The Four Pillars of a Godly Society | thebereancall.org

The Four Pillars of a Godly Society

September 1, 2022
Mike Warren

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Transcript:

Mike Warren: All right! Good to be with you guys again! I hope you enjoyed the last time I was here, and I hope you can enjoy this one. Let’s all stand and open in a word of prayer. Father, we thank you that we can gather as likeminded people—people that love you with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength; people who love your word, people who are committed to the accuracy of it, Lord, and willing to defend it at any cost. So, Lord, we just pray this afternoon that as we take a look at where America is at, what’s happening in our country, and what we can do about it, Lord, we just pray that you would speak to us. And we pray it in Jesus’s name. Amen.

You can be seated. You know, as a pastor you’re asked a lot of questions, but since Covid, and as we’re moving forward as a nation, one the most often-asked questions, if I can put it that way, as it were, is “What is going on in America? Why don’t we find America in biblical prophecy? It’s hinted at in a few places, but why don’t we see it there?”

And I’m going to offer to you my opinion. I’m going to try to back it up from what we’re seeing going on in the world today, and then I’m going to give you, as it were, an answer for what we can be doing in the time we’re living in. I personally believe that we’re living in a time—just like in the times of Jeremiah and Ezekiel—because of the idolatry that is going on in the world today and in this nation that God is judging this nation.           

Now, you may disagree. I don’t think that America is coming back. I don’t think that, you know, when the next elections come, I hear a lot of Christians say—and, you know, a lot of them are promoting, “We need to get out and vote.” Listen, I’m not looking for the next conservative president. I’m looking for Jesus Christ to come and take me out of this mess. Amen?

So, the title of my message is The Four Pillars That a Godly Society Is Based Upon. And what I want to lay out for you this afternoon is that the founding fathers based this nation on four godly pillars, and I’m going to prove to you, if I can, for a few moments, that those four pillars are gone.

Now, it says this in Psalms:11:3: “If the foundations be destroyed” (and I think they have been, for the most part) “what can the righteous do?”

So, there’s a statement there that we want to look at: “If the foundations be destroyed (and I think they have, and I’ll prove my point in a few moments) what can the righteous do?” I want to answer that for you, because that’s the question that I get asked a lot as a pastor. “What is the church to do? What are we supposed to do? Do you think there’s going to be another great revival?”

My answer to that is “no.” I think we have personal revivals. I think we ought to be about the Master’s business. But I don’t think that what we’re going to see in the future is what we saw during the “Jesus Movement,” with Chuck Smith, and that whole…and that was an absolute move of God! I’m a product of that. But I think we’re in a rescue mission. I think we’re in the time of the “remnant church.” I think we’re in the time that “Narrow is the way, and few there be that find it.” But that does not let us off the hook to shout long and loud the gospel of Jesus Christ. Can I get an “amen” on that?

Now, before I get into this, I want to say that we just finished the Book of Philippians in our church on Sunday mornings, and Paul makes an incredible statement there. In fact, it’s one of the only epistles, if not the only epistle where he really doesn’t have to correct anything other than a couple of ladies that are arguing—and that happens everywhere in church. And so, he’s laying out to this church that has supported him, that is connected with him, that loves him—it’s like, you know, these friends writing back and forth to each other. 

Epaphroditus brings them some offering to help support the ministry there—there’s a real connection between Paul the Apostle and the church there at Philippi. And so, I think that Paul wrote to the church because he doesn’t have to defend his apostleship. I think to this church he’s able to let down his guard and expose his heart.

And what he says to this church is incredible! He says, “For me, to live is Christ.” I think that’s the question that needs to be asked and answered in the time we’re living in. Is 

Christ and Christ alone the purpose and the reason for our lives? Do we live for Him? And to die, do we see that as gain?

And then he goes on and talks about the things that he’s willing to sacrifice—the things that he’s willing to forfeit—that he might know Him. And then he makes this incredible statement, and I want to start off the teaching with this statement. He says this: “For our conversation is in heaven.” That verse means it already exists in heaven. And the word for “conversation” is interesting. We get the same word for “politics” from that word. Your worldview, your conversation, the way you live, the way you act, the way you behave, your citizenship, as it were, is already in existence in heaven, to whence we look! We’re looking steadfastly and continually for the return of Jesus Christ! Man, I just tell you, that’s my hope! My hope is not for the next president or this next election that’s coming up. My hope is found in something very singular—the return of Jesus Christ. Because when He comes, He’s not going to drain the swamp. He’s going to remove it. 

Righteousness will be the order of the day. So, you and I as Christians—I just want to leave you with this thought before we start this message so you can have that mulling around in your mind—that we don’t belong here! We have neverbelonged here after the fall. This should be a foreign land to us. This should be a strange place. Oh, and by the way, it’s getting stranger by the moment. I told our congregation the other day, “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, you know, on your day off, by accident you turn on Fox News and you find out it can get worse! And it is getting worse. In fact, the Bible says it’s going to get worse and worse until the coming of the Lord. We’re in a time where, I believe—and you can disagree with me, that’s okay—you can be wrong, I’ll be right—but I believe…listen! I believe that God is judging this nation. You can’t abort 63 million children! You can’t shake your fist on gender in the face of God. The very things that God created—life—we’re destroying. Marriage, we’re destroying. Gender— “He made them male and female”—we’re destroying, and we’re doing everything, as one person quoted, Psalm 2, to disconnect from that. To cast off any moral bindings, any moral truth. And so we’re living in a time (not unlike what we saw in the nation of Israel and the condition of them, when Jeremiah comes upon the scene, and Ezekiel—and Daniel, up in the palace). 

So, I believe, and it’s my personal opinion, that we’re living in a time where God is judging the nation, and the pillars of truth that this nation was founded on, have been removed. There are four of them, and if you have your notepad out, let’s write these down. There are four pillars that every godly society is built upon. In fact, it’s interesting that our nation is the only nation in the history of the world that at its inception was founded on these four pillars. And I’m going to try to make my point briefly because I want to get to “What do we do when the foundations are removed?” Because I think all four of them have been taken out from underneath us.

Because that’s the question of the psalmist: “If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” And I think that has to be answered. 

Well, the first pillar—and if you ever have the opportunity to go to Washington, D.C. and go through a tour of all the different monuments they have there, it becomes very evident that they held a truth that God was the Creator of heaven and earth. It’s woven into the DNA of the Constitution: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator of certain inalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The first pillar that our founding fathers and the framers of the Constitution laid under the foundation of this nation, one nation under God, was that God is our Creator. 

The second one is that God is our Sustainer. We don’t look to the government to pay off our student loans. We don’t look to the government to hand us our free money. God is our Sustainer. It is to Him we look for our needs, for our sustenance, for everything that we need in this life. (And we’ll prove this point.)

Thirdly—and I think most importantly, and this is where we’re being bombarded today with psychology and mind science and head knowledge and psychoanalyzing, and…you know, listen! God’s Word declares (and our founding fathers understood it) that man’s heart is flawed. It is desperately wicked, and they need to be redeemed! There’s a need for redemption.

And then lastly, the last pillar is “God’s Word is the final authority, and it is the rule for life and conduct.” 

So, number one: God is Creator.

Number two: God is Sustainer.

Number three: man is fallen, and desperately so; his heart is wicked, and it needs to be—not reformed—regenerated; 

And number four, that the Word of God is the final authority of our lives.

Now, you know, before I got saved and left secular college to go to Bible college, it was my intention to become a high school World History teacher. So, I know a lot about history, and when I hear things like, you know, people: “Well, I read my son’s textbook, his history textbook, and I’m finding that there’s a lot of revisions and just lies, and it’s anything butsolid history of this country!” 

But I want you to know that 29—29 of the 56 founding fathers that signed the Declaration of Independence and got together and met to form the constitution of this nation—29 of them were seminary-trained ministers. They weren’t Deists! They started every session of Congress with two hours of prayer. They entered a recession with one of these 29 ordained ministers to bring the Word.

You know, I got the wonderful opportunity a number of years ago—we were back with Roger Stalheid helping to plant a church in Westminster, and one of the things we told the kids that went with us—we took a whole bunch of youth, we canvassed the city there, we put doorhangers on, we witnessed to people, we had coffee houses—it was a tremendous outreach. But we promised the kids that we would take them over to Independence Hall, do a little tour of where the country was founded, and then we would also go to Gettysburg. And so we did that. But when we got there to Independence Hall, there’s a statue outside of it. It’s a replica of the original, which is now over at City Hall in Philadelphia. But there’s a statue of George Washington. And so, I pointed it out to the kids, and as we were walking in and we’re going through the tour, the tour guide starts talking about these guys being Deists. And I raised my hand and said, “They’re not Deists.” I said, “I can find out the chairs with the different people and which ones were seminary-trained ministers. These were men of God. They weren’t Deists! Why are you saying that?”

He said, “You know more than I do?”

I said, “Apparently so.” 

“Do you want to do the tour?”

“I got it!” Well, what I said is, “The guy out front, George Washington….”

He said, “Well, that’s not the original. The original is over at City Hall, you know.

But it’s a marble replica. George Washington is standing there with his left hand on his sword and his right hand leaning, as it were, from his elbow, leaning hard on a book that’s risen up on a pedestal.” 

“What is the book?”

He said, “Well, I suppose it’s the Law.”

I said, “It is the Word of God. This nation was founded on biblical principles. These men were Deists. Twenty-nine of them were God-fearing Seminary-trained ministers of the Gospel. These men spent two hours in prayer before every ession, and they ended every session with somebody bringing the Word of God, and woven, as I said, into the DNA of this great nation, ‘One nation under God, were the principles—these four principles—that God is Creator, God is Sustainer, that man is flawed, and he is in need of redemption, and that the Word of God is the final authority for life and conduct. Those were the foundations, I think, when I read the Psalms, psalm 11, that he’s talking about.”

Now, what happens when those four foundations are destroyed? Well, what we have seen (and it’s interesting—there’s been a paradigm shift—and I kind of track these things), because at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, we saw a paradigm shift in the philosophy and ideology of this country, and it’s brought us to the point where we’re at today, because, we have now substituted, as it were, we have replaced God as Creator with Evolution. And that happened in 1925 with the Scopes Trials. How many… (laughing) Don’t raise your hand if you remember 1925! But you studied this in 1925. A high school science teacher named John Scopes was arrested, tried, and convicted for the crime of teaching Evolution in his class in a public school in the state of Tennessee. In 1925, John Scopes was arrested. He was tried and convicted for the crime of teaching Evolution in a public school. He was arrested and tried under what was called “The Butler Act,” and under the Butler Act, teaching of evolution was banned in public schools and was considered a criminal act to do so. That’s 1925! That’s less than 100 years ago.

And the Butler Act remained the Law, as it were, of the land for almost 50 years until 1967 and it was challenged by another young science teacher named Gary L. Scott, who had been fired for teaching evolution in the High School there in Jacksboro, Tennessee. He appealed to the higher court, and he challenged the constitutionality of the law, and he succeeded in doing so, and the law was repealed in Tennessee. Other states followed, and soon the teaching of Evolution in opposition to Creation dominated the public school system. Pillar number one has fallen.

Now, that’s one of the reasons why at our church we started a school. In fact, the first years—this year, in fact, our first session was on Tuesday, because we have High School teachers who come to our…credentialed California high school teachers…that come to our church and say, “We can’t take the jab. We’re not going to do the booster shots; we’re  not going to sign a document [and they’re required in the state of California] to sign a document that they’re going to teach the “woke” agenda; that they’re going to teach multiple transgender things…and they just said, “We’re not doing it!”

“Well, then, you can’t work in the public school system.”

And so the Elders were meeting with them, we were praying, “What should we do?” And we just came to the conclusion that it is time to give our kids—not an indoctrination but an education—a real education. I’m talking real math, realscience, real history in a Godly atmosphere. “What can the righteous do?” Reach out to as many people as you can!

Because the first pillar is gone.

The second pillar: “God Is Sustainer,” and you look at how our country is moving. We’re moving towards Socialism, Communism. We’re moving toward a One-World Government. They want us to be reliant, as it were, upon the government and the government handouts. 

In Philippians chapter 4 verse 19, it says this: “But my God shall supply….” How do you know that? “My God shall supply all of my needs…” (not your wants but your needs), “according to His riches in heavenly places by Christ Jesus,” which means that God’s economy to His people is not based on the economy of this planet. It’s based on the economy that He has in heaven. Oh, and by the way, He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, and if you need a ribeye, He can provide one! In fact, Deuteronomy:28:1-2, it’s interesting, as He’s instructing His people, He says this: “And it shall come to pass [it’s a promise!] it shall come to pass, if you shall hearken….” I love that word! In our congregation, I explain it. It’s not here. Sometimes we think when He says “hearken” He’s saying, “Here….” (That’s why I teach out of the old King James, because there are words in the Old King James that have different meanings even than the New King James.) I like a word-for-word translation, but the word for “hearken” has the connotation that you lean in.  Have you ever heard somebody who’s hard of hearing and they’re leaning when you try to say something and they cup their ear? The word “hearken” means “to lean and cup your ear to hear with the intent to be obedient to what is being said.”

We Christians, in a time that we are living in, need to lean in. Even if we need to cup our ears to hear what the Lord is saying with the intent to be obedient to what He’s commanding us. 

“It shall come to pass, if you shall hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God to observe and to do all of His commandments which He commands you this day, that the Lord thy God shall set thee on high above all the nations of the earth” [I think we started that way as America] “and all these blessings shall come upon you.”

In fact, they’re going to overtake you! They’re going to run you down and tackle you! “All of these blessings will overtake you, if (it’s conditional) you shall hearken unto the voice of the Lord your God.”

You know, in Luke’s gospel, it talks about [how] He cares for the sparrows, and He knows what you have need of, and I won’t go through reading all those verses, but we understand (we who are Bible-believing Christians) that God is our Sustainer. God is our Provider. It is to Him we look for every necessity of this life. He knows we need a place to live; He knows that we need clothes on our back and food in our stomachs. And He’s told us that if we work, He’ll provide that! 

But a very interesting thing took place in 1973 when the Humanistic Manifesto came out, and I just want to read you a portion of the Humanistic Manifesto, because again, there’s a paradigm shift. They’ve already removed God as Creator; now they’re working on God is the Sustainer, the source of all blessing. And in the Humanistic Manifesto of 1973, it states this: “No deity will save us. We must save and provide for ourselves.” It gets worse as we go through this, because we’re going to see that this demonic spirit, this seducing spirit, has found its way into the public school system and is indoctrinating your kids.

 Because the Humanistic Manifesto says, “No deity will save us. We must save and provide for ourselves.” We are responsible for what we are and for what we will be, both of which may present difficulties for members of certain sects (like Christianity, Judaism, Muslim) and it goes on to say “and other believers and doctors of a submission to what we will call ‘an all-powerful God.’” They’re mocking Him!

And then it goes on to say, “This must be overcome by expanding upon the role we play in the public education establishment so that we bring about our goals.” John Dunfrey wrote this: “The battle for a humanistic future of humankind must be waged and won in the public classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as a proselytizer of a new faith: humanism.”

And then he goes on to say, “A religion of humanism that recognizes, respects, the divine spark of what theologians call ‘divinity’ in every human being. We are all gods, and we are not subject to an all-powerful one. Utilizing the classroom instead off the pulpit to convey humanistic values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of education level: preschool, day school, high school, or universities.” That has been implanted in our educational system, and so the second pillar, God Is Sustainer, has been replaced with humanistic thought, with a humanistic manifesto, and we’re moving toward a society that relies upon the government instead of God for their needs.

The Third Pillar is that man’s heart is desperately flawed.  And I can’t tell you how many people have come to our church and said, “Well, do you have a 12-Step program?” “Do you offer psychological counseling? We’ve got some kids that are stressed out, man, and they need…do you offer that in your church?”

They obviously have never been to our church to ask those questions! And I said, “Well, it depends. Sometimes we have a one-step program, and sometimes it’s more than twelve steps.”

They said, “Really? Well, how do you determine how many steps are in a program?”

“How far it is from where you’re sitting in the pew up front to where you give your life to Jesus Christ. It can be 12 Steps. It can be one step, depending on where you’re seated. Because we don’t believe in Reformation. We believe in regeneration. We believe man’s heart is desperately wicked. We believe that he is flawed to the core of his being. We believe, like King David said, that “he is conceived in sin; he is born in transgression. He comes into this world with a fallen nature and he proves later that he has a fallen nature by the choices that he makes. But what we have replaced that with is psychology. Psychology today.”

Oh, it’s interesting to me that they call it “Biblical Counseling.” Have you ever seen those signs? We have a church in our town—largest church in our town—that people come because we don’t charge. We don’t charge. You know, like you’re using a lure. We say we do free counseling, and so, instead of paying $80 and hour to go to the psychologist they have on staff there, sometimes they can’t afford it and they come to our church. 

We had a doctor—a gynecologist—the leading gynecologist in our town. His wife was a nurse. They worked in the same office, and they were having marital problems. He spent $3,000 on psychologists to try to fix their problem, and he said it got worse. His wife dragged him into the office and said, “You know. This is free. It’s not going to cost anything. Somebody recommended this guy.”

He walks into my office. He sits down on the couch in front of me, and he looks around and he says, “Where are your credentials? Shouldn’t you have something up on the wall?”

And I said, “I don’t even know where my high school diploma is, much less my college diploma. My ordination certificate is around here somewhere.”

And so, he said, “I don’t have any hope that you’re able to fix this.”

And I looked at him, and said, “I don’t either.”

You should have seen the look on this doctor’s face! 

He said, “Then what am I doing here?”

“Well, I just want to tell you what God has to say—about you as the leader of your home. Are you a Christian?”

He said, “Yes.”

“Your wife’s a Christian?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s look at what God’s Word has to say about you.”

Three weeks later, their marriage was on track! A month later they stopped coming to the office, and the last time he came he brought me a Thomas Kincade original painting! He said to me, “You tricked me!”

[Audience laughter]

“Because all you gave me was the Word of God. It is sufficient! It does its work.”

But we think we’re wiser than God. We’ve developed this thing called psychology. You see, it’s not really in your heart; it’s in your head. It’s really not you, it’s how you were raised. You’re not a product of your choices, you’re a product of your environment. 

My dad was a moral man, not saved, but I was amoral. So don’t tell me I was a product of my environment. I made bad choices because I had a bad heart. Jeremiah:17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things!” Do you know that? And I tell our congregation, “Listen, even been born again and regenerated, I still have a traitor living in me! You know, Paul talked about it in Romans 7: ‘The things I don’t want to do, I do. The things I should be doing, I don’t. Oh, wretched man. It is conflict (he said). When I want to do good, there’s a law. Evil is present. You’ve seen it!” And he gets to the end, and it’s amazing to me! It seems like he uses bad language, because he said, “Well, I, myself,  the spirit man, we serve the Lord and yet the flesh wants to serve sin.”

The “I, myself,” what he’s saying is “the real me,” “the spirit man,” because one of these days we’re leaving this guy behind.

But the heart of man—we struggle with those things as desperately wicked, and the idea is “who can know it?” In Romans:1:21-22, it says this, “Because when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God,” didn’t put Him in the right position and place that He should have, of honor and prestige. “Neither were they thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, their foolish hearts were darkened; professing themselves to be wise, they became psychologists (oops, I mean ‘fools’).”

Titus:3:5. Well, verses, 3-5 really set that straight, doesn’t it? It says this: “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish.” (Oooh. Did you have a manner of life in times past when you were just as dumb as a duck head with a stick?) We were foolish, we were disobedient, we were deceived. We were serving diverse lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But after the kindness of the love of God our Savior toward man appeared, “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…” (and how did He do it?) …by the washing and regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit.”

Man’s heart is flawed. Man’s heart is desperately wicked. We need something to come from outside of us, to us. You know, my elders meet with me every Tuesday morning about 7:30 and we pray for a couple of hours. And I always remind them in our time of prayer that we’re just men that have been entrusted with an incredible truth. And to be able to minister this truth—we need something from outside of us that touches us, and we need it to touch us every day. And I always use, for example, with our elders, Isaiah. Isaiah was probably the greatest prophet in the Old Testament. You can argue the point, but he’s got the longest letter. Anyway, 66 chapters!

But Isaiah, when he stood before the Lord, he says, “I saw the Lord, high and lifted up, and his train, his glory, it filled the Temple.” And he said, “I realized in the presence of the Holy God, I was undone.” And he said, “I realized that I had unclean lips. What came out of my heart through my lips was unclean, and I dwelt amongst a people who had unclean lips as well.”

We are messed up! God sent an angel to take a coal from off the altar. And he touched Isaiah’s lips. And the response to that was, “Here am I.”

You and I desperately need something from outside of us—something we don’t have, because we come into this world fallen. Jesus said you must be born again. Then the Spirit of truth will take up residency in your life. But we have substituted that understanding that we need regeneration through the power of the Holy Spirit. Man needs to be redeemed. We have substituted that regeneration with reformation and we’ve substituted it with psychology.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time, because you guys are here because you understand psychology as whacked. But Doctor Solomon MacLoyd in 2019 said this about psychology. He said, “Psychology is the scientific study of the mind and behavior. You see, because psychology thinks that the problem is in the mind, and if you can control the mind, then you can control the behavior.” He goes on to say, “According to the American Psychological Association, psychology is a multi-faceted discipline.” Are you crazy? They’re whacked! There’s no discipline in this! “It’s a multi-faceted discipline that includes many subfields and studies such as areas of human development, social behavior, and cognitive processing.”

You know, in fact, you all know that the beginning of psychoanalysts was a man named Sigmund Fraud—er, Freud. (That’s a Freudian slip, I’m sure.) You know, his attitude was this: “Freud believed that people could be cured, making conscious their unconscious thoughts and motives, thus gaining insight and behavioral control.”

I tried that for almost 20 years. You know what I found? I was more out of control. I didn’t come to my right mind til Jesus Christ came into my heart. And He is a wonderful Counselor, because He is the mighty God; He’s the everlasting Father. He is the Prince of Peace. The world is looking in all the wrong places. But returning to the Word of God, understanding that their heart is flawed and desperately wicked, and they need a new heart; they need to be born again by the Spirit of God. They turned to psychology because they think the problem is in their head when it’s in the heart. And the third pillar has fallen. 

Well, the fourth pillar is: “God’s Word is the final authority for life and for conduct.” In Psalms:119:105, it says, “Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet; it is a light unto my path.”

You see, I had this wonderful privilege of coming out of extreme darkness. Some of you guys were asking me as we were interacting and fellowshipping, you know, “What was your background?”

“Pagan.”

“Oh, no, no. I mean what was your religious affiliation?”

“Heathen.”

I didn’t have one! I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. I led my father and my mother to the Lord. My mom told me when I turned 16, “Don’t make me a grandmother before my time.” That was my “moral compass.” “Do it if you can get away with it.” And so I lived in darkness. I lived without any moral compass. I lived a life of debauchery. And I’m not saying this because I’m proud of it, because I am not! It wasn’t until I met Jesus Christ and His Word penetrated my heart that light and hope came.

“Thy Word.”

And I tell my congregation—I tell them this: “I’m just smart enough to know that I don’t know. So, I trust God’s Word explicitly.” The talk that I gave last night, when I talked about the sufficiency of God’s word,” that’s not a teaching; that’s my life! That’s my conviction. That’s my mindset. “God said it; I believe it; that settles it.” 

I may have to wrestle with it because I’m having a hard time being obedient to it, but I’m never lowering the standard of God to meet my inability to reach it. I’m always “forgetting those things that are behind and reaching forward,” as it were, repenting, and asking God for more strength in the Spirit to live the life that He’s called me to.

I’ve made no confusion between justification and sanctification. I know I’m justified by faith. I know my sins are forgiven! Now, I’m just learning how to walk! You go to our church and you go into the nursery, and we have babies in there that are learning how to walk; they’re falling down, they’re messing their diapers, they’re bonking each other, and when they finally learn how to talk, the first word they say is “Me!”

So, you baby Christians, listen! (You mess your diaper, you fall down, and…can I say that? You can edit that out.) You know, and you drool on yourself, and you’re selfish and you’re self-seeking, and you learn how to grow up and walk and behave, as you’re instructed. 

We Christians grow up. We walk in sanctification through the instruction. We grow in grace but we grow in knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s our moral compass. And yet, they’re exchanging it, as it were, for humanistic thought. Second Peter chapter 1, verse 19, says, “We have also this more sure word of prophecy,” speaking of the Word of God. Whereunto we do well to take heed as unto a light that shineth into a dark place.”

That’s what happened to me! And I know how powerful God’s Word is. “Until the day dawns and the day star rises in our hearts….” 

And then Psalms 2: I just want to read the first four verses (it’s already been quoted, but…) “Why do the heathen rage?” They’re raging for a particular reason. Science, pseudo-science, psychology, all of these things, they have a spiritual connotation to them. There’s a spiritual reason behind them. These seducing spirits have come into our society. This started back in 1925 with the Scopes Trials and in 1973, the Humanistic Manifesto, and now the Ten Commandments were moved out of the courthouse, prayer out of the schools, God out of our public school system, and socialism, and antichrist teaching into our public school systems—all of these things are driving us toward something. And the fourth pillar hasn’t been removed, because this is what they’re trying to do.

Why do the heathen rage? Listen, these people are insane! Try to speak about God to them! You can watch what comes from their faces! It says, “The heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing. The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us.’ But He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, and the Lord shall have them in their derision.”

So, very briefly, I just wanted to bring out the fact that these four pillars, by the way, in which this nation was founded on by our founding fathers; it was welded into the DNA of this nation. God is the Creator. 

If you ever get the opportunity visit Washington, D.C. go to the Monuments. They haven’t taken those inscriptions off of all them. They’re covered with scripture! In fact, when I was talking to the guy about George Washington out there, I don’t know why he brought it up. He said, “George Washington never said that a country cannot be governed without the Word of God.”

I said, “No, you’re right. That’s a misquote. But what he did say is that the universe cannot be controlled without the Word of God.”

He said then, “George Washington looked a little higher.”

This nation was founded on God as Creator, God as sustainer, but man’s heart is desperately wicked, and he needs to be regenerated, not reformed. 

Fourthly, God’s Word is the final authority, and if you look at this nation, all four of those pillars have been removed. Think with me what is being taught in public schools to your kids? We have Dr. Mace Baker. He’s scheduled to come in a few weeks. One of the leading archaeologists and anthropologists on Creation. We’ve had Dr. Carl Kirby come, and minister to our youth. We took him to the schools. The schools were just blown away! They said, “We’d have that guy back! He’s crazy! Kids like him.” 

But, man, that guy is solid in the truth. Because your kids, this generation, has been indoctrinated by seducing spirits. So no longer in the public schools is God taught as Creator, Sustainer, that your heart is desperately wicked, that it needs to be regenerated, and God’s Word is the final authority. All that’s been removed. I make my case very simply that all four of those pillars are gone in this country. Would you agree?

So then, the question would be, “What can the righteous do?” What do we do at this stage of the world, and especially our country? Because I don’t believe it’s coming back! You may believe something different. There was a group of people that, when Covid came, and all the churches were shut down, we shut down for two weeks, because when our Governor Newsome made that decree, I looked at the state Constitution, the state Constitution said that he had the power, he had the authority of the Emergency Powers Act, in case of a pandemic, to shut the state down. But after two weeks, if it didn’t reach a certain criteria, which it had to overwhelm the medical community (we have five nurses that come to our church.) If it didn’t overwhelm the medical community, then he had to go to the legislation of our state and get approval to keep that law in place.

Well, it didn’t overwhelm. We had two cases in our county of 100,000 people. They were laying people off at our local hospital. It didn’t meet the criteria, so I posted the first amendment on our doors and I opened up the third week. And we told the people, “Wear a mask, don’t wear a mask; we don’t care. It’s up to you.” Our protocol was in place. It’s wintertime. Flu, cold season, use hand sanitizer. We do the old “elbow bump” instead of the handshake. If you’ve got a cold, stay home. But we’re not going to let the state dictate to us, because the greater danger is not being obedient to the Lord, when He says, “Do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together.”

So, the Sheriffs, they park in our parking lot. And so I walked up to the sheriff, and I said, “You know, we’re going to have church on Sunday.’ 

He said, “I suspected so.”

And I said, “So, when you come to arrest me, I’ve got my speech….”

He said, “We’re not going to come and arrest you. You’re within your rights to do what you are doing.”

What did the righteous do? They make a stand. You know, we know this verse because we’ve all quoted it, but I want to break it down for you. Then I want to end again where I started. “What shall the righteous do?” (2 Chronicles). And I’m not just going to quote it because we quote it almost like we just disengage our brain when we quote. I want you to think about it for the first time, because I think this is the solution for the time we’re living in. 

Second Chronicles 7:14: “If my people…” Can I say this to you this afternoon? “The problem with America is the church.” Can I say that again? “The problem with America is the church.” We were called to be salt and to be light. We were called to be the restraining force and the antiseptic ointment for debauchery and rottenness. And instead of appealing to the culture to be born again, to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and to speak God’s Word faithfully and accurately, to penetrate men’s hearts so they would be converted, we started acting like the world to reach the world. I’ve been a senior pastor long enough to watch this happen. I’ve seen it happen in Calvary Chapel. 

“If my people, which are called by my Name….” I don’t know what that does for you, but I know what it does for me when God says that to me…because when I get alone with Him, and I go at least twice a month up into the mountains to spend a day and night, just in prayer, and sometimes I fast and pray, but I just go for prayer walks….I just want to be alone with the Lord. Not to study anything I have to teach. Just for my own personal soul, because the Bible says, “They that wait upon the Lord, they shall renew their soul. They run and not grow weary, they walk and not faint,” and I’ve been at this a long time. I’ve fought a lot of battles, I’ve set a lot of ground, and I know that the only way I can do that is I have to get along with the Lord. 

My favorite title, when I’m alone with Him, is “my Father.” And you know, I don[t] want you to think I’m weird, but Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” I actually hear, in my prayer time (not out loud, but in my head, in my heart), I hear Him say to me, “My son. Mike, if My people, who are called by My name (it’s relational. He’s my Father. I’m His son.) I bear His name. I should bear His attributes; I should bear His character. I should be concerned with the things He’s concerned with. I should die to myself, take up my cross, and follow Him. I should be about the Master’s business. “If my people, called by my name, would first humble themselves….” We start our prayer with the elders as, “We know we ain’t much, Lord, but we’re all we’ve got. But we’re willing to put it on our altar. 

We’re willing to lay down our lives as living sacrifices. We will take this full hot earthen vessel and put something of You in it. We’ll do whatever You tell us to do.”

And our prayer is that every prayer that we pray would end with “Nevertheless, not my will….” “If My people, which are called by My name, would humble themselves”—and here’s the deal, “and pray….”

You know, I’m a little discouraged in our church because the greatest prayer meeting in our church—the greatest meeting in our church—should be our prayer meeting on Thursday mornings. You know, we’ve got 15 or 20 people who come out faithfully and we intercede for the church; we intercede for the community; we pray for the ministry; we pray for the Word when it goes forth from the pulpit. But prayer—prayer is the greatest privilege…. But let me just say this, and I know this is kind of an aside (it won’t cost you anything extra), but prayer is the greatest privilege ever given to you and me! That our Father would say to us, “Come into My very throne room to receive help and mercy at a time of need!” You know, He says that His eyes are on the righteous; His ears are attentive to our prayers. “The effectual fervent prayer of righteous men and women avails much.” 

What can we do in these final moments, when Jesus is about to come and remove His Bride and judge this world? We can pray. We can be a witness in our light and dark places. We can be the salt and light we always should be. But we have to humble ourselves and pray. 

And here’s the next one: We need to seek His face. You know, sometimes I have to correct people when I’m praying with them: “No, no. You’re praying the wrong prayer. You’re seeking His hand. What I’m hearing is ‘give me, give me, give me, bless me, bless me, bless me, heal me, heal me, heal me; Lord, I want…, I need….”

When I get alone with my Father, I say, “Father, what I need is You, face to face. Because you know if I have You, I have everything. ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, and His righteousness, and everything else shall be added unto you.’” We’re too busy praying for things, for blessing. Too busy seeking His hand. We should be seeking His face. Every morning I get up, the first thing that comes to my mind, the first thing that comes out of my heart to my Lord, is, “Lord, today I choose You. I choose to seek Your face. I am not defined by what I do. I could be a pastor today and not tomorrow, and it wouldn’t affect me one iota. I am defined by who I am in relationship to my Father.” Amen? 

Seek His face, and then turn from your wicked ways! Don’t make excuses for the sin in your life. Just lay it on the altar and confess to Him. “Lord, I’m struggling with this.” He already knows it. You’re not hiding anything from Him. Come broken before Him. You know, 1 John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. We all have a bent to it. But if we will confess, agree with God that He’s right and we’re wrong, He is faithful. He is justified through His Son to not only forgive us but to cleanse us! You see, I don’t just want forgiveness! I want cleansing. I want the thing removed from my life. And now, aren’t you glad that you aren’t what you used to be? But most of us aren’t what we should be, either. We’re in process. But there is that cleansing. There is that brokenness. There is that repentance. “Turn from your wicked ways.” 

And then, here’s the promise (see, I think this is the solution): “Then He says, will I hear from heaven.” Man, how far away is heaven that He can hear your prayers from heaven? Now, we think of heaven. No, I think it’s a dimension. I think that God…. I have a personal belief that when the Word says that He will never leave me, nor forsake me (personally) then I am spending my entire life face to face with Him, even though I can’t see it.

Oh, I’ve studied “String Theory” and “Dimensionality,” and those things interest me, because I know my God made them. And if there’s 11 dimensions, He can spend—well, He could spend my entire life face to face with me, and face to face with you for your entire life. I believe God is just that close. “I will hear. I will forgive.” Feel what it is to save. I don’t care about gas ever being $2.00 a gallon again. I don’t care if a Republican gets in, or a Democrat gets in, right wing, left wing, same bird. 

What I care about is that hearts would be born again by the Spirit of the living God through the preaching and teaching of His Word that they would enter into the Kingdom before the King of Glory comes and takes His Church out!

That’s what we’re praying for in our church. God as Creator is no longer part of the DNA of this nation. God as sustainer—gone. Necessity for redemption—removed through psychology. Word—the authority of the Word—taken out of the courthouses, taken out of the schools. “What will the righteous do when the foundations are removed?” You pray, you repent. You get right with God. You ask Him to use you in these final moments to be one who rescues those that are drowning. Pray for the power of the Holy Spirit to take God’s Word and penetrate people’s hearts. Mark Cahill had it right, man! Everywhere you go be a witnessing fool.

We were just celebrating my wife’s birthday, or anniversary. We went to the same restaurant twice. We like it! And we asked the waitress after she took our order, “How can we pray for you?”

She teared up! Shared a few things with us. We prayed with her. After we got done praying, she goes, “Where do you go to church? Where’s your church?” I said, “Well, we’re actually the pastor of a church. But we didn’t pray for you because we want you to come to our church. We prayed for you because we want you to know Jesus.”

Yeah, I think that’s where we’re headed, church. I think we’re on a narrow path, but there are people out there that need to hear. Amen? 

Prayer: Father, help us to understand. Help us. Our politics ought to be already existing in heaven; our citizenship is already there. What we ought to be concerned about is that and not the temporal. So, Father, use us in these last days. May you pour out your Spirit upon our hearts individually that we would have personal revival. That you would put in us the absolute confidence in your Word, that if we just speak it to somebody. It can just bypass the carnal mind and go down into the heart. You have Jeremiah the prophet in a time where God was judging the nation of Israel, and he knew that they were not going to escape God’s judgment, but he still preached repentance. God, may you find your people broken before you, filled with your Spirit, calling people to repentance that they might be born again. May we speak your word with authority. May we be the salt and light you called us to be. We pray it in Jesus’s name. And all God’s kids would say? Amen!

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