On March 11, 2011, in what has come to be known as “The Great East Japan Disaster”, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake – the most powerful ever known to have hit Japan – struck off the coast of Oshika Peninsula. It produced a catastrophic tsunami. Within minutes of the tragic event’s opening act, the modern age of instant access and free flowing information made its presence as plain as the quake itself. Videos streamed from cell phones and Twitter feeds relayed details in near real-time. The Japanese Apocalypse seemed to have its own Fox News theme music before the buildings had even stopped shaking.

Adding to the horror of an already catastrophic event, the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant was compromised and ultimately failed, prompting Japan to declare a state of emergency. European Energy Commissioner Gunther Oettinger, in an address to the European Parliament on March 15, described the event as an “apocalypse”.

In the wake of all of this, Western media seemed to be conflicted as to how serious the nuclear portion of the earthquake disaster really was. Some predicted doom, proclaiming imminent meltdown at the failed Fukushima facilities, while others treated the whole nuclear part of Japan’s trouble as no big deal at all.

Nothing to see here…and, heck, the radiation might even be good for you. (It worked wonders for Godzilla, after all.)

Environmental activist groups suffered little of the “conflicted” affliction that had beset the media, however. They rocketed into action, protesting the evils of nuclear power almost as quickly as Fox News had the Japanese Apocalypse theme music up and rolling.

In the midst of all of this, I was living in Seattle, wondering, among other things, who was right on the nuclear analysis. Was the cloud of leaked radioactivity that was heading across the Pacific really the black hand of death that some were painting it to be, or was it the practical equivalent of a mass of airborne vitamin C as some extremely pro-nuke types seemed to imply?

   While I had never really been a vitamin supplement kind of guy, after reading up on the situation I decided that it might be a good idea to start down that path, what with the black cloud of nuclear powered death heading Seattle way and all. So off to several downtown health-food-ish stores I went, picking out what was my first official collection of daily vitamins not to be found in a cheeseburger, pizza, or some similarly bachelor-friendly bit of culinary wonder.

It was a few days later – well into establishing my new daily vitamin routine as a habit – that I noticed something peculiar while perusing the aisles at the local Safeway. Something very peculiar…

I was happily be-bopping along, pushing my cart along ahead of me, when I noticed something green. A whole lot of green, actually. There was lettuce, celery, cucumbers, apples. There was a jar of pickles. And around the green were splashes of strawberry red and banana yellow. Very festive, I thought, but also very…weird.

What made all of this more than a little odd was that these natural shades of green, red and yellow were all in my shopping cart. Apparently, I had just happened to go about the process of shopping in auto-pilot mode and, for the first time in my life, I had only fruits and vegetables in there. I was stunned.

I even stopped in the middle of the realization to snap a picture of the cart with my iPhone.

This was a big deal.

Before any Greenpeaceniks or McDonald’s Haters out there who happen to be reading this get too awful excited, rest assured (or disappointed) in the fact that, before I left Safeway on that day, I had added Cheetos, Twinkies, and a handful of other “normal” items to my haul. Still, the whole thing represented quite a shift.

   I finished that weekend on a true, first-time-for-me surge into healthhood. It felt good…at least in my mind…at least for that weekend.

Three days into this vitamin and vegetable fueled approach to life (combined with my already established routine of walking 10+ miles each day), I felt invincible, or at least on the verge of it.

Then, on Day Four, my magic carpet ride to healthiness crashed, and hard, with me coming down with the most annoying conflagration of respiratory and digestive disorders that I can remember facing at any one time. It was ridiculous.

Of course, I instantly blamed the vegetables. And if it wasn’t the vegetables, it had to be some weird sort of chemical reaction that occurred when vegetables were combined with vitamins. Yeah, it had to be one of those two things.

Having been blessed with good health (if I take Tylenol more than twice a year, it’s an “off year” for me), I was so certain that the switch from health-light to health-heavy intake would bump me up to the next level that I couldn’t even imagine the opposite outcome as a likely outcome for anyone taking this route, much less the one that I would experience.

Yet there it was – my vitamin and veggie packed body was as bad off as it’d been in years – decades, even. The Greens had lied. The Health Nuts were just plain nuts. The more I type, the sillier I feel for having ever even entertained the notion that they were on to something – anything – good.

I should have known better.

And why fiddle with a smoothly operating machine like my largely taco- and Dunkin’ Donuts-fueled self, anyway? My lifelong strategy of creating a personal biological environment so overtly hostile to potential invaders that no germ or virus with even the slightest sense of self-preservation would dare even consider trespassing on – or in – my turf, had clearly worked. And well. For years and years and years.

   Then I bought the lie; the veggie and vitamin lie.

Apparently, I had to learn the hard way.

In all seriousness, while health food and vitamins are actually wonderful things, and maintaining our bodies is an important aspect of our fidelity to and glorification of God, there is no doubt that fallen men and women are very susceptible to deception; particularly deception that has already proven popular with others. Promises of an easy path to a wonderful destination are quite naturally a great temptation to us, and all the more so when we see friends and family stampeding in that direction.

Cheap + Easy = Red Flag

  

“The greatest heresy in the American Evangelical and Protestant church is that if you pray and ask Jesus Christ to come into your heart, He will definitely come in.”

~ Paul Washer

                                                             .

“The sinner’s prayer has sent more people to Hell than all the taverns in America.”

~ Leonard Ravenhill

                                                             .

We love beautiful things, and that tends to be good.

We also love easy things, and that tends to be bad.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise that the enemy would aim to craft a counterfeit of the most beautiful thing (Christ) by attaching a perverted version of it (or Him) to our inherent love of ease.

   What could be more appealing than a Jesus who has only your happiness in mind? What could be more attractive than a Jesus who lives only to serve your desires right where they are? What could be more wonderful than a Jesus who conforms his will to yours and uses all of his power accordingly?

How about one who will give you all of these things – fulfill all of your desires – without expecting anything of you or even slightly nudging you to change anything at all? In other words: A Jesus who doesn’t judge, or, as Tyler Padgitt likes to say, a Jesus who “isn’t mad at anyone.”

What self-centered rebel wouldn’t want a “savior” who saves them from Hell and from any pressure to change or conform to any standard outside of their own?

Sound too good to be true, non-believer?

Not so!

This “savior” is very real…at least in the minds of men. He feels good. Very good. Sinfully so, some might say. And you can find him headlining every Sunday in the auditoriums of American Churchianity. He loves those big stages, and he knows how to play a crowd. He’s been perfecting his game for thousands of years.

Enter: Flu Shot Jesus.

The Problem with Imaginary Friends

“When people say, ‘I believe in Jesus’, look them straight in the eye and ask, ‘Which one?’”

~ Walter Martin

                                              .

…he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”

~ Mark 8:27-29

                                              .

In America, practically everybody knows Jesus. And most claim to like the guy or even love him. And how could they not? After all, this Jesus that the typical everyman in America seems to regard highly sure has all the right positions on all the right issues, including:

1. Jesus knows that men and women are basically good. Sure, they mess up sometimes, but nobody’s perfect, Jesus understands this, and he just wants to help people do better by guiding them from mediocre to good, good to better, and better to best.

2. Jesus is love – with love meaning whatever you want it to mean, so long as it requires of Jesus that…:

• …he’ll never personally punish/discipline you.
• …he’ll never be angry with you personally.
• …he’ll never “force himself” anywhere that you don’t want him to be.

3. Jesus just wants you to let him help you. He respects your authority over your own life and would never even think of transgressing on your autonomy, but he would really like it if you’d choose to let him in the door, so to speak, so he can make your life better.

4. Jesus, if you’ll just let him “into your heart” (whatever that means) and say one time a few key words, will stamp both your Get Out of Hell Free and Free Pass to Heaven cards…simultaneously! These stamps never expire. They seal you entirely and allow you to go about your business as before without worrying at all about where you’re going when you die.

5. Jesus will demand nothing of you after you vote him in as savior. He’s just happy to have you and has no serious expectations beyond that. That’s just the kind of Jesus that he is.

If there’s one thing that comes through with crystal clarity where the nature of this Jesus is concerned, it’s that he is all about you.

He submits to your will. He is there to help (and never punish or criticize). His only real aim is to gently encourage you toward your best possible life, both here and hereafter.

How cool is that!

Whatta deal!

Now this is a Jesus that sells! This Jesus has real appeal in a culture like ours. He is imminently marketable; just seems to “sell himself”, so to speak. He seems to have it all – everything attractive and good to offer with none of the drawbacks.

Kinda like Coke Zero.

But this Jesus does have one little problem – a single lingering issue that does tend to paint all of this theoretical wonder in a different light. You see, unlike Coke Zero, this Jesus doesn’t actually exist.

(Chapter continues in Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity, available at FireBreathingChristians.com.)

room, where the four had come seeking seclusion for a conversation of significant importance.

And secrecy.

   “Yes, that’s just what the Hebrews thought.” Dr. Brody answered matter-of-factly as he walked slowly toward the table where the increasingly intrigued agents were sitting.

“What’s that supposed to be coming out of there?” the second intelligence officer asked.

“Lightning. Fire. The power of God or something.” Dr. Jones responded from behind Brody, standing just in front of a large rolling blackboard.

The first officer spoke again, this time in a more deliberate, concerned tone: “I’m beginning to understand Hitler’s interest in this.”

“Oh yes. The Bible speaks of the ark leveling mountains, laying waste to entire regions.” Brody explained, “An army which carries the ark before it is invincible.”

So begins Indiana Jones’ fabled quest in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the runaway hit and pop-culture staple that first graced the silver screen in 1981. Steven Spielberg’s and George Lucas’ star-powered cinematic collaboration struck many chords with many people on its way to its current iconic status.

For all of the considerable success resulting from those well played chords, one truth that the film simultaneously confirmed and relied upon, perhaps unintentionally, was its exposition of the nature of man’s regard for God – when he regards God at all, that is.

The idea is basically this: God is a tool.

Man’s tool, to be precise.

This was the Raiders’ plot lynch-pin delivered via Indiana Jones’ friend Dr. Marcus Brody:

Hitler could manipulate the supernatural power of God if only he could find and control the ark. God’s power would then become

the ultimate point-and-shoot weapon in the hands of a presumably invincible Nazi army. Thus it is clear that any man – Nazi or

otherwise – can tap into the unstoppable, unmatchable, supernatural power of God and manipulate it to his ends…if only he has the right tool or mechanism by which to do so.

In effect, through this realization you become god-like, or, for all practical purposes, God Himself. You realize that the tool is attainable by you, you seize the tool, and you use it as you please. In this, you ascend to the throne, take your seat, and direct His power – now your own – by your will, according to your desires, and for your ends.

Pretty neat, huh?

But hey, this is just the movies, right? I mean, should we be bothering reading so much into a Hollywood production when it comes to the nature of man, God, supernatural power, and the like? Raiders of the Lost Ark was a good flick and all, but does its little pitch and perspective on these subjects really matter?

Yes.

Really.

You see, sadly enough, the “Any man can claim, own, and control the power of God through tools” philosophy so central to Raiders is essentially the same view of God that is embraced and exalted by most of those leading the zombie religion movement in America.

In a very real sense Raiders is, at its heart, just another zombie flick.

Just as the Nazis fell under the spell of the charismatic Adolf Hitler, so too do the undead hordes of American Churchianity have their need-feeling, flesh-loving leaders. And, like Hitler, these leaders have an almost magical ability to captivate an audience and build a movement – a ministry, if you will – by appealing to the “itching ears” of the living dead.

And what do those ears most want to hear?

   What do zombies assume to be true, yet yearn to have confirmed? Why, that they are actually alive, of course.

Zombies want to be saved, or so they will often say. And many think that they are. Yet they are, and they most certainly wish to remain, zombies.

They love the flesh.

They live for it.

They feed it and feed on it; they can imagine nothing else. And it is in turn that the leaders of American Churchianity feed on them, by feeling their needs, feeding their flesh, and leading them straight to Hell and judgment, most often with a big smile, a kind word, and a warm, friendly pat on the back. If nothing else, the leaders of the Church of the Living Dead are masters of two things:

Deception and encouragement.

I’m Okay, You’re Okay, and Nobody Goes to Hell

 

“For from the least to the greatest of them,

everyone is greedy for unjust gain;

and from prophet to priest,

everyone deals falsely.

They have healed the wound of my people lightly,

saying, ‘Peace, peace,’

when there is no peace.

Were they ashamed when they committed abomination?

No, they were not at all ashamed;

they did not know how to blush.

Therefore they shall fall among those who fall;

at the time that I punish them, they shall be overthrown,” says the LORD.

~ Jeremiah 6:13-15

                                                .

(Chapter continues in Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity, available at FireBreathingChristians.com.)

She spoke calmly and clearly, sitting there as we talked over the kitchen table the way we had a hundred times before. Then, between sips from a favorite black coffee cup, she almost casually elaborated, “And I don’t feel bad about it at all. I really don’t.”

I say “almost casually” because she was clearly charting a course methodically and with purpose, yet there was also a certain nonchalant, matter-of-fact coolness to her delivery that either was cover for a deeper struggle that she wished to avoid, or an honest representation of the position to which she had resigned herself on the matter. I couldn’t tell which.

Her contentedness seemed to grow with every passing syllable. This was accompanied by a quickening of pace, as though there was something important waiting on the other side of her presentation.

“I know I’m supposed to [feel bad], but I don’t. I know that [the Bible] says to do certain things that I don’t do, but I don’t want to do those things and I don’t plan to do them, to be honest. I’m fine with that, really.”

By now she was beyond calm and well into a silky smooth autopilot mode. She had the confidence of the fit, self-aware, forty-something career-minded woman that she was.

“I don’t care if I just barely make it in; I’m just glad to be going to Heaven.”

And there it was: The Point.

“That’s all I want. I just want to go to Heaven.”

   I can remember those few sentences as if they were spoken to me only yesterday, though now many years have passed since that particular moment with that particular woman in that particular kitchen. Then, as now, I was struck by her ever-so-freely offered words, though time has brought increased clarity – and increased alarm – over their meaning.

She was not doing and had no interest in doing what she already knew the Bible had to say about this, that, or the other thing, and she certainly didn’t have any desire to learn more about what it might say about the other other things she hadn’t already accidentally discovered, but she was happy, confident and oh-so- comfortable in the embrace of the soothing notion that she was, in fact, at the end of the day – or at the end of her days, Heaven bound.

If there was one thing that she knew about eternity – her eternity, it was that she was securely saved and going to that beautiful place.

Her pastor told her so.

Her church told her so.

Her friends told her so.

Practically everyone in her Bible Belt American culture told her so.

And they all go on telling her so. Seven days a week and twice on Sundays.

This is the primary mission and consequence of the dominant religion of post-Christian America, which also just happens to be the religion that spearheaded the inauguration of America’s post-Christian era.

Its god isn’t angry at anyone. He’s far too nice for that; a whole lot more like Santa Claus than Yahweh, to be sure.

Its gospel isn’t a command to repent and turn from sin so that one might avoid the coming righteous judgment of a holy, distinctly un-Santa-like God. It’s more of a pleading request

from a weak, undemanding wannabe messiah/therapist who is just begging you to get out of the line going to hell (if there really even is such a place) and get into the line going to heaven, so that you might instantly and permanently qualify for his no-strings-attached, super-sized plan for your best life now.

With that god and that gospel, this religion’s members are just what you’d naturally expect: Millions upon millions of content and confident, flesh-obsessed walking dead who think like the world, act like the world, love what the world loves and hate what the world hates…all in Jesus’ name.

It’s that last bit – the “in Jesus’ name” part – that really does make all of the difference here. It’s the spark that has ignited the engine. It is through His name that credibility has been attained, ministries have been founded, and empires have been built, and it is through the abuse of His name, nature, Word, and Gospel, that this credibility, these ministries, and these empires have been empowered to twist and hold those who profess Him as Savior into a position of direct opposition to Him as Lord.

In His name, we have been called to abandon good and righteous judgment.

In His name, we’ve been called to make man’s happiness the center of all things, including religion.

In His name, we’ve been called to tolerate and even love the things that He hates.

In His name, we have been called to “be nicer” than…Him.

In His name, we have witnessed the construction of the very machinery now used to most effectively malign His holy name, openly mock His perfect truth, and wage war on His chosen people.

Welcome to American Churchianity.

THE CHURCH OF THE LIVING DEAD

 

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.

~ Colossians 2:8

                                                 .

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths.

~ 2 Timothy 4:3-4

While George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is widely credited with the inauguration of the modern zombie concept, a strong case can be made for none other than God the Spirit through His perfect written Word as the original author of zombie mythos. After all, it is His hand that wrote of the true nature of fallen man in such startlingly vivid, much-better-than-Technicolor detail, that many who read it simply cannot endure prolonged exposure to the picture that it paints. They recoil and they resist. They object and they protest. Such is the horror of fallen man’s reality.

Scripture paints a picture of fallen men and women in this real world that is far bleaker than the shambling hordes of “living

dead” that dot the landscapes imagined by the likes of George Romero. It’s not even close, really.

Consider for yourself the following truths concerning fallen men and women as revealed in Scripture:

• Fallen men and women are spiritually dead. Not spiritually “wounded” or spiritually “hobbled” or spiritually “critical”, but spiritually dead.
• Fallen men and women, though spiritually dead, are physically animated for a time. Thus, they walk and wander the countryside, so to speak, doing whatever appeals to their spiritually dead, flesh-obsessed nature.
• Fallen men and women love the flesh. It is what inspires them and what they constantly strive to feed and feed upon.
• Fallen men and women have a burning passion to gnaw, maul, and generally obliterate all that is truly holy and good – particularly the spiritually living.
• Fallen men and women, while they shamble about and seek to fulfill their (fallen) natural desires, have absolutely no awareness of a higher world or calling of any sort. They only see what their dead nature allows them to see. They are bound and their wills are defined by this dead nature, and they act accordingly.
• Fallen men and women can do nothing to save themselves from this state. They…are…dead.

Where the biblical account of zombie nature deviates from the more contemporary Romero spin on the concept is that one of the greatest longings and habits of actual zombies is for the formation and promotion of religion.

Zombie religion.

And it is here where one of the brightest, boldest, and most important battle lines is drawn.

On one side are zombies. They are completely dead spiritually, self-obsessed slaves to sin, lovers of the flesh, and haters of holiness and its Author.

On the other side are supernaturally regenerated “new creatures” in Christ. They are slaves to Christ, Gospel-fueled, lovers of the Lord and His truth. They are called and empowered to wage war against all that would stand in opposition to Him.

It is important to note that everyone is a member of one group or the other, and that every member of Group B was once a member of Group A. In other words, every single member of “Team New Creature” was once an obliviously content, spiritually dead and doomed member of “Team Zombie”…until the hand of God intervened, moving them out from one camp and into the other.

The one and only determining difference between the zombie and the new creature is the grace of God. This truth, when held closely, will be of great assistance as we consider the subject of zombie evangelism.

ON GRACE AND ZOMBIES

For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?

1 Corinthians 4:7 (NASB)

One goal of this book is to inspire righteous anger.

The anger part of that “righteous anger” formula is all too easy to find and foment. It comes quite quickly and easily to us by nature. It’s the righteous part of the equation that’s often a profound challenge in light of that very same nature, but this is a challenge that we, as new creatures in Christ, are commanded and equipped to overcome. With that in mind, this seems like a perfect time to remind ourselves that, as even the zombies so often like to say: “There, but by the grace of God, go I.”

This is true. Totally true. Even when a zombie says it.

And this truth means that, among other things, you and I both were once flesh-loving, God-hating zombies, right up until the very moment that He chose to save us. Let that soak some, even if you already have a solid understanding of this truth.

You and I once hated God by our spiritually dead nature, and we loved sin by the same. We once sat squarely positioned under the soon-coming righteous judgment of that same holy God and were incapable of moving – or even desiring to move – off that mark by even a single solitary millimeter. We loved it there because we hated Him. We loved what He hates and hated what He loves. We were that dead, or what we call ‘round these parts: “a zombie”. I was a zombie. You were a zombie.

   And it was in this putrid, sin-loving, truth-despising, God-hating state that He found and saved you, bringing you from death to life and infusing you with a new nature that inspired you to love the things you once hated and hate the things you once loved. He did this for you while you hated Him.

How’s that hit your sense of personal superiority…or even your sense of an autonomous ability to do anything good at all?

Pretty hard, I hope.

Only with our self-esteem properly obliterated are we able to even enter the arena of battle known as “evangelism” with any real sense of coherence and credibility – precisely because we must realize that all of the credibility is of Him and none of it is of us – even when it comes to the subject of our own supernatural conversion. Everything that we have or know – every thought, impulse, desire, hope, dream, accomplishment or bit of progress in any area of life – is all a gift from Him to us. We have no claim to personal glory here. And only in embracing this truth are we properly equipped to “wage the good warfare” and “fight the good fight” where this modern day American Churchianity-fueled zombie apocalypse is concerned.

This total, perfect grace permeates and defines the only supernatural message with the power to bring true life to the walking dead. And we are called to bring that message – and that life – to those zombies.

Their Slavery, Our Slavery, and the Nothing In-Between

But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.

~ Romans 6:17-18 (Bold emphasis added)

As we progress through the subjects covered here and in future volumes, the fact that all are slaves – either slaves to sin or slaves to Christ – should remain in the forefront of our consciousness, etched prayerfully into a position of prominence so that we might better accomplish the very challenging goal of balancing three vital – and challenging – aspects of the Christian walk:

     1.      Personal Humility – We were zombies when He bought us. All glory is His. Put another way: Get over yourself, already!

     2.      Boldness in Christ – He has bought and equipped us for His purpose and mission. He has done these things perfectly; we are without excuse.

     3.      Fidelity to the Gospel – We have a duty to honor our King by proclaiming and defending His brutal, hated-by-the-world Gospel in its full, undiluted form.

   We must remember that we were once just as dead in rebellion as any false convert, false prophet, or apostate teacher has ever been. And while this should make us gracious, kind, and even loving to His enemies (and ours), it in no way gives us license to adopt worldly definitions of grace, kindness or love as a way of avoiding or deflecting His definitions of those terms and applying them to the defense of His truth as He has commanded. We have been supernaturally saved for His purpose, and He has made plain that this purpose includes our proclamation and defense of His truth.

We are to do this with boldness and clarity, and we will suffer for our obedience to Him in this calling. We will be hated for it. We will lose family and friend relationships over it. And He will be glorified through all of this…which is the whole point.

Only with these truths embraced can we fully understand and obey His call to an action fueled by righteous anger regarding the false religion of American Churchianity.

In Apathetic Christianity, we will explore several biblical reasons for this righteous anger of God’s people against the zombie religion of American Churchianity, including:

Its adoption of secular principles and plans aimed squarely at deposing the family as the God-ordained center stage for worship and primary staging ground for worldwide evangelism, replacing it with…you guessed it…“church”.

Its deep desire to be loved by the world. You know, the world that hates God, holiness, truth, and those who love and stand for the same. That world.

Its obsessive drive to make the dead in sin comfortable on their way to Hell (and doubly so if they “tithe” reliably on their way down).

Hell’s Escort Service

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”

~ Jesus (The Real One) in Matthew 7:21-23

                                                  .

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him”

~ 1 John 2:3-4

                                                 .

Few systems of religion throughout recorded human history have been more effectively crafted to churn out the “workers of lawlessness” described by Jesus in the seventh chapter of Matthew than that of contemporary American Churchianity. It really does seem to have the whole black art of false assurance mastered; its capacity to comfortably escort millions to hell is without limit (or conscience).

When we use terms like “millions of workers of lawlessness”, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that these doomed groups are composed of precious, loved individuals

who are each made in the image of our holy God. Some are religious and some are secular. Some are our family members and some are strangers. Some are our friends and some are our enemies (whom we are to love). They are men, women, boys, and girls who, without the supernatural cure with which we have been entrusted and which we have been called to bring to them, are destined to face the eternal condemnation that we all once deserved.

They are teachers and preachers and pilots and homemakers. They are athletes and artists and leaders and soldiers. They are in your circle of friends and they are in your local congregation.

They even sometimes share a cup of coffee with you while telling you how doomed they are and how comfortable they feel about it. They won’t quite put it that way, of course, but, more often than not, you need neither pry hard nor peer intensely into their soul in order to see the truth that they tend to parade about quite effortlessly:

They are lost.

They are going to Hell.

And they are quite content.

Their religious leaders are paving this path to darkness and nurturing that contentedness, patting them supportively on the back as they take each successive step toward eternal damnation. Without divine intervention, these escorts to Hell will succeed. Fortunately, our Lord has just that sort of intervention in mind…through His chosen and obedient people.

His people and their love first for Him and then for the lost that He has called them to reach with His truth will be all that is needed here. This supernatural love and the action it inspires really is enough.

But wait, it gets better…and more challenging.

Not only does this supernatural weapon of liberation from slavery to sin and death known as the Gospel of Jesus Christ

have the power to free the slaves of American Churchianity, it even has the power to save those who are at the helm – holding the wheel and guiding the ship, so to speak – of this God-forsaken system of man-obsessed religion. Yes, even the very escorts to Hell themselves can be freed from bondage and brought from death unto life, if only we will honor our King and proclaim His Gospel command to Hell’s escorts along with their (temporary) captives.

The challenge here again is to remember that the worst of this zombie religion’s gatekeepers is no closer to spiritual life than you or I were before He brought us from death to that life.

Really.

And we must act accordingly.

So when a guy like Rob Bell says something stupid and dangerous – and he will – remember: There but by the grace of God go I.

Same goes for Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, and the rest of the “top-tier” – or any tier, for that matter – cast of characters in the American Churchianity line-up.

They are our targets, along with their followers.

They are all targets for conversion.

APATHY IS FOR LOSERS

This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

~ 1 Timothy 1:18-20

Vince Lombardi, the legendary head coach of the Green Bay Packers, once said, “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” In this, he seems to prophetically identify the heart of a problem that has left actual Christians either foundering or floating aimlessly in a sea that has come to be dominated and defined by American Churchianity.

We will not confront error.

We will not take stands.

We will not name names.

We will not obey our King’s command to fight the good fight, wage the good warfare, and tear down enemy strongholds, bringing all things into submission under Christ.

And why won’t we do these things?

‘Cause they’re “not nice”.

They’re hard.

And we have become, as Lombardi described, losers.

We’re good at losing.

   We like it. A lot. You might even say that, in many instances, we’ve come to love losing.

We definitely love it when we think it makes us look more humble or gracious or kind in the eyes of the world. And we really love to lose when fighting to win as He has commanded would actually cost us something we treasure – something we idolize – like status or peace or friendship or opportunity.

In this we have become that which we are called to destroy. We’ve become apathetic. In becoming apathetic we’ve become “good losers” from the world’s perspective, which makes us just plain losers from a Christ-centered perspective.

So now it is time to get with the program.

His program – a program for warfare.

Total warfare.

Warfare with a purpose.

His purpose. And His ultimate victory.

WAGING THE GOOD (AND SUPERNATURAL) WARFARE

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ

~ 2 Corinthians 10:3-5

We will not settle.

We will not compromise.

And we will not imagine for a moment that there is or was ever anything inherent within us that made us more worthy of salvation than any other zombie that there ever was.

We are here to win His promised victory by His grace and for His glory, and we will prevail against the very gates of Hell in the process. We will tear down every enemy stronghold between this place and that, grinding its ruins under our heels as we go on marching and bringing the walking dead to life in our wake. Our war against the zombie religion of Apathetic Christianity will be unlimited in its Christ-defined scope and unrelenting in securing its Christ-centered goals, because this is the only warfare that we can truly know as supernatural soldiers of the Sovereign King.

As we contemplate in these volumes the many battles that have come and gone, the battles that are upon us now, and the battles yet to come, we will examine several critical attributes and consequences of the religion of the enemy, including:

• Apathetic Leadership – Pastors, preachers, teachers, and leaders who scratch the “itching ears” of those who seek comfort apart from the Gospel of Christ and, in doing so, serve as willful escorts to Hell.

• Apathetic Family Life – Zombie religion’s abandonment of (and hostility toward) the family as the centerpiece for worship and development of true sons and daughters of Christ.

(This has been the complete Intro to Apathetic Christianity: The Zombie Religion of American Churchianity, available at FireBreathingChristians.com.)

We have a nation to save, but we have a God to honor first. May He never again allow us to forget this.   Thank you for your patience, grace, and desire to pursue His truth in all things.

Soli Deo Gloria…and let’s roll!

SAB

March 25, 2012

© 2011, 2012 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.

For more excerpts and other cool things, head on over to www.FireBreathingChristians.com.

Thank you!

Chapter 10

THE WOULD BE GOD WHO WOULD BE PRESIDENT

THE BEAUTY (GREAT HAIR) AND HORROR (WRONG GOD) OF EXPLICITLY UNBIBLICAL LEADERSHIP

…what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God…

~ 2 Corinthians 6:14-16

                                                                 .

“Of two evils, choose neither.”

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

                                                                 .

“Oh yeah, I know all about it. It’s incredible! Truly an amazing thing! If you work hard enough and you are a good enough guy here and now in the eyes of the god of this world – who, by the way, was once just a fallen man like you – he will then, in turn, make you the god of your own little planet. Wow! What’s not to like about that?”

The nicely dressed young man’s eyes widened a bit at this unusual response to his question.

“And after he green lights you for that supercool promotion, you get these amazing perks, including all the eternal sex you can handle with your multiple(!) totally-devoted-to-your-needs spirit wives. Quite naturally, the offspring from those never-ending celestial happy times will then go on to become the souls of the people populating the little planet over which you are god.”

By the time the subject of eternal celestial polygamous sex came along, the increasingly concerned young questioner-turned-listener had completely lost track of the warm smile that had accompanied his asking of the initial question in the first place.

“Then, of course, those people born under your godship, if they are wise enough, work hard enough, and are good enough in your eyes, can themselves earn a shot onto the same supercool track to god-ness; an eternity long path with no beginning and no end – just an unbroken, unending line of men becoming gods and women becoming eternal soul/baby-makers stretching as far into the past and future as anyone can see or imagine. Yeah, that makes perfect sense.”

By now passers-by at the Battlefield Mall were starting to slow down and pay attention. It didn’t help that the response, however kindly it was being made, was also being spoken with a precision and at a volume that sure seemed aimed, at least in part, at those increasingly interested bystanders.

“No true beginning. No end in sight. Just innumerable men-made-gods living out the most polytheistic religion imaginable, each going about their eternities enjoying a whole lotta power and, of course, a whole lotta sex with a whooooooole lotta women. Neato! Whatta deal, huh!? Well, maybe not so much if you’re a woman, but that’s obviously beside the point. This has to be a pretty easy sell for guys at least, right? I mean, guys who like sex and power, anyway. And since you apparently would like all of the power, all of the sex, and all of the sex partners that come as a part of that rather amazing sounding godhood package, you are here at the mall talking with me today. That’s pretty much it, right?”

This was not how or where the conversation was supposed to go. This was not the answer that the young man was looking for when he so politely and kindly escorted his simple, sincere question to its target with the warmest of smiles and a friendly, firm hand shake. And before the young man could respond, it got worse.

“I do appreciate that the name ‘Jesus’ was included in your question, since the single most important question that any of us can ask or consider is, ‘Who is Jesus?’”

Aha! Jesus! Now there was a term – a name, the name – that would surely unite all parties involved in the conversation…or maybe not…

“Of course, the name ‘Jesus’ is only as good or bad as the person to whom it is attached, so we can probably both agree that it’s always important to be sure that we’re talking about the same person when we use the same name. I mean, a lot of very different people can go by the same name.”

   (Chapter 10 continues in Stupid Elephant Tricks – The Other Progressive Party’s War on Christianity)

© 2011, 2012 Scott Alan Buss – All Rights Reserved.

For more excerpts and other cool things, head on over to www.FireBreathingChristians.com.

Thank you!

WHY SETTLE FOR THE LESSER EVIL?

THE SLAVERY AND STUPIDITY OF SECULAR STANDARDS

“No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith, for if he becomes President, he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths. [Loud applause] I believe that every faith that I’ve encountered draws its adherents closer to god.”[1]

Mitt Romney

(bold emphasis added)

                                                                                                                 .

“Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”

Dark Helmet, Spaceballs

                                                                                                                  .

“Why Settle for the Lesser Evil?”

Now there’s a campaign slogan you don’t see every day, at least not yet. But there it was, all decked out in red, white, and blue; proudly planted on the bobbing back bumper of the little Nissan pickup in front of me. “Cthulhu for President” was the headlining banner above the peculiarly provocative tagline.

   Cthulhu (pronounced: kuh-THOO-loo…I think), for those of you (no doubt happily) unaware of the name, is the moniker given to a dark, malevolent force of supernatural terror in a series of horror stories first penned by H.P. Lovecraft back in the late ’20s. Often described along the lines of “…an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature…. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque scaly body with rudimentary wings”[2], Mr. Cthulhu certainly had the look to go with the bad attitude and mission.

Somewhere between his intro in 1928 and the 2000 presidential campaign, enthusiastic Lovecraft and/or Cthulhu fans took (what can only be hoped to be) a tongue-in-cheek approach to the “pulpy, tentacle headed” doom-bringer in question and did what Americans do so well so naturally: They happily (and profitably) took on the mission of marketing their favorite force of darkness in every way imaginable and then some.

There were “funny” Cthulhu t-shirts. There were tasty Cthulhu candies. There were even adorable(?) little Cthulhu Beanie Baby style plushies. And then there was the ongoing “presidential campaign”, with shirts, slogans, and…bumper stickers. Bumper stickers like the one rolling along ahead of me a few cycles back.

While I’ve not bothered to check on the latest incarnation of Cthulhu for President in the present election cycle, one can only assume that he and his handlers are at it again, and happily so. Whatever terrible thing that may or may not say about our culture’s condition, now, more than ever, the “Why Settle for the Lesser Evil?” line seems worthy of serious consideration, even if its tentacle-headed advocate does not.

Incredibly, sadly, and incredibly sadly, professing Christians in America have not only managed to validate at least a substantial portion of something as idiotic as the Cthulhu campaign for high office, they have also managed to confirm the strategic observations of another pop-culture bad guy wannabe. When the Dark Helmet character (a Darth Vader knock-off) in Mel Brook’s Spaceballs flick (a Star Wars knock-off) announced confidently that, “Evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.”, he hit the nail on the head…so long as “good” is described by secular standards…which is exactly how most politically active professing Christians define it in practice these days. It is this shift toward secular pragmatism and secular standards of goodness in American Christendom that has made the question “Why settle for the lesser evil?” so sadly relevant today.

   In agreeing to measure the goodness or rightness of anything, much less the political leadership of our nation, by any standard other than God’s, we have made a compelling case for “choosing the lesser evil” and have, in doing so, proven that our “good” is, in fact, dumb. Frighteningly dumb. As Christians, we are supposed to know and advocate explicitly God-centered goodness as the only true sort of goodness to be found, but, in practice – particularly political practice – we simply do not believe this to be true.

We. Are. Dumb.

And unlike the kind of dumb that you might be able to laugh at in Spaceballs or a Cthulhu presidential campaign (not that I necessarily recommend either, mind you), ours is a form of willful stupidity that is far more dangerous and far more destructive, in part  because it is God’s own people who are often perpetuating this decidedly ungodly approach to life in His name.

We’ve become “politically savvy” Christians who know how to play the game to win! And just look at all of the “winning” we’ve experienced with this approach: We murder roughly a million innocent children each year, mostly for convenience; we tax young workers to support the Ponzi scheme of all Ponzi schemes in the form of ever expanding and long-known-to-be-unsustainable entitlement programs; we are on the cusp of formally exalting homosexuality – which God hates – as a legitimate and honorable “lifestyle”, and we are witnessing at this very moment  our comically unbiblical and unconstitutional statist system make its final, lumbering lunge toward much more formally tyrannical approaches in every realm given up to its dominion.

   And many of these progressive wonders have been won by us in His name as we have done everything we can see (and have been told) to do by the forces of secularly defined progress within conservative, libertarian, and Republican political circles. Where once we would at least pretend to seek God enough to insist that our candidates profess to be actual, orthodox Christians, we now find that to be more than negotiable.

After all, we have to win, right? We must beat Obama! That is our supreme goal…our ultimate challenge…our clear and present idol.

It is this idol, in various incarnations, that has been used very effectively and for a very long time by the enemy. In our embrace of this idol, we have abandoned our duty to truth and its Author and we have surrendered our one and only supernatural hope of actually winning “the culture war” or any other conflict of consequence. In agreeing with a godless culture that God is not the necessary explicit center for all good things, we have joined, in a very real sense, something even worse the “Cthulhu for President” campaign.

American Christians now fiercely believe and vigorously campaign for the “lesser” evil, and, in doing so, we do exactly that for which the greatest evil hopes. After all, if it’s not hard to imagine how pleased a Cthulhu or a Dark Helmet type might be at the prospect of directing his enemy’s future by simply presenting multiple evils from which that supposed “good guy” preemptively agrees to choose, then how much more so should we understand the very real delight of Satan at the prospect of manipulating America’s professing Christians in precisely the same manner?

Apparently, all the devil need do is hold out an Obama or a Clinton or a Carter in his left hand whenever he desires for American Christians to select whatever and whomever he chooses to offer up in his right. And professing Christians in America have, for quite some time now, been all too happy to play along. We just seem to love dancing to the “less evil” tune, no matter how obviously unbiblical it is or how much wreckage accumulates in its ever-lengthening, ever-widening, and ever-deepening wake.

   The Christian response to the political question, “Why choose the lesser evil?” should not be an explanation as to why said lesser evil should be chosen. The Christian response to this biblically ridiculous question should be something along the lines of:

Why choose any evil?

Or, as Charles Spurgeon famously and wisely recommended: “Of two evils, choose neither.”

Those of us who are Christians have been bought with a price. We are His slaves where once we were slaves to sin. Our breaths, our heartbeats, our actions and our votes are His property. We will answer to Him for how we spend every one of them.

This is the blessed reality that should inform our every thought and action, and this is the only hope that we have as we consider our calling and placement in a culture so vividly aligned with that described in the book of Romans:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

   Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served thecreature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

   For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error.

   And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done. They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. [3]

In response to such clear and present realities, we will often see and hear our brothers and sisters in Christ cite promises and verses from elsewhere in the Word, including, quite frequently, the matchlessly comforting and inspiring words of 2 Chronicles 7:14:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

But what if the God who has made this perfect promise has also clearly defined the humility mentioned in the passage? What if He has made plain that we are to be humble by submitting to His will completely? What if He has also made plain that anything less than complete submission to Him in such a manner is not humility at all, no matter how much we might like to imagine or spin or pretend otherwise. What if He has lovingly warned His children that failure to submit to His clearly revealed will is always the precise opposite of God-glorifying personal humility. It is always God-hating, self-centered pride.

Pride is the fuel of all man-centered pragmatism, and man-centered pragmatism has most certainly come to define, in many ways and on every front, the prevailing political attitudes of the vast majority of professing Christians in America.

But take heart!

There is hope.

Perfect hope.

Supernatural hope.

But do we want that hope? Will we humble ourselves as He defines humility and requires it of His people?

Or will we continue to pragmatically play the game  and dance to the tune that His enemy (and ours) has so happily arranged and offered up to us? Will we work and fight and pray for the sock puppet on the right simply because he is soooooo much “less evil” than the one on the left?  Or will we finally come to the place of agreement with Scripture and Spurgeon, who both exhort, “Of two evils, choose neither.”

While Cthulhu is a fiction, the perils of this age are anything but. In the hills of modern progressive America, there be dragons…real dragons…home grown, pragmatically nurtured, and ultimately lethal creatures bent on the pursuit of anything and everything but the explicit will of God…all in the name of progress, of course.

Our only real hope to slay these dragons lies on the other side of our proper understanding and application of what He describes as “the Sword of Truth” – His perfect Word.

---

COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL

 

This has been a long time in the making, but the day has finally come…

Posted here is the introduction from Fire Breathing Christians – The Common Believer’s Call to Reformation, Revival, and Revolution. The book will be released in late October. In the days leading up to launch, I will be posting excerpts from many of its 21 chapters so that you might get a feel for the material without having to go to the trouble or expense of purchasing a copy. Of course, if you like what you see, I fully expect you to buy at least three copies.

In all seriousness, if, after reading through the Intro to Fire (and the excerpts to follow), you find Fire Breathing Christians to be your cup o’ tea, I hope and pray that you will use the great power that you have to fan this flame into something God glorifying and culture impacting by simply sharing the message of this book with like-minded folks.  The good news is that the “God glorifying” part of that equation is, in a real sense, already in the bag. He has taken care of that. The “culture impacting” part is where you come in. To that end, your prayers are coveted and your spreading the word of Fire Breathing Christians is more appreciated (and more important) than you may ever know.

Thank you for taking the time to pause, read, pray and ponder. Without further delay…

__________________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2010 Scott Alan Buss - All rights reserved.

 

INTRO TO FIRE

THE POWER AND PURPOSE OF A COMMON BELIEVER

 

“FIRE…God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and not of the philosophers and savants. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.”

Blaise Pascal

I can remember holding my wife’s hand when she died. Even now I can vividly recall the moment before and the moment after, but it was the difference between the two that struck me with a force I’d not anticipated. It was in that instant following her ascent to paradise that I realized fully for the first time the fact of death—the permanent passing of a good and beautiful thing from this flawed and fallen world. The moment before, Kristi was there. Her spirit and mind were with me. The potential for every good and miraculous thing that might be realized through them was there with me. Then, in a breath, they were gone.

From a secular perspective, this was pure tragedy. Twenty-five-year-olds aren’t supposed to be diagnosed with cancer and twenty-nine-year-olds aren’t supposed to die. From my own weak and flawed perspective, this was a time of great loss and pain—the quintessential example of “a time to mourn.” From God’s perspective, this was a demonstration of matchless love and flawless timing, all according to the perfect plan He had ordained since before the dawn of creation.

It was in the midst of these competing claims to truth that I was blessed with clarity. The God who had so lovingly sustained and encouraged me through a four-year saga of hope and sorrow had then graciously provided the precious prize of certainty. Just as I’d discovered a deeper meaning of death, so too I had been presented with the gift of peace through a divinely inspired clarity. For the first time, I came to personally realize that God’s plan was not merely perfect in a broad, general sense, but it was flawless perfection for each and every one of us on an individual level—even for me.

It was a simple concept, really, yet one of impossible weight, all of which seemed to relentlessly press on my mind. I was simultaneously numb from the profound turn that life had just taken with Kristi’s passing and awestruck at what I was beginning to see clearly for the first time. It was at once a wonderful and frightening experience; one that left me feeling both desperately small and boundlessly hopeful. As I struggled with these apparent contradictions, I developed into a confused American thirty-something-year-old Christian man. And that was a good thing.

In the following weeks and months, I prayed, studied and sought the thoughts of others who had been exposed to this convicting and invigorating clarity. This search led me to many wonderful and inspirational stories, including that of a man named Blaise Pascal.

God-given Fire

Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.

Hebrews 12:28–29

Blaise Pascal (June 19, 1623–August 19, 1662) was a child prodigy who became a prominent mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. By the age of nineteen, he invented what many consider to be the first computer (it was a calculating device that he crafted to help his father, who was a tax collector). What I found most intriguing about his biography was its “Night of Fire” episode.

In the late 1640s, Pascal came into contact and subsequently wrestled with Jansenism, a branch of Catholicism that emphasized the fall of man through sin and the necessity of divine grace. Pascal struggled with and contemplated this philosophy well into the 1650s; though during that time, he embraced neither its views nor the God claimed as their author.

Then, on November 23, 1654, not long after a brush with death at the Neuilly-sur-Seine Bridge, he was overwhelmed by an intense vision. Between the hours of 10:30 and 12:30 at night, Blaise Pascal experienced what has come to be known as his “Night of Fire.” He recorded the experience immediately in a note, which began: “Fire. God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants…” and concluded by quoting Psalm 119:16: “I will not forget thy word. Amen.” He then sewed the written note into his coat and always transferred it when he changed clothes. The presence of the note was discovered accidentally by a servant after Pascal’s death…that is, if you believe in accidents.

I no longer believe in accidents, and that’s the point. Well, one of them, anyway.

After reading Pascal’s story for the first time, I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed and, I must admit, even a bit suspicious. The sheer power of it all was quite impressive, no doubt, but almost too fantastic to be true. Yet there it was, and as I pondered this dramatic episode further, my mind was propelled from one biblical account to another. The fire of which Pascal so passionately wrote inspired my recollection of John the Baptist’s announcing Jesus’ coming to “baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire” as well as images of Pentecost as recorded in the book of Acts:

When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them.

Acts 2:1–3

These accounts painted the once suspicious Night of Fire in a very different light. They seemed to me to proclaim that Blaise Pascal’s experience, while utterly fantastic and awe-inspiring in so many beautiful ways, was nonetheless quite possible—indeed, in a very real sense likely—in the life of a believer. The more I studied, the more I became convinced that Spirit and fire are not merely possible, they are to be expected. They are to be assumed in the life of a Christian.

Just the thought of such a thing as this is worthy of pause, I think, and pause I did. My frazzled mind grappled at length with what was, for me, a wonderful and intimidating new truth: Christ has come to baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire. And even better, He doesn’t seem to be selective with this Spirit and fire. He gives them to every believer.

This magnificent power might come over you in an intense vision on a November night, or it may make itself known as you hold the hand of a loved one who is passing from this life and into the next. It may lay its claim upon you while you struggle and cry out from the deepest place of despair or while you happily sit and read under a shade tree on the perfect, sunny day. Whenever or wherever it may have come to you, I cannot know or say, though I can be certain of two things:

Every Christian has been baptized with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Every Christian has been blessed in this manner for a great, God-centered and God-glorifying purpose.

The first aim of Fire Breathing Christians is to identify the God-given fire in every Spirit-filled believer so that they might actively and enthusiastically fan its flame. From one Common Believer to another, my initial goal is to impress upon every Christian man, woman, boy, and girl who may read these words that they have both an amazing power and a unique, individual purpose, regardless of their place, position, title, or role in this fallen world. There is nothing in your past—no failing or flaw—that alters this truth in the least. Every Christian has been called to otherwise impossible heights and equipped to attain them.

So it is that you and I have been brought together today for a great purpose. (And you thought this whole “pick up a book and have a look” thing was quite random, didn’t you?)

While we could hardly have imagined, much less properly planned such a meeting as this, we can now know that it has been both imagined and planned by the same Master who inspired matchless “certitude, feeling joy and peace” in one particular man on the night of November 23, 1654.

The God who claims and empowers great leaders and theologians is no less interested and takes no less joy in any other father, mother, daughter, or son. He seeks to lift them all to the same impossible height. As I am selfishly fond of pointing out, He takes great pleasure in using the weakest vessels to accomplish the most magnificent tasks. And His fire is not solely reserved for child prodigies or prominent philosophers.

This truth serves our purpose very well, as the change that America so desperately needs cannot be imposed from a pulpit. It will not be a product of seminary training. It will not come via decree or proclamation from the high places of man. It will come from the front lines, the grass roots, and the trenches. It is the Christian shopkeeper, landscaper, plumber, and homemaker in the pews who hold the keys to victory. They will make or break our cause.

It is the fire from above burning within these people that can heal a dying culture and restore a once-great nation. But this fire knows only one source and one goal—the one and only true God of biblical Christianity. Insofar as He, and He alone, is our center in all things, it will hold and we will accomplish otherwise impossible tasks.

To this end, every Common Believer has been called to this battle and equipped for victory.

The Common Believer

While this is certainly not a book of high theology, there are going to be some critical terms and concepts that must be defined as we go along.  To that end, Fire Breathing Christians will make regular reference to the Common Believer. With this term, I aim simply to address every genuine Christian convert and adherent to biblical truth, regardless of position, place, role or title.

The commonality expressed in this title is threefold:

1. Common in status as adopted sons and daughters of Christ.
2. Common in submission to Jesus as Savior and Lord.
3. Common in submission to biblical truth as authoritative in all things.

This category covers theologians, fieldworkers, philosophers, housewives, political leaders, policemen, fishermen, fathers, daughters, sons, and students. It includes all biblically defined Christians without any compulsion to exalt one above another or rank them in any order of perceived significance. These are the people that must be equipped so that they might successfully engage the culture.

We simply cannot continue to surrender most battles, cede most battlefields, and then hope to somehow win the war raging about that culture. We cannot wait for a good and godly leader to emerge or for somebody else—anybody else—to “do something.” We cannot wait for God to miraculously do what He has called and equipped us to do. You and I—each and every Common Believer—must take it upon ourselves to engage the enemy on every front. The arts…business…politics…these are the fields of battle that we are called and equipped to conquer.

Fire Breathing Christians is one Common Believer’s attempt to guide his brothers and sisters toward the Word of God so that they might be equipped to win the war we are all called to wage. In this, we will examine many spheres of life and areas of conflict between Christianity and its opposition throughout contemporary American society. We will see where we are, how we got here, and what we must do to restore our nation’s biblical foundation, one individual submission to Christ at a time.

Our preparation will begin with a detailed examination of the culture war as it currently stands on a variety of fronts; a survey of the battlefield, so to speak. As the self-helpers like to say, the first step to a solution is admitting that there is a problem, and when it comes to the state of American culture, we clearly have one of those. Many of them, actually, but each of these problems shares one root cause: Ours is a nation in open rebellion against truth and its author. The God of Christianity is hated here. This is the reality with which we must contend. This is our great challenge.

But we must never forget that within every great challenge lies great opportunity, and never more so than with this conflict in these last days. Our God has placed us in this particular place at this specific time to meet this unique challenge. He has equipped us for combat and called us to victory. These most comforting truths must not be forgotten as we take a first hard look at the field of battle.

Post-Christian America

American Christendom is in a free-falling state of collapse. Having conformed to the world she was commissioned to transform, the church has accommodated, embraced, and exalted an astounding variety of heretical concepts that would have been unimaginable to believers of just a generation past. Homosexual priests have claimed many a pulpit, the biblical definitions of family and gender roles have been largely abandoned, business and politics have come to be regarded as “separate matters,” church discipline is virtually non-existent, and Christ-less education has become the accepted norm. At the root of it all is an open tolerance of the biblical illiteracy that has come to permeate the church and define the average contemporary American Christian life.

As the church has surrendered to the lethargic, lazy spirit of this age, her enemies have advanced on all fronts. From within, liberal progressives win convert after convert through their zealous evangelical efforts. From without, an American culture at war with the faith that brought it into being batters, pounds, and assaults every biblical truth from every conceivable angle in a suicidal quest to remove from sight and memory every vestige of a once-cherished God.

Is this cause for despair? Should biblically submissive American Christians abandon all hope and concede that the culture—and perhaps even the church itself—has been lost to the enemy?

Absolutely not!

However brazenly the church may have spurned her Lord, we may be eternally thankful that in His matchless grace He has chosen not to return the favor. Far from abandoning us, He has called us to His side in these last days so that we might be empowered to stand and fight.

He has long been about the business of preparing us for this day and preparing this day for us. Throughout the age of American decomposition, He has allowed warnings to sound through the words of many good men and women.

Two such men published books in the early nineties, with each approaching the ongoing culture war from a unique perspective. Robert Bork’s The Tempting of America—The Political Seduction of the Law, written in the aftermath of his defeated nomination to the Supreme Court, was a brilliant and sobering account of a national judicial system that had lost its way. His detailed and compelling chronicle of America’s continued flight from her founding constitutional principles served both as a frightening diagnosis and a prophetic warning. Was Judge Bork’s warning heeded?

In the era of Barack Hussein Obama and Sonia Sotomayor, the answer is as obvious as it is unsettling. The “original understanding” of the Constitution so skillfully defined and defended in The Tempting of America continues to find itself openly undermined by the forces of progressive liberalism. In the wake of this ongoing assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation, we find ourselves moving ever closer to a state of overtly anti-Christian judicial tyranny.

In the classic work of apologetics, Christianity in Crisis, Hank Hanegraaff applied the illuminating light of scriptural truth to the church from within, focusing on the burgeoning movement of heretical philosophies that had come to permeate Christendom at every level and on a massive scale. Christians, the book maintained, had come to embrace and emulate a wide variety of cultic systems of thought in some form or fashion, and the cost to the church had been catastrophic. Hanegraaff predicted that if this trend continued, the church would find her already questionable influence further compromised, ultimately to the point of becoming a non-factor in the culture.

To avert this crisis, we must shift from perceiving God as a means to an end to recognizing that He is the end. We must shift from a theology based on temporary perspectives to one based on eternal perspectives.

And while change must come, it clearly will not come easily. Those who are feeding this cancer occupy some of the most powerful platforms within Christianity. They control vast resources and stand to lose multiplied millions of dollars if they are exposed.

The stakes are so high that those who are plunging Christianity into crisis seem willing to do and say virtually anything to silence opposition and rally support.

Was Hanegraaff’s warning heeded? Has Christendom embraced God as its ultimate end (or even as its ultimate beginning), submitting to His will wherever it may lead? Or is He still largely viewed as a tool to be used in the exercise of our will and pursuit of our desires all on our schedule?

Put another way, have you ever heard of Joel Osteen?

In the era of American Christ-less Christianity, the answer is clear and horrifying. The church has been utterly compromised, giving herself over to a Mr. Potato Jesus brand of religion that encourages adherents to add or remove any accessory from their customizable little pseudo-god in pursuit of personal acceptance and corporate relevance. The church has come to openly embrace virtually every counter-Christian concept in some form or fashion. As a result, the term “Christian” itself has lost most of its definitive power. It has become little more than a synonym for “good person.” That is, if you still believe in “good.” The results of this have been predictably devastating to the church, and where the church has been so effectively crippled by her enemies, the culture at large has suffered incalculable loss.

Biblical Christianity finds itself under siege from without and actively undermined from within. A nation once consecrated to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has fallen into a state of complete rebellion.

Terms of Engagement

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis described the path of the Common Believer as follows:

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down. I don’t want to drill the tooth, or crown it, or stop it, but to have it out. Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours.’

This is a fine initial description of the core truth that will serve as our guide. Christ wants all of you and He wants all of me. You and I are called to fully submit every area of life to Him. Our notions of politics, the arts, education, and economics are all to be subjected completely to His will if we are to have any hope of peace, prosperity, and victory in the culture war that has ravaged the America that God has given us. It is from this perspective that Fire Breathing Christians seeks to empower each and every Common Believer. It is from this launching point that we will examine the spirit of relativism that has consumed the culture and the spirit of compromise that has corrupted the church.

We will see—many times in our adversaries’ own words—crystal clear expressions of rebellion against and contempt for the God of Christianity. We will witness the enemy boldly proclaim, exalt, and advocate opposition to virtually every clearly pronounced truth of Scripture. We will then examine these actions and the motivations behind them in light of biblical truth. In this, we will gain a crucial understanding of not only what the enemies of Christianity are doing, but why they are compelled to do so.

This understanding is vital. After all, if we do not know what our adversaries are doing and why, any attempt to effectively engage them on the cultural battlefield will prove futile. Only when we have this knowledge in hand are we properly equipped to achieve victory. Only then can we finally liberate American culture from the secular forces of relativism and humanism that have come to dominate and enslave her. With our enemies identified, their strategies understood and the battlefield surveyed, we will then fix our minds on the God-given blueprint for victory.

As we consider the many challenges before us and begin down the path towards cultural engagement, we are well served to consciously cling to three essential aspects of the Holy Spirit as evidenced in the life of the obedient Common Believer:

1. A humble spirit—We must never forget that every slave of the enemy is only acting according to their fallen nature. We were once just as they are now. We must always earnestly pray for their regeneration by God’s sovereign hand and treat them accordingly: with love, patience, and respect whenever possible. Our boldness must always be “in the Lord,” and not of ourselves.
2. A servant’s spirit—We must always aspire to actively, consciously submit to the will of God the Holy Spirit, who dwells within us. We must serve Him completely and in all areas of life.
3. A martyr’s spirit—We must be willing to pay any price for the sake of advancing the Kingdom of Christ. Any means any.

While our God has baptized us with Spirit and fire, we must never imagine for a moment that one will ever contradict the other. The passion and power given every Common Believer is essential to success, but we must remain vigilant against our inclination to pervert or distort these treasures for the purpose of self-exaltation or excessive criticism of another.

Through Christ and our complete submission to His will in all things, there is no obstacle, challenge, or opponent that we cannot conquer. Through a process of thoughtful, prayerful preparation followed by obedient execution of His perfect plan for battle, we can finally engage the culture, achieve victory, and restore our fallen nation.

Fire Breathing Christians is aimed at guiding the Common Believer through this process. In doing so, it is my hope that readers will come to realize what may at first seem to be an unexpected benefit from such a book as this: everyday application.

Lest there be any confusion, the aim here is not to promote the everyday application of Fire Breathing Christians. At least not as an end. No, the goal here is to encourage and guide every Common Believer toward everyday study and application of the revealed truth of Holy Scripture. If Fire Breathing Christians is to be rightly applied, the first step in that application will always be to seek, find, and submit to truth as revealed in the Bible. That is where God-given hope and power lie in their undiluted, unmatched, and eternally relevant form. This is where our fire is fed.

While much of what is covered in these pages deals with large scale and lofty sounding bits of high drama and grand strategy, as we pass each milepost along our journey, we will see with great clarity that each problem under consideration and its biblically prescribed solution has direct application to our lives on a very personal level. We will pause at each of these markers to observe and learn how it is that we are to apply these specific scriptural principles to our everyday lives on an individual level, and as we do so we will grow.

When properly understood, this book should challenge and inspire positive change not only at an institutional or organized political level, but in the morning commute and at the kitchen table. It should shape not only our view of “how the world should be,” but how our families, friendships, and personal relationships should be. This is not a top-down message. The Bible-based, culture-transforming change advocated here is one that must begin at the roots before it can progress to the treetop.

The great challenges facing our country cannot be met on a national level if they are not first overcome in each of our hearts and homes. It is in the everyday life of the Common Believer that this culture war will be won or lost, so our growth is essential. It is essential to our peace, our happiness, and our ultimate victory.

In concluding this introduction to what Fire Breathing Christians is, I am compelled to take at least a moment to clarify what it is not.

Though one of the central themes presented here is the empowerment and unique purpose of each and every Common Believer, this is in no way intended to minimize the significance or importance of good, God-fearing leadership. Church history is replete with examples of wonderful men and women who have faithfully served Christ and led His people through the careful use of biblically sound instruction, made possible only through long years of study and personal submission. I do not in even the slightest sense aim to exalt any Common Believer, myself included, above the need for such divinely provided leadership and guidance.

This is also not a work that seeks to denigrate theology, doctrine, or dogma as trivial or unimportant to the Common Believer. Quite the contrary! Theology, doctrine, and dogma are essential to the Christian life, as they literally define it. The approach taken here will be to address pertinent doctrinal matters as we go along without stopping to dwell at length or dive to the furthest depths with regard to any single one of them. I wholeheartedly encourage the pursuit of such depth and will commend the inspired, inquisitive Christian to seek out other works to aid them with their ongoing growth. Biblically-rooted, Christ-centered knowledge is the greatest thing that a human mind can experience, so its unending pursuit should be the most natural sort of desire for every Common Believer.

With the principles of everyday application firmly grasped in one hand and commitment to biblically sound intellectual pursuit in the other, we are well equipped to begin our journey on an individual level so that we might eventually realize transformation on a national scale.