Just the other day, my wife was talking to a sister in Christ about the coming November 6, 2012 presidential election. As the discussion led from one critical issue to another, out of the blue the dear sister volunteered a comment with obvious frustration and dismay as she said, “Our pastor says nothing about the coming election or any of the issues involved. In fact, to listen to our pulpit, one would not even know that there is an election coming.” My wife’s heart sank and so did mine as she shared the episode with me.

The historical fact is that more catastrophes for the Kingdom of God have occurred at the intersection of religion and politics than at any other intersection in the world. It is the major intersection again in 2012 with deceptions coming from every direction, yes, from both church and state. As a result, the cause of Christ and the Kingdom of God have suffered and continue to suffer great losses at this critically important intersection of national and ecclesiastical life.

The sad fact is that such a true story from the sister in Christ about Christians and Elections, or if you will, about Pulpits and Politics, is not new. This has been the passive and silent political stance of the church and its leadership in most sectors of Christianity throughout the ages. As a result, when it comes to history-shaping-misshaping and society-forming-deforming elections, the church has failed to be the salt of the earth to restrain corruption in government and in society.

We must hear the words of Jesus Christ to His followers in Matthew 5:13,

“You are the salt of the earth (not of the church), but if the salt

has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is

good for nothing anymore, except to be thrown

out and trampled under foot of men.”

Many religious people will not vote again this year, and others will vote not having a clue as to the utter temporal and eternal gravity of the voting booth. All the while, many in the church community will vote for Barack Obama even as they did four years ago. I know, for I run into them again and again.

Which is why righteousness in the American culture in recent years has not progressed but greatly regressed, and anyone with half a brain knows it. And if it goes in this defining election year as it went in the last election four years ago, American society and government will be rotted even more as the church fails to restrain corruption, and the saltless-religious will be stomped upon at the polls as never before.

It is desperately important therefore for each and all of us to come to grips with the many deadly deceptions behind the church’s ongoing lethal lethargy and detachment from the entire political process.

DECEPTION # 1 – JUST ANOTHER ELECTION

There have been 56 presidential elections, and this will be number 57. It is another election year, and so we might at the most be told from the pulpit, “Be sure to exercise your right to vote. They do come and they do go, and you will have to wait four more years if you miss this opportunity. It is a privilege that you don’t want to miss, and by all means, and if it is at all possible, exercise your right to vote.” That is about as far as the drivel-dravel ecclesiastical influence goes in the lives of parishioners when it comes to electing governmental officials who will either lead or mislead the nation and future generations.

First of all, there has never been and never will be “Just Another Election.” The stakes are always too high as to whether a nation will be led in godliness or ungodliness. However, in this 2012 election, the stakes have never been higher. Listen now:

“TO SAY THAT THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ELECTION IS THE

SAME AS SAYING THAT AN F5 TORNADO IS JUST

ANOTHER WIND STORM.”

Our founding fathers had to fight against English Imperialism, and today their descendants must fight against Godless Socialism. Writes Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy of “Truth In Action Ministries,” “My friend, the writing is on the wall. If we as God’s people do not stand up and speak out, if we do not take the decisive action as U.S. citizens and regain control of our reckless government, America will descend even deeper into a socialist nightmare – a nation of dependency (upon government) – that will destroy the future for our children and grandchildren.” Amen!

She continues, “A core tenet of socialism is that wealth must be redistributed (Obama’s platform) through the coercive power of government. History shows us that socialism led to communism and failed miserably – sometimes with deadly results, as in Communist regimes where millions have been slaughtered victims to tyrants like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot.” Amen!

Then she quotes Ronald Reagan, “The principles of wealth-creation transcend time, people, and place. Governments which deliberately subvert them by denouncing God, smothering faith, destroying freedom, and confiscating wealth have impoverished their people.” Amen!

And then President Reagan said this:

“COMMUNISM WORKS ONLY IN HEAVEN WHERE THEY DON’T

NEED IT, AND IN HELL WHERE THEY’VE ALREADY GOT IT.”

Colossians 2:8 tells us:

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and

empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according

to the elementary principles of the world, rather than

according to Christ.”

America, as unthinkable as it is, and as never before in her young history, now suddenly hangs in the balance between being a free democracy or a socialist state. If the Obama regime has its way in a second fatal term, America will lose her Bible-based foundations – her Constitution, her Declaration of Independence, and her Freedom.

I use to think that any and all nations except America would allow the same cheat and imposter to trump them twice. Now I am no longer sure of that at all! Forgive me as I frown and propel my troubled mind another four years into the future, for I no longer see the U.S. as the freest and freshest and most exciting nation on earth. I can tell that something is deeply troubling me, for I am for the first time no longer calling the squirrels in our yard by the pet names that I have given them over the years. What is even worse, I have noticed recently that I haven’t even been noticing them.

Listen:

“TO SAY THAT THIS IS JUST ANOTHER ELECTION IS

THE SAME AS SAYING TO A MAN THAT HE HAS

HAD JUST ANOTHER HEART ATTACK.”

And be sure of this:

“LET NO ONE THINK THAT THE PEOPLE OF THE CHURCH

WILL HAVE A SENSE OF URGENCY FOR THAT WHICH

THE PASTORS OF THE CHURCH THEMSELVES

SHOW AN INDIFFERENCE.”

Just another election! Are we physically and morally and spiritually dead? I appallingly sense that many of the listless crowds in the society and the churches around us have not made any plans and well thought-out – prayed-up voting decisions beyond their next late-afternoon happy hour. Cheers! To them, it is just another election, and I don’t know whether to give them a mild rebuke or a stroke from a bullwhip.

DECEPTION #2 – ELECTIONS AND GOD’S KINGDOM ARE SEPARATE

It is that same old fallacious notion of the godless liberals, namely:

“THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.”

Which is nothing more or less than:

“THE SEPARATION OF GOD AND SOCIETY.”

What is even more pathetic is that we have had and still have many grass-roots pastors espousing the same deception, that is, what happens in the 2012 voting booths is quite apart from what happens in the Kingdom of God. Two separate worlds! That grievous fallacy is buried deep in the subconscious of the church, and little has been done to uproot it. In fact, again and again church leadership grows those bad roots deeper and deeper. As a church leader of a very large denomination very recently wrote:

“DURING AN ELECTION YEAR, CHRISTIANS SEEM TO CONFUSE

THE OUTCOME OF ELECTIONS WITH THE KINGDOM OF GOD.”

In other words, national elections and the Kingdom of God are separate and unrelated. What a disastrous statement!!! Nothing could be further from the truth and more damaging to the Kingdom of God.

The only reason that the sheep are confused about this is that their shepherds are confused and therefore are  confusing the flock. And the reason historically for this confusion is that THE KINGDOM OF GOD, or otherwise in Scripture called THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, sounds so big and so high, if you will, so otherworldly, that it has little or nothing to do with the kingdoms of the world. That is exactly the way that the devil wants it! Here it is again, the Kingdom of God getting smucked at the intersection of religion and politics!

And so there has been a resulting KINGDOM DUALISTIC THINKING, namely, that THE KINGDOM OF GOD and THE KINGDOMS OF MEN are totally separate and are to be kept that way. And I know Christians who therefore believe that it is right that there is no prayer or Bible reading or Ten Commandments allowed in America’s schools and colleges. They totally embrace the KINGDOM DUALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.

And so they furthermore espouse the separation of God from societal institutions, because God’s children are citizens of the Kingdom of God, and though they physically live in the lower kingdoms of men, spiritually they live in the upper Kingdom of God. After all, Jesus did teach us in John 15:19, 

“…but because you are not of the world, but I chose

you out of the world….”

So then, most church people will again this election year either go to or stay away from the voting booth with the fuzzy and hazy idea that their voting or not voting has little or nothing to do with the Kingdom of God. And they recreate God in their own image, namely:

“THAT GOD IS NOT REALLY THE KING OF THE KINGDOMS

OF THIS WORLD, BUT LIKE THEM, HE IS MERELY

A SPECTATOR OF THIS WORLD FROM HIS

OWN HEAVENLY KINGDOM.”

Oh God, enough of this deadly deception. Jesus Christ taught us to pray something in Matthew 6:10 which is a Kingdom of God principle,

“Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth

as it is in Heaven.”

Jesus did not teach us to pray that the Kingdom of God would come in the church as it is in Heaven. Jesus taught us to pray in essence that the Kingdom of God would encompass and permeate the entire earth in every sector and dimension as it does in Heaven. That is:

“THAT GOD’S KINGDOM OF RIGHTEOUSNESS WOULD BE

ENTHRONED THROUGHOUT ALL EARTHLY

GOVERNMENTS AND SOCIETIES.”

That is why we read about the Kingdom of God what we do in Matthew 13:33 as Jesus says,

“The Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, which a woman took,

and hid in three pecks of meal, until it was all leavened.”

Leaven creeps and spreads and expands and rises until it permeates all of the bread dough. It is the yeast principle which the church turned into the least principle.

But the Kingdom of God works the same way – like leaven. God’s Kingdom is not a churchy shrunken and introverted reality, but rather, an earthly expanding and extroverted reality! God desires that His Kingdom of Righteousness saturate and rise and spread through and over the whole earth.

Let the three pecks or measures of leavened-bread dough be suggestive to you and me of the three branches of the United States Government, which means:

“WE AS CITIZENS OF GOD’S KINGDOM ARE TO VOTE MEN

AND WOMEN OF RIGHTEOUSNESS INTO THE UNITED

STATES PRESIDENCY, THE LEGISLATURE, AND

THE JUDICIARY SO THAT HEAVEN’S

GOVERNMENT WILL RULE

IN AMERICA.”

Hear me:

“OUR VOTING KINGDOM-OF-GOD VALUES IN THIS ELECTION

HAS ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING TO DO WITH SEEKING

THE KINGDOM OF GOD AND HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS,

AS JESUS TELLS US TO DO IN MATTHEW 6:33.”

When Jesus tells us that His Kingdom is not of this world, He means that it is not a physical but a spiritual Kingdom. We must get rid of now this deceptive and destructive idea of the Kingdom of God as a Disneyworld – Other World Reality. It is sick and is sickening the earth like savorless salt. Christians are to be the SALT OF THE EARTH AND THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, NOT THE SALT AND LIGHT OF THE CHURCH. That is Kingdom of God living!

Therefore as salt and light, we must vote out Obama and ObamaCare which is really ObamaSnare, as it recklessly promotes the sinful slaughter of innocent unborn babies and heaps record-breaking taxes on American people like you and me to fund ObamaHell.

ObamaCare is the largest funding of abortion in history. The ruling released by the Supreme Court on June 26, 2012, on the Patient and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as ObamaCare, is stunning. The law directly compels Americans to participate in the funding of abortion. ObamaCare recklessly collides with the rights of conscience and religious freedom. It is clearly an unjust and unconstitutional law.

Hear it again and again – SALT RESTRAINS CORRUPTION AND ROTTING. That is what we as Kingdom of God citizens are all about on earth. That is our job along with adding more citizens to the Kingdom of God, and one place we get the restraining job done is in the voting booth.

Obama and ObamaCare must go, and it doesn’t take a zoologist to know that when the wild beast is restrained and kept away from the public, his wild and destructive nature is kept in check. But when he breaks out and gets loose among the public, his wildness and hurtfulness is much more destructive and outrageous.

DECEPTION #3 – VOTING IS LESS IMPORTANT – PRAYER IS MORE IMPORTANT

If you will, what we do in the voting booth has only limited implications, but what we do in the prayer closet has unlimited implications. That is also to say:

“ELECTIONS’ EFFECTS ARE OF LIMITED DURATION, BUT

PRAYER MEETINGS’ EFFECTS ARE OF

UNLIMITED DURATION.”

This too is another one of the prevailing deceptions in the church which we must break through and get out of. God help us!

When we find ourselves under anti-Christ rule, which we do now, we must hold to our hearts what we read in Proverbs 21:1,

“The king’s heart is like channels of water in the hand of the

Lord; He turns it wherever He wishes.”

God can turn the hearts of Obama and his czars away from Marx and to Christ easier than a Mississippi River flood can change the landscape of an entire state or states. Nothing is too hard or impossible with God. We must pray without ceasing for that very miracle in Obama’s life.

That is why we are told in I Timothy 2:1-3,

“First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions

and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men,”

“for kings and all who are in authority, in order that we may

lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity.”

“This is good and acceptable in the sight of God and

our Savior.”

However, this phony dichotomy between the voting booth and the prayer closet is another deadly deception. I have met in my ministry both ends of the two extremes. I will never forget the brother who disparaged church prayer meetings with the argument:

“YOU GO AHEAD AND PRAY ABOUT THE MATTER

AND I WILL GO AHEAD AND WORK ON THE

MATTER, AND WE WILL SEE WHO GETS

THE JOB DONE FIRST.”

And I have met the other brother who just the other day said:

“ELECTIONS – PHOOEY – THEY ARE ALL RIGGED. YOU GO

AHEAD AND WASTE YOUR TIME AND VOTE, AND

I WILL GET BEFORE GOD AND PRAY.”

We must hear more often the too-well-known words of James 2:17,

“Even so faith, if it has no works, it is dead, being by itself.”

If you will:

“FAITH CAN ONLY BE LIVING IF IT IS LIVELY,

OTHERWISE IT IS DEAD.”

So too:

“PRAYER WITHOUT VOTING IS DEAD.”

Prayer is necessary, but far from sufficient. In short:

“FERVENT PRAYER WITHOUT INFORMED VOTING IS DEAD.”

One is not more important than the other, for even as the prayer booth empowers the voting booth, so the voting booth validates the prayer booth. This sick reasoning that pits one against or over the other is to kill both. Then we not only lose our faith but our very lives. Stop it already!

You see, so many have the ill-conceived idea, and they live under the deception, that faith is mainly what we believe, not what we do. But the fact of the matter is this:

“FAITH IS NOT JUST A BARE ASSENT OR CREDENCE OF

THE MIND, BUT A FULLY CARRIED-OUT

CHOICE OF THE WILL.”

Jesus was dealing in principle with the very same issue when He said in Matthew 7:21,

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into

Kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of My

Father who is in Heaven.”

You see, some hope to be saved by believing well, others by meaning well, others by crying well, and still others by speaking well. But Jesus wraps it all up in doing well. In one fell swoop He removes all false foundations and lays one true foundation – he who does the will of My Father Who is in Heaven.”

DECEPTION #4 – NO MATTER THE ELECTION OUTCOME – GOD IS IN CONTROL

This one really frosts my pumpkin and boils my blood. It doesn’t matter therefore who or what we vote for, or that we vote it all, because when it is all said and done, God has it all covered. God’s rule overrules our vote or non-vote, so either way we must not put so much emphasis on the election process or on the election outcome, for OUR GOD REIGNS.

Or as a church leader said to fellow ministers recently:

“IF THE ELECTION DOESN’T GO OUR WAY, WHATEVER

THAT MIGHT BE, WE ARE TEMPTED TO THINK THAT

GOD’S PURPOSES HAVE BEEN DEFEATED.”

The strong implication being that no matter how you vote, God will sort it all out and make sense out of nonsense, order out of disorder, and good out of bad. God will unmess our mess! And that without churches and pastors giving the slightest guidance how we should vote in this critical election and why, so that we do not make a mess of it all in the first place.

But as many have often said, “I’ve read the end of the Book, and we win.” All is well that ends well! That sort of preaching puts everyone at ease in Zion, so let’s go to the fellowship hall after church and have a cup of coffee and talk about the Detroit Tigers and the Detroit Lions or some other important and relevant subject.

I met that faith-deception head on when I wrote my first book entitled “Is God With America?” which is really a lead in to the equally important question, “Is America With God?” In the book I deal at length with the deceitful notions of the separation of the secular and the sacred as well as the separation of church and state. After a middle-aged churchgoer had perused my book, his comment to me was, “I don’t really worry about what you wrote, for God has it all under control anyway.” That was that, and over 400 pages went poof in a blaze of hyper-Calvinism. You talk about a conversation-ender and an issue-eraser. Class dismissed!

Understand now, our God is the great and only sovereign God! We read in Ephesians 1:11,

“also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined

according to His purpose Who works all things after the

counsel of His will.”

There is no doubt in my mind that whatever happens in the 2012 presidential election, God, if it goes badly, will not have to convene an emergency meeting of the Triune Godhead to figure out what went wrong, and what now has be done about it. God does not live from emergency to emergency, or from crisis to crisis. There are no alarm systems in Heaven!

The sovereignty of God means that the purposes of God are being carried out and brought to fulfillment through all of the ineptitude and indiscretion and even the iniquity of men. God cannot be ultimately frustrated in His purposes and stalemated. No man or nation or devil will ever checkmate God.

When it comes to Divine purposes, all of those purposes issue from Him, are produced by Him, are designed for Him, and conclude perfectly in Him. In the final analysis, nothing is left to chance or polls or politicians. It is certain in all things therefore, including the coming election, that all candidates and concerns are at God’s perfect and all-powerful disposal and resolution. If we don’t believe that, then we are the children of a lesser god.

But then comes the fatal deception of so many religious people:

“NO MATTER WHAT WE DO OR DON’T DO, OR HOW WE VOTE OF DON’T VOTE,

GOD’S PURPOSES CANNOT AND WILL NOT BE DEFEATED.”

It sounds like such triumphant faith, but in fact it is a false faith. It is not Christianity and it is not the Bible. Not even in our salvation as Philippians 2:12-13 explains. And I assure you that if we operate upon such deceitful ground of holding God and not ourselves fully responsible, and operate with what we consider to be great faith but with a slight sense of responsibility and effort, we and this nation of America will collapse and perish and be carried away by godless, hostile, and dark kingdom forces. In short, as the truism states it:

“WE MUST PRAY LIKE IT ALL DEPENDS ON GOD, AND

WORK LIKE IT ALL DEPENDS ON US.”

God is now and always looking for those in church and state who will stand on and build the walls against invading and subtle enemies who cloak themselves as our friends but in fact are God’s and our enemies. God is now and always looking for those in church and state who will blow the trumpet of warning and alert, and not speak peace when there is no peace. God is now and always looking in church and state for those who will not come down and stop their work to negotiate with and befriend those who feign friendship but whose whole being is set on our destruction. Hear again the words of Nehemiah 6:3,

“…I am doing a great work, and I cannot come down. Why should

the work stop while I leave it, and come down to you.”

DECEPTION #5 – SPEAK SOFT ON HARD ISSUES

Today, as in no other time in the history of this nation, we are dealing face to face with hard-core rebellion against God in every dimension that we can think of. Hard-core infanticide, hard-core perversion, hard-core pornography, hard-core infidelity, hard-core marriage and family destruction, hard-core anti-Bible and anti-God and anti-Christness, hard-core everything that is vile and rotten!

There has never been a time like it in my 72 years of living in this country. We are swamped with hard-core immorality on every hand, and like Hollywood, Washington D.C. today legislates hard-core approval of it all.

And in the midst of it, we have church leaders telling us that we are to speak softly about these hard-core iniquities. If you will:

“WE ARE TO SPEAK ON THESE HARD-CORE ISSUES

IN A CUSHY WAY.”

That is, treat jagged, hard-rock sins like they were cotton balls. Treat vermin as if they were virtuous. We are told that we may disagree, but that when we do we must disagree agreeably. We are surrounded by an apostate nation and an apostate church that is more concerned about offending man than they are about offending God.

The advice that we are being given by ecclesiastics in this most critical period in American history, is that we must walk softly, and as pastors and parishioners we must carry a padded sword. We are to “tiptoe through the tulips” to use an old Dutchism. Don’t rock the boat and don’t disturb the peace, even if it is a false peace. Don’t turn people off and don’t alienate anyone. Easy does it in these hardest of times for truth to prevail. We not only live in SEEKER FRIENDLY churches, but we are being taught to be VOTER FRIENDLY too.

This may shock you, but we must hear it loud and clear, and that is:

“AMERICA NO LONGER HAS ELECTIONS, BUT NOW WE ARE FIGHTING

SPIRITUAL AND MORAL BATTLES IN A NATIONAL ELECTION

WAR OF OPPOSING KINGDOMS.”

November 6, 2012 in the United States of America is not an election, but a key battle in the war against godless forces of anti-Christness, unrighteousness, and immorality.

Everything that America has fought for in the World Wars of her young history, namely, Freedom, Constitutional Liberties and Judeo-Christian Morality, are now being destroyed from within her by an anti-Christ Marxist president and his Marxist czars. We are not in an election year but we are in an all-out war for our very lives and the free democracy called America.

And now listen:

“WHO HAS EVER HEARD OF FIGHTING AN ALL-OUT WAR

WITH SOFT WEAPONRY?”

I have heard of cold war but never soft war! This deception is one of the most devilish that we have ever encountered in church and state.

We need infinitely more from pastors than a soft call to vote. We need a strong call to war! And really now, is there anything soft in war? The Apostle Paul calls it in Ephesians 6:12 in the KJV:

“WRESTLING WITH PRINCIPALITIES AND POWERS.”

Soft my foot! There is nothing that is harder and more strenuous than wrestling that uses, abuses, and distends every joint and fiber of the body. I have never heard of a soft hold in wrestling. We must do all within the power that God gives us to body-slam the enemies of God and freedom, and pin them to the mat until they cry uncle. Cut the soft junk from the pulpits, and instead prepare our people for spiritual warfare at the polls.

I am strongly reminded of the words of Ephesians 6: 13,

“Therefore, take up the full armor of God, that you may be able

to resist in the evil day, and having done everything,

to stand firm.”

By standing firm here is meant nothing more and nothing less than to defend ourselves in that blessed state from which our adversaries will fight and fight dirty to throw us down. In the name of God, and for church, home, and country, stand for righteousness and freedom, for if we as God’s people don’t stand firm, this nation will fall flat.

Sound the trumpet! Give the battle cry! Command the troops. Arm them with truth! Close the ranks! Issue the marching orders! Let God arise and His enemies be scattered both in church and state. God help us! Amen!