His Truth Is Marching On
Our Christian Creed 2020
We Desperately Need A Creed in 2020
Read this, and tell me what it means?
“Mine eyes have seen the glory. Of the coming of the Lord. He is trampling out the vintage. Where the grapes of wrath are stored. He has loosed the fateful lightening. Of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on. I have seen him in the watch-fires.“ (re. Jerry Crutchfield, Lee Greenwood)
What I hope to accomplish here is a Christian Manifest or Creed which is needed so desperately. Our Creed we have learned from none other than the plan of our salvation from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us all.
Which they did most Christians one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, had down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith.
For the Apostles possessed “perfect knowledge” that they preached and preserved for us in perfect form as some would even venture to say differently and almost all were willing and did die doing for each of us to have the Gospel.
For after the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, the Apostles were invested with power from on high where the Holy Spirit came down upon them and they were filled with His gifts and had perfect knowledge and departed to the ends of their earth, preaching the good things sent from God to them proclaiming the peace of heaven to men who indeed equally and individually possess the Gospel of God.
The Christian Manifest by definition is: A creed whereby a Christian can become motivation, active, objective, and fulfill the command of the Lord to “Go.” (Mark 16.15)
Over the last 100 years we have gradually but intently come at ease with
a. pornography,
b permissiveness,
c. and gun violence
as normal in the
1. media,
2 education,
3 and government.
It is not normal in the eyes of the Lord. The question is what are we going to do about it and how far will we go?
The Apostles Resources
The State of Affairs - Where We Stand Today
Our public schools and many of our public gatherings are devoid of prayer at this date and in some areas Christian groups are sometimes denied the use of public facilities. There is the breakdown of the family, and antithetical abortion continues as a means of birth control far from the intent to save the life of the person carrying the baby. All of these are part of, a symptom, of a much larger problem.
I have written previously about the shift away from the Christian worldview to an impersonal matter - one or as I have heard it spoken of as energy shaped into its present form by impersonal chance. This is what our public high school students are taught without creation of our Lord God equally.
A Christian worldview can be reached by understanding this: A Christian worldview, answers the three very important questions Biblically:
1) We are God’s creation, designed to govern the world and fellowship with Him (Genesis 1:27-28; 2:15).
2) We sinned against God and subjected the whole world to a curse (Genesis 3).
3) God Himself has redeemed the world through the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus Christ (Genesis 3:15; Luke 19:10), and will one day restore creation to its former perfect state (Isaiah 65:17-25).
A Christian worldview leads us to believe in moral absolutes, miracles, human dignity, and the possibility of redemption. (re. Biblical Worldviews)
Next, we must agree on when I say that Christianity is true. Obviously the three things above. However, Christianity is the totality of our lives. It is not only our personal results, but governmental and legal as well.
It is everything. Those holding the materialistic worldview concept have done a much better job of pushing their agenda in education, government, and the courts than the Christian worldview. And that is an undeniable fact.
2020 Creed
Our Leaders 2020
Now we are back to our creed above where it is an understatement that we need to become motivated and activated to do something wherever you are for the Gospel of Jesus Christ which is in the center of the Christian worldview. Many people who call themselves Christian do not even attend a Church body on a regular basis much less act on their Christian faith to any degree at any time other than for a little time Sunday mornings if then.
As rare as that is let me state something that is becoming even rarer. We live in a republic, in the United States that was birthed out of the Judeo-Christian ethic. This is the freedom that we see becoming denied and despised. Dwight Eisenhower once said, “Our sense of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply religious faith, and I don't care what it is. With us of course it is the Judeo-Christian concept, but it must be a religion that all men are created equal.”
The third version of the Humanist Manifesto lays out their world without God. I have not linked the Manifest because it is evil. If you want to read it you can look it up on your own easily enough. Its authors are led perhaps unknowingly by a spirit of the Antichrist and Satan. They have done a much better job of selling their animal nature agenda than we Christians have admittedly done in the laws of the land and the core of society. The Humanist Manifesto is a dangerous religion make no doubt about it. Ignoring it will not negate its evil or begin to turn things around. Sadly, many Christians have their heads stuck in a hole and have no idea about this evil in the land.
That is what the Christian Manifest is all about; getting people to pull their heads out of the sand and becoming motivated to do something to negate the evil that is all around us. You do not have to look far to find it. But you can do something wherever you might be with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Our Christian Leadership Past and Present
Our Christian Leaders Past and Present Who Are and Have Worked To Sow The Seeds of Faith
Revival, reform, and revolution in evangelical leadership of Christianity is unhappily I must come to the conclusion lacking. From William Tyndale (c. 1494–1536), who first published the use of the term evangelical in English (1531) forward, the atmosphere in America is becoming more and more anti-religious. Here, I give thanks to Wikipedia for a list of those that have given their lives to Christian education and reform during our lifetime:
- Jerry Bridges, speaker with The Navigators (organization), author of The Pursuit of Holiness
- Tony Campolo, pastor, sociologist, author, public speaker and leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement
- Shane Claiborne, writer, political activist and leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement
- Charles Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, author of Born Again
- James Dobson, psychologist, founder of Focus on the Family, author of Dare to Discipline
- Tony Evans, widely syndicated radio broadcaster
- Alex McFarland, apologist
- Louie Giglio, speaker and founder of Passion Conferences
- Kent Hovind, dangers of evolution, scientific evidence for the Bible
- Sergei Kourdakov, former KGB agent who persecuted Christians in Russia, but converted and defected to Canada
- Tim Lahaye, dispensationalist novelist, author of Left Behind series
- Jeri Massi, author of the Christy Award-nominated Valkyries: Some Through the Fire
- Joyce Meyer, charismatic speaker, author of Battlefield of the Mind: Winning the Battle in Your Mind
- Chuck Missler, apologist, author, founder of Koinonia House Ministries
- Luis Palau, Argentinian evangelist
- Joni Eareckson Tada, author, radio host, and founder of Joni and Friends
- Jim Wallis, founder and editor of Sojourners Magazine, political activist and leader of the Red-Letter Christian movement
- David F. Wells, author of No Place for Truth or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology, motivator for The Cambridge Declaration
- Philip Yancey, Christianity Today editor, columnist, author of The Jesus I Never Knew and What's So Amazing About Grace
- Ed Young, writer, speaker, artist, and the founding and senior Pastor of Fellowship Church
Educators and professors;
- Darrell Bock, former president of the Evangelical Theological Society
- Don Carson, professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
- W. A. Criswell, former president of the Southern Baptist Convention
- Ligon Duncan, president of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
- Robert Godfrey, president of Westminster Seminary California
- Kenneth E. Hagin, Charismatic preacher and founder of RHEMA Bible Training College (RBTC)
- John D. Hannah, author and professor at Dallas Theological Seminary
- Irving Hexham, Professor of Religious Studies, University of Calgary
- R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky
- Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary
- Mark Noll, history professor at the University of Notre Dame
- Haddon Robinson, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary
- Klyne Snodgrass, professor at North Park Theological Seminary, author of Between Two Truths
- Chuck Swindoll, former president of Dallas Theological Seminary
Influencers and innovators
- Howard Ahmanson, Jr., philanthropist and financier of many evangelical organizations
- George Barna, directing leader of The Barna Group, a Christian research and training organization
- Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ
- Stuart Epperson, co-founder and chairman of Salem Communications
- Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and leader of Samaritan's Purse
- Chip Ingram, founder and teaching pastor of Living on the Edge
- T. D. Jakes, pastor, author, filmmaker, and bishop of The Potter's House
- Richard Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission
- Frank Laubach, missionary, writer, developer of the "Each One Teach One" literacy program
- John Osteen, founder and first pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas
- Tony Perkins, political activist and president of the Family Research Council
- Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America
- Jay Alan Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ)
Political figures
- John Ashcroft, former U.S. Attorney General and U.S. Senator from Missouri[4]
- George W. Bush, former President of the United States[5]
- Jimmy Carter, former President of the United States[6]
- Ted Cruz, U.S. Senator from Texas[7]
- Jim DeMint, former U.S. Senator from South Carolina
- Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas
- James Lankford, U.S. Senator from Oklahoma
- Sarah Palin, 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee and former Governor of Alaska
- Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota[8]
- Mike Pence, Vice President of the United States
- Rick Perry, U.S. Secretary of Energy and former Governor of Texas
- Ronald Reagan, former President of the United States, who despite being a insignificant mainline Protestant, became a hero of the Christian right[9]
- Ben Sasse, U.S. Senator from Nebraska
- John Thune, U.S. Senator from South Dakota
(re. wikipedia.org, 15 January 2020)
Creed Education
Christian History
Among the group above is one of my late teachers Dr. Chuck Missler who gave me a search for a deep understanding and true love for endless Bible and the history that supports it.
Every great revival in the history of those that occurred in Great Britain and Scandinavian not only changed lives by salvation but also brought social change and action that swept the land.
One would have to read the history of these revivals to see this clearly. But social change was undoubtedly part of the great revivals. Until we learn that revival begins with social change first and spreads it may never happen.
We are going to have to start preaching on the streets again like never before in the big cities and in the small cities where they are as well. We must act, but If we must wait for any reason, make it a good one. Souls await.
Yours at one time was in the same state of darkness. So be kind and loving and help start the revival wherever you are. This is a Christian Manifest or Creed to motivate and encourage action to start the revival at the point where one is. The fire of God will spread. I know it will.
Now, on to a touchy subject. In preaching the Gospel you may occasionally violate the limits of civil obedience. There are people who are violently opposed to what the Founding Fathers of this country and those in the states.
All thirteen of them at the time, had in mind when they came together and formed the union. They had no doubt in relationship to the state on the part of anyone on the base of the existence of God. In our material chance-oriented generation, it has produced a state where some obey the law only where guns and the patronage are concerned, if at all.
Important Principle That Must Be Inflexible
A Very Important Principle To Learn and Not To Forget
Important Principle: The material chance-oriented worldview gives no base to live by, no reason to hope, except to use force and patronage, as to why a citizen should obey the law. We are seeing the results of this in the news on almost a daily basis.
Now we will briefly examine the Christian who is a God-fearing person not living like the principles of the world. The Bible commands us to obey the state. Here is a very important question we must face. Has God set up the state autonomous from Himself? Are we to obey the laws of the state no matter what?
Of course not. In this one area man is becoming what appears to be the measure of all things. And, of course they are not in the eyes of the Lord, not at all. Jesus, in Matthew 22.21 said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s,”.
Out Lord did not equate God to Caesar. It was Caesar as a man and God as God. The civil government, as all of life, stands under the Law of God. The Humanist Manifesto disagrees. So be it.
They are wrong, and they too stand under the Law of God whether they like it or not. The men who wrote the Humanist Manifesto envision a world without God. They are evil without knowing it. I hope they read this short article and understand. Then they are under judgement.
They are not bad people I hope, but deceived by the god of this age who is soon to be judged as well. We live in exciting but evil times. Don't be deceived yourself or lulled into sleep. Don't forget an individual’s worldview is your “big picture,” a harmony of all your beliefs about the world. It is your ways of understanding reality. One’s worldview is the basis for making daily decisions and is therefore extremely important. (re. Got Questions Org.)
My Thoughts
My Conclusions
Let us examine Romans 13. 1-4, “Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God. So, anyone who rebels against authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and they will be punished. For the authorities do not strike fear in people who are doing right, but in those who are doing wrong. Would you like to live without fear of the authorities? Do what is right, and they will honor you. The authorities are God’s servants, sent for your good. But if you are doing wrong, of course you should be afraid, for they have the power to punish you. They are God’s servants, sent for the very purpose of punishing those who do what is wrong.”
Now it is obvious that God has ordained the state as a delegated authority among men. This is including the governors, legislators, judges, supreme court and others who are authorized by God to punish those who disobey the law and to commend those who do right as well at times.
Peter, who is like a lot of we men today, said, “For so is the will of God, that with well-doing we may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. ”(1 Peter 2.15)
Peter says we are to honor the civil authority and to fear God. The state is to punish those that do wrong which is becoming a full-time job. It is also to commend those that do right which it rarely does in my estimation.
If the civil authority does not do this the whole system falls apart. The state is to be a minister of justice which is a legitimate function of the state, and we as Christians are to obey them as a matter of conscience. (re. Romans 13.5)
But, what do we do when the state does that which violates its legitimate function? Many early Christians died because they refused to obey the state in a civil matter. If you think that the early church was not civilly disobedient you would be dead wrong. For example:
1) Christians were thrown to the lions in the Roman Empire. Tacitus documented the way that Nero singled out Christians to blame for the great fire in Rome in 64 A.D. Tacitus stated that Christians were singled out for their “hatred of the human race” and “abominations.”
According to Tacitus, Nero punished Christians by nailing them to crosses, burning them as torches for light after sundown, and covering them in animal skins so they could be eaten by dogs.
NOTE: “Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle, and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a chair.”
This situation is strikingly illustrated in the famous correspondence between Emperor Trajan and Pliny the Younger (61 – 113 A.D.), the provincial governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor in A.D. 112 (Bryant, 1993, p. 314).”
NOTE: What did the Christians do wrong? They refused to worship Caesar as a sign of loyalty to the Roman state.
2) William Tyndale (c. 1490-1536) He is the English translator of the Bible we have to thank for who advocated the Scriptures over and against the state and the roman church. William was successful for years in evading the state for years but he was eventually condemned as a heretic, tried and executed on October 6, 1536.
NOTE: His crime was giving the Bible to the common man so they could read and understand it for themselves. He died for being a Christian and nothing else.
3) John Bunyan (1628-1688) He was found guilty of breaking the king’s law and arrested three times for just preaching the Gospel without a state’s license and for failing to attend the Church of England. For these supposed crimes he spent twelve years in an English jail. While there he wrote many works one of them Pilgrim’s Progress.
NOTE: Wherever the Reformation took place there was some form of civil disobedience or armed rebellion.
4) Netherlands: A lot of this I researched for my dissertation back in 2016. Roman Catholic Spain had isolated the population both politically and even geographically. It was the Protestants concentrated in what is now Holland which became the last holdout against the Spanish power.
Protestantism became the revolt establishment as the dominant religion against the Spanish power. The real turning point was the battle for Leiden in 1574. The Dutch Protestants fought a very hard and costly battle.
When it was finally over with thousands of dead the door was open not only for the successful Dutch Reformation with all its cultural as well as religious results.
I have provided just a few examples of where Christians had to combine as a physical force against those who tried to force them to disobey what God had commanded. There are hundreds of other examples including the Israeli Forces, the Apostle Paul and others in the New Testament.
Thank you for reading the article. Your comments are welcome in the space below. You may feel free to email me provided in the space below my picture above. We work hard on this short article believe it or not and would appreciate some feedback. Again thank you and God's blessings.
The Back Side of Better - T.D. Jakes
Do you Submit Yourself to Christian Service?
I join you in the Christian Manifesto 2020
This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.
© 2020 Gary E Hill