Winning the Culture War   

By David H. Grisham

"Repent Amarillo" has been all over the news lately. I have lost count of the television interviews, radio interviews, etc. We have been in the local paper as well as those in Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Seattle, California (several papers), Brazil, Portugal, and India. We have been on the radio as far away as Germany and were mentioned on television in Great Britain. Not to mention being splashed all over the internet. Most of this has been very negative publicity.

   Why are we in the news so much? What have we done that is so newsworthy? We took a stand for righteousness and took down a swinger’s club. Did we fly a plane into the building? No, we did not. Did we drive a car bomb into the building? No, we did not. Did we set the building on fire? No, we did not. Did we even threaten to harm anyone? No, we did not. What then did we do? We preached it to death with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We drew a line in the sand for righteousness in our city and we said, ” No more”. The swinger’s club was an on-premise sex club charging money at the door to swap spouses inside. They had three bedrooms and one of them contained a bondage device. The owners charged $30-$40 per couple to enter, depending upon the party. It had a few hundred members. They call this the “Swinging Lifestyle” but that is just a fancy euphemism for a quasi-legal form of prostitution. These men pimp out their wives to others and the women basically prostitute themselves out to other men. It is a perverted lifestyle that mocks God’s Holy Matrimony as surely as homosexual marriage. They can slap the lipstick of colorful language on this “lifestyle” all they wish, but in the end, it is still the pig of adultery. It is an abomination in the eyes of God and a public menace for the transmission of STDs. It is back-alley filth trying to gain social acceptance as just another choice.

   The adultery lifestyle is just the next wolf to emerge out of the dark recesses of our humanistic culture. Homosexuality is already out and currently seeking legitimacy by political bullying and marriage by judicial fiat. The adultery lifestyle is waiting in the twilight and is trying to sneak into the light of public acceptance. Pedophiles are waiting their turn to emerge out of the darkness of public disgust and illegality. Our culture is heading straight down the road of the judgment of God to the drumbeat of these soldiers of hell marching into acceptance by our society. America is in deep trouble.

  We have had 50 million abortions since Roe v Wade in ‘73. We have homosexual marriage legal in five states and the Washington DC area. California is still struggling to legalize it. The divorce rate is skyrocketing. Crime is rising. Corporate greed and government corruption are out of control. Drug and alcohol abuse kill far more people than guns. Young children spout filthy language as a matter of daily discourse. Still more children are fornicating themselves into teen pregnancy and abortions. Everyone wants to pass the buck to the government to help the poor. And we have become so materialistic that we worship the almighty dollar rather than the almighty God. Anyone who is not seeing the moral decay of our culture is either a fool or willfully blind. Most people are hiding their heads in the sands of pleasure seeking and are looking toward the next president as our Messiah. A political Messiah is the hope of the fool.

   Who’s fault, pray tell, is it for this mess? None other than the American Christian church. Over the last several decades the American church has retreated into it’s “sanctuaries” and tried to pretend it can change the world by hiding the light of the Gospel of Christ under a basket, i.e. a building. Churches have been so consumed with letting the culture into the church that they have watered down the blood of Christ and compromised the truth. They have forgotten that the church was supposed to go into the world, not the other way around. Pastors and elders have been preoccupied with building the next “Six Flags Over Jesus” mega church rather than attempting to affect social change with the Gospel. They have conformed the Word of God to the culture rather than conform the culture to the Word of God. They ” have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof”.

   Quite frankly, the modern American Christian is sinful, lazy, and cowardly. Sinful? You bet. Statistics show that the divorce rate inside the church is virtually identical to the rate outside the church. The same statistical matchup is true for the rate of abortion. The American Christian church, as a whole, is a dismal failure. Jesus said, ” You will know a tree by its fruit.” What is the fruit of the modern church? The same rates of abortion and divorce as the world. That’s bad fruit and it’s indicative of a bad tree. American Christians “lazy”? Again, yes. Many Christians spend a great deal more time watching television than reading their Bibles. They can quote sports statistics much more accurately than they can quote scriptures. Why? Because they consider television and sports more worthy of their time than God. They spend more money on sinful music, sinful movies, and sinful activities like nightclubs than they contribute to charities or to church. Why? Because these things are more important to them. Jesus said, ” Where your treasure is there shall your heart be also.” The typical American Christian would rather take their child to sports events all over their city or state but they will not walk so much as across the street to witness for Christ. Is the typical American Christian cowardly? Absolutely. Statistics show only about 2% of all Christians ever lead another person to Christ. They are so fearful of offending the lost that they just choose to make excuses for their silence. And if you have the audacity and boldness to be among the 2% who will speak to the lost about Jesus they will be the first ones to shout you down with chants of “intolerance” or “hater”. The typical American who claims to be a "Christian" is carnal, rather than spiritual, and is likely not saved. God Knows... Jesus said, ” Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of heaven but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” Most who claim to be  Christians in this godless culture do not do the will of the Father, they do their own will. They seek pleasure and fun on a daily basis and God is just someone they visit every week in a church as if the Lord is some elderly grandfather than they have conveniently left in a nursing home and have no real interest in. They live for self, not for Christ. They are in jeopardy of hell.

    Many pastors are not much better. They refuse to preach the full counsel of God for fear of running off their parishioners with “itching ears”. They work on entertaining the crowd for the same reason. They treat Pagan Easter eggs and Easter bunnies as things churches should and so commit spiritual adultery. They either only touch lightly on sin or they ignore it. They rarely, if ever, preach repentance. They do not teach the fear of God so their congregations live in willful sin without fear. They do not preach on righteousness and holiness for God’s people. If they did preach these things it would be reflected in the behavior of their congregations. They do not compel their parishioners to go out and witness for the lost. They speak about “destiny” for your life rather than the will of God. And they rarely, if ever, take the risk of going outside the church into the culture to confront the darkness of evil with the light of Jesus Christ. When we stood against the swinger’s club here in Amarillo, very few out of the 300 or so, churches would stand with us. If modern Christians and modern pastors do not repent of this and start getting off of their “blessed assurances” and take on the Devil in the culture, then the Devil will secure the culture and will kick down the doors of the “sanctuaries” and mercilessly persecute the children of God.

  The modern church and modern Christians need to separate themselves from the sins and excesses of this vile culture. Stop compromising with evil. Start reading the Word of God. Throw the television in the trash where it belongs. Throw the secular music away with it. Stop minimizing the severity of sin and start maximizing obedience to God. REAL CHRISTIANS OBEY GOD. Stop seeking pleasure and start seeking to reach the lost. Preach the Gospel. Speak out against evil. Against sin. Take back your city by taking back the culture. Be courageous and bold. Stand and do not back down. We are losing our nation but are in danger of losing something far greater, our souls. Will people be angry? Yes, they will. Will you be persecuted? Yes, you will. But you’ll be in good company with the likes of the Apostle Paul and Jesus. You can either live your way or God’s way. The narrow road to heaven or the broad road to hell. Your choice. Choose wisely.