Silence is Madness

Happy Memorial Day

The day that we remember those who have given the most so that we can experience the most of life

If your family is one of those families who have sacrificed by losing a loved one in a war or some other way in the armed services. We are very sorry, but also thankful for what your loved one gave for our freedom

If you have been or are in the armed forces - thank you for your service.

As American’s we are very thankful for the lives that have been laid down and the sacrifices made so that we can live the dream.

God Bless America Again!

Though I didn’t do it last year, I’ve been taking the three holidays of summer and speaking a series that I call, “The Spirit of America.”

A series that focuses on God’s Spirit in America.

A series that looks at the past of our country, and the now and the future and how God has been and will be involved in all.

A series that looks at our problems of faith and patriotism and from the Word of God show you what God has to say.

I want to get back to that this year.

I want to speak a message entitled, “Silence is Madness,” and in this and I think all three for the summer will look at the principle of Separation of Church and State.

Turn with me over to Psalms

Psalm 2:1–4 NKJV

1 Why do the nations rage, And the people plot a vain thing? 2 The kings of the earth set themselves, And the rulers take counsel together, Against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, 3 “Let us break Their bonds in pieces And cast away Their cords from us.” 4 He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.

The nations raging against the leadership and authority of God.

We know that this speaks of the history of the nation of Israel, but we also can see that this is prophetic about a time in the future.

I believe that time that we are living in now is one of them

Think about the picture here.

The Madness of Our World

all the nations of the world, knowingly aligning together against God. But then think of the headlines that we’ve had for a lot of years now.

Each story getting more insolent and rebellious against God.

It would seem that the stage is set for this to happen today!

Here are some that I’ve found over the last 10-15 years:

A state employee in Minnesota was barred from parking his car in the state parking lot because he had a religious sticker on his bumper.

A kindergarten student in Saratoga Springs, New York, was forbidden to say a prayer over her lunch and was scolded by a teacher for doing so.

A military honor guardsman was removed from his position for saying “God bless you and this family, and God bless the United States of America” while presenting a folded flag to a family during a military funeral - a statement the family requested be made at the funeral.

Senior citizens meeting at a community senior center in Balch Springs, Texas, were prohibited from praying over their own meals.

A library employee in Russellville, Kentucky, was barred from wearing her necklace because it had a small cross on it.

College students serving as residential assistants in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, were prohibited from holding Bible studies in their own private dorm rooms.

A third grader in Orono, Maine, who wore a T-Shirt containing the words Jesus Christ was required to turn the shirt inside out so the words could not be seen.

A School official in Saint Louis, Missouri, caught an elementary student praying over his lunch; he lifted the student from his seat, reprimanded him in front of the other students, and took him to the principal, who ordered him to stop praying.

In Memphis, Tennessee, a library offered shelves for displaying community advertisements and announcements. When a local church placed a notification of its upcoming Christmas program and a small nativitiy scene on the shelf, the library required the removal of Joseph, Mary, Jesus and the wise men from the scene leaving only the farm animals.

As I spoke about these things in the last 20 years, I’ve watched as some of the people who heard these messages, took on the demeanor of Pastor Ken is a little out there, this could never happen in America.

I spoke of persecution, and so many people (Christians) refuse to see that it is happening.

Yet:

In Orange County, California, a pastor was arrested for quietly playing Christian music at his picnic table in a public park

Two Gideons were arrested in Florida for standing on a sidewalk and giving Bibles to those who wanted them

Four Christian evangelists at a public festival near Detroit were arrested for answering questions they had been asked about their own Christian faith.

A Christian father was arrested in Lexington, Massachusetts, for objecting to the public school teaching his kindergarten son about homosexuality and gay marriage.

A sixty-seven year old man in Georgia was arrested for passing out Christian tracts on a public street

In Philadelphia eleven Christians were arrested for holding up signs with Bible verses during a gay pride parade down the city’s streets

In Wichita, Kansas, a pastor was arrested for standing on a public sidewalk and giving out Gospel tracts and the Gospel of John

In Hemet, California, a Christian pastor was arrested for reading a Bible out loud on a public sidewalk.

and in Sacremento, California, a christian youth pastor was arrested after he struck up a casual conversation about faith with fellow shoppers at a mall.

And I didn’t even touch on the smear tactics of the left to the appointment of the last conservative Judge to the Supreme Court, Judge Brett Kavanaugh

Or the many Christian business men and women who have been taken to court over cakes and clothing and other things that deal with gay marriage and other things that are against their faith.

Why is it just the Christians?

I just saw that in the local schools, this new muslim congresswoman is going to be having special days where the kids are taught certain ways of the muslim faith including their prayers in the public school classrooms.

I’m not against the muslims, we live in a country that believes in freedom of religion. It’s why our founding fathers came here.

But let me try to teach my students how to pray to Jesus and see what happens.

The Madness Continues

This conflict is not new. but it is heating up.

We have never experienced anything like this in America

We’ve read about in our history books, we’ve seen it in our world news

But we’ve not lived it here before. And we have to be careful about the way that we respond to it.

These two Sides - God and Satan have been at it from the beginning.

And we know that God wins in the end.

But what about now in America? The answer to which side will succeed is found in the people

In God’s people

What many of us don’t realize is that these things have always been in our country, but they didn’t effect us, because there was a different heart in God’s people.

I’m not asking you to rise up and stand against a new attack.

I’m asking you to rise up and stand.

I’m asking you to stop being wishy washy

I’m asking you to fight for what you believe in. To stand up for your faith, and to do it before the chance to stand up for it is completely gone.

These secular anti-God forces cannot and will not prevail if God’s people take their place.

Where we are losing our country to these thoughts from hell, are in those places where we who love God become:

apathetic, lethargic and uninvolved

If this continues to happen, we will continue to read these types of news articles and see these things continue to occur in our country day after day.

Matthew 13:25 NKJV

25 but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Mathew 13:25

The people of God are asleep, and the enemy is taking advantage of our lack of vigilance.

It’s not that we don’t have the support.

You see that’s one of his tricks. We think that we are outnumbered. But I want you to know today that it is a very small percentage who are getting these things done and they are being successful, because we are not engaged.

It only took one woman to get prayer out of our public schools, because everybody thought that she could never do it. And guess what, we have been paying for that in our country ever since.

Look at the news of our schools now.

Polling repeatedly confirms that public approval for religious expressions such as prayer at school events, or political gatherings and other things such as displaying the Ten Commandments or other religious documents, preservation of the national motto and “under God” in the pledge, teaching creation in our public schools is consistently at 70% or above.

That’s huge folks. We aren’t being defeated, we just aren’t making noise.

That’s less than 30 percent that are getting these things done. How? We aren’t involved. We are silent majority.

We saw this in the history of our nation.

Thomas Paine was very vocal and hostile toward Christianity.

He sent those views and critiques to Benjamin Franklin and listen to Franklins response:

I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion that…the consequence of printing this piece will be a great deal of odium (hate) drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. he that spits into the wind, spits in his own face. But were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? …Think how great a portion of mankind…have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice - to support their virtue…I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person

Pain was not to be moved, so he went ahead and published the book, “The AGe of Reason. And was condemned by his peers.

Here is what Samuel Adams told him:

When I heard you had turned your mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished, and more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States. the people of New England, if you will allow me to use a scripture phrase, are fast returning to their “first love” (Revelations 2:4) … Do you think that your pen - or the pen of any other man - can unChristianize the mass of our citizens? Or have you hopes of converting a few of them to assist you so bad a cause?

John Adams wrote: The Chistian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, le the blackguard (soundrel, rogue) Paine say what he will.

When Supreme Court Justice William Paterson learned that some Americans had agreed with Paines work he made a powerful statement

Infatuated Americans! Why renounced your country, your religion, and your God? Oh shame, where is they blush? Is this the way to continue independent and to render the 4th of July immortal in memory and song?

Many men called him blasphemous. Out of touch with the principles of the revolution. Elias Boudinot, president of Congress, published “The Age of Revelation” which was a full length theological rebuttal to Paine’s work.

What am I getting at today? We have the power to do the same.

We don’t because we are lethargic

We don’t because we want to keep a certain image in our society

We don’t because we don’t care.

And we are losing ground in a battle that we should be gaining for a lot of reasons

Silence is Madness

And I’m not talking about just talking.

In just two centuries, we have gone from that to what we have today.

Galatians 5:9 NKJV

9 A little leaven leavens the whole lump.

Galatians 5:

I’m talking about being diligent.

If diligence is not practiced, little things ignored can grow into big problems. And that is what has happened, by brothers and sisters.

What happened over time, because of the things that were going on, was that the strong denunciations of this anti-God sentiments, like Paines, began to lesson.

And this gave ground to the rise of a well organized secularist movement in America.

Read the 9 Demands of liberalism

Silence gave way to the breeding grounds for this liberal movement.

And let me tell you the breeding ground that it became.

From the National Liberal League we now have:

ACLU - The american civil liberties union

AU - Americans united for separation of Church and State

MRFF - Military Religious Freedom Foundation

FRFF - Freedom from Religion Foundation

AA - American Atheists

PAW - People for the American Way

and others that we hear of all the time like MoveON and Media Matters

We also have our colleges where liberal professors who out number conservative ones by 6 to 1, ramming the liberal position down our children’s throats.

If your child goes to a secular college and claims to be a Christian, they will be laughed and scorned out of the classroom

But here is the good news church. Here is the good news America - they have not won yet.

God hasn’t taken the church out of this world yet, he hasn’t removed his voice.

We think, the liberals think that they have progressed. They now use titles like, progressive, evolutionary and modern.

They tell us that we are followers of something from so long ago that is outdated

But I say that if you look at the 9 demands of liberalism, they have not progressed at all. They are not modern at all.

They are still caught up in things from so long ago.

So what do we do?

It has been said and right so, that all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

We must teach our children the Word of God and hold nothing back.

We must teach them what God says, and why he said it.

We must become reengaged in society. We have to enlarge our pro-God view from out of our little blessing world and the church and into the big world that it was meant for.

We must vocally support religion in America and the public liberties that it has given to us. Use them

we must politically support those same things. You have a vote, use it.

we must denounce (and it’s going to cost you) those who attack and seek to abolish those liberties and expressions of faith.

remember silence is madness - to not do these things doesn’t keep us safe. It just means we lose these things by default.

When God gave his people the promised land, did they just walk in and take it? No, they had to fight for it.

My brothers and sisters, this is a battle. There is a price. Are you willing to take it?

Are you willing to say something when you hear something else?

Are you willing to pray - that’s the main thing, to really commit to an assault of prayer for our country.

And it’s not a mamby pamby prayer force that’s needed. It’s warriors on their knees, in warfare.

If you look back at , that’s what we have. A Spiritual battle.

And I guess that’s the next question. Do you really see that this thing is spiritual? Do you understand how important it is?

I think most. And some just don’t care.

Listen, if you’re not a fighter and your a lover. then let me tell you about America what God told his people about Israel. Then get used to living in the wilderness.

Silence is madness, but I tell you that if we will work together, with the Kingdom of Heaven behind us, we can silence the madness!

Matthew 11:12 NKJV

12 And from the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.

Do we take our guns and pitchforks and head to the streets? NO

2 Corinthians 10:3–5 NKJV

3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

2 corinthians

Some times it will be a gentle answer that turns away wrath. Other times it might be as Paul says, our prayer should be that of asking for boldness that we might declare the mystery of the Gospel, as we ought to speak.

And when you are attacked for those words, of that stand, or that belief, read and 5.

Acts 4:19–20 NKJV

19 But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. 20 For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”

Acts 4:19–30 NKJV

19 But Peter and John answered and said to them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. 20 For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.” 21 So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding no way of punishing them, because of the people, since they all glorified God for what had been done. 22 For the man was over forty years old on whom this miracle of healing had been performed. 23 And being let go, they went to their own companions and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. 24 So when they heard that, they raised their voice to God with one accord and said: “Lord, You are God, who made heaven and earth and the sea, and all that is in them, 25 who by the mouth of Your servant David have said: ‘Why did the nations rage, And the people plot vain things? 26 The kings of the earth took their stand, And the rulers were gathered together Against the Lord and against His Christ.’ 27 “For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together 28 to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done. 29 Now, Lord, look on their threats, and grant to Your servants that with all boldness they may speak Your word, 30 by stretching out Your hand to heal, and that signs and wonders may be done through the name of Your holy Servant Jesus.”

My brothers and sisters, Fellow Christian Americans

We have an initiative from above.

WE cannot fear man, we cannot listen to man over that initiative and that heavenly mandate.

We must do what we can do to spread the gospel and the will of God wherever we are and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves

We cannot retreat, we cannot withdraw

We see this modeled in these scriptures and we must do the same here in America.

And pray and expect the same results.

Acts 4:31 NKJV

31 And when they had prayed, the place where they were assembled together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spoke the word of God with boldness.

Acts

America is Worth It!

Let’s Pray