When R.J. Rushdoony wrote this essay in 1994, we had no “Clergy for Choice” promoting abortion, no unrepenting “gay clergy,” no “re-imagining” conferences of minor league theologians trying to take the Cross out of Christianity. But we do now, and what he wrote in 1994 is only even more starkly true today.
https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/the-retreatists
The question he asks, he dares today’s churches to answer: “How will Christ the King treat a church that hands His world over to His enemies?” Ouch.
In Acts Chapter 6, the church in Jerusalem creates and appoints deacons to minister to her members, adding to the church an active agency for helping the poor and needy. In no time at all the establishment turns against the deacons and puts Stephen to death. That’s how important the deacons were. But in our time, in many of the churches, deacons have lost their function–if you can even find any deacons at all.
We as Christians need to reclaim lost ground for Christ’s Kingdom: too much of it has been surrendered.
This morning, our Pastor spoke on this very subject. Amazing how things are going south on us.
That seems to happen fairly often.
I believe in calling a spade a spade, and a false teacher by name. Besides the false Rapture teaching (unless you believe the Rapture takes place at Christ’s Second Coming at the end of the Age), the other teaching that has done so much harm is Romans 13:1-3 about submitting to those in authority even if they are wicked and pass anti-Christian laws. That is not what Romans 13 teaches! The only authoritative gov’t is that which serves according to God’s laws. People in gov’t are to be ministers of God. You can’t be a minister of God and serve Satan and the world’s rebellion against its Creator.
There’s an awful lot of Biblical illiteracy out there.
Deacons, elders, and members are all important, not just pastors!