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Who Will Take a Stand for King Jesus?

 
Rev. Stephen Mashburn presents a powerful portrayal of the failure of God's Church to rightly represent Him in the streets of our cities. Though Pastor Jack Graham may speak eloquently for the lives of children and who, by the way, has a crisis pregnancy center in his church, when it comes to confronting the evil (abortion mill) just a few miles from his facility he totally ignores that. Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, TX was our first "God is Going Back to Church" endeavor in January, 1997. The wonderful theology of the church house must become biography in the streets if we are ever to fulfill our purpose as the Lord's victorious Church on this earth! - Flip

 Who Will Take a Stand for King Jesus?

The Wednesday Godarchy Line: "When Solomon had finished the temple of the LORD and the royal palace, and had succeeded in carrying out all he had in mind to do in the temple of the LORD and in His own palace, the LORD appeared to him at night and said: 'I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a temple for sacrifices. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague among My people, if My people, who are called by My name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.'" (2 Chronicles 7:11-14)

How often most American Christians cite verse 14 without the context before or after this great promise. The promise is for God's people AFTER they have sinned greatly by tolerating evil until they have forced God to bring judgment on the entire nation. To hear most Christians talk today, they have relegated this judgment into the future after the Lord Jesus has magically "raptured them out of trouble" yet they claim the promised revival for today. Let those who have ears to hear hearken to what the Holy Spirit is saying.

God has been pouring out judgments on America seeking desperately to get our attention as His Church for the past 40 years. You can find a list of 29 specific examples of God's remedial judgments on America on the OperationSaveAmerica.org web site in the 2001 articles archive under the title "Many have asked if God will judge America" .

Yet the Church for the most part has not taken a stand. To their credit, the Southern Baptist Convention delegates in their annual conference last week voted to renounce a 1971 resolution that supported abortion if "the mother's health was in question" from their position paper against abortion. That resolution goes on to say human life should be protected from conception to natural death.

The denomination said "the health of the mother" cannot justify taking a human life." Richard Land, who now heads up the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission found the health exception "lamentable" but said it can serve as a warning.

"It's not a position we've had for the last 30 years. We have been a strongly pro-life denomination. If many of our leaders and many of our people could be confused or blinded by the spirit of the age on this issue in the early '70s, then it could happen again." Could?

Yet Land, and other former SBC Presidents and new president Jack Graham all hail from mega-churches in cities where there are abortion mills killing children. A position paper that is not binding on individual "autonomous churches" is quite different than taking a stand. Donating money to a pregnancy care clinic or crisis center is not taking a stand either. Proclaiming the gospel of Christ with authority commanding entire cities to repent from the gates of hell at the local abortion clinic to city hall to the pulpits and everywhere in between is taking a stand against our greatest national sin in American history. All ought to be done without leaving the latter undone

Many good Bible preaching Baptist pastors are striving to build mega-churches or emulating them using programs that these mega-churches use seeking to bring as many sinners into the church house as possible. While they pray with thousands at the altar to accept salvation by believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, God is trying to get Christians out of the church house and into the streets to take a stand for King Jesus. The people will rarely do what the pastor is not willing to do.

Jack Graham, SBC President, is the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. Where were the pastors of this church of some 24,000 members last year during Operation Rescue/Operation Save America's national event that week in July? I tell you they were not leading their members to the gates or thousands would have followed them not just that 1 week but would still be taking a stand against child murder each week at the gates today.

In Chist's love,

Stephen Mashburn