It is up to those who teach and preach to bear a true and faithful witness of Christ. In so doing they may have to accept a much smaller church than the minister who is hustling the Gospel and giving American people what they want. On the other hand the preacher may bear a true witness and have a large following. It is not the size of the congregation that is at issue, the main consideration is the faithfulness to what the Spirit is saying today.

The Spirit is not saying love, love, love, grace, grace, grace, but repent, repent, repent. Pray and see if I am correct.

How miserable to be a false witness of Christ! Some of us may be "ministering" to people when we ought to be bearing witness to them.

Christ is the beginning of the creation of God. I know some theologians may disagree but it is my thinking that at some point in eternity past Christ came forth from the Person of God and then, through Christ, God created the spirit world and eventually the physical world. This is not to say that Christ was created but that He created all things from the beginning.

Christ also is the beginning of the new creation in that He is the Firstborn from the dead.

In any case, God has determined to make Christ the Center and Circumference of the whole creation so that all is summed up and finds fulfillment in Him.

The American believer is often lukewarm. He is not on fire for God and not on fire for the devil. He or she is determined to be vomited from the Lord's mouth (so much for eternal security!).

You never in your life heard a church say it was rich and increased with goods. Every church has its hand out because Christ is broke. So if the Laodicean church is saying it is rich it is because the government is subsidizing it.

I see an attempt on the part of the presidency of the United States to appear as Christian and to ask Evangelical leaders for their counsel. No doubt some Christian leaders will fall for this because they are so anxious to get everybody to love them.

In the day that the President does like the rest of us, repents of his sins, takes up his cross, and follows Jesus, standing against the moral sins of the nation, then I will be persuaded he has been born again.

But deliver me from a secular political attempt, combined with an ecclesiastical political attempt, to dupe the American sheep into thinking that somehow the government will finally become Christian.

The Christian Church is the lampstand of God. Its job is to bear witness of the Person and will of God. It needs no assistance from the secular government.

If the Church will do its job of witnessing and the secular government will do its job of punishing evildoers and rewarding the righteous (according to the Bible definition of evil and righteousness) we will get along just fine. But there is to be no mixing of the two! The government and the Church have different roles from God.

To be continued.