Worldviews in Conflict
On Friday, September 25th, in the year of our Lord, 2009, an unprecedented event took place at our nation’s capitol. The event called for fifty thousand Muslims to gather together to demonstrate Islamic unity in Washington DC by exercising Jummah prayer. About five thousand actually participated. According to one Sheik, who led this historic gathering, “Muslims should march on the White House. We are going to the White House so that Islam will be victorious, Allah willing, and the White House will become a Muslim house.” Perhaps, in the person of Obama and his ill-fated policies, they already have their man in the “House.”
Knowing the serious implications associated with this assembly, men of God were duty bound to address Islam in America with the Gospel of the Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This meeting could not pass unchallenged. Approximately, 50 saints showed up with a two-fold concern. First, we had a concern for souls held captive by a false religion, Islam, a false god, Allah, and a false prophet, Mohammed. I know in our moral relativistic society that making such a definitive statement is a violation of America’s trendy new idol called “tolerance.” To our own detriment, it has become taboo in the West to assert that there is a certain culture, civilization, religion, or philosophy that is superior to others.
Tragically, it was moral relativism in the historic Christian West, which first served to destroy the notion of absolute truth, dismiss God’s moral laws, and prostrate Christianity. This foolish pursuit provided the fertile soil for a toxic weed like Islam to proliferate. Yes, pluralism, multi-culturalism, diversity, tolerance, and every other humanistic concept prepared the way for the “religion of peace” to spread. Apparently, America and our European counterparts are not yet fully convinced that the rejection of the Christian worldview for a humanistic one, inevitably leads to tyranny.
We also fail to recognize that the promotion of pluralism is not the end state of all things. It merely creates the transitional period, which establishes of major paradigm shift amongst men and nations. Moral equivalency helps to move men and nations from one God and standard (Christianity and God’s law) for instance, to many gods and many standards (moral relativism) and ultimately to another god and its standard (Allah and the Koran). Regardless of this disconcerting event on September 25th, we proceeded to preach the truth of God’s word and lift high the name of Jesus. In a word, we were not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ, for it is still the power of God unto salvation (Romans 1:16).
Second, we had a deep concern for the future of our nation and the historic Christian West. Through immigration, population, and insidious attacks from Muslims, Europe and America stands in danger of Islamic tyranny. Biblically, this threat can be traced to the West’s rejection of the true and living God of the Bible. In America, we have for decades officially distanced ourselves from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, the God of our fathers. Corrupt courts have systematically removed the knowledge of God from the public life of our nation. As nature abhors a vacuum, our nation has become filled with “the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird” (Revelation 18:2b).
Soon, America will be forced to realize that our humanistic system of pluralism cannot sustain itself in the wake of Islamic aggression. Muslims view the West’s “sensitivity training” as sentimental hogwash propagated by an immoral, decadent people made weak by their own debauchery. Killing our own children by abortion, feministic rebellion, and parading homosexual lust like Sodom inflames their hatred towards us. Thus, they believe they are morally obligated under Allah to rid the world of the “Great Satan.”
Throughout redemptive history, when men and nations reject the Triune God, they get turned over to the false gods and idols they went a whoring after. This is an indisputable reality and yet the church in America, our culture, media and government remain blissfully ignorant of what is transpiring under our watch.
Isaiah 60:12 states, “For the nation and kingdom that will not serve thee shall perish; yea, those nations shall be utterly wasted.” Jonah warns, “Those who regard worthless idols forsake their own mercy” (Jonah 2:8). Jeremiah declares, “Because your fathers have forsaken me, saith the Lord, and have walked after other gods, and have served them, and have worshipped them, and have forsaken me, and have not kept my law; And ye have done worse than your fathers; for, behold, ye walk every one after the imagination of his evil heart, that they may not hearken unto me. Therefore will I cast you out of this land into a land that ye know not, neither ye nor your fathers; and there shall ye serve other gods day and night; where I will not shew you favour” (Jeremiah 16:11-13).
Moreover, Jeremiah mocked Israel’s rebellious idolatry, “But where are your gods that you have made for yourselves? Let them arise, if they can save you in the time of your trouble: for according to the number of your cities are your gods, O Judah (Jeremiah 2:28).” In other words, when America starts to experience bombings, beheadings, honor killings, and other “virtues” of the Islamic religion and we cry out to God, the awful response from heaven may be, “Look to your idols of tolerance, diversity, and pluralism to deliver you from evil.” Could this be the great reward America has earned for allowing the humanistic worldview to establish the new mores of our nation?
In supreme irony, the homosexual agenda that implemented much of the moral relativism to promote their abominations may have unwittingly prepared the way for Islam to prosecute them one day. In other words, the more the homosexuals work to silence the Church, shove Christians in the closet they vacated, and demand their sexual perversions at the expense of religious liberty, the more they will rue the day, if Islam ever rises to power. While Christians call homosexuals to repent of their sexual rebellion out of love for their eternal souls and the soundness of our nation, Islam demands their death! Seem impossible, not hardly, Scriptures warn that God cannot be mocked, what we sow, we shall surely reap (Galatians 6:7).
America cannot escape God’s increasing judgments upon our blood-stained, perverse land. We have codified evil into law (abortion, homosexuality) and Islam, barring national repentance, could very well be His instrument of chastisement to drive home this inescapable reality. God used Babylon and the Roman Empire to judge Israel and He can certainly use Islam to judge the West for our spiritual treachery and betrayal.
As I write, there are fifty million Muslims inhabiting Europe and unashamedly have announced their intentions to take it over and turn it into Eurabia through any means necessary. In London, they actually carried signs declaring, “Be prepared for the real holocaust,” “Europe take some lessons from 9/11,” “Behead those who insult Islam,” “Islam will dominate the world” and “Freedom go to hell.” Based upon these charming sentiments, Islam, amazingly, has gained the most-favored religious status in Europe and is currently spreading their propaganda in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Humanistic Worldview
While in Washington DC preaching the Gospel and witnessing to Muslims with tears, I became keenly aware of the conflicting worldviews competing for our future. To appreciate the analysis of the first worldview, humanism, the movie, O’ Brother, Where Art Thou, may help bring clarification. In one scene, the three main characters are driving down the road on their quest. Suddenly, they see a young black man with a guitar hitchhiking. Aware of the desolations of the location, they promptly pick him up. As they continue down the road, they question this young man as to why he was out in the middle of nowhere. The character, Tommy Johnson, replies, “I had to be at the middle of the cross roads at midnight to sell my soul to the devil.” Evert, George Clooney’s character, breaks out in a superior grin and declares, “It’s a small world spiritually speaking. Pete and Delmar have just been baptized and saved. I guess I’m the only one that remains unaffiliated.” When questioned as to why he would sell his everlasting soul to the devil, Tommy in a dead pan response states, “Well, I wasn’t using it.”
As humorous as that may seem, this was the mentality expressed by the political elite walking in the midst of the spiritual battle that was raging for the souls of men, the lives of children, and the future of our nation. They are proud to be a part of the spiritually “unaffiliated.” Unbeknownst to them, however, is the reality that they inhabit the kingdom of humanism, which is the second oldest religion in the world. It was this false religious system inspired by Satan, himself, which was responsible for the Fall of man. The first known religion is Biblical Theism, which established paradise before the Fall and is the only one that can restore man.
It is the kingdom of humanism in the West, which wars against the Kingdom of God. It is this battle, which is opening the door for the kingdom of Islam to exploit. A friend of mine, Jeff Ziegler, from Strategic Global Initiative recently penned:
The Church’s present fight is against the kingdom of humanism. As stated in our previous missives, Humanism is a religion which seeks to deify man through statist, pagan and occultic influences. Humanism, replete with its own manifesto, is a fully articulated antichristian worldview. The kingdom of humanism has touched every social institution in our nation including the Church. Thus, it is imperialistic. The myth of humanism is that a scientific elite has through time, reinvented God and ethics in man’s image (the antithesis of the Biblical record) and has engineered a superior secular culture, ever evolving into a cooperative society resulting in a utopian ideal and ultimately immortality apart from the God of the Bible. Human progress is akin to divinity itself and therefore any religion (especially orthodox Christianity) which would impede such progress is seen as retrograde, fit for eradication. Humanism then, tolerates no other gods before it. Obama follows this line with unerring accuracy.
As the humanists observed our display of the Ten Commandments, the large crosses, and our passionate appeal to the Muslims and our nation, they could not mask their contempt. With noses uplifted to the sky, they mockingly condescended toward us poor, pitiful, religious peasants engaged in infantile, petty, religious wrangling. Their mentality seemed to suggest, if only you superstitious, outdated, religious, right wing nut jobs had an evolved superior intellect like ours, the world would finally achieve peace. According to their worldview, God does not exist and even if one did, he/she would be too big to fit in any one’s religion.
Of course, they conveniently ignore the fact that the 20th century was one of the bloodiest in mankind’s history. In the name of non-religion─Humanism, Communism, Fascism, and Nazism, all atheistic states─hundreds of millions of innocent people were murdered. The promised humanistic utopia made by the political, academia, and cultural elite never materialized. Bloodshed touched bloodshed; it broke out like a plague (Hosea 4:1, 2). Men forgot the God of the Bible and destruction was their lot.
Islamic Worldview
The fatal flaw in the West’s response to Muslim’s tyranny and aggression is to treat Islam as just another religion. Though it has elements of religion, its true identity, however, is something totally other. Islam is a political, militaristic, ideology, which promotes totalitarianism. It is therefore, naïve to compare Islam to Christianity, Judaism, or any other of the world’s religions. The true comparison of Islam is more akin to Communism, Fascism, and Nazism. In our history, America has fought, and for the most part emerged victorious, against all three totalitarian “isms.” It remains to be seen, if we have the moral courage to defeat the rise of Islamic totalitarianism in our day.
In a land that promotes freedom of religion, it is difficult for us to discriminate. This is partially responsible for our refusal to state the self-evident truth. America, Europe, and the free nations of the earth are not at war against terror or the new administration’s designation “man-made disasters.” Terror is a technique. Nobody goes to war against a technique or fights “man-made disasters.” We are at war with the Koran and its demonic teaching, Islam, and Muslims intent upon Jihad (Holy War).
Islam believes in dividing the world into two houses, the House of Islam and the House of War. There is no neutral zone. Islam is predicated on a vision of conquest to submit men and nations to their god, Allah. As a free people, you have one of three choices when it comes to the demands of Islam, convert, become their dhimmi (slave) or die. Islam does not spread itself through mere religious appeal, but through fear, intimidation, slavery, and death to the “kafir” (unbeliever, infidel).
The lack of moral clarity, sound judgment, and courageous leadership as it relates to the threat of Islam, I can only surmise, is the result of the God’s judgment upon Europe and America. How else do we explain our self-imposed blindness? Why do we seem incapable of not fully comprehending the threat and danger Islam poses towards our national security and future freedoms? The more Islam threatens, the more the West appeases. The more they strike us, the more we grant them special religious favors. The more they kill people, the more the West desires to learn from them. They will not allow for churches to be built in their nations, but we bend over backwards to let them build mosques in our nations. They shut down any freedom of speech in their nations, but we allow Islamic schools to indoctrinate children in an ideology of terror and hate. Is this the sane policy of people who long to remain free? I think not!
Christian Worldview
In Washington DC, there were two manifestations of Christianity present, one modern and the other Biblical. The first was offended by our bold proclamation of the Gospel towards the Muslims. These brethren presented to Muslims a men-centered gospel with pleasant smiles on their faces, which has built large mega-churches in America, but is powerless to defeat evil in our day. Mr. Ziegler aptly pinpoints the problem:
The church modernist generally holds that the Gospel must be disguised so as not to offend. Presentations must be “seeker sensitive” to avoid condemnation. Care is taken not to use the Bible as it has a negative cultural context. Issues of sin are not to be discussed as this has a tendency to make the hearer uncomfortable. Thus, man not God is the center of this kind of Gospel.
Juxtaposed to this watered down version of the Gospel, were men of God who declared, “Thus saith the Lord.” Though we offered an apologetic for the Christian faith, we did not apologize for proclaiming, “Jesus is the way, the life, the truth and no man comes to the Father, except by Him (John 14:6).” The reality that all men and nations must contend with is found in Acts 4:12, “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name (Jesus Christ of Nazareth) under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.”
The main problem with the modern-day Church as I see it is somewhat related to the problem of pluralism. Too many Christians believe personal salvation and the institution of the Church are the end state of all things. Instead of viewing personal salvation and the Church as God’s implementations to spread His Kingdom, the Church has managed through the years to create a dualistic reality, one spiritual and the other secular. Anything that concerns the earth, culture, politics, or other “worldly” considerations is to be avoided. According to this view, God is not concerned with earthly affairs; He is only concerned with spiritual matters. This is a surprising view, since the majority of Scripture emphasizes how man, God’s creature, is to live upon God’s earth. There are precious few passages of Scripture, which emphasize the eternal realm. Out of those rare passages that actually address eternity, the majority accentuate hell and not heaven.
Unfortunately, the Church little realizes that our modern-day view of Christianity does not proceed from the Bible. It comes from the Pietistic religious movement that began in the 17th century. According to Rev. Mark Rushdoony:
It (pietism) rightly emphasized the need for a personal application of Christianity but wrongly did so in terms of the revived Greek dualism of Renaissance and Enlightenment thought. Pietism was an emphasis on piety understood in a dualistic sense, so it quickly tended to subjective and even antinomian (anti-nomos, or anti-God’s law) holiness. Pietism defined Christianity in terms of “spiritual” otherworldliness and saw it in opposition to the worldliness of day-to-day human activity. Pietism, in fact, saw Christianity as a retreat from earthly, worldly concerns, which it increasingly abandoned.
As Rev. Rushdoony explains the Church came under the influence of the Greek dualistic view based upon the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods. Europe witnessed a revival of the classic Greek and Roman sages, which divided reality into two spheres, the material and spiritual. Humanistic thought, based upon Greek dualism, views the material world as man’s domain. If a god does exist; he is exclusively confined to the spiritual realm. Much of the Church eventually bought into this view hook, line, and sinker.
Christianity subsequently morphed from a complete life and truth system that was binding upon all men and nations to a spiritually, subjective faith, which became personal and thus irrelevant in the “real” world. As the Church adopted this mode of thought and practice, God’s authoritative law was replaced with natural law governed by man’s fallible reason. Christian morality was limited to a private, spiritual sphere, but was invalid for society at large. This is how unspeakable abominations became main stream in America with little protest from the Church. If evil could be designated as political or social, then the Church should avoid it. After all, to many Christians today, Jesus is just Lord of the Church and not the universe, which He created (Colossians 1:16-18; Psalm 24:1). Thus, the thought of being used of God as salt and light to preserve and protect society from moral decay became a foreign idea to the modern-day Church (Matthew 5:13, 14).
As the Church embraced more of the pietistic philosophy, the revelation of the Gospel of the Kingdom diminished. In stating this historic observation, I, in no way, seek to minimize the importance of personal salvation and the Church. Biblically, however, they are not God’s supreme agendas. His ultimate commitment is for His Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven (Matthew 6:10; 6:33).
In fact, the whole purpose for being born again is for lost souls enslaved by the kingdom of darkness to enter and see the Kingdom of God (John 3:3-5; Colossians 1:13). Thus, salvation is a much needed experience, but the Kingdom is the goal. Men are born into God’s Kingdom and they are subsequently added to His Church. To this day, however, the Church camps about the experience and ignores the reality of God’s Kingdom. The enemies of the cross and the powers of darkness are greatly enhanced by our lack of revelation. Tragically, this lack of knowledge of God’s Kingdom has brought an awkward truce between Christians and Humanists. Both agree that our Christian faith should remain privatized and have no impact in the “real” world. If you are the enemy of our souls, you have to be a happy camper. The more evil proliferates, the more Christians are inspired to ignore and avoid it.
According to Mr. Ziegler:
The nature of the Kingdom of God holds that neutrality does not exist in any area of life. The primary notion being that all knowledge has its genesis and application in Scripture alone and that any other man centered idea, philosophy, political social theory, economics, educational theories, indeed man’s civilization itself is at war with God. The Kingdom of God agrees with the Biblical ideal or the sum of God’s will which requires the absolute destruction of sin and evil in the individual and society. Scripture clearly depicts the Kingdom of God as God’s authorized and judicially required civilization which subjugates all competing kingdoms. See Psalm 2:1-12; 103:19; 110:1-3; Matthew 24:14; 28:18-20; Ephesians 1:17-23; I John 3:8. Thus, the Kingdom of God is not static nor passively ethereal, but, is actively conquering all before it.
Hence the Kingdom of God, Christ’s Crown and Covenant, is always disinheriting all interests of unregenerate man and his kingdoms. Thus, humanism and the Kingdom of God are locked in mortal combat but the righteous are divinely guaranteed absolute and comprehensive victory (Daniel 2)!
This was the historical Christian faith that brought the light of the Gospel of the Kingdom to those men and nations who sat in great darkness (Isaiah 9:2). Pagan nation after pagan nation fell to the cross of Christ. Since we have abandoned the importance of God’s Kingdom in the earth and developed escapist theologies, which has led to our cultural corruption, Islam may very well be God’s reminder to the Church that He fully expects the Great Commission to be fulfilled in time and history.