General

Ronald Reagan once said that “facts are stubborn things.”

Tonight, the president of the United States tried to put a good face on the state of the American nation. Senator Marco Rubio gave the Republican response.

Here’s the bottom line: America is turning away from God’s principles, and our self-centered immorality foreshadows a coming economic storm. Faith and morals lead to stability and prosperity; Unbelief and narcissism produce anxiety and poverty.

Want a few economic facts about the USA? Ponder this list of seventy-five and go on your knees in prayer.

#1 In December 2008, 31.6 million Americans were on food stamps.  Today, a new all-time record of 47.7 million Americans are on food stamps.  That number has increased by more than 50 percent over the past four years, and yet the mainstream media still insists that “things are getting better”.

#2 Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

#3 According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

#4 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all Americans have received money from a safety net program run by the federal government at some point in their lives.

#5 For the first time ever, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

#6 Median household income in the U.S. has fallen for four consecutive years.  Overall, it has declined by over $4000 during that time span.

#7 Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

#8 The percentage of working age Americans with a job has been under 59 percent for 39 months in a row.

#9 In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. That number remains the same today.

#10 When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job in America today, it comes to more than 100 million.

#11 According to one recent survey, 55 percent of all small business owners in America “say they would not start a business today given what they know now and in the current environment.”

#12 The number of jobs at new small businesses continues to decline.  According to economist Tim Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration: Bush Sr.: 11.3, Clinton: 11.2, Bush Jr.: 10.8, and Obama: 7.8

#13 The U.S. share of global GDP has fallen from 31.8 percent in 2001 to 21.6 percent in 2011.

#14 The United States has fallen in the global economic competitiveness rankings compiled by the World Economic Forum for four years in a row.

#15 There are four major U.S. banks that each have more than 40 trillion dollars of exposure to derivatives.

#16 In 2000, there were more than 17 million Americans working in manufacturing, but now there are less than 12 million.

#17 According to the Pew Research Center, 61 percent of all Americans were “middle income” back in 1971.  Today, only 51 percent of all Americans are.

#18 The Pew Research Center has also found that 85 percent of all middle class Americans say that it is harder to maintain a middle class standard of living today than it was 10 years ago.

#19 62 percent of all middle class Americans say that they have had to reduce household spending over the past year.

#20 Right now, approximately 48 percent of all Americans are either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.

#21 Approximately 57 percent of all children in the United States are living in homes that are either considered to be either “low income” or impoverished.

#22 According to one survey, 77 percent of all Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.

#23 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs.  Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#24 The average amount of time that an unemployed worker stays out of work in the United States is 40 weeks.

#25 If you can believe it, approximately one out of every four American workers makes 10 dollars an hour or less.

#26 According to the U.S. Census Bureau, an all-time record 49 percent of all Americans live in a home where at least one person receives financial assistance from the federal government.  Back in 1983, that number was less than 30 percent.

#27 Right now, more than 100 million Americans are enrolled in at least one welfare program run by the federal government.  And that does not even count Social Security or Medicare. 

#28 When you account for all government transfer payments and all forms of government employment, more than half of all Americans are now at least partially financially dependent on the government.

#29 Barack Obama has been president for four years, and during that time the number of Americans “not in the labor force” has increased by nearly 8.5 million.  During the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans “not in the labor force” only rose by about 2.5 million.

#30 Electricity bills in the United States have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row.

#31 According to USA Today, many Americans have actually seen their water bills triple over the past 12 years.

#32 There are now 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

#33 Right now, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

#34 As the economy has slowed down, so has the number of marriages.  According to a Pew Research Center analysis, only 51 percent of all Americans that are at least 18 years old are currently married.  Back in 1960, 72 percent of all U.S. adults were married.

#35 At this point, only 24.6 percent of all jobs in the United States are good jobs.

#36 In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

#37 Recently it was announced that total student loan debt in the United States has passed the one trillion dollar mark.

#38 If you can believe it, one out of every seven Americans has at least 10 credit cards.

#39 One survey of business executives has ranked California as the worst state in America to do business for 8 years in a row.

#40 In the city of Detroit today, more than 50 percent of all children are living in poverty, and close to 50 percent of all daults are functionally illerate.

#41 It is being projected that half of all American children will be on food stamps at least once before they turn 18 years of age.

#42 More than three times as many new homes were sold in the United States in 2005 as will be sold in 2012.

#43 53 percent of all Americans with a bachelor’s degree under the age of 25 were either unemployed or underemployed last year. Getting an education is very expensive and doesn’t necessarily lead to a good job.

#44 The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs.  60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

#45 Our trade deficit with China in 2011 was $295.5 billion.  That was the largest trade deficit that one country has had with another country in the history of the planet.

#46 The United States has lost an average of approximately 50,000 manufacturing jobs a month since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

#47 According to the Economic Policy Institute, America is losing half a million jobs to China every single year.

#48 The U.S. tax code is now more than 3.8 million words long.  If you took all of William Shakespeare’s works and collected them together, the entire collection would only be about 900,000 words long.

#49 According to the IMF, the global elite are holding a total of 18 trillion dollars in offshore banking havens such as the Cayman Islands.

#50 The value of the U.S. dollar has declined by more than 96 percent since the Federal Reserve was first created.

#51 2012 was the third year in a row that the yield for corn has declined in the United States.

#52 Experts are telling us that global food reserves have reached their lowest level in almost 40 years.

#53 One recent survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans have $500 or less in savings.

#54 If you can believe it, one recent survey found that 28 percent of all Americans do not have a single penny saved for emergencies. Many expect various government agencies to take care of them.

#55 Medical costs related to obesity in the United States are estimated to be approximately $147 billion a year.

#56 Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all-time high.  Meanwhile, wages as a percentage of GDP are near an all-time low.

#57 Today, the wealthiest 1 percent of all Americans own more wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined.

#58 The wealthiest 400 families in the United States have about as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent of all Americans combined.

#59 The six heirs of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton have a net worth that is roughly equal to the bottom 30 percent of all Americans combined. 

#60 At this point, the poorest 50 percent of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States.

#61 Nearly 500,000 federal employees now make at least $100,000 a year.

#62 In 2006, only 12 percent of all federal workers made $100,000 or more per year.  Now, approximately 22 percent of all federal workers do.

#63 If you can believe it, there are 77,000 federal workers that make more than the governors of their own states do.

#64 Nearly 15,000 retired federal workers are collecting federal pensions for life worth at least $100,000 annually.  The list includes such names as Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Trent Lott, Dick Gephardt and Dick Cheney.

#65 U.S. taxpayers spend more than 20 times as much on the Obamas as British taxpayers spend on the royal family.

#66 Family homelessness in the Washington D.C. region (one of the wealthiest regions in the entire country) has risen 23 percent since the last recession began.

#67 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.

#68 During fiscal year 2012, 62 percent of the federal budget was spent on entitlements.

#69 Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, approximately one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid.

#70 It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.

#71 Medicare is also growing by leaps and bounds.  It is being projected that the number of Americans on Medicare will grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.

#72 Thanks to our politicians, Medicare is facing unfunded liabilities of more than 38 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.  That comes to approximately $328,404 for each and every household in the United States.

#73 Amazingly, the U.S. national debt is now up to 16.3 trillion dollars.  When Barack Obama first took office the national debt was just 10.6 trillion dollars.

#74 During the first four years of the Obama administration, the U.S. government accumulated about as much debt as it did from the time that George Washington took office to the time that George W. Bush took office.

#75 Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was originally created back in 1913.

Those are the economic facts on the true state of the American Union. Ponder them, weep over them, and commit yourself to a lifestyle of renewal.

 

The recent 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade–the Supreme Court decision that ignited the abortion holocaust in America–gives occasion to consider the power of deception in our world.

We live in a time when deceit openly parades itself as truth.

Our leaders tell us that federal deficits don’t matter, that marriage can be re-defined, that women should serve in combat, and that taking away guns will make us safer (to name just a few of the deceptions of the month).

What’s interesting about this list (which could include many other progressive examples), is that if you believe one of the deceptions, you probably believe most of them.

And you likely also believe the grandest deception of all: that it’s okay to kill an innocent baby in the womb.

First of all, let’s be clear on the source of deception on earth. Contrary to atheist’s claims, most people understand that there is a spiritual being called the Devil, Lucifer or Satan and legions of fallen angels (demons) that influence human behavior. These beings are as real as we are, though they are unseen (Ephesians 6:12).

We don’t know a lot about Satan, but here are a few salient facts that relate to our topic.

1. We first meet Lucifer in the form of a serpent in Genesis 3:1-5 where his first recorded act was to deceive Adam and Eve into disobeying God–leading to the spiritual fall of the human race.

2. He is called a deceiver: “And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him” (Revelation 12:19).

3. To deceive is to tell a lie–to not present the truth about a person or subject. Jesus said about the Devil:  “[He] does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

4. Jesus also linked another horrific sin with Satan and his ways. Speaking to those who had given in to satanic deception, he declared, “You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning” (John 8:44).

We learn from these references that there is an incredibly powerful and sinister fallen angel (and his minions) that are at work in the unseen world on earth, lying to people about the truth and deceiving them regarding morality.

(If you need a refresher course on the battle we are facing in the invisible world against Satan and his forces, then I recommend pulling off your bookshelf Frank Peretti’s This Present Darkness or Piercing the Darkness and reading them through again (I do this once every few years). Better yet, purchase Dean Sherman’s Spiritual Warfare for Every Christian to learn what to do about it.)

And oh–another thing about Satan that was mentioned above:

He is a murderer.

Which brings us to the deception of abortion.

For a moment, let’s clear our eyes and think about the deceit of abortion that is pervading the earth today. Millions of Americans and maybe billions of people worldwide are deceived about this subject. They have bought into a wretched lie that contains:

Deceitful Language

I don’t know who invented the word “abortion” (though I know who inspired it). We use the word abortion as a clinical term for killing precious, beautiful, innocent babies. But the word “abort” is not a personal word. In normal usage, we abort things not people–such as rocket launches. It’s a way of stopping or ending some “thing”, not someone.

When we “end someone” that’s normally called killing or murder.

To rationalize this in our own minds, somebody also invented the word “fetus” which sounds more like a “thing” than a person. That makes it easy to get rid of.

Deceitful History

Killing innocent babies in the womb is not new. It goes back thousands of years, and was viewed by most cultures as morally wrong. You probably didn’t learn that in school.

Even in ancient polytheistic Greece, the Hippocratic Oath (400 BC) was used to encourage doctors of the healing arts to take a stand against abortion. Here is the original form:

“I swear by Apollo the physician, and Aesculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath. . . I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary (medical device or medication) to produce abortion.”

For thousands of years, this was the norm. Abortion was not good medicine nor moral. It was murder–plain and simple.

Deceitful Autonomy

One of the most prevalent modern lies regarding abortion is that women have a “right” to control their own bodies. Every fair-minded person agrees with this general statement. Each of us has been given a body that we should steward and nurture through good lifestyle choices.

So far, so good.

But wait a minute. A baby in the womb is not my own body. It’s somebody else’s body that has a God-given right to life, health, and protection. Yes, that body is dependent on his or her mother for nine months, but after birth, it’s also dependent on people for many years. There’s really no difference.

Plus, complete human autonomy is an illusion. We are called to love one another and submit our lives to the One who created and loved us first. Actually, “in Him we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

Deceitful Logic

Nothing makes logical sense about killing an innocent baby in the womb. The truth is actually pretty simple. Ask a ten year old. They may not understand sex or how procreation works, but they know that mommies and daddies produce babies.

In other words, life begins at “conception”–the moment a man’s DNA joins a woman’s DNA to create a new human life. This concept is not “above our pay grade” as once stated by our current president. It’s a simple, basic, logical fact.

The whole discussion of “viability” is also nonsense. My own children are now eighteen-to-thirty-one years of age and during their childhood years, they certainly couldn’t live on their own. I sometimes wonder if they’re viable now.

I also wonder if I’m “viable” at this point in my life. I need my wife, children, parents, doctors, friends, professionals and many other people in my life. Viability is a silly, non-logical argument for taking human life.

Then there is the greater illogic of the word “choice.” This seems to be the favorite deception of our time because the word “choice” sounds so lofty, noble, and freedom-laden.

However, truth to brain: The rightness of a choice is  determined by what choice you make. Some choices are good: to love, care, be patient, forgive etc. And some choices are bad or out-right evil.

The most evil choice on a human plane? To kill another innocent person.

So next time someone says to you that they’re “pro-choice,” simply ask them a question: What is the choice you’re making? Then after they give you their verbal smoke-screen about terminating a pregnancy or whatever, solemnly remind them that aborting the fetus is really murdering their own offspring for selfish reasons.

Hopefully the truth will lead them to change their mind.

Deceitful “Rights”

Many abortion advocates couch their position in the language of the civil rights movement. They say they are freeing up women the same way Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves.

But the only true rights that human beings possess are God-given and God-defined. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable (can’t be taken away) rights that begin with “life.”

The “right to life” is both basic Bible and basic American. To be pro-choice (killing babies) is actually to be on the wrong side of the civil rights struggle. It was the morally-wrong slave owners that were pro-choice. They didn’t want to force other people or states to own slaves, they just wanted to be free to do so themselves.

And upon what did they wrongly base their choice? They believed that Negro slaves were not fully human–hence the rationale that the choice was okay.

Pro-choice abortionists are the slave owners of the 21st century. They don’t necessarily want to force others to believe like them (except for tax-payers to pay for all abortions through Obamacare). But they believe their choice is justified because the fetus in the womb is not fully human.

Sound familiar? Satan’s lies don’t change much in history. He just sprinkles the same old deceit on new areas of interest.

Why? Because he was a liar from the beginning and wants to destroy (murder) human beings.

Abortion fits his agenda perfectly. Through human accomplices, he has successfully murdered over 55 million Americans since 1973 and possibly one billion human beings worldwide over the past fifty years.

That’s why abortion is the greatest deception of all.

And that deception is passed on by the secular press. Last week in Washington, D.C. over 600,000 people marched against abortion in the annual March for Life.  That same week, the “Million Mom March” was supposed to draw a million folks to agitate for gun control.

But only 6,000 showed up.

The Associated Press (a secular-biased news organization) reported that “thousands” came to each event. In other words, they lied to the nation to create the impression that two equally significant protests took place in the nation’s capital.

The truth was the March for Life out-numbered the Gun Control March one hundred to one!

Be encouraged those of you who believe the truth and weep over the great abortion deception. Truth will win out in the end.

My friend, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, described his closing prayer at the 2013 March for Life this way:

“For four decades, families have traveled over miles of wintry highways in the hope that their trips to Washington, D.C. will someday end–and with it, one of the darkest periods of American history. Until then, they continue their pilgrimage to protest a ruling now responsible for the slaughter of millions of unborn lives. Undeterred by ice or snow, this generation of abortion survivors has resolved to never let the nation forget the blood spilled in the name of “choice.” Today, despite freezing temperatures and whipping winds, people came by the hundreds of thousands to fill the National Mall with a word the media won’t even say–life.”

“As I closed the rally in prayer, I thanked God for the hope these young people represent–not just to our movement, but to America. In the Old Testament, through God’s servant Moses, He put before a new generation, the covenant that was over 1,000 years old. It was this new generation’s time for choosing. God said, “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days.” May we not just be a nation that chooses life, but chooses abundant life in Jesus Christ.”

We live in a world in desperate need of leadership. Good, wise leadership.

I’m sure that people in other time periods thought the same. Sin and tyrants have stalked the earth for centuries. When evil rushes in like a flood,  a new generation of leaders is needed to rise up, speak and live the truth, and point people to freedom.

The biblical book of Judges is entirely devoted to this subject. Things got bad in Israel;God raised up a good leader; the people were delivered.

In this second decade of the 21st century, I am viewing an ominous leadership vacuum on the horizon. How should we focus our prayers? And who is most responsible for the dearth of righteous leadership?

Let’s look at few realms where good leadership seems to be waning.

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

The world scene today is not very encouraging from a political leadership standpoint.

In Latin America, pseudo-communist Hugo Chavez is dying in a Cuban hospital. Aging dictator Fidel Castro is probably comatose in the room next door, and both nations are mired in poverty. Ecuador and Nicaragua join with these two nations to form a Marxist-leaning beachhead in the area of the world once protected by the Monroe Doctrine.

Other Latin nation like Brazil and Argentina are rising, but godly leadership is desperately needed to save Latin America from a lurch to the left.

Europe is wealthy and stable compared to other parts of the world, but the weight of many out-of-control entitlement states–especially in the southern tier–could bring Europeans to their knees.

Where are the Winston Churchills and Charlemagnes that are needed to save Europe from both a cultural and economic demise? Angela Merkel and David Cameron are decent–but not exciting. President Hollande is leading France off a tax-the-wealthy cliff. And to the east, Vladimir Putin is no Mikhail Gorbachev.

Then there is Asia where India and China are rising–but can you name any of their leaders?  The Communist Chinese shuffle leadership every five years and India is still a nation with great poverty. There are pockets of hope in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea, but in North Korea, the latest “Kim” still rules this starving nation–and is testing nuclear missiles.

The Middle East and other Muslim nations are in full-blown leadership crisis. Egypt is now led by Islamic radicals that seem intent on drip feeding sharia law to the unsuspecting masses. Somalia is the new Afghanistan, North Africa is being radicalized, and Syria is engulfed in civil war.

Then there is the United States. I have believed for a number of years that our present political leaders are the worst of our entire history. That goes for both sides of the aisle. No wonder their poll numbers are smaller than my shoe size.

Can you compare Nancy Pelosi to Sam Rayburn? She gave us bills so scary that they needed to shove them through before anybody read them (Obamacare). Harry Reid to Henry Clay? Reid hasn’t passed a budget, which is required by law, for over three years.

And President Obama has clearly shown his quasi-socialist tendencies, and is okay with trampling religious faith (ask Hobby Lobby and numerous other businesses) in his quest to fundamentally transform America from a freedom-based Christian nation into a secular welfare state.

There are many great governors and other leaders waiting in the wings (Governors O’Donnell, Kasich, Daniels, Haley, Jindal, Perry, and Senators Ryan and Rubio are a few that come to mind) but none have commanding national stature. Barack Obama’s cleverness as a politician appears to be producing what Patrick J. Buchanan calls a “New Majority” in America.

That is a scary thought indeed.

Buchanan warns: “With demography moving against the GOP, with more and more Americans becoming dependent upon government, it will take leadership not yet visible to rescue the Republican Party from the fate Barack Hussein Obama has in store for it.”

ECONOMIC LEADERSHIP

I’m re-reading David and Robert Wiedemer and Cindy Spitzer’s best-selling book Aftershock. The sub-title is “Protect Yourself and Profit in the Next Global Financial Meltdown.”

The authors were nearly the only people on earth that predicted the economic calamities of 2007-08 and so their words have credibility. They said then and are re-stating now that we are in a very dangerous “Bubble Economy” because of disastrous leadership in high places that led to the popping of the stock bubble, the housing bubble, the private credit bubble, and the consumer spending bubble from which they say we will not recover.

What’s now looming on the horizon are the final two bubbles–the government debt and dollar bubbles. The Wiedemers and Spitzer believe these bubbles will also “pop” sometime between 2013-15–depending on how many drastic measures the Fed Reserve throws at the problem. And because America’s economy is one-third of global GDP, what happens here will affect everybody.

The Aftershock authors believe we passed the point of no return in 1981 when our deficit reached what is now a paltry sum of $200 billion. From that point on it was politically unfeasible to reverse the devastating consequences that are coming.

Worldwide, we have very poor leaders running the Treasuries of the nations. There is a huge vacuum of wise, godly, principled people. Only Jeffrey Lacker, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond–the lone dissenter on all the Fed’s quantitative easing moves–seems to understand that we must change course or face grave consequences. See his warning in The New York Times. 

I’m spending much of this year getting both my personal and corporate financial houses in order to prepare for what’s ahead. There’s time to build an ark when God speaks, but not after he closes the door and the rains descend.

Make Aftershock one of your books of the year in 2013.

SPIRITUAL LEADERSHIP

But I believe the gravest leadership crisis or vacuum we face comes from the realm that is meant to be the “light of the world”–the Church. Where are the pastors and spiritual leaders who are championing the spiritual harvest, making disciples of all nations, and reforming nations through the power of the Gospel?

In the 20th century we had Billy Graham, Bill Bright, Loren Cunningham and others who pointed the way. In past centuries, the pastors in America led the fight for salvation in individuals and freedom in nations.

Can you name their counterparts today? Probably not.

One survey tells you all you need to know about why we’re in a spiritual leadership vacuum.

The National Association of Evangelicals--the largest evangelical umbrella in America (and upon whose board I serve) asked their members how many of their pastors endorsed political candidates in the 2012 election–a critical election with a clear choice between a man with a Judeo-Christian worldview (Mitt Romney) and one with a secular outlook (Barack Obama).

According to the IRS, non-profit churches can’t endorse partisan candidates, but pastors can do so as individuals and certainly disciple their people to make informed choices.

But in the 2012 election, 94% of pastors didn’t endorse candidates or disciple their people in voting.

Only 6% of Christian leaders got involved. Less than a tithe. During the Revolutionary War days, the numbers would have been reversed.

Now you know why 25 million evangelicals voted for secularism and the growth of the entitlement state in the 2012 election. The pastors didn’t lead, and the people didn’t follow.

The leadership vacuum begins with the Church.

One hundred and sixty years ago, during the drama of the Civil War, America’s greatest revivalist, Charles Finney, blamed the ministers of the day for the growing darkness in the nation. The following quotes are from his book Power From On High:
 
“I believe it is a fact generally admitted that there is much less conscience manifested by men and women in nearly all walks of life than there was forty years ago. There is justly much complaint of this, and there seems to be but little prospect of reformation. The rings and frauds and villainies in high and low places, among all ranks of men, are most alarming, and one is almost compelled to ask: Can anybody be safely trusted?”

“Now what is the cause of this degeneracy? Doubtless there are many causes that contribute more or less directly to it, but I am persuaded that the fault is more with the pastors and public press than in any and all things else.”

“Pastors have ceased in a great measure to probe the consciences of men with the spiritual laws of God. So far as my knowledge extends, there has been a great letting down and ignoring the searching claims of God’s law as revealed in His Word. This law is the only standard of true morality.”By the law is the knowledge of sin.”

“The law is the quickener of the human conscience. Just in proportion as the spirituality of God’s law is kept out of view will there be a manifest decay of conscience. This must be the inevitable result.”

Notice Mr. Finney says the failure of pastors to share the truth–coupled with the influence of the media–inevitably leads to societal decay. Here is his ringing verdict:

“If there is a decay of conscience, the pastors are responsible for it. If the press lacks moral discrimination, the pastors are responsible for it. If the Church is degenerate and worldly, the pastors are responsible for it.

“If the world loses its interest in Christianity, the pastors are responsible for it. If Satan rules in our halls of legislation, the pastors are responsible for it. If our politics become so corrupt that the very foundations of our government are ready to fall away, the pastors are responsible for it.”

“Let us not ignore this fact, my dear brethren; but let us lay it to heart, and be thoroughly awake to our responsibility in respect to the morals of this nation.”

Charles Finney was right. If the spiritual leaders don’t point the way, then all other spheres of leadership will, of necessity, become corrupt.

My pastoral friends: It is time to repent and step into the void with the grace and truth of Jesus Christ. To all others, we must  “pray for those in authority” (1 Timothy 2:1).

Let’s begin with those who shepherd our souls.