Spiraling Into Irrelevancy

Coach Dave Daubenmire
Editorial:

“Spiraling Into Irrelevancy”

I hope you don’t think I am a Michael Savage groupie. It is just that, in my opinion, he is a voice of reason crying in the wilderness.

On both Monday and Tuesday nights this week he has used his platform on his nationally syndicated radio show to boldly proclaim that America’s only hope is a return to a society built on the “bedrock of the Bible.”

He has more boldness than ninety per-cent of the pastors standing in the pulpit. Most of the pastors are good for nothing, at least as far as the great commandment is concerned.

Those are not my thoughts that I am expressing. They are the words of Jesus speaking directly to his followers in the fifth chapter of Mathew’s Gospel.

“Ye are the salt of the earth:
but if the salt has lost his savour,
wherewith shall it be salted?
it is thenceforth good for nothing,
but to be cast out,
and to be trodden under foot of men..."

Americanized Christianity is being trampled under the foot of man with the dutiful acquiescence of the people-pleasing pastors who make peace with the principalities and powers that the Apostle Paul warned us we were to “wrestle” against.

The gospel of John Lennon “all you need is love” has removed the salty-sting from the Gospel, and replaced it with the sugary-sweet message guaranteed not to offend. The book of Jude exhorts all believers to “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints.”

Contending for the faith should conjure up all types of manly images in the mind of a believer…contending for a crown, a boxer in the ring, fourth and goal with the game on the line, standing and speaking what must be said no matter the consequences.
While the world explodes around us, our pulpits serve up pabulum about “blessings,” “felt needs,” “relationship evangelism,” and “retire with success” seminars. Let me be the first to echo the words of Jesus…”the salt has lost his savor” as the once great-Christian-American church spirals into irrelevancy.

A salt less Gospel is “no Gospel at all.” How has this happened to us?

Jesus gave us a clear warning that a time would come when our leaders would “in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men” thereby making “the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition.” All believers should be repulsed by what passes as “the Gospel” today.

American Christianity is spiraling into irrelevancy as the salt loses his savor.

Sound pretty harsh does it? Well look around, buddy. Christianity is mocked, disrespected, impugned, all under the approving eye of the prissy pastors bowing their knee to the invisible threats of the IRS.

“Please master, can we pray now? We promise to keep the Gospel hidden inside our stained-glassed fortresses. We promise we will not try and influence government, nor speak out against any politicians, and if you let us continue to claim tax-exempt status we promise that we will never do or say anything that could be miss-construed as being civility disobedient. After all, we are Christians, and we know that God has given us secular leaders for our own good...”

Good for nothing…that’s what American Christianity has become. Secularized compartmentalized, camouflaged, politicized, and chamelionized…hiding in the shadows of moral relativism.

I cannot even watch the charlatans that they put on TV. And Christian radio? Oh my goodness.

Christian Bubblegum music that is “safe for the whole family” and “positive and encouraging,” interspersed with “financial peace university” and “end-time” sermons encouraging folks to be “rapture ready.”

The message is clear. “Just hang in there, don’t worry about anything, Jesus is coming to rescue us.”
Is that really what Jesus died for? He shed his blood so that we could all sit around like a stack of cord-wood and wait on the rapture bus?

I watched with amazement the recent tsunami-caused destruction that swept across Japan. In an instant, thousands were ushered into eternity, and millions lost all they had. The fragility of life was apparent.

But modern American Christianity thinks that America is immune to such disaster. “God has not appointed us unto wrath” the cowardly escapists preach from their pulpits. I wonder if any of those Japanese were Christians. Where was God for them? How come they lost all of their “stuff”?

If you really believed what you claim to believe…that the imminent return of Jesus is upon us…how can you sit passively in your church and not give clear warning to your friends and neighbors? While a spiritual tsunami appears on the horizon Christians are taught to “come ye” rather than “Go Ye.”

Thousand will die today. Thousands will die tomorrow. The wages of sin is death.

Let me ask you a sobering question. What if Jesus doesn’t return for ten years…or twenty…or a hundred? What are the prospects for your children and grand-children?

Will we look back on the second decade of the 21st Century as a time when the leadership fiddled while Christianity burned? What if secular talk-show host Michael Savage is right? What if a return to the Bible can save this land? I turn on the TV and watch the “Word of Faith” folks “believe” for a financial harvest. I watch them “believe” for “your healing.” I watch them exhort you to send them a “faith seed” for the “harvest” to come.

What if they all turned their “faith” to believing in the end of abortion in America, or the end of the scourge of divorce and broken families? What if they “believed” in a return of Godly values to America where children were once again taught to “flee immorality,” where spiritual revival was more desired than financial revival, where Christians actually did live out the command to go and teach… "whatsoever things I have commanded you."

What if America’s pulpits trumpeted a demand for a return to those Biblical values? What if we just demanded of our leaders, don’t lie, don’t steal, and don’t covet? What if we turned our focus from escaping the culture to becoming the salt of it? What if we believed for a “back to the future” America where the Bible was the foundation upon which this nation stood?
But we are running out of time. If Jesus doesn’t return soon, then our children will be relegated to a life of reaping the sins of their fathers.

“A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children:” Shame on us for spending the inheritance.It is not about “saving America,” or “reclaiming this nation.” It is not about allegiance to a country, or even to a way of life. It is about his exhortation to “Occupy until I come,” a passing of the torch to the next generation, a “fighting a good fight, finishing the course, keeping the faith.”

I am persuaded that Christianity will never die. I pray America doesn’t.

“If the foundations be destroyed what can the righteous do?”

                                                                                                              Psalm 11:3

Drill baby, drill. Drill deep into the bedrock of America…into the rock upon which we were built.

“Hearken to me, ye that follow after righteousness,
ye that seek the LORD:
look unto the rock whence ye are hewn,
and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged.”

                                                                                                            Isaiah 51:1

Why does Michael Savage understand that the “Bible is the bedrock” of the American culture and our pastors do not?
The American church is spiraling into irrelevancy.