WHAT IS THE ROLE OF "THE CHURCH" IN TODAY’S SOCIETY?

And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. 1 John 5:11-12

When you think of church, undoubtedly your mind goes to the towering spires of cathedrals like Westminster Abbey or perhaps Notre Dame? Or it may be the multipurpose building down the road where church services are held as well as yoga classes? We have all become used to thinking of church as a building or an organization but the word was never originally used this way. The New Testament writers  used the Greek term ekklesia which has been translated in most English bibles as “church”. Ekklesia literally means a “calling out of ” or “called out ones” and derives in Greek from the word ek, which means “out of” and klesis which means “a calling”. The word ekklesia is used more than 100 times in the New Testament . In the Greek translation (the Septuagint) of the Old Testament, made several hundred years before Jesus’ birth, ekklesia is used to denote gatherings or congregations.  So our ideas of church being a building or a particular group – Anglican Church, Orthodox Church, Catholic Church etc has no New Testament or Old Testament foundation. Rather, the ”called out ones” in the first century AD were those whose allegiance was to Jesus as they were called to a new life out of pagan Roman society.

It is astounding that an initial small group of 11 frightened apostles, fearing for their own lives, and gathered with other believers in an upper room of a building in Jerusalem could have subsequently “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). However, that is what happened after they received the Holy Spirit in the upper room. This upside down message persists until today and causes many problems for its hearers.

As Jesus took His disciples to Jerusalem to face his own certain death, there was some jockeying for the best positions in what the disciples could see would be a “new world order”. Jesus wanted to set things straight and called them together to say (Matthew 20:25-28):

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

This upside down world of servant leadership was an ongoing challenge to the world of self-interest and has been operating as part of our very DNA right up until our present age. However, the message of a risen Jesus who died for our sins and came to serve was powerful and the “called out ones” and their message spread throughout the Roman Empire.

A key event took place in AD312 when the night before a crucial battle between the eastern and western parts of the Roman Empire, Emperor Constantine prayed for success in a coming battle near Milvian Bridge in Rome:

“Either in a vision or a dream, he saw an image with the script "In Hoc Signo Vinces" ("In this sign, conquer"). Controversy still swirls around both the event and the image that he saw.”

It was later reported that the sign was that of the Cross and Constantine ascribed his success in the battle to the Christian God. This led to the Edict of Milan in AD313 which granted Christians permission to meet and also property that was confiscated was returned. It looked like a new age had begun but many different views soon emerged with various “councils” of the ekklesia taking place to decide what was right and what was wrong. The first of these was the Council of Nicaea in AD325. This important Council , according to Rebecca Denova:

“resulted in the Christian doctrine known as the Trinity, which articulated the relationship between God and Christ. The Council voted to claim that Christ was of the identical essence of God, present at creation, and manifest (incarnated) on earth in Jesus of Nazareth. Until Christ returned, the now Christian emperor stands in for Christ, and so carries the identical power of God on earth as he rules.”

However, as a structure and bureaucracy evolved – “the called out ones” of the early church, in effect became the “institutionalized ones”. Man-made church sturctures and procedures replaced Jesus’ simple command to “go and make disciples”. So, the problems associated with an institutional church remain right up until today. As President Reagan said: “The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy”. However, Jesus did not come to die for an institution or bureaucracy. He came to die for the “sins of the world” and His strategy was for disciples (ekklesia) to make other disciples rather than ecclesiastical bureaucrats to take over the world. After His resurrection and before He ascended into heaven, Jesus told His disciples:

“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you…” (Matthew 28:19-20).

It is largely forgotten, in this age of woke culture,  that the history of the West is really the history of the rise and now decline of Christianity. Around 1,000 years ago, the “catholic” or “universal” church split into Eastern and Western factions and the Western Popes became extraordinarily powerful, with armies at their command. Then a momentous spiritual and historical event occurred 500 years ago, when a German Catholic priest Martin Luther confronted the institutional Roman Catholic Church which led to the Reformation. As the site www.1517.org puts it:

“Sola Scriptura, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide. Scripture only, grace only, faith in Christ only—the great Biblical columns of Reformation Christianity. But there was really another great and overarching theme: Solus Christus. Not “Christ as our great example,” but Christ the Lamb—the Great Substitute for sinners whose death (and life!) satisfied divine justice in our stead. Christ, the sole hope of those who think they are beyond hope. Christ, who is the one real subject of Christianity (vs. “Christianity” as health, wealth, success, “spirituality,” recipe for successful families, paradigm for economic liberation, key to drug-free kids, or any of a hundred more counterfeits).

Our Western society today is the result of the influence of 2,000 years of Christianity but Jesus’ central command to “make disciples” was redirected by the first church bureaucrats to: “make institutions”. The Last Reformation group - put it well in the movie – The Last Reformation – the Beginning.

“CHRISTIANITY CAME TO GREECE AND BECAME A PHILOSOPHY
IT CAME TO ITALY AND BECAME AN INSTITUTION
IT CAME TO EUROPE AND BECAME A CULTURE
IT CAME TO AMERICA AND BECAME A BUSINESS”

Not surprisingly, institutions created by man are imperfect, often corrupt, deceptive and end up glorifying man rather than God.

In a bizarre twist, the “church” now has been “turned upside down” by the world and its “new” teachings from an “anointed” group of  secular “woke priests” anointed by Twitter. An article published 2 years ago on the interesting site Antichrist News highlighted this issue in the commentary: “Dozing Bishops Meet the Religion of Woke” - It is worthwhile reading the complete article but this quote gives you the flavour and central idea:

“The religion of the woke people is narrow, puritanical, and righteous.  Those who don’t conform to its catechism—the heretics—are quickly expelled or “cancelled.”  As with other fundamentalist faiths, the new religion appeals not to reason, but to emotions.  The proof of one’s faith is shown by the repetition of mindless slogans and by passionate demonstrations of commitment. Strangely—or perhaps not so strangely—the woke people do not worship a Supreme Being.  They look not to God, but to the State for the answers to life’s problems.   The promised land is not in heaven, but here on earth.  And it can be achieved once the woke people take the reins of government.”

Christian institutions have come under the influence of the “church of woke” and their “priests” who are prominent on social media. This has a long gestation and according to Marcus Warner and Jim Wilder and outlined in their excellent small book The Solution of Choice. They write that the “church” made a “left turn” with the Enlightenment, 500 years ago. An adversarial relationship developed between “the church” and philosophy and the issue of “truth” became central to thinking. Warner and Wilder express this is as:
God + Reason = Transformation. They note that focusing on truth would seem to be good but “the more we focused on truth and being right, the more divisions became necessary” in the “church”.

They then highlight the “second wave of Enlightenment philosophers” which was called “Voluntarism” (from the Latin word for will). Essentially this philosophy tried to combine the idea of God’s will and human will ie choice. The equation resulting from this second wave of Enlightenment was:
God + Choice = Transformation. They comment that from this shift “discipline and right choices were central to living the Christian life successfully”. Unfortunately, believing the truth and making good choices does not seem to have borne great fruit, as church attendance continued to decline.

The missing element, according to some was “power” and so the missing element must be the Holy Spirit, who gives power. The model then looked like this:
Power + Faith = Transformation. However they write that “spiritual power is not the foundation on which the Christian faith is built, and it does not necessarily produce character or build virtue”.

This led to a new postmodernist movement within the church of “tolerance”. The “church” has come to believe “we need to accept and embrace everyone as they are without any expectation of change”.

The common outcome across these various secular movements since the Enlightenment is that the philosophies of the day radically influenced the beliefs of the “church” rather than the other way around. This idea is highlighted most horrifically in Eric Metaxas’ book “Bonhoeffer” where instead of standing against the evil of the Nazis and their policies in the early 1930s, the German “church” supported Hitler and his murderous eugenics regime.

However, Western societies also have been radically impacted for good by Christianity across the last 2,000 years. From Russia to Scandinavia, Great Britain to North America, society and its laws have derived from the God of the Bible. The widely used political metaphor of a “light on the hill” was first promoted by Jesus who said to his disciples (Matthew 5:14):

“You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

Unfortunately today, Christianity has become a forgotten cultural remnant of the early disciples who “turned the world upside down”. Church institutions have lost people’s trust after instances of child abuse and individual moral failure. Furthermore, just recently, the organizational church has not stood up against the government vaccination and other authoritarian COVID-19 mandates, so has become, in many cases, simply a tool of government. A recent UK survey has shown the most Britons want “woke Bishops out of Parliament” as there is growing disquiet because “Bishops are no longer interested in faith but are instead pushing a woke agenda”.

It is time for Jesus’ disciples – “the called out ones” – the ekklesia, “the church” - to be a “light on the hill” in a world that is becoming increasingly dark. Some see this as the church becoming “political”. However, Eric Metaxas in his new book “Letter to the American Church” says:

“But where did we ever get the idea that we should mind our own business along such lines, as though the truth of God were a parochial, subjective idea that had no bearing on anything beyond our private prayer times and churches? Where did we who claim to be the Church ever get the idea that we shouldn’t express any number of things too loudly, that we shouldn’t—for example—express the biblical view of human sexuality as a sacred and mysterious bond which God created only for the marriage between men and women for life? Where did we get the idea that we don’t have an obligation to tell the world what God says about such things—about the unborn and about human freedom and human rights? Or about anything, including the deadly perniciousness of Marxist atheist philosophy, whether in economics or in any other sphere? Where did we get the idea that we shouldn’t be at the forefront in criticizing the great evil of Communist countries like China that brutally persecute religious minorities in ways that bring to mind the Nazis themselves? And why would we not speak out against American and international corporations that do business with them until they force them to take human rights seriously and change their inhuman practices? How dare we be silent about such things?

What is the role of the church in today’s society? Well – just as the early Christian believers “turned the world upside down”, so must the Christian believers (disciples) of today. Sons of Issachar who are disciples of Jesus need to stand against the antichrist spirit that seeks to bring about an autocratic and evil global dictatorship with the fusion of man and machine.  Of course, this will put the “called out ones” into the path of conflict with the New World Order. Increasingly it will be unacceptable to hold Christian views. This was evident this last week in Australia when a former banking CEO was forced out of a position as CEO of a Melbourne football club, to which he had been appointed only 30 hours earlier. Remarkably, this was because he attended a church where the pastor had given a sermon in 2013 that condemned abortion and homosexuality.

Clearly, despite Christianity forming the legal and moral groundwork of Western civilization, these foundational views will be increasingly seen to be dangerous by the “woke” priesthood of the New World Order. Nevertheless, Jesus’ command was clear and simple: to create disciples and teach what He taught. His “called out ones” need to speak for the hope that He put within us as we look beyond the trials of the current day, to eternity.

“..God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” (1 John 5:11-12).  The disciple whom Jesus loved said simply (1 John 5:5):
“Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

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STORIES THAT CAUGHT MY ATTENTION THIS WEEK

The Propaganda Campaign for COVID-19 Vaccination

Judicial Watch is a privately funded conservative foundation “which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law” and has uncovered a Biden administration propaganda plan to promote the COVID-19 vaccine. A 249 page document was received as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that showed the extensive targeting of media, entertainment, sport, “culture event producers”, “late night hosts”, “Hollywood comedy writers”, YouTube content for young people, social media influencers, Christian Broadcasters, TV talk shows, and even Disneyland. This propaganda campaign, which must have cost an extraordinary amount of money, promoted the COVID-19 vaccines as being “safe and effective” despite information held by the government’s own agencies raising significant safety concerns. Judicial Watch’s President, Tom Fitton said :

“These records show a disturbing and massive campaign by the Biden administration to propagandize and politicize the controversial COVID vaccine. It seems as if the entire entertainment industry was an agent for the government!”

It is clear that no stone was left unturned as a psychological operation was unleashed by the government to “persuade” everyone to get “vaccinated” with injections that had no long-term safety studies and where Big Pharma was indemnified for any adverse effects of the injections. With de-platforming of ideas and people that do not fit with government or “trusted” groups like the UN or WHO, it will be increasingly difficult in the years ahead to discover “the truth”. The outcome will be just like the Russian people who read Pravda (Russian for truth), the mouthpiece of the Soviet regime up until the collapse of the Soviet Union. People in the USSR realized that the real truth was the opposite of whatever they read in Pravda. As governments increasingly turn to online censorship and the media promotes “trusted news” using left-wing “fact checkers”, we all have to view any information backed by government and media, with great suspicion.

Deadly Gain-of-Function Research Conducted in Australia

Remarkably enough I recently came across this 2022 report - commissioned by the former Health Minister for Australia, Greg Hunt. I could only obtain the Executive Summary but it is extraordinary to find that this official Australian government report (“Gain-of-Function Research Review: Report”) claims

“Most gain-of-function research is safe and leads to many benefits for human health. Gain-of-function research has led to new knowledge and technologies, including:

• new knowledge about how biological systems work and the processes underlying human and animal health and disease

• new knowledge about how infectious agents spread, infect and cause disease

• new pharmaceuticals and vaccines, precision medicine and gene therapies.”

To reassure any of the Australian public who could be concerned about the government funding of this research, the report says:

“Over the last 10 years, the Australian Government has funded or conducted 17 research projects that were identified in this review as gain-of-function research that could increase the harmfulness of an infectious agent to humans (also described as ‘gain-of-function research of concern’). These projects comprise less than 0.3% of the more than 6000 infectious disease research projects that were funded or conducted by Australian Government agencies.”

So – only 0.3% of the projects that the government has funded could result in “killer organisms” Already I feel much better!

Unbelievably, the report about the gain-of-function research is published under the banner “Building a Healthy Australia”! Of course there is an attempt to “spin” the great advantages of funding gain-of-function research but the report itself acknowledges:

“The review found that the Government has funded through NHMRC, or conducted at CSIRO (both government-funded organizations), gain-of-function research that could be categorised as ‘of concern’ because it involved modifying a virus or bacterium in a way that may make it more dangerous to humans.”

And this is what they’re telling us! Undoubtedly there is a lot more that is being kept secret including information about the researchers and specific projects because, as the report says, of a need to “protect researchers from potentially serious threats to their personal and professional lives”.

It's clear that there is a lot more to this story than that being admitted by the Australian government. Senator Rand Paul in the US has put Dr Anthony Fauci under the spotlight to find out more about the gain-of-function research conducted with US funds, including those of the Department of Defense. It is widely acknowledged that the characteristics of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 indicate that it is a laboratory creation and it seems extraordinary to find that Australian scientists were involved in this type of research. What is certain is that more deadly viruses created using gain-of-function research will “escape” from a laboratory somewhere and result in the next “pandemic”.

I’m Coming Out as a “Far-Right” Extremist

The interesting column by Andrew Devine in The Conservative Woman this week, highlighted what the mainstream media considers “far right” compared to just a few years ago. Hilary Clinton spoke about “deplorables” during the 2016 US Presidential campaign and it became evident that these “deplorables” were those who didn’t agree with the left-wing agenda. However, the broad sweep of deplorables has caught up many more in the new view of what is “far-right”. Andrew Devine notes that the following views are now considered evidence of being on the “far right”:

• Being pro-family

• Being against illegal immigration and protection of national borders

• Being pro-Western civilization which is seen as being “pro-slavery”

• Being against coercive lockdowns and authoritarian COVID-19 vaccination policies

• Being pro-Israel or believing that Israel has a right to exist

• Being against “exotically costumed transvestites” reading stories to pre-school children in libraries

He concludes his article with this insight:

“What was once the norm is now viewed as the extreme, thanks to the frighteningly effective process of ‘delegitimisation’ practised by the left on anyone who disagrees with their world view.”

The war of “delegitimisation” increasingly will be waged by governments and Big Tech to promote approaches that are authoritarian and against freedom. We need to help and support views that were previously mainstream but now are seen as unacceptable.

How the Left Laid the Foundations for Totalitarianism in Our Lifetime

The article in the The Steam by John Zmirak this week is important to read to answer the question: how did things get this bad so quickly? Zmirak is a provocateur and is prepared to take on the woke and left agenda with no holds barred. His article highlights the fact that the left side of politics mostly overlooks abuses by “progressive” or “revolutionary” regimes. He notes that

“Up till now, totalitarian movements have typically concentrated first on seizing outright political power, before attempting the wholesale, coercive transformation of culture that swallows up business relationships, churches, education, and family life.”

The positive news is that many authoritarian regimes eventually fail (Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union) but some (like China) persist by withdrawing from economic control of its citizens.

Zmirak notes that a key and influential thinker of 20th century communism was Antonio Gramsci. He saw that seizing power may not succeed in the long-term and so proposed that

“the Left first concentrate on a campaign to influence, subvert, co-opt, and finally dominate society’s non-governmental institutions. Then political power would fall into its hands like a ripe piece of fruit”.

This strategy seems to have been very successful as various corporations, universities, media and Big Tech have gradually embraced and promoted “woke” and Marxist ideologies. The result seems to have been an increased appetite for authoritarianism as was evident in all Western countries during the COVID-19 “pandemic”. Western democracies increasingly looked like China and some politicians from democracies spoke admiringly of Chinese government achievements. COVID-19 has been a political “softening-up“ process to make us ready for the next authoritarian government response. The COVID-19 “pandemic” was so successful that planning is proceeding for “a new pandemic”. It must be just a matter of time before governments announce another “pandemic” and lockdowns, QR codes and vaccine “passports” are rolled out again.

Who is Really Controlling Biden?

A number of people have raised this question as it was evident even before the results of the 2020 US Presidential election that Joe Biden had a loose grasp on issues and had contradicted himself repeatedly over the last 20 years. Even Barrack Obama’s former Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, said that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades”. Obama himself said “don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f… things up”.

It was interesting therefore to read an article by Patrick Wood in Technocracy News which proposes that Biden is controlled by members of the mysterious Trilateral Commission a group committed to the New World Order.

The Trilateral Commission was founded by David Rockefeller in 1973 and its members have been influential in every Presidential administration since then. The Trilateral Commission has members from Europe, Asia-Pacific and the North America. Wood notes that in Biden’s current administration, there are 10 current or former members of the Trilateral Commission including: the Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, and the Ambassadors to Poland, China and India.

The Trilateral Commission was created by David Rockefeller to construct a new economic international order. Rockefeller, with input from Zbigniew Brzezinski (the intellectual force behind the Trilateral Commission) could see that it made no sense to rely on democratically elected governments but that an integrated global and political structure was needed. Rockefeller literally plucked Jimmy Carter from the obscurity of the Georgia governorship to become US President and Carter’s administration was populated with Trilateral Commission members including Brzezinski as National Security Advisor. Barrack Obama also was a “creation” of the Trilateral Commission.

Since I read last year that Sir Keir Starmer, the current Leader of the UK Opposition Labour Party, was a member of the Trilateral Commission, I realized that he was being groomed by the New World Order to become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Starmer became a Trilateral Commission member in 2019, the only one of 650 UK Members of Parliament. Undoubtedly his “boosters” in the Trilateral Commission must be rubbing their hands with glee at the moment, as UK Prime Minister Liz Truss self-destructs following badly implemented financial policies. Watch for the remarkable rise of Sir Keir and another brick in the road to a globalist New World Order!

Protests in Iran

There have previously been uprisings against the Ayatollahs controlling Iran and in 2009 serious protests against the strict fundamentalist Shiite were held with thousands flooding the streets of Tehran demanding freedom. At the time, Barrack Obama did nothing to indicate support for the protestors and of course famously later dispensed US$1.7 billion in cash by plane, the result being further funding of international terrorism. Freedom though, is difficult to crush, which should be encouraging to all of us in the West, where governments have become increasingly dictatorial.

So it has been interesting to read in the last few weeks about widespread Iranian protests occurring, following the brutal death of a Mahsa Amini, a 22 year-old Kurdish woman. Amini was killed after her arrest by the so-called “morality police” for showing too much hair under her hijab.

There are reports of widespread demonstrations in more than 100 Iranian cities followed by a brutal response by the theocratic Iranian regime. As usual, the leader of the Iranian thugocracy, Ayatollah Khomeini, has blamed the West and particularly the US and Israel for these protests. The Iranian regime has a consistent track record with brutal crackdowns against protestors as recently as 2017 and 2019 -

A recent article in the Spectator Magazine by Ali Ansari reports that:

 “Protesters have a key advantage over the regime: an abundance of fresh political ideas on civil society, democracy and the nature of change that Iran needs. Social media, too, is being put to good use by the protestors in articulating these ideas. The internet – or, at least, intermittent access to it – has provided a means to post viral videos which have encouraged others to take to the streets. “

Ansari believes that the regime is living on borrowed time and that there could be a collapse of the theocratic dictatorship in the coming days. One hopes so but there is such a strong security presence in Iran and secret police everywhere, just like the former Soviet Union. The Ayatollah and his henchmen have a “take no prisoners” approach to the protests and it is hard to see the Iranian protestors winning the war for freedom, in the short-term.

Maritime Border Deal Between Israel and Lebanon

There has not been much publicity given to a deal announced by Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid this week for a maritime deal between Lebanon and Israel. The deal seeks to create peace between Israel and Lebanon, which is largely under the control of Hezbollah, essentially Iranian-funded terrorists. This issue will be important in the concluding stages of the Israeli election campaign. Benjamin Netanyahu said this week that the deal was a

“historic surrender” that sends money to Hezbollah and enables Iranian involvement in the Qana gas field. Netanyahu said that Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz “gave Hezbollah our territorial waters, our sovereign territory, our gas, and in the end they succumbed to another Hezbollah demand to allow Iran to drill gas off the coast of Israel,” Netanyahu said. “They are bringing Iran close to our northern border.”

The key issue is access to gas in the waters between Lebanon and Israel. Given the current world energy crisis, there is a lot at stake. Netanyahu has the experience over a 20 year period to understand the folly of trying to “buy off” implacable opponents. It will be interesting to see what happens as the Israeli elections approach on 1st November.