THE CHURCH and the STATE

Let the Government Have the Stress!
by Pastor Bulldog
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Were you watching the Presidential count-down on television, On November 4, 2008? Sen. Barack Obama, became our 44th President Elect of the United States of America and on January 20, 2009, he will be our 44th President in actuality.. He is the CHANGE the American People wanted. If some were disappointed and feel their prayers were not answered, know this: God always answers prayer.
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God has a plan and it will not be diverted. We have a new President in power by a remarkable series of events. Let' keep our prayers going up in regard to President Elect Obama. I am looking and waiting to see the direction God is going to take this country and the world in general. Whoever is in the Oval Office, God put him there.
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A heart-stirring historical event has happened; something that needed to be done since the days that slave ships unloaded their cargo in our ports. I can see God's hand in this. He set the stage for overturning injustices which have kept this country from its full potential. We have only had partial greatness because of internal distresses. And now we have been given a level playing field; one nation, indivisible, for the people, by the Lord through human instrumentality.
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As I was contemplating this sudden turn of events, I went to the word of God, which is the only way to get your head on straight after expectations have been fractured. I thought to myself as I recalled the times the Lord mightily blessed Israel, His people; and also the times He intervened into their wicked ways and sent judgment upon them. In the shallowest course of history and even the chronology of civilization in the New York Times Almanac, the rise and fall of civilizations and empires, at the height of hedonistic practices and injustices, should make the most hard-hearted stop and gasp.

Will God intervene to restore this country's core values and Bible morality? Our nation's history, while noble, is not "squeaky clean." God promises judgment upon all presumptuous wicked actions of men and countries and civilizations.

It takes no great historian to determine this. Regular systematic reading of the Bible for believers reveals heavely wisdom to even the simplest of souls the direction of God's will in carrying out His plan. I believe that the biggest differences in understanding the Bible is in how it is usedt. Do you want to find a verse of passage that you can use to prove that God approves of killing unborn children, or to come up with a revelation that homosexuals are God's gift to humanity?
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You've heard it said that you can make the Bible say anything you want it too, and that seems to be true. With little or no knowlege, we see Bible verses flung into our faces, extracted out of context from the word of God in order to support private agendas. Our oldest son has an expression for such hypcritical disembling fools: "educated above their intelligence."

More and more we are seeing an exodus of Biblical morality which God gave us to keep us from killing ourselves. But the unredeemed of the world have an authority problem and are saying, "We want no king but Satan (What other choice is there?) So, we have the choice of which version, which part, which verse of the word of God we can choose to omit or change according to what we want people to read and prove an unpricipled doctrine.

So in praying and watching to see what God brings about, we have these questions to ponder as we meditate from our daily time in the Bible:

• Will the church be attentive to its God-given mission to bring many to Christ and to take care of the afflictions of their own without governmental intervention, or will they be forced to take their ills and hurts to undogly psychologists and psychiatrists?
• Will the Lord insert the stopper on the moral spiral that is draining the strength out of our country?
• Will the false prophets in our old-line churches continue to lead innocent and ignorant sheep astray by preaching erronious doctrines?
• Will this nation repent for the moral injustices committed by our country, as Daniel did for Israel in exile?
• Will we undergo the Lord's national chastening by letting our enemies overthrow us from within and by causeing us to live under Socialism?
• Will we take the Lord's chastening like well-born-again children of the Lord? "For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth” (Hebrews 12:6).
• Will we pray for our President Elect as we give worship to our heavenly King?
  

The ancient Church at Antioch, Syria, was without guile, no biases, and gave no offence to the Jews and Gentiles or to the Church (1Corinthians 10:32). It began and “fleshed out” as they just went about doing the work of the Lord. It is a good model for effective local churches, "And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch" (Acts 11:26). But they lived, worked, and worshiped while under a cruel and unfriendly government.

A true believer wants to be approved of God and seeks the thrill of ministry opportunities. Let us be approved of God as workmen that need not to be ashamed and know that our ministry is to shed light; when the light is turned on, cockroaches scramble back into darkness.

”Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation” (1Thessalonians 5:4-8).