Compromise Leads to Persecution

"It’s easy to decry right-wing scaremongering in the abstract, far more difficult to give advice to real people who have to make decisions that could cost them their careers."  Carl R. Trueman

At last Carl Trueman has to face the reality of the layperson in the pews.  Yes, your mealy-mouthed pontifications about not making enemies with the world and how grace is common to all has come home to roost. Celebrity preachers are more concerned with how many members attend and contribute monetarily to their own careers than with the real rubber meets the road reality that Christian persecution is here to stay.  

Stand on the deontological standards of God's moral law and be fired from your job, lose your family, and wind up homeless.  That's quite a price to pay for being true to the biblical worldview, is it not, Mr. Trueman?  Not a word about Alistair Begg's real motivations for accommodating to the woke agenda, right, Mr. Trueman?   (Acts 5:29).

I am continually amazed at how proficient the sophists among the fake Evangelical elite are at dodging the ethical and moral implications of their pontifications from the bully pulpits of media platforms, social media, and their paid positions in woke Evangelical colleges and seminaries.  The celebrity preachers are unwilling to sacrifice their careers by telling the hard truth.  So, their advice to you is to compromise as well.  

After all, how can Evangelicalism survive without church members who have paying jobs and can contribute huge amounts of mammon?  The point is that the Evangelical elites can continue in their lavish lifestyles, while the rest of us toil away in blue collar jobs.  Perhaps the hard sayings of Jesus were not so much rabbinical hyperbole as actual and practical applications of God's moral law?  If evangelism and mission is about accommodation to the world, count me out.  However, if evangelism and mission is about challenging the world and challenging the religious Pharisees of easy believism, common grace, and the well meant offer?  Count me in.

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? 37 Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mk. 8:36-38 KJV)

And did you notice that Trueman likes to fellowship with Romanists by publishing in their magazine, "First Things"?  Why would a genuine Protestant Evangelical give credibility to a publication which promotes compromise and accommodation to a false religion that the Protestant Reformers referred to as a "synagogue of Satan"?  This pretty much sums up the problem of Evangelicalism today.  Who will stand for the truth?

The late Dr. Gordon H. Clark succinctly stated the problem of accommodating to secular views of the civil magistrate:  

My thesis is that secularism necessarily implies dictatorship and totalitarian rule.  For example, Aristotle pointedly objects to Plato's communism; but his own theory defines the state as the partnership or "community" which includes all goods.  The result is state control of religion and of all human good, nothing excepted.

It is only the Hebrew-Christian revelation, as exemplified in the condemnation of King Ahab's violation of Naboth's private property, that justifies both the authority of a state and the limitations on that authority.

The Confession in section i states that it is God who has ordained civil magistrates.  Their authority comes from him; therefore, they cannot rightfully act as dictators; their just powers are only those which God has assigned them.  What those powers are and what they are not is indicated here and there throughout the Bible; and appeals to the Bible must settle such questions as pacifism and capital punishment, as well as the principle of private property.

Dr. Gordon H. Clark.  What Do Presbyterians Believe?  The Westminster Confession Yesterday and Today.  1965.  2nd Edition.  (Unicoi: The Trinity Foundation, 2001).  Pp. 207-208. 

Dr. Clark would have never agreed with the radical two kingdoms view or with the so-called Christian libertarian movement in the political realm.  The reason is clearly stated in his commentary on the civil magistrate.  There is no such thing as neutrality.  While I would not say that Clark was a theonomist--mostly because the theonomy movement is predominately based on the theology of paradox of Van Til and his followers--it is clear that Clark advocated for a Christian worldview which included political activism on the part of both denominations and church members who are genuinely Christian.

It is increasingly clear that the leftists in America have a double standard for justice.  Their idea of justice is based on secular humanism and rights that the economically and racially oppressed can demand that the government enforce from the top down.  When critical race theory and cultural Marxism become the basis for American jurisprudence and the civil magistrate, the result is the totalitarianism that Clark predicted.  Anyone can see that losing one's ability to support his family is persecution.  The Democrats are determined to take away the divine rights of Christians to worship and believe whatever they wish, and the enforcement of it is to remove their divine right to self-defense by the second amendment, their right to free speech and freedom from government oppression of religion, i.e. the free exercise of religion.  The government run by the left wants to confiscate private property and redistribute wealth to so-called oppressed groups, including those who are not even citizens of the United States of America.  Open borders, the radical LGBTQIA+ movement, the radical reinterpretation of history,  and the removal of statues and books with which the leftists disagree are all symptomatic of an outright attack on the Christian worldview and the U.S. Constitution, which drew heavily from biblical principles of divine justice, not the Marxist social justice of the critical race theorists and the human secularists.

Christians who actually believe that God determines right and wrong should become not just evangelists for the Gospel, but also political activists who stand against the pharisaical Evangelical elites who have joined with the social justice warrior movement.  I find it strange that R. Scott Clark claims to be more concerned about the Gospel than political activism, yet he writes extensive articles criticizing John MacArthur.  MacArthur just happens to agree with a Reformed piety that actually calls for obedience to the Gospel and obedience to the moral law.  But Scott Clark is more concerned with appeasing the world than with standing against immorality.  Perhaps it is because Scott Clark is more concerned for pragmatic church growth than with faithfulness to the whole counsel of God?  (Acts 20:27).  Carl Trueman's article is posted at the Heidelblog for good reason.  (See:  Can Christians Attend Gay Weddings?).  Why is this even an issue?  Both Trueman and R. S. Clark are compromisers of the kind that I totally dislike.  These fake Evangelicals in the celebrity elite crowd are leading entire denominations into theological and political compromise, which eventually will end with God's judgment falling on them and on the nation.