"Repent Amarillo" has
been all over the news lately. I have lost count
of the television interviews, radio interviews,
etc. We have been in the local paper as well as
those in Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle,
California (several papers), Brazil, Portugal,
and India. We have been on the radio as far away
as Germany and were mentioned on television in
Great Britain. Not to mention being splashed all
over the internet. Most of this has been very
negative publicity.
Why are
we in the news so much? What have we done that
is so newsworthy? We took a stand for
righteousness and took down a swinger’s club.
Did we fly a plane into the building? No, we did
not. Did we drive a car bomb into the building?
No, we did not. Did we set the building on fire?
No, we did not. Did we even threaten to harm
anyone? No, we did not. What then did we do? We
preached it to death with the Gospel of Jesus
Christ. We drew a line in the sand for
righteousness in our city and we said, ” No
more”. The swinger’s club was an on-premise sex
club charging money at the door to swap spouses
inside. They had three bedrooms and one of them
contained a bondage device. The owners charged
$30-$40 per couple to enter, depending upon the
party. It had a few hundred members. They call
this the “Swinging Lifestyle” but that is just a
fancy euphemism for a quasi-legal form of
prostitution. These men pimp out their wives to
others and the women basically prostitute
themselves out to other men. It is a perverted
lifestyle that mocks God’s Holy Matrimony as
surely as homosexual marriage. They can slap the
lipstick of colorful language on this
“lifestyle” all they wish, but in the end, it is
still the pig of adultery. It is an abomination
in the eyes of God and a public menace for the
transmission of STDs. It is back-alley filth
trying to gain social acceptance as just another
choice.
The
adultery lifestyle is just the next wolf to
emerge out of the dark recesses of our
humanistic culture. Homosexuality is already out
and currently seeking legitimacy by political
bullying and marriage by judicial fiat. The
adultery lifestyle is waiting in the twilight
and is trying to sneak into the light of public
acceptance. Pedophiles are waiting their turn to
emerge out of the darkness of public disgust and
illegality. Our culture is heading straight down
the road of the judgment of God to the drumbeat
of these soldiers of hell marching into
acceptance by our society. America is in deep
trouble.
We have had 50
million abortions since Roe v Wade in ‘73. We
have homosexual marriage legal in five states
and the Washington DC area. California is still
struggling to legalize it. The divorce rate is
skyrocketing. Crime is rising. Corporate greed
and government corruption are out of control.
Drug and alcohol abuse kill far more people than
guns. Young children spout filthy language as a
matter of daily discourse. Still more children
are fornicating themselves into teen pregnancy
and abortions. Everyone wants to pass the buck
to the government to help the poor. And we have
become so materialistic that we worship the
almighty dollar rather than the almighty
God. Anyone who is not seeing the moral decay of
our culture is either a fool or willfully blind.
Most people are hiding their heads in the sands
of pleasure seeking and are looking toward the
next president as our Messiah. A political
Messiah is the hope of the fool.
Who’s
fault, pray tell, is it for this mess? None
other than the American Christian church. Over
the last several decades the American church has
retreated into it’s “sanctuaries” and tried to
pretend it can change the world by hiding the
light of the Gospel of Christ under a basket,
i.e. a building. Churches have been so consumed
with letting the culture into the church that
they have watered down the blood of Christ and
compromised the truth. They have forgotten that
the church was supposed to go into the world,
not the other way around. Pastors and elders
have been preoccupied with building the next
“Six Flags Over Jesus” mega church rather than
attempting to affect social change with the
Gospel. They have conformed the Word of God to
the culture rather than conform the culture to
the Word of God. They ” have a form of godliness
but deny the power thereof”.
Quite
frankly, the modern American Christian is
sinful, lazy, and cowardly. Sinful? You bet.
Statistics show that the divorce rate inside the
church is virtually identical to the rate
outside the church. The same statistical matchup
is true for the rate of abortion. The American
Christian church, as a whole, is a dismal
failure. Jesus said, ” You will know a tree by
its fruit.” What is the fruit of the modern
church? The same rates of abortion and divorce
as the world. That’s bad fruit and it’s
indicative of a bad tree. American Christians
“lazy”? Again, yes. Many Christians spend a
great deal more time watching television than
reading their Bibles. They can quote sports
statistics much more accurately than they can
quote scriptures. Why? Because they consider
television and sports more worthy of their time
than God. They spend more money on sinful music,
sinful movies, and sinful activities like
nightclubs than they contribute to charities or
to church. Why? Because these things are more
important to them. Jesus said, ” Where your
treasure is there shall your heart be also.” The
typical American Christian would rather take
their child to sports events all over their city
or state but they will not walk so much as
across the street to witness for Christ. Is the
typical American Christian cowardly? Absolutely.
Statistics show only about 2% of all Christians
ever lead another person to Christ. They are so
fearful of offending the lost that they just
choose to make excuses for their silence. And if
you have the audacity and boldness to be among
the 2% who will speak to the lost about Jesus
they will be the first ones to shout you down
with chants of “intolerance” or “hater”. The
typical American who claims to be a "Christian"
is carnal, rather than spiritual, and is likely
not saved. God Knows... Jesus said, ” Not
everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter
the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will
of my Father in heaven.” Most who claim to be
Christians in this godless culture do not do
the will of the Father, they do their own will.
They seek pleasure and fun on a daily basis and
God is just someone they visit every week in a
church as if the Lord is some elderly
grandfather than they have conveniently left in
a nursing home and have no real interest in.
They live for self, not for Christ. They are in
jeopardy of hell.
Many pastors are not much better. They refuse to
preach the full counsel of God for fear of
running off their parishioners with “itching
ears”. They work on entertaining the crowd for
the same reason. They treat Pagan Easter eggs
and Easter bunnies as things churches should and
so commit spiritual adultery. They either only
touch lightly on sin or they ignore it. They
rarely, if ever, preach repentance. They do not
teach the fear of God so their congregations
live in willful sin without fear. They do not
preach on righteousness and holiness for God’s
people. If they did preach these things it would
be reflected in the behavior of their
congregations. They do not compel their
parishioners to go out and witness for the lost.
They speak about “destiny” for your life rather
than the will of God. And they rarely, if ever,
take the risk of going outside the church into
the culture to confront the darkness of evil
with the light of Jesus Christ. When we stood
against the swinger’s club here in Amarillo,
very few out of the 300 or so, churches would
stand with us. If modern Christians and modern
pastors do not repent of this and start getting
off of their “blessed assurances” and take on
the Devil in the culture, then the Devil will
secure the culture and will kick down the doors
of the “sanctuaries” and mercilessly persecute
the children of God.
The modern
church and modern Christians need to separate
themselves from the sins and excesses of this
vile culture. Stop compromising with evil. Start
reading the Word of God. Throw the television in
the trash where it belongs. Throw the secular
music away with it. Stop minimizing the severity
of sin and start maximizing obedience to God.
REAL CHRISTIANS OBEY GOD. Stop seeking pleasure
and start seeking to reach the lost. Preach the
Gospel. Speak out against evil. Against sin.
Take back your city by taking back the culture.
Be courageous and bold. Stand and do not back
down. We are losing our nation but are in danger
of losing something far greater, our souls. Will
people be angry? Yes, they will. Will you be
persecuted? Yes, you will. But you’ll be in good
company with the likes of the Apostle Paul and
Jesus. You can either live your way or God’s
way. The narrow road to heaven or the broad road
to hell. Your choice. Choose wisely.