I believe God loves us all and wants what is best for us, saints and sinners. But actually we are all sinners. All sin takes you away from God. So a lying tongue is just as bad as someone looking at porn. Actually, I think internet porn on a whole is a good thing. I worry about those girls but rapes have gone down significantly since porn became so instantly and anonymously available on the internet. And sexual perversion is nothing new. It cracks me up when people want to act like we're the first people who ever figured out some of these things that others judge really feels good, newsflash that's why people do it. It's been going on since there was man on the planet.

So how can we know for sure that God hasn't abandoned America? We can't, just like we can't know for sure there even is a God. It's all a matter of faith. But hey they are adding the words "under God" to the Texas pledge that kids have to say in school everyday so we're doing our part. I just have to wonder if God is so great why do people think they have to scare people into believing in Him? Not even believing in Him but believing in Him the same way they do which is of course the "right" way.

Interesting article. I just would like to know who said that this country. I don't think it's biblical to believe that. Especially given that this country was made wealthy by means He would not approve (brutal slavery and near genocidal treatment of Indians here). So the direction of the country and it's morals are no huge surprise. What I wonder about is if living in the new covenant we are judged as individuals and our williness to join in the work in the body of Christ instead of as a nation.

What a load of crap.
Wah Wah the sky is falling.
Repent. Repent.
The end is at hand.
Everyone is Godless but us.
We are special.
We are chosen.
Come join the chosen.
Oh and please make a contribution on the way out.

This is the worse of the Christian Faith.
The holier than thou preacher.


Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye." (Matthew 7:1-5 RSV)

Although I'm not a fan of John McArthur, he raises some interesting points and you did a great job presenting them. The Biblical passages on this point are unassailable.

Upon reading cityguy's post, I wonder if perhaps we should turn the initial question around and ask ourselves, Has America abandoned God? I would say as a nation, yes, amidst the raging cultural war, God is being slowly squeezed out of the public square, yet He still has refuge in the depths of individual's hearts.

We call ourselves "one nation under God", but are we?... Especially after 1960 when the moral fiber of our country has rotted after 5 decades of government sponsored hedonism and materialism? For example I remember we called 9/11 the darkest day in AMerican history and I'm thinking.....wait a gosh darn minute. Yes, it was bad, horrendously bad...but we kill 4,000 innocent babes in the womb everyday in this country!!!! It's 9/11 everyday for babies in the womb! So to me, the darkest day in this country was Jan. 22, 1973 when the US Supreme Court imposed abortion on demand here and indirectly on the rest of the world through our foreign population control policies. We've killed more babies in the womb than in all the wars so far put together. So far, 50 million American boys and girls have been killed on the altar of abortion framed around a women's right to privacy.

Speaking of privacy, many have hailed the Supreme Court's 2003 Lawrence v. Texas decision, as a Roe v. Wade for the homosexual movement. The Supreme Court granted constitutional protection to sodomy while denying the state's right to uphold public morality. We've already witnessed the next step in this gradualist reshaping of public morality in the legal and social acceptance of "marriage" between homosexuals.

We are living in a time of great disorder. The true cause is that we have abandoned the fundamental doctrine that Christ is King of nations as well as of individuals. These legal decisions are America's "moral 9/11" IMHO...and so wouldn't your #4----Consequential Wrath-Patterns and results oriented. We reap what we sow sort of thing...come into play? I think so.

You started with McArther, I'll end with Cardinal Pie, one of the greatest theologians of the past 2 centuries gave a prophetic warning of the consequences of banishing the law of Christ from the public life and restricting it to the domestic lives of its adherents.

"When a country's Christianity is reduced to the proportions of domestic life, when Christianity is no longer the soul of public life, of the power of the State and of public institutions, then Jesus Christ will treat such a country as He Himself is treated. He will continue to bestow His grace and blessings on those who serve Him, but He will abandon the institutions and authorities that do not serve Him. And such institutions, authoritites, kings, and races, will become like the sands of the desert or like the dead leaves of autumn which can be blown away by a gust of wind."

Like you said, "God has given this country over to a depraved mind. Whether you agree or not, it's something we need to think on seriously. Where are we heading? Is it too late to turn our country around?

Stay tuned."

Thank you, KFC, for this very sobering article.

WHo did Jesus come to save? He was condemned for associating with harlots, the unclean; those that the religious of the time refused to accept. "Nation" is Ceasar's junk. Render it unto him, I don't think God would really lean much of his policies on political borders.

After the Soviet Union disbanded, for instance, did God's policies toward Eastern Europe have to be revised? lol. How does NAFTA or the EU effect God's judgement? Does he judge the British on the level of Britain, or does EU membership cause them to be lumped in with the French? I have zero control over what happens in Las Vegas. If God's judgment happens in Vegas, will it stay in Vegas?

Toss away this silliness, KFC. You don't like being associated with Phelps, and yet here you are, saying that because we've associated ourselves with homosexuality that bad things are going to happen to us. Are you just trying to bait a comparison now? Will you now admit that your message, at least the part that most offends people, is the same?

P.S. You have read enough of the early church documents to know that this stuff has been said in EVERY era.

BAKERSTREET POSTS:

St.Mark 12:13-17

[I]"They sent some Pharisees and Herodians to him to ensnare him in his speech. They came and said to him: ‘Master, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone's opinion. You do not regard a person's status but teach the way of God in truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or should we not give it?’ Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them: ‘Why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.’ They brought one to him and he said to them: ‘Whose is this image and inscription?’ They replied to him: ‘Caesar's.’ And Jesus said to them: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.' And they marveled at him." [/I]


I’d agree that "Nation is Caesar's junk" but only on one level. That is, as citizens of a nation we are obligated to obey lawful authority. Among the things owed to lawful civil authority are honor, respect, obeience of the laws, and payment of taxes to contribute to the support of services which allow citizens to live in peace and security which protect them from violence and civil disorder. But it's also more than this. Our Lord uses this situation to teach that man belongs totally to His Creator. "You must perforce give Caesar the coin which bears his likeness, but give your whole being to God, because it is His likeness, not Caesar's, that you bear." ---St.Jerome.

Here, Christ asserts a principle which should guide the action of Christians whenever they are politically or civicly involved. Sure we are recognize the rightful autonomy of earthly elements and structures and we must operate within those lawful given situations. At the same time, the Christian’s proper starting point, when voting, considering laws, local ordinances, school board policies, and other various structures of the public square, is to judge what the will of God is here and always bear His standards as the first and highest authority.

BAKERSTREET POSTS:


I think He would and does...I think God owns us and owns all authority over government. I say this based on Christ' own declaration while in the presence of Pilate that all authority comes from God. St.Jn. 19:11; Prov. 8:15-16; Wis. 6:3.


Romans 13:1-7
1 “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been established by God.
2 Therefore, he who resists authorities opposes what God has appointed, and those who oppose it will incur judgment upon themselves.
3 For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then, do what is good and you will receive his approval,
4 for he is God’s servant to you for the good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid: for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the evildoer.
5 Therefore, it is necessary for one to be subject, not only to avoid the wrath but also for conscience' sake.
6 For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, serving for this purpose.
7 Render to all men their dues. Taxes to whom taxes are due, custom to whom custom is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.”

God, being the Author of social order, created man as needing to live and develop within a community. There are many Scriptural passages that reveal God’s sovereign will requiring public and social activism from His people. Almighty God uses individual, the Church and the government of nations as delegated spheres of authority to perform His will and to establish His purposes.
Ron T. Mabon explains it best in his book, “God is politically active”.

The family is the most fundamental and essential institution and the first sphere of delegated authority created and established by God. Gen.2: 23-24; Eph. 6:1-4. The second sphere of delegated authority established by God is the religious authority, the Church. Under the Old Covenant, that authority centered around the Temple, the Levitical priesthood (the Law) and the synagogue. But when the New Covenant was established at the Death and Resurrrection of Christ, that authority was vested by God in the Church. The Church’s authority operates in matters of a spiritual nature--in areas of morality, seeking and interpretating God’s will and in fulfilling His mandate and purpose of the salvation of souls.

The third sphere of authority that was created, established and instituted by God for His purpose is the institution of government. Since each family, Church, and government authority is delegated to human individuals who are capable of misusing it, each user is accountable to God for his administration of his authority that he holds and he is held to a higher standard than the person who holds none i.e. “...to whom much is given, much is required.” St.Lk. 12:48; cf StJames 3:1.

There is no authority but by act of God, and the existing authorities are instituted by Him; consequently anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine order. So the authority contained in civil government is God’s authority and becasue it is both instituted and accountable to Him, it exists to accomplish His purpose. Politics, as you know, is the inner workings and the activities of government. God was involved in the politics of Egypt and so was His man, Joseph. God is involved and like Joseph, so should His people be. Therefore, we cannot be obedient to God’s will and also be apathetic to politics or to the authority of government for when we are it leads to dire results --so called legalization of pornography, sodomy, abortion, and euthanasia to name just a few.

Cityguy posts:

I was thinking of this when writing reply # 6 and 7.

Bakerstreet posts:


Secular humanists are trying their best to banish all Christian thought and action from the public square and from all public venue for that matter. Secular humanist voices, your voice here speaks beguilingly of 'tolerance' and 'diversity'. Premarital sex? Why not? People and school age kids can't help it. Abortion? Women must be free to choose. Homosexuality? Different strokes for different folks. Porn? Lighten up. Adultery? Be understanding. Assisted suicide? Be compassionate.

Christians are so intolerant. Well, so was HE. Jesus more than "offended" the moneychangers; He "intolerantly" threw them out of the Temple. He said, "mean spirited" and "hurtful" things to people--hypocrites, brood of vipers, sons of Hell, etc. He told the woman in adultery to go and "sin no more". He was more than "insensitive" to unrepentant sinners: He warned them that Heaven would not be "inclusive" of them.

Um, yeah. God orders us to be subject in the passages you quote, and then God removes his "hedge" when the policies of the nation go against His will.

You didn't answer my questions, though. If I am a citizen of the England AND the EU, am I going to be judged by the works of the British people or the EU as a whole? You guys have a sick delight for Old Testament carnage.



It has nothing to do with intolerance. It has more to do with total wastes of skin who after natural disasters and tragedies claim that God has stopped protecting us because we have gay neighbors. The sickness isn't that you are homophobic, it is that folks like KFC, Phelps, and the like delight in saying that kids, soldiers, etc., die because of public policies that we have little control over as individuals.

I have never been offered, once the ability to vote on gay marriage, or sodomy laws, etc. The Republicans that supposedly oppose all that never do anything about it when they get into office. Yet, your angry bronze age god sits back and watches my family get killed in a hurricane and doesn't lend a hand because of those policies? That's what Pat Robertson, Phelps, Falwell, and apparently KFC believes.

That kind of thing isn't intolerance, it's a mental illness.



I think that line alone would convince about anyone that you are mentally ill. So, resisting Hussein, Soviet Russia, Hitler, etc., was resisting divine order. The founding of America was an act of resisting the divine, since we were rebelling against the government of our leaders in England.

I think you need to go back and reread God's opinion of secular power:

I Samual 8:

6. But the thing displeased Samuel, when they said, Give us a king to judge us. And Samuel prayed unto the LORD.
7. And the LORD said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them.
8. According to all the works which they have done since the day that I brought them up out of Egypt even unto this day, wherewith they have forsaken me, and served other gods, so do they also unto thee.
9. Now therefore hearken unto their voice: howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and shew them the manner of the king that shall reign over them.
10. And Samuel told all the words of the LORD unto the people that asked of him a king.
11. And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.
12. And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.
13. And he will take your daughters to be confectionaries, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.
14. And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.
15. And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.
16. And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.
17. He will take the tenth of your sheep: and ye shall be his servants.
18. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the LORD will not hear you in that day.
19. Nevertheless the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel; and they said, Nay; but we will have a king over us;
20. That we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.

Sounds like an accurate prediction, thousands of years old, of every political problem we have today. Religion is always used by governments to keep people subject to them. Oddly, you'd have us live under the likes of Hitler and Stalin, supposedly under orders from God not to oppose them.

I really don't understand your perspective, Lula. Our government accepts homosexuality. Our votes have ZERO chance of changing that, because we have no candidates to vote for that will ever do anything about it.

BUT... according to KFC, because of the acts of our government, God removes his hedge of protection from us, "abandons" us, and we suffer.

Yet...

You sit here and claim that it is WRONG to oppose the government. So it is wrong to oppose the people who are causing God to abandon us. That's an odd, self-defeating conflict you've got going there...

Render it unto him, I don't think God would really lean much of his policies on political borders.

God has alot to say about the "nations" in scripture including "Righteousness exalts a nation; but sin is a reproach to any paople." Proverbs 14

He chose Israel out of all the nations to be a light and an example to the other nations.

and yet here you are, saying that because we've associated ourselves with homosexuality that bad things are going to happen to us

not that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that because we have REJECTED God first, HE GAVE US UP to a depraved mind and as a result we will do things not proper, not reasonable and out of this mind comes all sorts of things like murder, anger, strife, malice and slander, etc...sounds like the nightly news doesn't it? When God abandons us we become a culture without reason, without conscience, without morality. An example would be Bill Clinton. His approval rating went up in the middle of the Lewinsky's hearings. Why? Because the culture approves of this. It's a perfect fit. This is what it's like when God abandons society. The cultural moral mind is gone. It's gong to get more wicked. You wait and see.

A sure indicator that we're under God's wrath is when society doesn't tolerate any that speaks out against sin. When the government even comes in when the Preacher preaches against it. Already being done in Canada and very close to being done here as well.

CS Lewis said the last experience of a sinner is when they realize the horrible loss of the freedom they so desired.

You didn't answer my questions, though. If I am a citizen of the England AND the EU, am I going to be judged by the works of the British people or the EU as a whole? You guys have a sick delight for Old Testament carnage.

you will, as an individual be judged on what you have done as an individual. But the works of a nation, made up of these same individuals will come into play as God makes his decisions to keep his hand of grace upon them or take his hands off and let them walk in their own wicked ways as a nation.

BUT... according to KFC, because of the acts of our government, God removes his hedge of protection from us, "abandons" us, and we suffer.

no, it's not the government making laws........it's the rejection of God......read this again from Romans 1:18:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness

Why does God use the wrath of abandonment? There it is......"men who suppress the truth."

It's always about truth. Always. The truth is under assault.

I have more to say on this......too much to put here. I will do another part to this to finish it.

Oddly, you'd have us live under the likes of Hitler and Stalin, supposedly under orders from God not to oppose them.

No. We are to obey the laws of the land, but when we come up against a law that is superceded by God's law we are always to obey God over man.

An example of this would be during the days of Moses when the mid wives were ordered by the government to kill the boy babies. They refused and let them live instead defying the law of the land. God blessed the nation as a result of this and Moses came into the picture during this time.

P.S. You have read enough of the early church documents to know that this stuff has been said in EVERY era.

please tell me what era has rushed to.....no..... demanded to have society accept homosexual behavior as normal? No, I haven't seen that. Yes, homosexuality has been around but not endorsed as normal and even....nowadays encouraged to be tried and experiemented with.....does Boulder Colorado HS strike a bell? The wickedness of our culture is fast becoming a cesspool as we continue to fill it up with all sorts of degradation. The hose is on full blast and I'm afraid no one has the guts and/or the ability to shut it off.

Sugarcoat it how you like, but it is up there in the blog. You conveniently paraphrase what MacArthur actually says concerning Cataclysmic Wrath:



This, again, is the same old Phelps crap. He's talking about God refusing to help when asked, about God turning His back on those that are seeking Him, simply because of the general moral character of their nation. Never mind the parable of the prodigal son, whose father sees him while he is still far away.

You vehemently deny any association with Phelps's ideology, and then write a blog basically outlining and supporting it. You pretend that how he protests and the use of the word "hate" is the difference, but that isn't what people find morally outrageous. People are offended by televangelists using human suffering and tragedy to promote their agenda and fill their coffers.

So, evidently, God has turned his back on my family because of other people's sins. Otherwise you believe that the pious only get a wink-wink kind of tragedy during adversity, which places the people who really DO suffer as obvious sinners. Sure, you don't chant this at funerals, you just keep it under a bushel, whitewashing your sepulcher.

Anyone who wants to to hear the real thing and not KFC's sugar coated version can do so here. It's all about God turning his back on a society. These are the people who can delight at the idea that God murders Egyptian firstborn children or orders genocide.

What do you suggest we do about homosexuality, KFC? You tell me, what should I do about it so God will stop all the plagues and hurricanes and volcanoes and such? Do we kill them? Outlaw homosexuality? Maybe have tribunals for people who are accused of such and burn them at the stake?

You talk a lot, but you don't really reveal much about what we should do. Could it be because you don't want to say it out loud?