Reverend Peter Marshall's Commentary Archive

 ". . .Why do you not know how to interpret the present time?" (Luke 12:56)

     Drastic times call for drastic measures. Today, we’ll talk about what has to happen, and how we can get it started. 

It should now be apparent to everyone that America is in the worst crisis we have seen since the Great Depression of the 1930’s. And we have not yet hit bottom. Unemployment will continue to rise at least through the rest of this year, so the foreclosures on people’s homes will continue to rise as well. Banks will continue to fail due to their toxic mortgage debt, and the government will continue to print outrageous amounts of money to throw at the problem. This will not solve the problem. It will create rampant inflation. In the end, the economy will only turn back up when all the bad debt has worked its way through the system. That could take at least another year, or two.

Meanwhile President Obama and the Congress continue to mortgage the lives of our children and grandchildren by plunging the country so deep into debt that it is now probable that they will have a lower standard of living than we do. If that happens, it will be the first time in American history that any generation has had a lower standard of living than their parents. Recent actions could prolong the depression by another four or five years – who knows?

The Federal debt has virtually been doubled by the recent stimulus bill and the new budget – to well over 7 trillion dollars. And there is about 5 trillion more debt which has been hidden by keeping it out of the official budget figures. When we talk about a trillion dollars, most of us don’t begin to understand how much money that really is. Well, just how big is a trillion? Here’s one answer: if you began spending a million dollars on the day Jesus was born, and spent $1 million every single day, 365 days a year, it would take you until October of 2737 to spend a trillion dollars! And the debt is about 12 times that big! 

The most egregious examples of the insanity that now pervades Washington are the $787 billion stimulus bill and the now-signed-into-law budget bill for the next fiscal year – $410 billion. Senator John McCain offered an amendment to this latter bill that would have removed 9.000 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion from the bill. It was summarily rejected. Among the absurdities you and I will be paying for are: $2.1 million for the Center of Grape Genetics in New York State; $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa; $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah; $650,000 for beaver management in North Carolina and Mississippi; $951,500 for Sustainable Las Vegas; $2 million to promote astronomy in Hawaii; and it goes on and on, but you get the idea. None of this kind of thing has any effect at all on stimulating the economy, because none of it helps businesses, which are the economy’s engine.

And, in the face of this completely out of control spending, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said "If there’s any message from the Congress to the markets it is that this (referring to the stimulus package) is a fiscally sound package." How can she say that with a straight face? Either she is simply stating a bold-faced lie, or she is so completely deceived that she has no understanding whatsoever of the damage she is doing to the country.

There is nothing remotely “fiscally sound” about either the stimulus bill or the budge bill. The stimulus bill spent more money at one time than has ever been done in our nation’s history, and they did it with money we do not have, adding almost 50% to an already out-of-control federal debt. And she dares to call this “fiscally sound!”

What kind of complete craziness is going on in Washington?

Well, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, made a very revealing remark recently that answers that question. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” he intoned. “This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” Precisely. Now that the Democrats have complete control of the Federal Government they can do what they were prevented from doing before.

Those “things” Emanuel is referring to are what has plunged the stock market into free-fall. The market responds to what determines the business climate, or said differently, it takes the temperature of the nation and acts according to what that means for the business environment. The market’s pessimism means that it isn’t buying the hype of the so-called “rescue” plan; the market doesn’t think that spending all that money is really going to rescue anything. My guess is that the market suspects that Obama is using the fear caused by the ongoing financial crisis to enact “things.” In other words, his socialist agenda: socializing health care, completing the federalization of education, and promoting government control of energy through strict regulations and subsidies. You see, health, education, and energy have utterly nothing to do with our financial crisis, so they cannot in any way cure it. Obama is simply using our nation’s crisis to engineer the greatest social transformation in our entire history. And I think business and financial people see that.

Do you remember that the President campaigned on a promise to do away with the usual Washington climate of earmarks and wasteful Federal spending? Just this week, he said that he would come to grips with the problem of earmarks – later. He also said that he was still committed to reducing the national debt, but we couldn’t deal with it now – it would have to be later. Later. I personally don’t think “later” is every going to come. I believe that Obama’s verbiage about this is just to an attempt to placate his critics and give himself political cover. Again, as I said last week, he will never turn on his own Democrat Party, whose very existence is characterized by tax, tax, spend, spend. If he tries to change them, he will destroy his own power base,. He will never do it.

What, then, is to be done?

Folks, I believe that it’s time for the Second American Revolution. I’m talking about a drastic rising up of the American people to replace the government in Washington (and also in many of our State capitals), to return to fiscal sanity, and to usher in a Third Great Awakening – nation-wide spiritual and moral revival.

For years, I have been afraid that my fellow citizens across the country were, like the proverbial frog in the beaker, simply accepting the gradual slide into socialism and immorality that has been taking place. My fear was that people wouldn’t wake up until it was too late, until all of our unique American freedoms had been swallowed up by a European-style socialist government.

But just this week, my accountant told me that he has been hearing mutterings from his fellow professionals and small business people here on Cape Cod about overthrowing the government! They’re saying that if there were militia groups around that they would join them. Good heavens, this is Massachusetts, the heart of the liberal Northeast! Talk like that hasn’t been heard in these parts since 1775! Hearing that gave me some hope – not about people joining militias, mind you. But, maybe there is still enough backbone and fight and resolve in the American people to the point that we will rise up and deal with things.

Now, please don’t think that I am advocating violently overthrowing the government. Absolutely not! But, I am plugging for a peaceful overturning of the government in Washington and elsewhere. We need to clean house, or as we used to say – throw the bums out! We need an even greater change in Congress than the one that took place in 1994. We must finish what the Reagan Revolution promised before that, but was not able to deliver – a drastic re-structuring and downsizing of the Federal Government to bring it into fiscal responsibility and get it off the backs of the people, a huge reduction in, if not elimination of, the national debt, and a rolling back of the socialist regulatory controls that are stifling American business.

We need the greatest change in the way government is done in this country since the first American Revolution. All those in Congress who are just enjoying their own power trip, or who delight in spending our money must be removed – irrespective of their party. The Republican Party has been disgraced by Republican Senators and Congressmen who have joined the profligate Democrats in driving the nation toward financial ruin. If we cannot scour clean the Republican Party, then we shall give rise to an alternative political party, just as the Republican Party was created in 1854 by break-away Democrats and Whigs worried about the nation-destroying threat of slavery. It will take a similar change.

What is God doing? He is allowing the situation to get worse and worse, letting the financial crisis deepen, letting the economy sink lower and lower, letting the socialists in Washington have their way and continue to ruin the country, until the American people finally get desperate enough to rise up and take action.

How shall we take action? The man that best models the kind of actions we need to take is the Father of the (First) American Revolution, Samuel Adams. Born into a Calvinist family, and possessed of a vibrant evangelical faith, Adams exerted revolutionary leadership on two fronts simultaneously – the political and the spiritual.

We must do likewise.

The Committees of Correspondence were a sort of networking organization conceived almost simultaneously by Adams and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, as a way for the Patriots in different colonies to communicate with one another. Adams further described their purpose as setting forth “the rights of the colonists . . . as men, as Christians, and as subjects” (of the British crown), and added that these rights were “best understood by reading and carefully studying . . . the New Testament.” Adams is telling us that to understand our position in society we need to study the New Testament. 

In addition to all his political involvement in the struggle for American freedom, Adams strongly prioritized his spiritual life. As the struggle against Britain intensified, Adams followed the example of his Puritan forebears by regularly taking days of prayer and fasting “to seek the Lord,” as he put it. 

We must do likewise. 

A nation-wide political and public policy revolution will only take place if America’s Christians clearly understand that Jesus requires Christians to take the Gospel into every area of life – including politics. We are not allowed to go passive in the face of what is happening; we are not permitted to hide our light under a bushel. We may feel increasingly marginalized or estranged from a society that is growing more hostile to Christians and Christianity, but that does not let us off the hook. Even when they were taken captive and removed from their homes to Babylon, the Jews of the Babylonian Captivity were commanded by the Lord to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare will you find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:7).  

Even though it seems at the moment as if the leftists and secularists are in control of the levers of power in our society, we must actively strive for the moral and spiritual welfare of the nation. And how much actual control those leftists and secularists have may be a media-generated delusion. Remember that on Election Day last fall three states passed referendums banning same-sex marriage! The American people haven’t changed since November – the public is still right-of-center, and basically conservative. 

We must find each other, and get networked. We must create our own local Committee of Correspondence, and link up with others across the country. 

It is interesting to see how the Lord is developing the network of concerned Christians in this time of crisis. I cannot count the number of ministers of the Gospel that I have met in recent years who have felt called by the Lord away from the pastoral ministry into Christian activism. Every one of them spoke of their deep concern about the nation’s moral and spiritual crisis and the loss of our Christian heritage. They are meeting one another, talking about networking the believers in their areas, and developing nation-wide contacts with like-minded conservative Christians. There is a growing understanding about the futility of having separate organizations – always trying to “reinvent the wheel” – and so there is a growing desire to work together.

To this end, we need to form “Concerned Christians” types of groups in our churches, which would inform the church of developments on the city or state level that required prayer, or the contacting of legislators, or sermons from the pulpit. We need to link with other such groups in other nearby churches, and also on the state level. We need to join groups like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, and many others – not only so we can receive their newsletters and know what’s happening, but also so we can know when to pray and what actions we can take. Only as our own local “spiritual militia” units are joined to others in our states and across the country can a synergy be developed that will bring about revolutionary change. 

In conjunction with Oregon's susquicentennial anniversary this year, a group of concerned Christians are organizing celebrations in all major towns and cities. The event programs will include a presentation of Oregon’s Christian heritage, and the fact that the state was founded by Christian missionaries to the Indians. In all of the networking with civil officials, educators, ministers and churches, the object is to develop a state-wide grass-roots network of people concerned to impact the state morally and spiritually. They are already reaching out to like-minded people and organizations in Washington State, and the hopes are that what they’re doing could become a model for other states. 

You see, folks, that is how it gets done…

On the spiritual side of Samuel Adams’ two-winged revolution, the Church of Christ in America is in desperate need of a revival of such proportions that it would amount to the Third Great Awakening.

Samuel Adams set apart days of prayer and fasting to seek the Lord during the Revolution, and we are going to have to do likewise. There will be no revival, no nation-wide spiritual revolution until committed Christians in our nation go deeper with the Lord Jesus.

As it is now, the huge majority of those calling themselves Evangelicals do not know how to articulate their faith. Question: are you confident that you can clearly explain the Gospel to another person? I have little trust that most of the people in the pews of our Evangelical churches in America could do so. And I strongly suspect that the young people in these same churches probably don’t know much more about their Christian faith than how they feel about it. Which is why for most of them it evaporates like the morning dew under the heat of secular professors or peer pressure when they get to college. I don’t thing that most of us who call ourselves Evangelical Christians are very certain about what we believe, or why we believe it. 

The preaching emphasis in most evangelical mega-churches is not helping people grow in the understanding of their faith, and how to live it out day by day, but in being motivational to the attendees (think Joel Osteen). Much of the pulpit ministry in these churches is focused on promoting motivation and personal success, not in proclaiming the Cross. The Cross is the dynamic of the Christian faith – without it there is no Christian faith.

Generally, there are three kinds of churches in America today: dying main-line denominational churches (both Protestant and Catholic) who are completely irrelevant to the culture, having long ago capitulated to it; mega-churches that are driven by a happy-clappy consumer mentality (get ‘em into church for the music, the Easter extravaganza, the men’s softball team, Starbucks in the lobby, etc.); and the new and independent charismatic or evangelical Bible churches whose future, unfortunately, is often far too dependent on the leadership traits of the current pastor.

Any hope for a spiritual revolution in this country cannot rest on the first two kinds of churches. I believe that the chances of Biblical Christianity being able to impact the culture in a life-changing way lie with the growing number of evangelical and charismatic churches. But, they will never pull off a nation-wide revival in their current spiritual state. Only if they recover the true dynamics of New Testament Christianity can they ever hope to create a spiritual revolution. God is at work in these churches, sifting and sorting. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He is separating wheat from chaff – separating those who want to go deeper with Jesus from those who are content with a shallow “easy-believism” that costs them nothing.

To go deeper with Jesus means hungering for a deeper experience with Him in worship; it involves becoming thirsty enough for the truth and power of God’s Word that we spend time in it every day; it will lead to growth in spiritual disciplines and becoming concerned about spiritual formation in our lives – perhaps even to the point of finding a spiritual director; it will create a desire for community with other Christians; and it will mean embracing His Cross – committing ourselves to the daily death of sin and self in our lives, and the daily experience of His Resurrection power.

Only churches that embrace these aspects of New Testament Christianity will be qualified to produce a spiritual revolution and become dynamic enough to impact the culture.

Let me give just one example of what this kind of change will mean in the typical evangelical or charismatic church of today. Take the matter of music during worship times in our churches. A shift in the focal point of the music must take place – from the stage or platform to the pew. The current practice today is that half a dozen band members and singers lead (far too loudly!) the congregation in what is supposed to be worship. Only they’re not really leading the congregation – they are performing, and the congregation is mainly focused on them. The center of attention isn’t God, or the congregation; it’s the musicians up front. After all, the volume put out by those up front is far greater than the singing of the entire room full of people.

I read an article recently which said that the genius of the Protestant Reformation in regard to music was that it took church music away from the professional musicians and gave it back to the worshippers in the pews. Luther wrote hymns based on popular tunes – including German drinking songs! John Calvin wrote hymn lyrics from the Psalms. But, oh, how centered in Christ it all was! Reformation music led the worshippers to the foot of the Cross.

The music in a church service is not supposed to be a performance by the musicians up front, while the congregation sings along with them. Just the reverse: the musicians need to lead the people, and accompany the congregation’s singing.

I used this illustration of the kind of change that’s needed in our churches to make a point. Only when ordinary Christians across America take charge of our own spiritual lives and our own worship – to get ourselves by the back of the neck, so to speak, and go deeper with Christ – only then will we see a new Reformation in our churches. And only when we see that happen will we be ready to lead a nation-wide spiritual revolution.

The Second American Revolution will be a grass-roots, locally initiated movement, if it happens at all. But, God will raise up leadership, both on the local and on the national scene. He always has. During the first American Revolution He lifted up Samuel Adams on the political front, and George Washington as America’s Commander in Chief on the military front, and during the Civil War He raised up Abraham Lincoln to be our President. So also He will raise up leadership for the Second American Revolution.

But, we must not wait for others to lead; the leaders will emerge when needed.

The time is now. The situation is desperate, and growing more so by the month.

Are you ready to act?

P.S. Tools for action on the local level can be found in my Restoring America DVD, and the accompanying Leader’s and Learner’s Guides.   

Copyright, 2009, Peter J. Marshall. All rights reserved.

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