Emergent Churches, homosexual marriage, Seeker Friendly philosophy, abortion, Liberation theology, Keynesianism, intellectually vapid Pentecostalism, existentialism, Arminianism, collectivism, Radical Two Kingdom theology, the decline of public morality …
All of these seeming disparate movements and many more like them have one thing in common and that is they are arid and life destroying winds that blow in from hell which are given to the complete destruction of the Western Church and so Western civilization.
It is not as if these movements and the ideas that motivate them are not inner connected. Only the fool would think that we are bent over at the force of hurricane winds and not realize that all of these winds serve blow in from the same pit and serve the same end. It may seem like Emergent churches have little to do with Keynesianism or that Pentecostalism and existentialism are isolated and unrelated breezes but we have need to realize that all of the breezes that blow from hell are resulting in a similar end. The work of the winds of government schools is one with the work of the winds of Radical Two Kingdom theology. The work of the winds of Arminianism is one with the work of collectivism. All these winds blow from West to East and all of these winds blow from Hell.
Ideas have consequences and the consequences of these ideational trade winds from Hell is to rob God of His glory while impoverishing and killing those made in His image. It is not as if these winds are random and isolated. They blow in at the beckoning of their master to take the life out of all that they swirl about. Taken together they have the ability to turn a verdant land into an arid desert and to reduce a land filled with a vibrant people to a wasteland populated by emaciated skull and bones.
We cannot allow ourselves to think that we can shelter ourselves from some breezes while allowing some to blow across us. They all are dedicated to destroying us. We will not save our churches by sheltering our churches from the winds of hell, for winds that destroy our families will destroy our Churches. We will not save our families by sheltering our families from the winds, for the winds, should they destroy our culture, will wreak havoc on our families. This is not a windstorm we can resist piecemeal. No, we must build wind shelters simultaneously for all our institutions — from family to church, from civil to educational, from the the arts to economics, from our structures of jurisprudence to all our cultural infrastructure.
With the intensity of these winds from hell we have come to the point where no one person or institution can find a safe way out for themselves alone. As such all must join together, out of interest for God’s glory, and stand together in the work of building shelter in the storm. At this moment in history there are none who are of like mind who can isolate themselves from those who share their interest. What is at stake is no less than God’s glory and our freedom.
You make a very powerful point, isolationism does not work, which leads to the question: Just how do we build, how do we join together . . . especially when American Christendom is isolated because it is scattered to the four winds having unequally yoked itself to the greater secular village? Just gathering together as a “local” church for a few hours a week at a building that most commute to and then blending back into the secular community during the rest of the week just doesn’t cut the mustard, nor is it the biblical model of the local congregation, which is vital to the wellbeing of the saints. The Scriptures and history make it clear, especially our colonial history when our late Christian republic was formed, that there is no such thing as keeping covenant with Lord and each other without living in close enough proximity that the local church can establish local checks and balances and protections for itself, through local political and economic processes, to create substantive communities, which can link to each other in building Christian culture. I believe the age of the virtual “local church” is coming to an end.