We're losing this Battle

 "Always, the most revealing thing about the church is what she thinks about God" 

                                                        -- A.W. Tozer 

 

 

"Adolescent Christianity is any way of understanding, experiencing, or 

practicing the Christian faith that conforms to the patterns of adolescence 

in American culture. I am well aware that the tangled web of beliefs, practices, and experiences that we call “adolescence” is itself a product of human cultures and changes over time. Attempts to define a universal set of 

traits that apply to every adolescent are always gross generalizations that 

betray cultural biases. One reason juvenilization is so powerful and deceptively difficult to manage is that adults are constantly investigating, debating, and misreading the supposed “nature” of adolescents. Juvenilization is 

also driven by actual changes in the lives of young people, not just adult 

perceptions. So, no matter how the experience of adolescence changes, 

churches will eventually conform to that new set of adolescent traits. 

A reliable body of social science research has identified some common 

aspects of adolescent development in American society. And though some 

of the traits we ascribe to adolescents have changed over time, beneath these 

particulars lie some foundational realities that have remained relatively stable. Adolescents are people in a particular developmental life stage, who occupy particular positions in the social and economic structures of society, 

and whose lives provide important raw materials for creating meaning in 

American culture. Each of these aspects of adolescence shapes the process 

of juvenilization in the church, so each deserves some explanation." 

     The above quote is from Thomas Bergler's book "The Juvenilization of American 

Christianity." In it, he lays out the case -quite powerfully-- that modern evangelicalism has become nothing more than an extension of high school youth groups in its adolescent approach to ministry and the Gospel.  

     Discussion of sin, wrong, conviction, boundaries, standards, doctrine, and even God Himself has become tainted by the influence of the youth culture and viewed only through the prism of spiritual adolescents for who the entire services are structured. 

God has moved from deity and awe- inspiring, all-consuming, to your best bud, incapable of demanding circumspect living from His worshippers. Worship itself has, in fact, become en emotionally driven, shallow exercise more akin to the squealing teenaged girls fainting at the sight of the Beatles in 1964, than Moses prostrate before the burning bush. 

     The worship music has taken on the sound and feel of sappy teenaged love songs about some dreamy high school senior that the sophomore female singer has a crush on. 

      Social Justice warriorism has replaced St. John of the Cross and his "Long Dark Night of the Soul." Traditional orthodoxy is lost. Sneered at as some relic in an archeological dig. If it doesn't elicit emotion...it's not "anointed. 

      We've spent the last thirty years or so, reshaping the message of the cross to fit itself around the culture, instead of digging in deep, reinforcing our proclamation of that gospel and influencing and reshaping the culture by the power of the cross.  

Paul taught us that "the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing.  

     But the current trend in evangelicalism is to look at the traditional gospel message as the foolishness and to try to bend it to fit the foolishness of the lost.  

Carl Lentz with his semi-erotic stage productions (replete with handsome youth pastor onstage in his underwear at a women's conference) and knocking back shots with Justin Bieber in an Aussie bar.   

     Andy Stanley declaring the Old testament bulky, cumbersome and unnecessary excess baggage for the modern church.  

     Stephen Furtick in his frequent displays of spiritual egomania, declaring himself a theological superman and posturing like a peacock while spitting out charismatic pablum. 

       Even the SBC's own J.D. Graeer weeping over a gavel...a gavel and declaring that the SBC ought to refer to LGBTQ people by their preferred pronouns because it's "welcoming." (never mind the fact that it's blasphemous and amounts to telling God that He got it wrong when he "fearfully and wonderfully made" said confused person) 

This current generation exists in a theological Sesame Street. Or Mr. Rodger's Neighborhood.  Descriptives like "warfare" "battle" "endure" "circumspect" "grave" or "sober" are not used in these services. It's all about love. God is love. God is ONLY love. At the expense of all His other Godly attributes...even His Holiness.  He is not a consuming fire...he's a warm cup of cocoa. He is not Holy and terrifying (in an awe-inspiring way) He is really really good. And He can't be offended and all He cares about is your frail little heart.  

     Where the heroes of scripture were rugged, stalwart, fierce men of prayer and conviction...this brood know nothing about long nights laboring in prayer over people going to Hell. They know nothing of fasting until God moves. Crying out in burden of soul for the lost. They have never confronted sin in society, save the annual pro-life rallies, which -while necessary and of utmost urgency-- have become the low hanging fruit of the evangelical world. Kill babies? Of course, that's wrong! but confront someone over a sinful lifestyle that they claim God approves of? No... that's not "loving."  

     When Dr. Falwell first envisioned Liberty University, he saw a place where culture would meet its seawall. A place that would stand out as a line in the sand like a firebreak cut in a forest. We would be different. Biblically, theologically different. We would cherish the gospel and the work of the Cross so deeply that we would never consider bending it to shape itself to society.  

      The Bible says that Jesus became the cornerstone...and you would either fall on it and be broken or it will fall on you and you will be crushed. The choice was simple. Surrender to the Gospel of the Cross, or ultimately be judged by it and destroyed by it. 

We have taken the Gospel of the cross and made it a warm fuzzy emotional Hallmark Channel movie. Jesus has become Mr. Rodgers. "You are special to me" has replaced, "Don't be surprised when I tell you that you must be born again." "I love you just as you are" has replaced "If anyone would follow me, he must take up his cross and follow me. He must die. We have removed the death-to-self requirement from salvation and we have failed in doing so. 

    Liberty University has been moving toward this chasm of liberalism since Dr. Falwell passed away. And our affecting society has been weakened because of it.  

Our students are simply not hearing the Gospel as they once were. They have been fed this liberal neo-evangelicalism by the bucketload and it shows.  

         If we will truly train Young Champions for Christ, then we MUST abandon this false god of society-filtered gospel and preach the Cross once again. We have fallen far. We have a lot of ground to reclaim. 

 

 

 
 

 

Ice Berg Right Ahead! What Liberty must do to survive...

 

Iceberg, Right Ahead!

   

  As a proud alumnus of Liberty University, I write the following with a heavy heart and a worried soul. Our beloved LU stands at a precipice, a crossroads. We've been steaming across the Atlantic at record speed for years and suddenly, there appears an iceberg in our path. And we are dangerously close to plowing head-on into that disaster, after which there will be no recovery.

     Now there is some background required her, before we go forward. You need to know some history and the depth of my roots to this place. I come from a generation of LU students who came here when it was a small Bible college in the foothills of the Blue Ridge mountains. When the founder was debating Jesse Jackson on the Phil Donahue Show and marching in the January cold to protest the slaughter of babies.

     Jerry Falwell Sr. was a hero to my generation. In him we saw a man who dreamed big, prayed big, and worked hard to see those visions to their end. We came to this mountain to feel the touch of God on our lives and we left here to start churches, or Christian schools, or go to the mission field, or start an inner-city ministry.

     Liberty was a bible college then. Virtually everyone on my hall my freshman year was there to be a pastor, or a youth pastor, or a Christian schoolteacher. We lived four to a room that was built for two. We had to get our hair cut. We wore ties everywhere. We held late night bible studies, just a few of us at a time in the foyer of our dorm.

     We taught Sunday school classes for our Christian service. We took mandatory classes on Evangelism and soul winning. We had chapel three times a week...not "Convocation..." chapel. I hear E.V. Hill for the first time my freshman year and I never again heard another preacher who could stir me quite like that great man of God.

     Dr. Falwell preached to us in two of the three chapel services each week.

Preached.

He didn't "chat" or "have a dialogue" he preached. He preached doctrine. He preached tradition and orthodoxy. he was huge on patriotism and Americanism and short on political correctness.

     No one ever doubted Doc's love for sinners. And they never wondered where he stood on sin. Not. Ever. He identified it. He refuted it. he pronounced God's judgement on it. And he proclaimed the Gospel as the only way to defeat it.

The Gospel. The real Gospel. Not the woke gospel or the Critical race Theory Gospel, or the neo-evangelical gospel, or the millennial gospel.

     Doc sided with Jesus when he said "I am the way, the truth and the life. NO man comes to the Father except through me!" He was unafraid to preach hard sermons against harmful sins and call on Christians to renounce those sins and come out and be separate, and yet to be loving as we did.

     Doc would have choked on the social justice warrior gospel. He would have shown the door the current crop of flock star pastors that lay claim to the evangelical flavor of the week and occupy the best seller list. He would have decried their shallow theology and their heretical doctrine.

     He would have been politically incorrect. Very, decidedly politically incorrect.

He would have named them by name and confronted them with the power and directness of Paul when he got right in Peter's face in the Temple. He would have called them on their heresy and blistered them for their popularity.

     And for certain they never would have set foot on Liberty's campus.

Make no mistake...Doc had his share of controversial speakers in the day. I was here on campus as a freshman when Ted Kennedy came to speak once. And Ollie North delivered the commencement address when one of my best friends graduated a few years after that. But ted was not there as a pastor or a minister. Nor was Ollie. Doc made it clear that they were not ministers and they did not agree or align with Liberty's doctrinal positions. (Ollie certainly did, but Ted Kennedy did not. Jerry invited him because despite their differences politically, they had met and become friends)

     Doc kept us filled to the gills with preachers. With pastors. With men who embraced traditional evangelicalism and were unashamed to stand firm on the doctrine that had been handed down from out church fathers. Names like Lakin and Wemp and Rogers, and Stanley and Smith, and Criswell...and of course the aforementioned E.V. Hill.

     It is said that the Secret service trains it's counterfeit teams not by having them handle the counterfeits, but by having them only handle the real thing, so they know the real thing so well, they can spot a fake before it ever hits their hands. That was Doc's philosophy as well. We were inundated with solid, traditional, perhaps "Old Time" preaching and teaching, so that we would feel uncomfortable in the presence of heretics and hucksters.

     We came here to this mountain, wanting to build something that maybe resembled what Doc had built. We walked this mountain when it was mostly undeveloped and barren. We lived in Quonset huts and undersized dorms. I had a mobile office trailer for my freshmen English classes my freshman year. We had lousy cafeteria food and strict dress code guidelines. We attended church Sunday morning and again on Sunday evening and again on Wednesday.

Church.

     Not some cute-named gathering made for spiritual babies who wanted to hear glorified bedtime stories. We heard preaching. We were challenged. We wept at altars and prayed into the wee hours and begged God for a vision of our own to change a piece of the world.

     So much has changed at Liberty. So much. It's barely recognizable and I don’t mean physically. It's not Liberty anymore. It's not Doc Falwell's Liberty. And if action is not taken it will never be again.

     I have considered this place my second home since I was a freshman here. I stayed atuned to what was happening here on campus even when I wasn't a student here. I love this place and I carry a piece of this place with me wherever I go, and I have left a piece of my own heart here.

I came to work at LU in May of 2014. For the first two years I worked there I felt driven by the Holy Spirit to spend my lunch hour in prayer for my school. I would sit in the stands at Williams stadium and praye for the campus, for the staff, for the student body. Pray for a revival. Pray for an awakening.

     I left my job at LU in May 2019. I remain here in Lynchburg and my daughter is a Liberty student. I love this school. I want the very best for her. I want Doc's legacy to remian intact.

That's why I have to speak out.

     Liberty is not Doc's school right now. There is an iceberg right ahead and if we don't take drastic emergency action...she will drive her bow straight into the apostacy and heresy that is creeping into other Christian universities and down she will go.

And I love her too much to let that happen.

     First off, let me say that much of the problem is not Liberty's doing directly. We can only work with what comes here. This generation is not being raised the same as the generations before. They do not hear the sound doctrine we did. They are not being taught solid theology. They are not questioning what they are hearing. They see an endless parade of millenial Flockstars in skinny jeans and fitted T-shirts, who replace the actual Gospel with a virtue-signaling, Jesus-juking, comic book theology that bows it's knee to every social trend and trick in order to be "relevant" "relatable" or "woke."

     This past week we saw a BLM march on our campus in defiance of the college specifically telling them not to assemble because of safety issues. They claimed to not be BLM, but they held signs with BLM catchphrases, chanted the BLM words, and they knelt. The knelt on THIS campus. On the very same mountain where the "I Love America" rally was born, students at Liberty University knelt.

     Doc Falwell would have had your bus ticket waiting for you at your dorm before you got back there. Liberty has -under the guidance (or lack thereof) of Jerry Jr.-- fallen into the same cesspool that the SBC is mire din, that the evangelical megachurches swim in, and that bring shame to the name of Jesus.

We have had such luminaries as J.D. Graeer who emplored the SBC he led as president, to embrace gender pronouns in an effort to "extend friendship" to the LGBTQ community. never mind the fact that doing so is a slao to the face of the very God we claim to worship, the very God who created man and woman only, and who assigned those genders in the moment of conception as part of His plan. When we bow our knee to the god of culture, and address a man as a "she" because he has a head full of bad wires and doesn't recognize the authority of the God who created him...we commit blasphemy. We claim to know better than God.

We commit the sin of Lucifer.

     Liberty has begun down the path of Critical Race Theory and a subtle embrace of "White Fragility" a book that creates racism out of whole cloth and thin air. Our alma mater has begun to embrace the "woke" culture, the lies that go hand in hand with it, and the destruction of history in the name of "relevance." We have dipped our toes in the water of "White Privilege" "White Guilt" and White self- loathing.

    We have become what we beheld, and it is a dreadful thing indeed.

Alumni have been more vocal in the days and weeks since Jerry Jr.'s fall and removal. I think we sense the seriousness of this moment. Every new day reveals the fact that Jerry Jr. did NOT grasp his father's vision. not all of it. Not the faith part. Sure, he built the physical part of his dad's plan and did it well. But Jerry ran roughshod over the spiritual inheritance his father left us all on this mountain and those who walked these sacred steps while Doc was alive see this as a dividing moment. We either take action now and avoid the iceberg and get this ship back on the course she was built for...or we plow headlong into spiritual disaster and watch her sink.

     What have the alumni been asking for and proposing? I watched the convo comments the last few days and I talked to fellow alumni on my own. I offered a forum on this show and hopefully, today we will hear from them. But the ones I spoke with have told me in no uncertain terms that they are angry. They feel betrayed. They see the glaring danger that is being ignored and they demand changes.

     And the worst thing they've said, and said this unanimously, is that for the first time in their lifetime, they can no longer in good faith recommend Liberty to their own children, or grandchildren or friends’ children.

    I've spoken to Christian educators who regularly encouraged their graduating seniros class to put Liberty on the top of their lists of prospective colleges, not tell me they won't even recommend LU at all.  For me personally, I have worked for four years to get my daughter into LU and keep her there. It has not been easy. but this fall, for the first time, I asked her if she wanted to consider another Christian college. The words hung in my throat and I blinked back tears. The thought that I would one day not want my own child to come here to this special place has been more than I could bear. The alumni have had enough.

     What is it we want? What do we want to see? First of all, we want an end to this madness that says we need to be like the culture around us. We never were! We never can be. Jesus Himself warned us that the world will hate us. If the world doesn't hate us, we are doing something wrong. We want an end to the popularity seeking. And end to the theologically shallow, spiritually vapid flockstars like Lentz and Stanley and Furtick, and Smith, and Graeer and McManus. We want an end to the butt kissing of big-time showboat stage-show preachers, and we want a return to the actual gospel that permeated this campus.

Why do we cram these frauds down the throats of our student body endlessly? Why do we send the signal that this is what "successful" church looks like? Why do we indulge the flesh and ignore the mind?

     Why don't we invite some little out of the way pastor who has never had more than 75 in his church and has never made more than $40,000 a year in all his time as a pastor and who works diligently, without a twitter account or a Youtube channel or a facebook page? Why don't our students hear from anonymous missionaries who work tirelessly in a foreign land for no glory and almost no pay?

When do we send the private jet for a guy who has one of his own, put him up in the finest facilities and ply him with gifts in the name of hospitality, and yet ignore an unknown pastor who does frontline battle every day of his life? Whatever happened to James Chapter 2?

     Why has the faith-based curriculum been reduces so drastically? How does lowering the doctrinal bar help us attain our stated goal of training young champions?

     We are failing. And we are almost beyond the point of no return. We need the board to reestablish the original vision of Dr. Falwell. We need to thoroughly purge the "woke" theology, and popularity doctrines, a dn the cult of personality that has invaded our territory. We need to develop men and women of spiritual character again. Unafraid to speak the truth, even if the truth isn't "woke" Popular, dressed in skinny jeans or without socks. We need an end to posing preening and posturing and a return to holiness, truth, facts, logic, and a bold proclamation of the Gospel. Not the social gospel...the Jesus-butchered-on-the-cross-because-of-sin gospel. The call it a sin because it IS a sin gospel.

     We need to get back to training young champions for Christ. Not building the fan base of a Bono wannabe who throws back shots with Justin Beiber on a Friday and stands in a pulpit on Sunday.

We want our kids to be Jerry's kids again.

 

    

    

Our Country's Only Hope

 

What is going on in our country?

Since the election of Donald Trump, and especially since the arrival of the China virus on our shores, this country has been under an increasing attack.                     

We’re attacked financially in the form of job loss, businesses shut down, growth stunted. We’re attacked physically in the eruption of lawlessness and chaos, under the cloak of “peaceful protests” which are nothing more than imported riots. Cities are being burned by people who don’t even live in those burning cities. And the mayors of those towns are providing the matches and gasoline and blocking the fire department from doing their jobs.

Insanity has taken over. The answer to the incredible lawlessness and destruction? Defund the police.

The answer to the morality vacuum is to remove the very roots of Faith that this country was built upon.

It’s not only okay to riot…it’s encouraged. But meet in a house of worship and you literally face arrest.

We stand at a critical time in our nation’s history where, once again, we face the very real prospect of a civil war of some form. Come election day, November 3, 2020, we may very well see some form of bloodshed as the tipping point is reached. I feel more and more comfortable that President Trump will win re-election, and in doing so, we will see a level of hatred and insanity the likes of which this country has not seen since 1865.

How did we get here, and how can we leave here?

In my assessment as a believer in Jesus Christ and an adherent to Christianity, we got here because we abandoned the faith this nation was founded upon. On the surface that’s a generic, almost trite, Christianese statement. But let’s look more closely at this.

First…the fault lies to a large measure, with American Christians themselves. We have become complacent and we have compromised the core of the faith that built this country.

In decades past, when a revival hit a town, bars were closed. Broken homes were mended. Businessmen became better bosses. Young men surrendered to the ministry. Houses of prostitution were shuttered. Whole communities were altered for generations to come, because the people took God seriously. The realized they had come face to face with a Holy God, and the thought gave them pause. They dare not defile what He had done in their town. The Holy Spirit broke loose on people and they were radically changed. Sin was exposed…and it was not tolerated.

In more recent times -maybe the last thirty years or so—this has fallen by the wayside. The Church became a big business and like every big business, the focus became growth and profit. Growth was defined by quantity not quality. And so, the message was compromised. In the name of Grace, sin became something almost non-offensive to the new version of God they began worshipping. Where my generation (I am 57) was raised to dread the very thought of sin and run from it…subsequent generations were taught that sin isn’t really the bad thing we were told it was. It’s just part of being a human after all, and how dare the Church stand against it? We’re insensitive. We’re “graceless” or legalistic. Surely Jesus would not care about sin…He’d only care about the sinner.

They twisted the scriptures to meet their twisted views, until the scriptures themselves were so unrecognizable that they then started dismissing them altogether. The Genesis account of Creation became a “myth” that the author used to illustrate a point. This led to “pastors” endorsing gay marriage because after all…the Adam and Eve story was now just a myth. “Love is love” they declared and being popular was all they cared about.

The battle was no longer against sin…it was against anything actually being a sin.

Let’s be clear here…America was not founded as a theocracy. The founders were dead set against that idea. We were not a “Christian Nation” as some would describe us. But we were a Nation of Christians. The first amendment was put in place to guarantee the freedom of expressing and promoting the Christian faith our founders adhered too. They did not believe in forcing adherence to Christianity, or they would have written that into the Constitution. But they did believe that Christianity -if protected by that Constitution and practiced properly—would govern the nation and create a “Theocracy by proxy.” Their vision for the country was that Christianity would be properly lived out in a way that made it irresistible and thereby it would become -almost through Osmosis—the true governing power of our nation.

But the church has surrendered this. The church has grown cold and tolerant…two things that always lead to destruction. The church needs to repent of her luke-warmness. Repent of her carelessness. Repent of her attitude toward sin. The church needs to stop being concerned about being popular, and start being concerned about being Holy!

The Bride of Christ has become a party girl. Instead of a solemn virgin, she has become a popularity seeking gold digger. Seeking the love and approval of a world that only knows to hate her. Jesus Himself said “Do not be alarmed when they hate you…they hated me first.” (John 15:18)

We have spent the last thirty years trying desperately to get the world to love us and all we get is increased hatred. Because they see through the attempt. They expected from us, boundaries and an uncomfortable declaration of sin. Instead they got “woke” ness and weak capitulation. And they only see it as weakness, and they hate us even more.

If this country will survive, it must start with a revival in the church. One that brings a clear, concise, unwavering declaration of sin, and of God’s holiness. We must be the friend of sinners but the absolute sworn enemy of sin. And that line must not be blurred.

Being “woke” “seeking to understand” “extending grace” have all become nothing more than excuses for embracing bad behavior. Yes…embracing. We moved from tolerating, to approving, to embracing it.

We have failed.

This nation needs a repentant, broken, determined-to-be-holy Church to get serious about the time that remains.                                                                                          Without this, we are already lost.