The Church's Disastrous Retreat from the Public Square

Post 6 in a series

By David Hobbs

In both the Civil War and the Revolutionary War, the tide of public sentiment was turned by fiery preaching from the pulpits of America. Scottish reformer John Knox was so powerful in the pulpit in Scotland that Mary, Queen of Scots, is reputed to have said, “I fear the prayers of John Knox more than all the assembled armies of Europe.”

But the 20th century saw a remarkable change in the pulpits of America. Other than briefly in the black pulpits during the Civil Rights movement, the pulpit’s fire has gone out and the pastors have retreated from the public square and confined their ministry to within their four walls. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but the results have been disastrous for the church and the nation.

Once the government and the Supreme Court got away with outlawing prayer from the public schools in the 1960s they took an even bolder step 10 years later and legalized abortion at any time during pregnancy. They reasoned that the churches would not rise up and fight them and they were right. The churches fretted and fumed, prayed and marched, but when it was all over, abortion was still legal and the church was back inside its four walls where it's been ever since.

Many church leaders justified their retreat by saying the church shouldn’t be involved in politics anyway, but should instead concentrate on winning souls. When enough souls got saved, they reasoned, they would vote the miscreants out of office. But if that was the church’s strategy, where are all the souls that were saved while the church was absent from the public square? Instead of growing, the church as a whole has been losing members steadily for many years in America.

Once the church proved it wouldn’t fight for even the babies in the womb, the culture began pushing it around like the playground bully. Though over 70% of Americans identify as born-again Christians, they have let the homosexual community, estimated to be around 2½%, defeat and humiliate them on issue after issue, winning not only legally, but also amazingly in the court of public opinion. Nothing brings to mind more clearly the humiliation the people of God experienced at the hand of their enemies in the Book of Judges, than the church in America over for the last 50 years. And instead of repenting for its failures, the church expects the Lord to swoop in, rapture it to heaven, and then trounce the world! Have we learned nothing from our Bibles, which are now available in over 50 English translations?

As things got worse, the pastors adopted a strategy, consciously or unconsciously, that they would concentrate their efforts within the four walls, and delegate the cultural battles to others. The anti-abortion effort became lay-led and has been ever since. How has that worked? Unable to get access through the pulpits to the people (and not possessing the pastors’ God-given charisma to lead the people), lay pro-life leaders were rendered largely ineffective. As one long-term national pro-life leader wrote not long ago, the lay-led pro-life movement has proved to be a colossal failure over the last 40 years. How colossal? It’s failure has cost somewhere between 55 million and 95 million lives.

Is there a singe pulpit the abortionists fear? Any group of intercessors anywhere in the country they cringe at the mention of? They laugh and scorn the church, which is so ineffective that even when that brave band of film makers caught Planned Parenthood in the act of illegally selling baby parts, authorities brought charges against the film makers instead of PP, which has yet to lose a single dime of funding.

As part of this trade off by the pastors to delegate the church’s cultural warfare to others, many Para church ministries have sprung up like Focus on the Family, the American Family Assoc., National Right to Life and many, many more. How has that worked out? They fight for the church continuously on a national level, but have only managed to slow down the cultural decay, not stop or reverse it. All of them put together have not been able to equal the power of the fiery pulpits. And no matter what the situation, whether it’s a victory or a defeat, their answer is always the same, “We need more money!”

Today was the last day of the Supreme Court term and they handed down their tragic decision overturning Texas’ common sense abortion clinic law and then skipped town. Almost immediately I received an email from a national pro-life group informing me of the terrible news and begging for an emergency donation--as much as I could give. I thought, Why? The Supreme Court’s out of town for three months; there’s nothing that can be done about it now. What’s your next strategy going to be, anyway? Do you have any idea? Why do you need money when you don't know what you'll do with it? But they use every opportunity to dun you for money. They have become just more bureaucracies in a city full of bureaucracies, and, like all bureaucracies, self-preservation takes first place on their list of priorities. How I long for one of them to say, “I know you’d like to give, but don’t send any money now. We are going to spend the summer in fasting and prayer, asking the Lord what our next step should be. Please pray with us.” But I never have and probably never will see such a statement. How can God use such an unrighteous system to accomplish His holy will?

Which brings us back to the pastors. It seems clear to me that no one else can do the pastors’ job. God made them His leaders and gave them charisma to lead. God causes His people to follow them because that’s the way He has ordained it. If the pastors don’t lead the church, it is not going anywhere, no matter how much people like me hector and fume. That is one task they cannot delegate to others, no matter how much they want to.

It’s like the leading bass singer in the opera feeling sick and delegating his part to the soprano that night. He can delegate all he wants, but his part is not going to be sung by any soprano. Likewise, no one in all of God’s creation can perform the pastors’ part but them. Either they rise up and do it like they’ve been called to, or it won’t get done and the churches will continue to flounder and lose ground.

John Knox is also known for his prayer to God, “Give me Scotland or I die!” Is there a pastor in America today who will cry out to God, “End abortion for me or I will die!”

God told me to call the church to a war footing, but unless the pastor’s pick up and trumpet that call, it will never happen.

What's the Prophetic "Now" in the Church? Post 5

By David Hobbs

(This is part 5 in a series of numbered posts)

Though the Book of Joel is coming (post 3), I don’t believe we’re there yet. Today the church is in 1 Chron. 12, when there was a major change about to take place in Israel. The Kingdom of Saul had become corrupt before God, yet had resisted all attempts at correction. Now it was about to be replaced by David, who had the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the call of God on his life but little else. The prophetic call had gone out and many had joined David even during the 7 years he was fighting the die-hard remnants of Saul’s kingdom. The people of Israel were having to choose which kingdom they were going to align with, the one from the past still trying to stay in power, or the upstart one with the anointing and promise of God.

Today the church of Jesus Christ stands in a similar place. We must choose between an old, familiar-yet-failed order, and a new one the Holy Spirit is raising up.

Let’s be honest. The church in America has failed. Like the churches in the Book of Revelation, we do have things that are commendable, but we have failed at our most important callings. We have failed at the Great Commission--evangelizing and discipling our world; we have failed at the first and greatest commandment-–loving the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength; we have failed at being the salt and the light of our world; and we have failed at stemming the tide of the evil, sodomistic culture that has taken over America. 

Like King Saul, the church has resisted the attempts of the Holy Spirit to reform it. Awakenings and revivals come and go; while the church slips back into its old deadness. We have lost the fear of the Lord so there is no wisdom. Our people live carelessly like the world with no fear of consequences or judgment. Though the church belongs to Jesus and was purchased by His blood, most of what goes on in it is not His will but man’s. (If the Holy Spirit was having His way, would the churches across America be in the state they are in?)

But now, like in 1 Chron. 12, there is a new move arising from the ashes of the old order: a new army being led by the One David was a type of--Jesus through the Holy Spirit. The call is going forth again. In David’s day the first ones to respond were those whom the old system had rejected: the ones in distress, in debt, or discontented (1 Sam. 22:2). Likewise the ones responding now are those dissatisfied with the old order, dissatisfied with the lack of the power that Jesus promised, dissatisfied with feel-good messages that leave them empty inside--people too much in love with Jesus and the moving of the Holy Spirit to abide dead religion. The Holy Spirit is raising up this army, and for the most part He’s not going through the churches to do it. He’s looking for hungry hearts like it says in 2 Chron. 16:9--to show Himself strong on their behalf.

How do you join it? You must first get up to snuff with the Holy Spirit yourself: you must learn what it is to be Spirit-led; what it means to have a true personal relationship with Jesus and not just talk about it; you must be sold out and fully committed to His will in your life. Then you can look for like-minded people to group together with. Remember, this is an army, not a bunch of spiritual lone rangers. The absence of Koinonia love for the brethren is almost as glaring in the modern church as the absence of true love for God (“if you love Me, keep My commandments”). It’s our love for one another that will prove to the world our connection to Jesus (John 13:35).

In those days there were many like the sons of Issachar (v. 32) who “had understanding of the times, to know what Israel out to do;” so much so that v. 22 says there assembled to David at that time “a great army, like the army of God.”

Will the Holy Spirit do any less in our day? Jesus must have His army, just like He must have His bride.

Time of Great Danger for the U.S.--Post 1

By David Hobbs

(This is the beginning of a string of posts that all flow together, based on a word I received from the Lord to "Call the church to a war footing.")

There has come a time of great danger to this country and to the church, especially between now and when the next president is inaugurated in Jan. 2017.

The very foundations of this nation are being shaken by an accelerating collapse of our moral order and its replacement by an ungodly, sodomistic one. Christians, who over and over again have been unable to stem this tide, are expecting God to step in and judge this horrific state of affairs. But the church is making a serious mistake. The Bible declares in 1 Peter 4:17 that judgment, when it comes, must begin with the house of God. Before God can judge the evil in this nation, He is bound by His word to judge the evil in the church. And the church is woefully unprepared for such judgment. It has been so focused on the speck of sawdust in the nation’s eye that it has missed the plank in its own.

On the recent National Day of Prayer (May 5^th), there were 300-400 at the breakfast sponsored by the CBA—food and a speech in a comfortable setting. That evening, at the prayer-at-the-fountain event, there were 18. On previous National Days of Prayer, we used to have prayer meetings all over town: City Hall, Yuba County Courthouse, even Wheatland. Now we’re down to one event that drew 18 people. But the truly amazing thing was that out of the 18, only 1 was a member from the regular, mostly white, Evangelical/Pentecostal churches that dominate Yuba-Sutter. Only one out of thousands! The church is dwelling careless and at ease. Someone I shared this with said, “Not all people are called to intercession.” Well, how many from our 100+ local churches has God called to intercession? One hundred? Two hundred? Then where were they? When the dike starts to break, everybody swarms up to try and plug it, whether they are trained dike repairers or not. But nobody in the church thinks our dike’s about to break.

When I asked the Lord where the church was, the Lord showed me they were all over town. Doing what? He gave me the scripture of 2 Tim. 2:4 where Paul exhorts Timothy to be a good soldier. (How many Christians today even consider themselves called to be spiritual soldiers? Listen, unless you were a “special needs” student who went to school on the short little school bus, you’re called to be a soldier in this war!) Then Paul told Timothy what was required of God’s soldiers if they wanted to please their commanding officer (Jesus). They had to “refrain from becoming entangled in civilian affairs.” That was God’s answer to my question “Where is the church?” They weren’t in brothels or bars. But they were busily engaged in affairs of this life which had entangled them to the point they had forgotten they were supposed to be soldiers about the Master’s business. When I wondered what could be done about this situation, the Lord told me, “Call the Church to a war footing.”

The church is trying to fight a war with a handful of valiant intercessors, while the rest of the body takes its ease in Zion: living carelessly, going to church when it’s convenient, going to prayer meetings if no ball games are on, glad to be saved by grace and not works! It’s the same way our nation has fought its last few wars: Viet Nam, Iraq and Afghanistan. The wars raged and people died—55,000 in the case of Viet Nam—But the nation was never put on a war footing. We were never called to sacrifice anything or do anything other than live life as usual. Many veterans have said we could have won the Viet Nam War if we had only prosecuted it whole-heartedly. It’s the same way we are fighting ISIS today, with one hand tied behind our backs, trying to pick off a leader here or there. And the church has done the same thing in its war against a spreading culture of evil.

Most of the church doesn’t even realize it’s at war. If you want to know if we’re at war, ask an intercessor. Do you know one?.

Before God can judge Barack Obama, He must judge the church. He must judge the lukewarm, the complacent, and those who put their lives in this world ahead of their calling in God. Many who are sitting at ease in Zion today, waiting to be raptured to heaven, will be shocked to find themselves spewed out of Jesus’ mouth like it says in Rev. 3:16. That is the startling teaching of the Bible. Jesus would rather we were atheists than lukewarm Christians who have lost our first love.

(Keep reading the next post down to continue with this thread)

War Footing—World War II (Post 2)

ByDavid Hobbs

(Keep reading down from the last post above. The thread continues in this post)

Perhaps the greatest example of a nation being on war footing in modern times was the U.S, in World War II. We were viciously attacked which galvanized the nation. We knew the future of our nation depended on us winning this war against two formidable foes, Imperial Japan and Hitler’s Third Reich.

The nation went on war footing. The men marched off to war, the women marched into the factories to produce the weapons of war. Even the children went around with their wagons picking up metal to recycle into the war effort. Food was rationed; gasoline was rationed; whole cities near the coast were blacked out at night; people put their savings into war bonds to fund the war effort; Hollywood made short movie clips for theaters to play between their regular movies exhorting the people to buy war bonds and support the war effort.  There were shortages, there was suffering, there were sacrifices all around. But now we look back and call the World War II generation “The Greatest Generation.” They not only won a world war fought on 2 fronts, but they turned America into the greatest superpower on earth and caused the 20^th century to be called “The American Century.”

That was the last time this nation has been placed on a war footing, and, not coincidently, the last war America has decisively won.

I use that as an example of what a war footing is and what it can accomplish because I believe God is calling the church to a war footing now. It’s the only way we can overcome what is about to hit us.

(Keep reading down to next post for a continuation of the thread)

What Is About to Hit Us, from the Book of Joel--Post 3

By David Hobbs

(This is a segment of a string of posts that all flow together. Keep reading from the posts above)

We all hope for massive revival and I believe it is coming. But how is it going to get here? The Book of Joel tells the whole story: Joel, the only prophetic book in the Bible that has never been fulfilled in real time except for 2:28-29 on the Day of Pentecost.

 It starts with terrible times for the people of God—first a drought/famine befalls them, then a mighty army attacks them. What’s puzzling about this army is that it’s sent by God against His own people (2:11 & 26). But it all becomes plain when you consider what I said in my last post: God’s judgment, when it begins, must start with the house of God. And that’s what this is. God sends this terrible army against His own people with the intent of calling them back to Himself. But it’s a high stakes game: the army is real and will destroy His people unless God intervenes to save them, but that will only happen if they repent. It's important to note that because the judgments are sent by God against His people, they can't be prayed away by the intercessors. All the intercessors can do is cry out to God that the church will repent

Chapter 1 starts off making it plain that this is a worse disaster than they have ever seen in their lifetimes or for many generations. Verse 5 has the first wakeup call: to the drunkards (those intoxicated with the riches and sensual pleasures of this life?). The call goes out to mourn because of the dearth upon the land. The call intensifies in verse 11: call a fast and a sacred assembly, gather the elders, lie all night in sackcloth, bring all the inhabitants of the land to the house of the Lord and cry out to Him. The creation itself feels the effects of the dearth and cries out.

We don’t know how well they followed these instructions but things got worse. In chapter 2 they lurch from the frying pan into the fire. What started as a series of natural disasters in chapter 1 now becomes an attack by a vicious army like had never been seen before.

³A fire devours before them,

And behind them a flame burns;

The land is like the Garden of Eden before them,

And behind them a desolate wilderness;

Surely nothing shall escape them….

⁶Before them the people writhe in pain;

All faces are drained of color.

            In verse 12 the call to turn back to God goes out a second time. Apparently they didn’t take it seriously enough before, which is exactly where the church is at today. We’re concerned about things but not desperate. The emphasis this time is on turning to God with all their heart, not just going through the motions of fasting and prayer (“rend your hearts and not your garments”). Again the nation is called together to pray and fast and cry out to the Lord. But this time it is made total: even the nursing babes are to be there; even the bride and groom are called from their wedding to be there. In other words, the whole nation is shut down and commanded to cry out to God with all their might. “Business-as-usual” is finally abandoned. Either we break through to God right now or the nation will be destroyed--it finally becomes true desperation! And it works! This is what God has been waiting for! This is what God is waiting for today. No more half-hearted, limp-wristed, “when-will-this-be-over-so-I-can-go-to-Dennys?” church services. They finally get the compromise out.

            Look what happens next. After the people of God finally give God their full attention and full heart, in verse 18 God hears from heaven and the whole situation starts to change. He deals with the immediate threat but He doesn’t stop there. He also promises abundant blessing and restoration for all they lost during the dearth. But He goes still farther. In verse 18 he speaks the familiar passage about pouring out His Spirit upon all flesh, which sparks the great revival we’ve all been waiting for.

            Then, in chapter 3, after He is done judging His people and reaping the saved of the earth through great revival, God turns to the world and deals with them (verse 2). He actually goes to war against the nations (verse 9 +) which ends with the terrible judgment of the wicked. Then the story continues right on into the Millennium (verse 18 to the end) and the happy state of the victorious people of God.

            There you have it—the whole end-times scenario played out in the Book of Joel. But to get through to final victory, the church must go through her own tribulation where she finally gets right with God. Judgment must start with the house of God.  It’s a “win big” or “lose big” scenario, there’s no in-between. It’s going to take all hands on deck, battle-station ready. Those who are not willing to give it their all will walk away, never to be heard from again. God told me, “Call the church to a war footing.”

(Keep reading down to next post, where the thread continues. To get there click on "older posts")