15 October 2008

the congregation of the dead

By Dave Daubenmire
Pass the Salt Ministries
www.ptsalt.com

The man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead. Proverbs 21:16

America is a dying country. I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but America is a dead man walking.

The once great “shining city on a hill” is gasping for breath. Everywhere you turn you are faced with the harsh truth that the death rattle has begun. We are a dying people controlled by a dying government, infected with the dead leadership of dead men, who chew on a dead gospel served-up in dead churches, by dead pastors living out a dead faith.

The stench of death is permeating our society. How could this possibly be? America, has wandered “out of the way of understanding.” Make no mistake about it; America is dying of spiritual starvation. We are the victims of spiritual bulimia, willingly vomiting out all that would nourish us.

America is a congregation of the dead.

We have no one to blame but the Church. I know that makes many of you nervous as you cling to your “dead faith full of dead works” believing that God is pleased with your apathy towards the spiritual condition of this nation. You, my Christian friends, are complicit in the spiritual coup that has swept over America. Compromise is the birthing ground of sin. Savorless salt producing good-for-nothing Christianity.

It is easy to blame the sinner as he proudly gallivants his debauchery for all to see. But it is the “compromise of the converted” that has paved the way for our national suicide. It is not the bold sinner that has destroyed our nation, but the “Silent Saint” ashamed to speak the Truth. And make no mistake about it…we have only ourselves to blame. We have willingly “wandered out of the way of understanding.” We followed folly, “changed the truth of God into a lie and are reaping the whirlwind from our unwillingness to contend for the Truth. Silence isn’t golden, it’s yellow.

We are a nation of liars, following liars, believing liars, and celebrating liars. Jesus said “The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. We have rejected His words, and we have rejected His life. “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”

Freddie Mae and Freddie Mac are the vomit of America’s bulimia. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: it hath no stalk; the bud shall yield no meal: if so be it yield, the strangers shall swallow it up. Hosea 8:7.

Strangers are swallowing us up. How else can you explain the impotence of the American Church? Only a fool would deny the cause of our malnutrition. We have belched out the bread of life. Professing ourselves to be wise we became fools.

No wonder our nation is the congregation of the dead.

As is our custom, my wife and I were doing our daily devotions this morning and our Scripture reading was II Thessalonians 2. “And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”

Much of America is Christian in Name Only. (CHINO) We wear Jesus like a merit badge from the Boy Scouts. But for most Americans church membership is no different than membership in the local Moose Lodge or the American Legion. It is a social structure where like-minded folks get together for fellowship. Like the Shriners, the Church is a club for do-gooders who want to shine their “Christian Medals” for their friends to see.

Almighty God warned us. “See, I have set before thee this day life and good, and death and evil; In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it. But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it.

I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live:” Deuteronomy 30

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We have rejected God, rejected His Truth, and rejected His Son. We have embraced death, celebrate death, and subsidize death.

We are a congregation of the dead.

Our government is corrupt because our people are corrupt. Our people are corrupt because our churches are corrupt. Most serve mammon and give lip-service to God. Pastors beg the government to permit them to preach what God has commanded them to say. No man can serve two masters.

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers. Isaiah 1.

Our faithful city has become a harlot.

II Chronicles 7:14 is a popular verse, IF MY PEOPLE…it seems so easy and simple. But rarely do I hear the companion to that verse quoted…the IF NOT of God’s conditional promise. How many of you are familiar with the IF NOT of II Chronicles 7:19?

But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passeth by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the LORD done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them.”

Read it closely. It is God doing the plucking, God doing the casting out, and God making it a byword among all the nations. But the “elected officials” and the men of God called to hold them accountable will ask “Why has the Lord done this to our nation?”

And it shall be answered “because they forsook the LORD God of their fathers…therefore HATH HE brought all of this evil upon them.”

God is judging America my friends. Fifty million babies, sodomy in the streets, and the purging of His name….

“"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever." Thomas Jefferson.

The alleged-deist Thomas Jefferson was ten-times the Christian most evangelicals are today and the Baptists wanted to run him out of office.

“…therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them.”

America is the congregation of the dead.
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