For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. - Romans 1:16 (ESV)
They are coming for your vote again Christian. They will inundate you with Facebook memes that are either outright false or use schemes that sound pious and reasonable but were cooked up by political operatives who just want to use you. They need your vote and will sell you righteousness where it does not exist. Travel back with me to the 1990s and the immoral presidency of Bill Clinton. All we heard was how Christians could not support such an immoral man. The three loudest megaphones for morality were Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and Dennis Hastert. Leveraging political operatives hidden within the church they decried the death of morality and how we need to stand to bring it back. In just a few years we would discover that at the very time both Gingrich and Livingston were having affairs on their own wives. Gingrich would divorce his wife to marry the woman half his age. Livingston has so many affairs his own party made him resign. Hastert did not have affairs, no. He liked molesting little boys instead.
Live and learn right? Nope. In 2012 God gave us a choice between a Mormon and a liberal Christian. Mormonism is of course a Satanic cult that believes Satan and Jesus are brothers. The church chose the Satanic cult member. That was when we started to hear that it wasn't so much the candidate but the platform we were voting for. What is a platform? It is a written thesis of what the party allegedly stands for. It is designed by political operatives who are trying to reign in the voters they need to win. This country however is meant to be balanced so when one party takes their vison to the extreme the vote allows the country to self-correct. So the platform is designed to essentially promise voters things that those elected may or may not ever pursue. George W. Bush for example ran on a pro-life platform, despite being pro-choice before he entered politics. When he had complete control of Congress for two years though he never brought it up. Well, until the 2004 election when he again promised the church he was pro-life. In 2012 Mitt Romney insisted he was pro-life despite pretending to be pro-choice while Governor of Massachusetts. Are we sensing a trend?
Fast forward to 2016 and God gave us the choice between the most immoral man ever to run and the most vilified woman in history. Married three times and committed adultery on all three wives? Well he has a little "r" next to his name, so. Bragged about grabbing women by their vaginas because he was famous? Well we aren't voting for a pastor in chief! Paid hush money to a porn star he slept with behind his wife's back? Don't look at the man! Look at the platform! Why? Why do I care what political operatives wrote down to lure my vote? Do you want to play a little politics? Who gave us Roe versus Wade? A Republican led Supreme Court, 7-2. Who affirmed Roe decades later? A different Republican led Supreme Court. So spare me that your party is the righteous party trying desperately to outlaw what they created. Vote for the platform? Don't look at Newt, Bob and Dennis? Oh are those names too old for you?
How about Jerry Falwell Jr.? What, too soon? Recently he stepped down from leading Liberty University and the cries came out from the bowels of the NAR to forgive and show mercy. This is a man who tried to lure Christians to vote for his candidate time after time. It's the platform after all! Turns out now that Falwell was engaged in an affair with a Miami pool boy and his own wife, for years. Did you get that? Years! Go back and read all of his quotes and articles over the past few years and realize that while he was lecturing us on values and platforms he was watching another man have sex with his wife. Over and over again. When the relationship soured, the pool boy began blackmailing Falwell. So explain to me again why as a Christian we should check our brain at the door and vote blindly for whoever these people swear are the righteous choice, not because of who they are but because of what some nebulous platform declares?
Should we continue to not care that every "Christian" that surrounds this president is wildly apostate and heretical? Why are we listening to NAR political forces such as Franklin Graham who earns nearly a million dollars per year in salary from his charities? The same Graham that has accepted donations from Trump to both charities? Why are we listening to hucksters like Paula White who routinely blasphemes scripture to bilk money from unsuspecting sheep? She is the "spiritual advisor" for the president you know. We can go on and on but do you want to know how much idolatry surrounds this president now? Here is the heart of their 2020 "platform."
RESOLVED, That the Republican Party has and will continue to enthusiastically support the
President's America-first agenda;
RESOVLVED, That the 2020 Republican National Convention will adjourn without adopting a
new platform until the 2024 Republican National Convention;
That is the Christian choice? No, it is a cult of personality idol worship. Please keep in mind this not an endorsement of the other side. It is only today's divisive politics that insists you are either on my side or the other. I am on Jesus' side and I do not try to shoehorn Him into any carnal political party. Jesus would not endorse the impoverishing of the poor, war for personal profit, or the destruction of this planet; let alone all of the popular wedge issues. The Great Commission was not to go into all the world and make sure they vote this way or that. His kingdom is not of this world. Never lose sight that when Jesus walked the earth the worldly politics of His day were far more extreme than ours. Israel was greatly oppressed by the Roman Empire. The disciples desperately wanted Him to deliver them from that oppression but He came to deliver them from a far greater and eternal oppression - sin and the power of Satan. That by the way is the Gospel. Today the message and mission of Jesus and thus the church has not changed. It is no more about abortion than it is about climate change. It is no more about gay marriage than it is about social justice. It is an always has been about the Gospel. Only the Gospel has the power of God for the salvation of man, as they key verse reminds us. I will employ my usual allegory here. This world beloved is the Titanic. It is huge, run by the rich and powerful and brags that it is unsinkable. This arrogance has led to the ship running blindly into and iceberg and believe me, I've seen the movie, the ship is going down. Politics is the practice of arguing over who is best suited to guide the ship into its icy grave. Christianity is the practice of telling people where the lifeboat is and His name is Jesus.
Vote as you feel led beloved even if it to not choose either evil. Do not let anyone convince you that God has endorsed either candidate because God is not in the endorsing evil business and quite frankly, neither should we. Unfortunately, the world's political forces are like Lucy to the church's Charlie Brown. They hold out that football of ending Roe and the church just cannot help itself. Once again though, I have seen how that one ends. She will pull the football away. She always does. And the church will obediently line up to try and kick it again next time. It always does. How I long for the day that the church stops acting like a cartoon character so easily manipulated by the words of men, written down on meaningless platforms that drive us to great heights of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Rev. Anthony
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