Monday, May 21, 2012

God Has Not Forgotten: Sin Has Been Defeated

They do not consider in their hearts
that I remember all their wickedness;
 now their own deeds have surrounded them;
they are before my face.....
They are all adulterers. 
Like an oven heated by a baker--
he ceases stirring the fire after
kneading the dough, until it
is leavened.
Hosea 7:2,4

     Men have come to believe, first, that there is no God, therefore they have no need to worry. Do they? God remembers all that a man has done, believed, practiced, and how they have taught others whether it be the truth or a lie. Nothing is hidden from God, although He will hide Himself from men: Truly You are God, who hide Yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior" (Isaiah 45:15). When God pulls back His hand then man becomes confused, they seek Him in vain, or look to other self-fulfilling ideologies that bring a sort of happiness to them. God has promised to save His people, those He chose before the foundation of the world, and this is the Doctrine that is the foundation of Christianity. History records the death of Jesus Christ, Doctrine records that by His death, resurrection, sin is destroyed, and be destroying sin, then we have a means to have forgiveness for all sins we commit, salvation is possible. This does not mean that we are not responsible for our sins and that we are affected and others, only that being of the Chosen of God we have forgiveness and salvation, eternal life. I have attempted to bring to the reader those things written by men that have had an effect upon society as a whole, and the individual. But I fear, some people will not do anything about this knowledge, they will continue to be associated with Churches that teach a different Doctrine, one that is of naturalism, humanism, and communism, either in whole, or part, either in ignorance, for this is what has been taught to them in Universities, or Seminaries, or by their belief in those ideologies, philosophies that are counter to God and His word. Call yourself Christian, but that is only to be in name and not in actuality.  
 The Abolition of Truth and Morality

            The basic problem of the Christians in this country in the last 80 years or so, in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals.
            They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion.  But they have not seen this as a totality –– each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in their worldview ––that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and of the world, and life as a whole. This shift has been all the way from a worldview that was at least vaguely Christian and people’s memory (even if they were not individually Christian) led them toward something completely different –– toward a worldview based upon the idea that the final reality is impersonal matter or energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance. They have not seen that this worldview has taken the place of the one that had previously dominated Northern European culture, including the United States, which was at least Christian in memory, even if the individuals were not individually Christian.
            These two worldviews stand as total and complete anti-thesis to each other and in content, and also in their natural results –– including social logical and governmental results, and specifically including law.
            It is not that these two worldviews are different, only in how they understand the nature of reality in existence. They also inevitably produce totally different results. The operative word here is inevitably. It is not just that they happen to bring forth different results, but it is absolutely inevitable that they will bring forth different results.
            Why have the Christians been so slow to understand this?  There are various reasons but the simple one is a defective view of Christianity.  This has its roots in the Pietist movement under the leadership of P.J. Spener, and the 17th century.  Pietism began as a healthy protest against formalism and a two abstract Christianity.  But it had a deficient, "Platonic" spirituality.  It was Platonic in the sense that Pietism made a sharp division between the "spiritual" and the "material" world –– giving little, or no, importance to the "material" world. The totality of human existence was not afforded a proper place. In particular it neglected the intellectual dimension of Christianity.
            Christianity and spirituality were shot up to a small, isolated part of life.  The pietistic thinking ignored the totality of reality. Let me quickly say, that in one sentence, Christians should be Pietist in that Christianity is not just a set of Doctrines, it is that Christianity is founded on right doctrines, those Doctrines that are first founded in the early, primitive Christianity. Every Doctrine is in some way, to have an effect upon our lives, but the poor sight of Pietism and its resulting Platonic outlook has really been a tragedy not only in many people’s individual lives, but also in our total culture.
            True spirituality covers all of reality.  There are things the Bible tells us as absolutes which are sinful –– those things that do not conform to the character of God. But aside from these the Lordship of Christ covers all of life and all of life equally. It is not only that spirituality covers all life, but also, it covers all parts of the spectrum of life equally. In this sense there is nothing concerning reality that is not spiritual.
            Related to this, it seems to me, is the fact, that many Christians do not mean what I mean, when I say Christianity is true, or The Truth. They are Christians and they believe in, let us say, the truth of creation, the truth of the virgin birth, the truth of Christ's miracles, Christ’s substitutionary death, and His resurrection and ascension once again into heaven to sit at the right hand of God, but they stop at this point with these and other individual truths.
            When I say Christianity is true I mean it is true in total reality –– a total of what is, beginning with the simple reality, the objective existence of a personal infinite God. Christianity is not just a series of truths but Truth –– Truth about all of reality. And the holding to that Truth intellectually –– and then in some poor way living upon that Truth, the Truth of what is –– brings forth not only certain personal results, but also governmental and legal results.
            Now let's go over to the other side –– to those who hold the materialistic final reality concept. They solve the complete and total difference between the two positions more quickly than Christians. There was the Huxley’s, and George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), and many others who understood a long time ago that there are two total concepts of reality and that it was one total reality against the other and not just a set of isolated and separated differences. The Humanist Manifesto I,(Humanist Manifestos I and II), (New York: Prometheus Books, 1973). published in 1933, showed with Crystal clarity their comprehension of the totality of what is in full.  It was to our shame that Julian (1887–1975), and Aldous Huxley (1894-­1963), and the others like them, who understood much earlier than some Christians that these two worldviews are two total concepts of reality standing in antithesis to each other. We should be utterly ashamed that this is the fact.
     There is no way to not admit it; the Church has been affected by these ideologies, men and women who have one thing in mind, that is to destroy Christianity, and bring into society, utopia. That will never happen; men are just too greedy. Why would I put good apples into a barrel of rotten apples? The question is: will you remove all encumbrances that are hindering your faith in the true God? Or will you just accept the status quo? 
      My Cousin Darrel wanted some information of Islam and Communism, and this I will do next, the method will be not to just have information that they are bad, this most would agree, rather how do they line up with Scripture?
 
For they themselves declare
     concerning us what manner
of entry we had to you, and how
    you turned to God from idols
to serve the living and true God, 
    and to wait for His Son from heaven,
whom He raised from the dead, even
    Jesus who delivers us from the 
wrath to come.
                                             1Thessalonians 1:9-10
 
Pray Prayers of Intercession-God hears that prayer
 
Richard L. Crumb 

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