The Army of the Lord

The songs are still sung in churches where the preaching is
weak and the people are dutifully adding up their contributions
to the Lord. In a land where money buys everything, this worldly
attitude has stormed into many congregations with the relentless
force of an F-4 Tornado. Preachers carefully observe the
government’s rules to preserve IRS exemptions, when they
should be preaching the gospel disregarding government dictates.
The Romans didn’t approve of the early Christians yet they
kept believing, in spite of hardship, persecution and
martyrdom.

Most of the panic emails I get about everything from Planet X
to the new restrictions of Codex Alimentarius on food supplements
come from...you got it...Christians! Where is their God? Have
they minimized their concept of the Almighty Creator until they
have little more than some statuette sitting on a mantle?
We’ve become a land of lavish cathedrals and elaborate
fellowship centers posing as Christian churches. We have
enormously wealthy televangelists using the satellites to promote
doctrines of health and prosperity rather than the Kingdom of God
and the message of salvation through the shed blood of Jesus
Christ.

Something has been lost in our country and it shows in every
facet of our social fabric including the misuse of technology,
the rise of occultism and the disintegration of the home.
We’ve lost our God. We’ve allowed the Supreme Court
to tell us what we can do, say and even think rather than obeying
the message of the Bible. Rather than soldiers of the cross, the
army of the Lord, we’ve shrunk back into a cadre of hope-so
and maybe-so purchasers of fire insurance policies to try and
avoid Hell. While the rest of the world can go there, we’re
busy hiding from everything! Onward Christian Solders? Well that
must have been another generation.

The signs of the world turmoil that were enumerated in Luke 21
and Matthew 24, rather than eliciting joy from the Christians who
claim to love the Lord’s second advent, scare them half to
death. Oh my. There are volcanoes and magma lurking underground
in Wyoming. The Grand Tetons will be blown off the face of the
earth and take us with them. What? Without some volcanoes
you’re going to live forever? Get over it, Christians, you
sound and act like a bunch of ninnies that would make cottontail
rabbits laugh.

Preachers tippy-toe through sermons that please adults and
hardly challenge the minds of first graders. But start preaching
hard gospel and congregations get offended! However, a man called
of God to preach the gospel isn’t going to let offended
people in the congregation dictate the message God puts on his
heart to preach. Well, not if he’s really called of God.
Some professional clergymen who find that lifestyle rather
remunerative and pleasant as long as none of the board members or
wealthy contributors are offended, might well tailor their
speeches to tickle the itching ears. But a man called of God
gives out God’s message no matter who is offended. The
offended need it most.

With every Christian message this writer publishes, back come
emails telling me what fine people they are even though they are
atheists. That kind of ego is understandable among the
unchurched, but in the church it is intolerable. Man is born a
sinner with a sin nature and until he is saved by the grace of
God and the vicarious death of Christ on the cross, he is still
in his sin and will die in it. There is a different standard
between "a good person" in social situations and "good" by
imputation of righteousness upon salvation that every Christian
should understand and no unsaved person will comprehend.

As pulpits shrink with narrow messages of lovey-dovey social
gospels (not the gospel at all) so has the strength of the church
in America shrunk, atrophied into a vociferous opponent of half a
dozen ills such as abortion, gay marriage and the fate of the Ten
Commandments displayed in public while allowing the heathen to
dictate what professing Christians do to reach the unchurched.
Worse yet, the lifestyles of many churchians parrot the
world’s ways to the extent that there is virtually no
difference in the way Christians speak out in the world. We are
to be different. Jesus had a strict and primary command to His
believers: love one another and go into all the world and preach
the gospel.

Most of the poeple of this world are hamstrung by fear, and
nothing is more disheartening to Christians who are still holding
the Sword of the Spirit than to see a weak defenceless "church"
holding a torch that isn’t lit. It takes time and effort to
study the Bible, and we won’t make that time. Ours is a
great and mighty God, Creator of everything, eternal in the
heavens and completing the work outlined in His Bible. If you
want a tiny "god" then start with the person of self,
that’s a very small god indeed. Time has gone for the army
of the Lord to be hiding in bushes fearing every act of
Government or decision of the courts or idiotic UN dictates.

Read Ephesians 6:12-17. We must be able to withstand
in the evil day. Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith
ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And
take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which
is the word of God: Not hiding in safe places, but marching
onward as true soldiers in the Name of Christ!

Dorothy Anne Seese writes for major US
periodicals and news. Her career began
as a child actress in the 1937. In the
fifties at U.C.L.A. she received her
liberal arts degree in Political Science.