Normally when a war is declared a nation changes gear and gets on a war footing. There can be no more business as usual when a country is under attack, and everyone is expected to contribute to the war effort. Either they engage militarily or help support those who do.
When a country is under direct attack, no one has the luxury of sitting on the fence. No one can just claim they will sit this one out. No one can pretend that everything is not at risk. No one can just go about his daily trivial pursuits. Everything is now in danger, and so everything changes.
When we think about the war of worldviews and the culture wars, I would have thought that most Christians would rise up to the challenge. They would see the many serious threats and act accordingly. They would realise that the time for playing games is long over, and they would gear up for battle.
Christianity is now under ferocious attack all over the West. We have moved from being a Christian culture to a post-Christian culture, and now we are living in a decidedly anti-Christian culture. Every day true believers who stand up for their beliefs and values are being targeted by the secular state and the militant minority lobby groups.
Christians are losing their jobs, being fined, and even thrown into jail. Yet most West Christians do not know about this nor do they care about this. God’s supreme institutions of marriage and family are under ferocious attack, we slaughter millions of unborn babies every year, we are awash with filth, perversion and sleaze and call it entertainment, yet most Christians do not give a rip.
In an Internet age it is hard to offer ignorance as an excuse anymore. Anyone who is not dead can see just how bad things are getting. Yet most believers sit there as if none of this is taking place. Why is this? Sure, we have a handful of brave souls like Margaret Court who will boldly speak out for truth, regardless of all the hate, vitriol and abuse she gets.
But she is clearly the exception. Most people who call themselves Christian will never speak out on anything that matters. They either do not give a rip, or they are despicable cowards. And as I keep reminding folks, when a list of sinners is mentioned in Revelation – those who will be banished from God’s presence – at the very top of the list are cowards.
Read it for yourself in Revelation 21:8. All I can say to these folks is either they need to repent and pray for some Holy Ghost boldness, or they need to get saved! But the time for limp-wristed cowards quivering on the sidelines is now long gone.
Either get in the trenches with your brothers and sisters, or admit that you are not even on the same side. Indeed, those who refuse to stand for Christ and the Kingdom in these dark days have effectively sworn their allegiance to the other side.
There is and can be no neutrality here. You either side with Christ and his army, or you are part of the other side. It’s our choice. Decide wisely. I for one have had a gutful of these spineless wonders who sit in the pews each week and do nothing for the Kingdom. But they are more than happy to chew out and criticise warriors like Court and others from the comfort of their lounge chairs.
I have no time for these fake Christians. I only have time for those who are the real deal. And that is just how Christ looks at all this. He has made it crystal clear that you are either for him or against him. There is no spiritual Switzerland here that you can hide out in. You are either fully sold out to Christ and engaged in his battles, or you are still in the enemy’s camp.
We are in a time of war my friends. The other side has declared war on us long ago. Indeed, Satan has declared war against the saints from the very beginning. Forget your stupid games, entertainments and trivial pursuits and put on your war armour. You must get involved – now.
The great saints of old understood full well the idea that we are at war, and that we cannot pretend everything is just peachy. They knew that the normal Christian life was like a battleship, not a cruise ship. Let me offer some stirring words from these great champions of the past:
“It is urgently needful that the Christian people of our charge should come to understand that they are not a company of invalids, to be wheeled about, or fed by hand, cosseted, nursed, and comforted, the minister being the head-physician and nurse – but a garrison in an enemy’s country, every soul of which should have some post of duty, at which he should be prepared to make any sacrifice rather than quit it.” F. B. Meyer
“The Church of Christ is continually represented under the figure of an army; yet its Captain is the Prince of Peace; its object is the establishment of peace, and its soldiers are men of a peaceful disposition. The spirit of war is at the extremely opposite point to the spirit of the gospel. Yet nevertheless, the church on earth has, and until the second advent must be, the church militant, the church armed, the church warring, the church conquering. And how is this? It is in the very order of things that so it must be. Truth could not be truth in this world if it were not a warring thing, and we should at once suspect that it were not true if error were friends with it. The spotless purity of truth must always be at war with the blackness of heresy and lies.” C.H. Spurgeon
“When a nation calls its prime men to battle, homes are broken, weeping sweethearts say their good-byes, businesses are closed, college careers are wrecked, factories are refitted for wartime production, and rationing and discomforts are accepted—all for war. Can we do less for the greatest fight that this world has ever known outside of the cross—this end-time siege on sanity, morality and spirituality?” Leonard Ravenhill
“The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a scanty round of formal religious services once every week. But of the great spiritual warfare—its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests—of all this they appear to know nothing at all.” J C Ryle
“Though you and I have stepped from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear son, we are still surrounded by a culture controlled by God’s great enemy, satan. We must live in it from the moment we accept Christ as our saviour until judgement falls. We, too, are encompassed by one who was once our king, but is now our enemy. It is just plain stupid for a Christian not to expect spiritual warfare while he lives in enemy territory.” Francis Schaeffer
“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.” A.W. Tozer
Let me close by asking you a few questions. With so many millions of Christians here in Australia, why in heaven’s name should someone like Margaret Court have to stand alone against the angry hordes who want to destroy her? Why should she have to be a sole voice in the face of so many who hate on her, despise her, and oppose her?
Where are all the Christians at a serious time like this? Where are all the believers who should be standing strong with Margaret in the front lines? Why does she have to experience all this demonic hatred and persecution on her own? Why do you stay home, glued to your television sets, and say nothing? Why?
One day you will stand before your Lord who gave everything he had in order that you might live. You will have to give an account as to why you treated his supreme sacrifice with such contempt. No one should want to be in that place come judgment day.
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