At around 1am in the morning I was taking a brief stroll through the Internet, checking out the new day’s headlines. Alas, this exercise brought me much more than I expected. Within the space of four minutes I ran across four rather frightening headlines which certainly did not help me get ready for sleep.
What these online headlines confirmed was the fact that we are in a war. On every side there are forces arrayed against us, working overtime to destroy, faith, family and life. The onslaught is fierce and incessant. I am sure if I spent a few more minutes searching the online papers I would have found more such gloomy headlines.
But here are the four news items which caused me to lose a bit of sleep:
One. Julia Gillard and Bob Brown are the nation’s key leaders. Both are atheists who seem hell-bent on destroying God, family and country. They continue to push radical agendas which should frighten every one of us. In this headline we see how the two have been jumping into bed together (figuratively speaking), making all sorts of sleazy deals.
It seems that the attempt to get same-sex marriage legalised in this nation is now well under way, given their unholy alliance. And the article also speaks about a new Greens-led push for legalised euthanasia. These two leaders are a terrible pair.
Two. John Stanhope, the Labor leader of the ACT, is doing his own bit to eradicate faith and family while promoting false religions and alternative lifestyles. He is fully in favour of all the radical, trendy causes, including the two mentioned just above.
And while he is certainly no friend of Christianity, it seems he is a real buddy with Islam. He has just announced that his government will allow a major Islamic mosque to be constructed in Canberra. I guess in his books any religion is better than Christianity.
Three. There are even more attempts to kick God out of the nation, further sealing our fate. As I mentioned earlier on this site, there is a major attempt by the Liberals to put the Bible back into citizenship ceremonies. This is because Labor thinks they should have no part in such activities, and they have been banned.
This is not the first anti-Christian move by the Labor government, and it will not be the last. But it simply demonstrates the true colours of this outfit. With an atheist at the helm, one can expect such attacks on Christianity to occur.
Four. You will need to check out this nasty case of anti-Christian bigotry for yourself. It comes from a ‘nice’ smiley former TV presenter. Gee, she seems such a nice person, someone who wouldn’t hurt a fly. But read her very ugly attack on faith in schools and you will get a bit of a surprise. (Consult the four links below for these stories.)
Are you in the battle?
All these headlines are bad enough, but what really weighs me down is the fact that so much of the Christian church either does not know about this stuff, or does not care about it. So many believers seem to be completely oblivious to the major battles taking place all around us.
Our faith is being savaged on all sides and the casualties are mounting up, but so very few believers seem to even realise this, and/or seek to do something about it. I hope we all are aware of the fact that no one has the luxury of sitting on the fence in a time of war. We all must get involved, or we will lose it all.
When mentioning this issue elsewhere, one believer replied by saying this is a spiritual battle and we must fight it there. It most certainly is, but it is a battle that has to be fought on other levels as well. It is not a case of either praying or doing, but a case of both praying and doing. We must pray like mad, intercede and engage in spiritual warfare, but we must also act in the various areas where the battles rage.
One way to illustrate this would be as follows: Suppose you are outside with your young daughter, and she runs onto the street. You see a big truck at the end of the block heading her way. No Christian parent would just stand there and pray for divine protection.
He or she would not just stand around saying, “Lord, you know this is a spiritual battle and the enemy wants to get my daughter. This is a heavenly war, so I ask you to defeat the powers of darkness…” Instead the parent would run to the street and save the child from certain death or destruction – perhaps uttering a prayer along the way.
So with all these battles around us, we must both pray and get involved in the social, political, cultural or intellectual fights as well. We must put feet to our prayers, in other words. But the first step in all this is to understand the nature of the war and the shortness of the hour.
Too often believers want to just sit around waiting to be ‘blessed’, not lifting a finger in response to the various attacks against us. But as Robert Moffat put it, “We have all eternity to celebrate our victories, but only one short hour before sunset in which to win them.”
In a time of war we cannot just sit around and pamper ourselves. Leonard Ravenhill put it this way: “Many believers live as if this world were a playground instead of a battleground.” Or as John Piper rightly remarked: “There is a war going on. All talk of a Christian’s right to live luxuriously ‘as a child of the King’ in this atmosphere sounds hollow – especially since the King himself is stripped for battle.”
A.W. Tozer said it this way: “Yes, if evangelical Christianity is to stay alive she must have men again, the right kind of men. She must repudiate the weaklings who dare not speak out, and she must seek in prayer and much humility the coming again of men of the stuff prophets and martyrs are made of.”
In closing, let me remind you of the film version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In it was this short bit of dialogue:
“Theoden: I will not risk open war!
Aragorn: Open war is upon you whether you risk it or not.”
Yes the war is already upon us. The only question is, what are we going to do about it?
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/greens-gay-marriage-victory/story-fn59niix-1226014411240
http://www.chiefminister.act.gov.au/media.php?v=10376
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/holy-row-over-citizenship-bible-ban/story-e6freuzr-1226014422825
http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/dear-god-get-the-hell-out-of-our-schools/
[1104 words]