Jesus Is Lord in Everything but Voting—Right?

© The Very Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D.

⁹ Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, ¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, ¹¹ and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Phil. 2:9-11 NKJ)

The three expressions—in heaven, on earth, and under the earth—refer to angelic beings and perhaps those who have passed into the presence of the Lamb, to all those on earth at any point in time, and those demonic beings under the earth. It is comprehensive.

We see from these verses that not only is Jesus the medium of worship but also the object of worship. The world hates the name “Jesus” as seen in making fun of it, saying “O Jesus Christ” and not “O Buddha” or something like that. One can pray in public in any name but Jesus; one can pray to “God Almighty,” to Allah, but just don’t pray in Jesus’ name. The reason should be obvious—Jesus is the supreme enemy, which is why Christians, who wear His name, are hated so much.

It seems that at every turn we Christians are being marginalized in our USA culture. Liberals hate us, the sexually immoral despise us with every vile force they can muster and want to murder us, and the culture is being educated in public, godless, government schools not to listen to us, that Christianity is an outdated religion that has a very fallible book full of mistakes and errors. Organizations like the ACLU want us to keep Christ in our private churches, and they want “Caesar” to be lord in the culture. They say keep Jesus out of politics and the public arena, for that belongs to the “neutral” government. The upcoming vote for the president of the USA is to some extent a battle over who is Lord in our society, Satan, or the Messiah who is Jesus the Lord. But we cannot say that the RNC represents all  godly principles; rather, they are, at the moment, just less evil, but should we not want lesser evil than more evil?

But how should Christians engage in the spiritual warfare that is around us every day? Let us look at 2 Chronicles 7:13-14 in the Old Testament.

¹³ When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, ¹⁴ if My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, THEN I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

This applied to the Old Testament people of God, but we are the new Israel of God (Gal. 6:16; Eph. 2:11-22) so it applies to us also. The passage says the covenant people of God who are called by His name (now “Christians”) are to do several things:

• Humble themselves before God, which means to confess their sins
• Pray and seek Him
• And what is often overlooked: “turn from their wicked ways”
• “THEN” He will (notice the order) “forgive their sin, and heal their land”. Forgiveness is the basis for other blessings, and in turn forgiveness is conditioned on turning from our sins, or repentance (We Christians are eaten up with sins; click here to get my book on the Ten Commandments or go to Amazon and enter Curtis Crenshaw, NOT Ten Suggestions.)

Then in 2 Chronicles 20, the enemies of King Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, were coming against him, and they were too many and too powerful to fight. Here is what Jehoshaphat did:

• He feared and set himself to seek the Lord (v. 3)
• He invoked the covenant promises (“are not you our God”, v. 7)
• “If disaster comes upon us . . . we will stand before this temple and in Your presence, and cry out to you in our affliction, and you will hear and save” (v. 9)
• Here is what they prayed: “We have no power against this great multitude that is coming against us; nor do we know what to do, but our eyes are upon you” (v. 12)

So, what did Judah do in the face of overwhelming odds? They prayed and worshiped, and they were granted victory. We are not Judah, but we are in covenant with God through the blood of Jesus, and we enter His presence to worship each Lord’s day. It is there, in His holy presence in worship, that we do battle with our enemies. Of course, we also use other human means, such as voting in this election. If the outcome is not what we think is best, we must submit to Him, for His plan will go forward. But WE MUST BE FAITHFUL where we are whatever the outcome. We cannot see the future, but Jesus has determined the future; thus, we must be faithful in whatever He has decided for us, whoever wins the election. There is only one Man who is the answer to all our sins and problems, and that is the One who became human in space and time, who became a slave, ill-treated, who was crucified, died a criminal’s death, resurrected, who in turn knows all the trials we go through because He went through them to conquer for us: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15 ESV).

But in the New Testament we see something similar as 2 Chronicles 20:

³ For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. ⁵ We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, ⁶ being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete. (2 Cor. 10:3-6 ESV)

This passage commands us to use our divine weapons, not physical ones, to destroy “strongholds” of Satan. We do so by proclaiming the gospel, by making known the Triune God and the Incarnation of the Son of God, and we can in turn do that by disseminating the word in books, tracts, sermons, voting, praying, helping girls to overcome abortion, etc.

Now the One who was completely obedient must be completely obeyed, for He is LORD! We can see how quickly things can change with the new evidence from the FBI regarding the new found emails. Who knows how that will turn out? If providence goes as usual (who knows!), it may turn out completely different from what anyone thinks! But we know who is in charge; thus, let us do our meager part in repenting,  praying, voting, and trusting in

“Him who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. AMEN.” Ω. (1 Tim. 6:15-16 NKJ)

Error of Unbelief and Not Voting

(© The Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D., October 26, 2016)

Gospel light is like a rheostat: turn it down, and darkness floods a room; turn it up, and light floods the room. In either case, the rheostat controls light and thus darkness. Likewise, the gospel will dispel the darkness or it will allow the darkness to come in. The Church at large controls the rheostat. By definition, light controls darkness, not darkness the light.

This past week I heard the pastor of a large evangelical congregation in Dallas say on his radio program: “We are not going to prevent America’s ultimate collapse, but we can delay it. We can buy time so that we can preach the gospel. . . .” The context was that we should vote, and that for the less wicked person: Trump. After listening to several of the pastor’s sermons on the Internet, here is what he meant: The Church will lose in the spiritual battle in the USA and the world; Satan will win, but we should at least delay the inevitable destruction by voting for Trump.

If I believed the Church would lose, I would have quit the ministry years ago. Unbelief in overcoming the devil and his fallen angels is one reason evangelicals do not vote, thinking what is the use since this is Satan’s world, and he allegedly cannot be defeated except by muscle (Jesus beats him up at the end). But if all evangelicals did vote, we could control the country. It is primarily our fault that the USA is falling apart morally. Most denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, have fallen prey to liberalism; but those who have remained true to Holy Scriptures, have otherwise generally fallen prey to end time hysteria with its inherent pessimism and defeat of Christ’s Church. This end time fear has paralyzed us. Allegedly, the only way we can win the spiritual battle is to be delivered from this world in a secret second coming called the rapture. Then seven years later, when the Church is once again defeated, there will be the public Second Coming, the real Second Coming that the Creeds speak about.

Now we all believe in the Second Coming, for that is part of the ancient Creeds and is very clear in the Gospels; that is not the issue I’m raising. The issue is whether the Church is impotent and can only retreat, and whether the gospel is impotent. The issue is that many evangelicals use the rapture to do nothing. This defeatism reflects directly on the enthroned Son of God, and whether He can, by His Holy Spirit, change cultures and people. But the problem with many evangelicals is that we think Satan and his “gospel” of darkness is more powerful than Jesus and the true gospel. It is Jesus who is enthroned; not Satan. (We’ll comment on Rev. 2:13 next time.)

Consider this logic. If we Christians obey the Triune God’s commandments, preach His gospel, and live accordingly, we lose. But if the ungodly disobey God’s commandments, preach abortion, LGBT, steal through excessive taxation and printing money with no backing, lie and murder to get their way, they win. But how in the world can pursuing darkness win and pursuing the light lose?

Recall what happened to the children of Israel when they sent the twelve spies into the land and ten came back with a bad report. Essentially, the ten spies were guilty of unbelief, and their bad report lead Israel to regret that they had left Egypt. The two spies, however, responded with belief:

³⁰ Then Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, “Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it.” ³¹ But the men who had gone up with him said, “We are not able to go up against the people, for they are stronger than we.” ³² And they gave the children of Israel a bad report of the land which they had spied out, saying, “The land through which we have gone as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants, and all the people whom we saw in it are men of great stature. ³³ There we saw the giants (the descendants of Anak came from the giants); and we were like grasshoppers in our own sight, and so we were in their sight” (Numbers 13:30-33).

The ten spies contrasted themselves with their enemies, concluding they could not defeat them; but Caleb and Joshua contrasted their enemies with the LORD God, who had given them victory over all their enemies up to this point, not the least was the parting of the Red Sea. The LORD God made Israel wander in the wilderness 40 years because of their unbelief manifested in their fear. Will King Jesus make Christians in the USA endure much persecution for their unbelief in facing the enemies of Jesus? Only God knows.

This is what we are facing with most of evangelicalism: unbelief in the face of godless enemies. We contrast ourselves with those in power and conclude it is hopeless, denying both the power of the Gospel and the power of the risen Christ who reigns over all the world by His resurrection and Ascension, where He is seated in victory at the right hand of the Majesty on High (Hebrews 1:3; 8:1). But we must contrast our enemies with the Lord God, the Lamb of God, who sovereignly rules.

When the Lord Jesus gave the great commission, do we think He was giving commands that could never be carried out, that He was just helping the twelve be positive amid certain defeat?

¹⁸ And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. ¹⁹ 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, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)

Notice Jesus said that He had ALL AUTHORITY, but where?—“in heaven and on earth.” The words “heaven” and “earth” mean the whole universe, using a device called a merism, opposites to mean totality. Considering His having “all authority,” He commanded a few followers to “make disciples of all the nations,” by two means: baptizing in the name of the Holy Trinity, which assumes the gospel, and teaching new disciples all that Christ had taught the twelve. To give them faith that His command to subdue the word by the gospel was not an empty command, He proclaims He will be with them to the end of the age. And He is with them, not just as a comfort in their trials, but to give them victory, for that is clearly the context!

In two thousand years, Christianity has grown from a handful to the largest religion of the world, about 2.5 billion, and in every country in the world. Islam cannot boast of being in every nation nor of so many, being about 1.8 billion.

Thus, we must bring to bear His righteousness in every area of life, which means voting. AMEN. Ω

(Next time we shall look at who is Lord of the world, Satan or Jesus, and how that affects voting? Read the blog just before this one to see an answer to voting for the lesser of two evils.)

 

Heresy of Perfectionism and Voting

© Rev. Dr. Curtis I. Crenshaw, Th.D., 20 October 2016

The heresy of perfectionism is an old one in the history of the Church. In one form, it is thinking that we can obtain absolute moral perfection in this life by the power of our wills (Pelagianism). In another form, it is demanding that others conform to our level of conformity to God’s word, or we will excommunicate them from our presence.

Christians have a type of perfectionism in politics today. Every Christian is flawed, but in our hypocrisy we want others who are flawed in the same way we are before we will associate with them.  But just think of what the Lord had to work with: hoof in mouth disease Peter, doubting Thomas, tax collecting Matthew, Christian-murdering Paul, and so on. If the Lord Jesus had refused to use them because they were not perfect, we would have no Church today.

Likewise, some Christians are so self-righteous that they will not vote for a professing Christian who is flawed, like Donald Trump. If they can’t have one who conforms to their view of righteousness, then they will not vote at all. Actually, that is not quite true, for a No vote for Trump is a Yes vote for Hillary Clinton. They forget that the Son of God was incarnated to save sinners, to promote His kingdom with good-for-nothing Christians, not that I’m saying Trump is a Christian, but James Dobson says he became one recently (click here). He may not be, but God is so sovereign He even used wicked Pharaoh to accomplish His purposes.

The Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” (Rom. 9:17 NKJ)

The Triune God has been striking straight blows with crooked sticks like Pharaoh since the world began. Consider some of the arguments some Christians give for not voting for Trump:

• “Trump made some disparaging remarks about women that was played on some media just recently.” We don’t justify that; indeed, we say it was awful. BUT Trump apologized for it so why aren’t you forgiving him? Is that an unpardonable sin? What happened to forgiving 70 x 70?
• “It is a matter of the lesser of two evils.” Duhh, then why not opt for the lesser evil? Or, do you want more evil? In fact, in every election to any office we’re always choosing the lesser of two evils because no one is perfect.
• “But someone who professes to be a Christian should not act that way.” Granted, but does that mean that we put a more wicked person into office? Moreover, consider the larger picture. Trump has gathered some good Christians for his administration, such as Pence as Vice President, who professes faith in Jesus. Trump has good appointments to the Supreme Court who will rule according to original intent of the Constitution, who will not engage in making laws, who will protect our Second Amendment rights, Trey Gowdy as the no compromising Attorney General, who, in contrast to Obama’s lying, cheating Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, will actually promote justice and not personal plans. But Hillary will appoint those who will continue abortion, the murder of babies, the destruction of the family with more LGBT rulings, will effectively take away our Second Amendment rights of self-protection, will tax and spend, AND continue persecution of Christians in the USA and worldwide. Indeed, Hillary has said that she will continue Obama’s agenda. What in the world is the matter with us that we would rather have the devil than one who is flawed? Recall what St. Paul said about his own life:

For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. (Rom. 7:15-16 NKJ)

Yet, Jesus still used Paul!

Or, how about this objection:

• “Christians can vote for Trump, but they can’t do it in the name of Christianity.” How silly; then whose name do they invoke if not the Triune God’s name? Is there some neutral, moral territory in the world? I think not, for Jesus is King of kings and everything is His, right now. Voting for Trump is morally a good choice.

Some Christians seemed to be saying that if they cannot get an uncompromising Christian in office, then they will help to put in office a Triune God hating anti-christ, who will murder babies, destroy the families, attack Christians and the Church. What is wrong with us?

Yes, indeed, it is a matter of the lesser of two evils, and I will honor Christ by voting for lesser Trump.

AMEN. Ω