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Surge Summary: The people of God in America have received of God’s grace and now carry a responsibility to bear witness to truth every day in every way so that the nation can be turned back to Him. God’s blessing and man’s duties to serve Him in their culture always go together.
by David Lane
Created in the image of God, man is not some two-bit player positioned on the stage of history. By covenant, man is the steward of the whole of Gods earthly creation. As it is expressed in Genesis 1:26: “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
James B. Jordan in his excellent book, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis, writes that the world is transformed from glory to glory. Each generation builds on the heritage passed onto it by previous generations. New and better buildings replace old, crumbling ones. New and better medical insights replace old and inadequate methods.
Solomon reported in Proverbs 15:24 that “
The way of life is upward for the astute man.” According to Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox the adverb ‘
upward’ implies success, not difficulty.
However, in Genesis chapter 3, the ‘upward’ progression and increased revelation of God came to a halt with man’s downfall. Although Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, Jehovah did not leave them without hope, promising in verse 15 that one of their descendants would destroy Satan. “But in the interim,” as Dr. Bruce K. Waltke pointed out in his 2002 Christian Book of the Year, Genesis: A Commentary, “the adversary is left to test the fidelity of each succeeding generation of the covenant people [Judges 2:22] and teach them to fight against untruth [Judges 3:2].”
As a fundamental hallmark of Old and New Testament theology, putting each succeeding generation of God’s people to the test will help them to stand in culture as a bulwark against “principalities and powers” and God’s enemies. With its emphasis on evangelism and future retirement benefits in Heaven, contemporary Christendom, by contrast, seems to have decided on a completely different course of action.
With its focus on attendance, holdings and portfolios, the current model’s quest for success in ministry has been tried and found wanting for the simple reason that culture is but the public manifestation of religion. American Christendom’s present-day objectives appear to be deficient in or even entirely lacking the spirit of Scriptural truth to call into question secularism’s false gods, which now dominate and lord over the nation’s spiritual, intellectual, educational, economic, vocational, and cultural levers of power.
Former President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] used a metaphor to convey a profound truth about the fragility of freedom that equally applies to the 21st-century Church: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance and we don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
American Christendom should be held accountable for its forfeiture of contemporary education by ceding proprietorship to secularism.
A.W. Pink’s spiritual insight into what is required to secure God’s everlasting order demands rehabilitation of American Christendom in order to reestablish the Biblically based culture bequeathed to us by America’s Founders: “It would indeed be strange if we apprehended how that on the one hand Canaan was a free gift unto Israel, which they entered by grace alone; and on the other that they had to fight for every inch of it!”
Responsibility and grace are two sides of the same coin.
Nowhere in the Epistles is there a single incitement for the saints to either engage in public evangelism or even to do ‘personal work’ and ‘win souls’. They are instead required to “witness for Christ” by their daily conduct in public and private life. They are to “show forth” and display God’s praises rather than just pronouncing them. They are to let their light shine. The testimony of life is far more effectual than glib utterances of the lips; actions speak louder than words.1
As for secular humanism’s legacy and domination of governments and cultures over the past millennia, all were built in Cain-like fashion on a brother’s blood. “The rivers of blood spilled by Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, and Idi Amin, the oceans of blood poured out by Josef Stalin and Margaret Sanger, are but the most recent examples.”2
What, if anything, is today’s Church telling the nation?
A former business owner, Dennis Peacocke [born 1953] has authored 4 books: The Emperor Has No Clothes: Commentaries by Dennis Peacocke [2002]; Winning the Battle for the Minds of Men [2005]; On the Destiny of Nations [2012]; and Doing Business God’s Way [2017]. His message at Sojourn Church, titled Who is My Neighbor, is worth watching: isojourn.tv/message/who-my-neighbor
With the nation being in crisis racially, economically, and spiritually, it is not the primary responsibility of Washington, DC, to fix it. In truth, it is the burden and duty of the Church of the Living God.
We owe gratitude and praise to the Gideons and Rahabs entering the public square.
David Lane
American Renewal Project
- A.W. Pink, Gleanings in Joshua.
- James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis; 2001.
The views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge.
Image: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/91261194@N06/49746548167
Don’t let Leftist social media shut us out! Sign up for Daily Surge’s daily email blast… it’ll keep you updated on each day’s Daily Surge new columns. Go to dailysurge.com and sign up under “Free Newsletter” on the right side of the page, one-third of the way down. It’s easy! And like it says, it’s free!
Surge Summary: The people of God in America have received of God’s grace and now carry a responsibility to bear witness to truth every day in every way so that the nation can be turned back to Him. God’s blessing and man’s duties to serve Him in their culture always go together.
by David Lane
Created in the image of God, man is not some two-bit player positioned on the stage of history. By covenant, man is the steward of the whole of Gods earthly creation. As it is expressed in Genesis 1:26: “Let’s make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
James B. Jordan in his excellent book, Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis, writes that the world is transformed from glory to glory. Each generation builds on the heritage passed onto it by previous generations. New and better buildings replace old, crumbling ones. New and better medical insights replace old and inadequate methods.
Solomon reported in Proverbs 15:24 that “The way of life is upward for the astute man.” According to Jewish Hebrew scholar Michael V. Fox the adverb ‘upward’ implies success, not difficulty.However, in Genesis chapter 3, the ‘upward’ progression and increased revelation of God came to a halt with man’s downfall. Although Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden, Jehovah did not leave them without hope, promising in verse 15 that one of their descendants would destroy Satan. “But in the interim,” as Dr. Bruce K. Waltke pointed out in his 2002 Christian Book of the Year, Genesis: A Commentary, “the adversary is left to test the fidelity of each succeeding generation of the covenant people [Judges 2:22] and teach them to fight against untruth [Judges 3:2].”
As a fundamental hallmark of Old and New Testament theology, putting each succeeding generation of God’s people to the test will help them to stand in culture as a bulwark against “principalities and powers” and God’s enemies. With its emphasis on evangelism and future retirement benefits in Heaven, contemporary Christendom, by contrast, seems to have decided on a completely different course of action.
With its focus on attendance, holdings and portfolios, the current model’s quest for success in ministry has been tried and found wanting for the simple reason that culture is but the public manifestation of religion. American Christendom’s present-day objectives appear to be deficient in or even entirely lacking the spirit of Scriptural truth to call into question secularism’s false gods, which now dominate and lord over the nation’s spiritual, intellectual, educational, economic, vocational, and cultural levers of power.
Former President Ronald Reagan [1911-2004] used a metaphor to convey a profound truth about the fragility of freedom that equally applies to the 21st-century Church: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance and we don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
American Christendom should be held accountable for its forfeiture of contemporary education by ceding proprietorship to secularism.A.W. Pink’s spiritual insight into what is required to secure God’s everlasting order demands rehabilitation of American Christendom in order to reestablish the Biblically based culture bequeathed to us by America’s Founders: “It would indeed be strange if we apprehended how that on the one hand Canaan was a free gift unto Israel, which they entered by grace alone; and on the other that they had to fight for every inch of it!”
Responsibility and grace are two sides of the same coin.
Nowhere in the Epistles is there a single incitement for the saints to either engage in public evangelism or even to do ‘personal work’ and ‘win souls’. They are instead required to “witness for Christ” by their daily conduct in public and private life. They are to “show forth” and display God’s praises rather than just pronouncing them. They are to let their light shine. The testimony of life is far more effectual than glib utterances of the lips; actions speak louder than words.1
As for secular humanism’s legacy and domination of governments and cultures over the past millennia, all were built in Cain-like fashion on a brother’s blood. “The rivers of blood spilled by Adolf Hitler, Fidel Castro, and Idi Amin, the oceans of blood poured out by Josef Stalin and Margaret Sanger, are but the most recent examples.”2
What, if anything, is today’s Church telling the nation?A former business owner, Dennis Peacocke [born 1953] has authored 4 books: The Emperor Has No Clothes: Commentaries by Dennis Peacocke [2002]; Winning the Battle for the Minds of Men [2005]; On the Destiny of Nations [2012]; and Doing Business God’s Way [2017]. His message at Sojourn Church, titled Who is My Neighbor, is worth watching: isojourn.tv/message/who-my-neighbor
With the nation being in crisis racially, economically, and spiritually, it is not the primary responsibility of Washington, DC, to fix it. In truth, it is the burden and duty of the Church of the Living God.
We owe gratitude and praise to the Gideons and Rahabs entering the public square.
David Lane
American Renewal ProjectThe views here are those of the author and not necessarily Daily Surge.
Image: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/91261194@N06/49746548167
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