending, and total accountability. Most organizations crumble because of financial woes. Bad financial planning (insufficient funding), mismanagement, and dishonesty are just a few ways financial problems can doom an organization. Being disciplined with how you spend, how you manage growth, and how you invest your resources will go a long way toward giving you a healthy bottom-line. Being realistic about projections, operating within a well-defined budget, and being an “open book” when it comes to accountability will not only give you a reputation for integrity, but can also provide others with confidence in investing in or donating to your organization.
A few weeks ago, there was a segment on the news where a dozen people were offered – for free – a Hershey chocolate bar or a ten ounce bar of silver. All of them took the candy. The candy bar was worth a dollar or two. The silver bar was worth $142.00 at spot prices on that day. People did not know the value of what was before them. There is a segment on the TV show The O’Reilly Factor (with Bill O’Reilly) called Watters’ World. In this segment, Jesse Watters asks people on the street simple questions about current events, history, and politics. Although often humorous, it is sad that people are so ill informed about this great country in which they live, and — not just our history — but current events as well.
Now we have a socialist being supported by the majority of college students and young adults in the presidential election. We have people worried about transgender bathrooms and the news media making it a big story, while ignoring the slaughter of 250 Christian women and girls in Mosul, a 16 year old beaten to death in an American high school, wild and godless gangs making our cities killing fields, the influx of Islamic radicals, the silencing of a middle school choir singing our National Anthem near the 9/11 memorial, and the continued murder of the unborn through abortion.
Several years ago, I was in Germany where we visited the 
So, I ask the same question… How can we NOT know? How can we not see the truth in front of our eyes? How can we continue to ignore the desperation of the times in which we live? How can we not see the writing on the wall, holding us accountable for our silence while our society slips further into the abyss? We will one day stand before a Holy God and, when asked about all of the souls we allowed to pass into a godless eternity, “We didn’t know” will not be an adequate response.
To hold to the truth of scripture is to be called a bigot. To have a problem with a grown man sharing a bathroom with a young girl is being “intolerant”. To demand that our leaders protect our borders is being “racist”. We are living to see our culture “calling good evil and evil good…” God issued a warning of “woe” to come on such. The worst of it is the awful silence in the contemporary pulpit — the failure to warn the nation. I for one will inform the uninformed, call sin by its proper name, and declare that people need to be saved. I will stand by the truth that the church cannot embrace the lies of culture and remain authentic. We must bear the scandal of the cross and refuse to be silent in the face of evil. We must care enough to speak the truth regardless of how we may be labelled — bigot, homophobe, racist, intolerant. Satan and his forces are stalking our families and communities. It is time to stop letting a liberal culture and media define us for simply believing in something and Someone. It’s time to stop being afraid of “ugly names” and start fearing for the souls of lost men and women heading into a hopeless eternity.
I’m tired of the LGBT agenda that is being forced upon the American people. Understand me when I say that I don’t believe that anyone should be threatened, abused, or discriminated against because of their lifestyle. However, I do not believe that churches should have to hire someone that promotes a lifestyle contrary to our biblical world view, or be forced to affirm perversion as a “civil right”. While members of the LGBT community should not be oppressed or mistreated, neither should those of us who believe that their lifestyle is a sin be forced to agree with their choices. If you can’t “legislate morality from the (court) bench”, you shouldn’t be able to legislate immorality either.
I’m tired of we, the American taxpayers, being robbed to support leftist causes and wasteful governmental agencies. It infuriates me to see our tax dollars go to failed and failing “green” companies (remember Solyndra) and other “pet
I’m tired of Islamic terrorists being called moderates. When I was young and growing up in the South, there was a religious organization that committed acts of terror in the name of God. They were called the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, the church rose up against them and said, “You’re not Christian… You’re wrong.” It’s time for any moderate Muslims to rise up, call these terrorists for what they are, and affirm the right for Israel to exist in peace.
I am still proud when I hear the sound of our National Anthem being sung at a sporting event.
Dishonesty has been around since the Garden of Eden. 
Someone to believe. We all desire to be spoken the truth.Whether it is a doctor giving us a diagnosis, a politician making campaign promises, or a child explaining how the expensive vase ended up on the floor in a thousand pieces, we all want people to be straight with us. The fact is, however, that we have become accustomed to much less. In politics, lies and “back-room deals” have become expected, and we have grown too complacent to alter the modus operandi. On television, we see dishonesty given a pass — even glorified — as long as it serves some noble purpose, whether on a sitcom or the nightly news. As a pastor, I cannot tell you how many marriages and families I have seen torn apart because of dishonesty and deception.
I would contend that we are not too far gone. I would argue that we are not beyond expecting truth — regardless of how painful — from those around us. Getting back to a place of truth and honesty might be painful for a season, but once we you get there with God’s help, and make that your expectation, you will be amazed at the freedom that accompanies truth. As the saying goes… “The truth will set you free!”
On June 6, 1944, the success of Operation Overlord (what we commonly refer to as D-Day) can be largely attributed to the fact that personnel and equipment were where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there.
Conversely, the failure of Operation Market Garden (famously depicted in the movie A Bridge Too Far) just three months later can be blamed, in large part, on the inability to get men and supplies where they needed to be in order to support troop movements and actions. Although Operation Market Garden was actually a larger operation, it failed to meet it’s objective and expedite the end World War II.
This would imply that David, as king and leader of the army, should have been with his army, Instead, he decided to hang back, and relax in the confines of his palace in Jerusalem. While there was not necessarily anything inherently wrong with being where he was (in his palace), by not being in his proper place, it allowed him to fall into temptation, and subsequently sin with Bathsheba. Not being where he was supposed to be opened the door for sin, and changed the destinies of Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba, David himself, and an entire nation.
Maybe there is nothing inherently wrong with where you are… it’s just not where you are supposed to be. For me, as a burned-out Southern Baptist preacher in 1989, a perfectly acceptable place for me to be would have been at home with my family. However, where I was supposed to be was in Glorietta, New Mexico. Being there, and my subsequent encounter with the Holy Spirit as a result, changed my future, my ministry, and my life.
We have now in America what is referred to as The Bystander Effect. This “psychological phenomenon” was brought to light on March 16, 1964 when a young woman named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was brutally stabbed to death while walking to her apartment at Kew Gardens in Queens, New York City. A man named Winston Moseley had decided he was going to kill a woman that day, and it didn’t matter who it was. Driving around, Moseley spotted Genovese, and followed her to a parking lot. He got out of his car, and when she began to flee, he quickly caught up to her, and began stabbing her. As Genovese screamed, “Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!“, Moseley continued his attack. Amid her cries for help, a neighbor eventually yelled out of his window, “Let that girl alone!“, at which point Moseley fled the scene of the crime. Lying wounded and dying, not one of the estimated three dozen+ people who either heard her cries or saw the attack came to help Genovese. After ten minutes of lying there wounded, her attacker returned, and continued to stab, rape, and rob Genovese. By the time Moseley left, and help finally arrived, it was too late. Twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese took her last breath en route to the hospital.
Is His sacrifice nothing to you?
The 2015 movie Bridge of Spies tells the true story of James Donovan, an American lawyer who was tasked with defending a Soviet spy during the height of the Cold War. After being given the unenviable assignment of unsuccessfully defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (real name: Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher) after his capture by U.S. authorities in 1957, the tenacious Mr. Donovan continued with appeals, eventually arguing his client’s case before the Supreme Court (which ruled against him in a 5-4 decision). Although his arguments did not sway the courts, he did manage to see one decision go in his favor…
Four years after his defeat in court, Mr. Donovan and Mr. Abel were once again reunited on the Glienicke Bridge when Abel was traded to the Soviets for downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. Not only that, but at about that same time at Checkpoint Charlie, American student Frederic Pryor, who had been held without charge by the East Germans, was being released as well.
It is pretty apparent that we live in a world of extremes…
The Heart of Abba - Ron Phillips 