CRACKED FOUNDATIONS

Many are stunned at how fast not only the country, but the church is crumbling.  I believe a lot of it has to do with foundations. In terms of the country, the foundation is the Constitution and the need for a spiritual and moral people in the nation to make it work.  In terms of the church, it is Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible, and the need for a spiritual, moral, and obedient people under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  No other foundation can be laid other than Jesus Christ.

I believe I am uniquely qualified to comment on this matter.  I am an architect celebrating 35 years of ownership of my own firm and a Christian evangelist with over 60 years of unqualified faith in Jesus Christ.  I know about both physical and spiritual foundations.

In my work, we always spend a lot of effort to be sure the foundation is right – the best looking building will not withstand all the forces of nature forever without a sound foundation.  The operative word is FOREVER.  It will stand for a while.  I am working today on a house built in 1934 where the stone foundation moved.  Masonry buttresses and eight starbolts were required to stabilize it.  It is near a 400 foot drop-off into Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia.  The ground can move beneath you over time, and you need to account for it in the beginning.  Buildings are designed to withstand wind, snow, earth movements, and much more.  In Buffalo, New York, they just got about six feet of snow with two more feet coming soon. Roofs have to be designed to hold a lot of snow, and foundations have to be designed to withstand deep frost. Winds are about the same as here though, and earthquake design is not as critical as in California or parts of the Midwest, for instance.  Buffalo does not get six foot storms all the time, though I remember they have 102” (8’-6”) when I was in college many moons ago.  If you designed a roof there the same as here, it would be OK the vast majority of the time, but it would fail under conditions they have now – conditions we never see here.

Foundations often do not crack right away – sometimes the loading changes, sometimes the ground shifts, and other times there are simply problems with the materials or the way they are connected.

Our nation was founded with the assumption people would be self-governing and have a moral compass.  The Bible was the basis for so many of our founding principles, and you can see scripture emblazoned on key buildings throughout our nation to this day despite the concerted efforts of a few remove all reminders of our foundation.

The spiritual foundations and the perilous state of the church is what concerns me even more.  I understand a country that spends far more time on banal if not evil entertainment than on spiritual development will fail.    Oops!  Did I say “country” or “church”?  Yeah, I said “country” but I could just as easily have said “church”.

I constantly hear evangelical Christians betray themselves.  They have spent precious little time studying the scriptures in order to make them wise to salvation. Instead, Christian music, Christian comics, Christian dinners, Christian “fellowship”, Christian car shows, Christian sports nights, and much more are what consume the lion’s share of their time.  Now I have nothing against ANY of those things per se – however, when you eat only desserts you get fat and out of shape and unable to run out of trouble.  You need to be conditioned by the word and beat your body into subjection if you are going to win the race.

It started out with “situational ethics”.  Canards such as lying to the Nazis to protect Jews were used to promote a system where there is no absolute right and wrong – NO moral absolutes.  People started living together outside of marriage once the stigma started to subside. And on and on.

Secularists attacked the Bible with fanciful tales of Darwinian thought and Christians compromised.  They started with the gap theory, theistic evolution, and worse, which any person who actually studies the Bible could debunk in fewer than five minutes.

They painted pictures of God being unfair to us.  If God were unfair to anyone, it would have been to Jesus – the innocent Son of God dying for the sins of the world!  Instead, they hem and haw about whether the unsaved are going to hell.   Trust, me, they are going to hell.  “There is no other name under heaven…”  “Neither is their salvation in any other…”     God the Father would never have sent Jesus Christ to die if there were ANY other way to be saved.

Without a Biblical revelation of who Jesus is, one will accept the world’s version of who Jesus is.  A platonic and naïve teacher who was kind and gentle, out of step with the politics of the day and who never said a word about homosexuals one way or the other. Perhaps to be compared to Mohammed and Buddha and Krishna, but not the Son of God or anyone worthy of total devotion.  Just another way to order ones life to please the man or force or whatever upstairs.

Nothing could be further from the truth.   Jesus was an intellectual giant at 12 and no one could ever win an argument with him.  He cleared out a whole marketplace while 12 strong men looked on taking notes. He could control nature, spiritual forces, and remote sickness.   No one else even comes remotely close because Jesus Christ is God in the flesh and is the foundation for our faith.   All we need to know is written in the Bible, which is 100% accurate not only as a spiritual tome, but in terms of history, economics, astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, psychology, prophecy, and in all moral matters.

The problem is that people do not read the Bible, let alone study it or obey it.  I have produced over 1,250 radio shows and any number of people have called in with major issues.  In the vast majority of cases, they are not in a regular program of Bible Study and they do not pray much at all.  They usually went to church, but the word is so compromised most places, and without real power in others, their lives were dysfunctional in terms of being warriors in the kingdom of God. 

The ignoring of the scriptures, the failure of pastors to preach with authority and passion which has yielded weak Christians, and the luke-warm attitude of people has disabled them from being effective in the current war for men’s souls.

Understand that people WILL believe something.  Over 50% of evangelicals now say there are other ways to God than through Jesus Christ.  The BIGGEST lie ever told by the devil.   If you want to find Fargo, North Dakota, you cannot head in any direction and get there.  You need good maps or an up-to-date GPS or you will never get there.  How can anyone think they can go any direction they want and find God?  We have to follow his precise directions or we will be lost.  “Narrow is the way that leads to eternal life!”   I wrote a tract on this – the cover illustration was a wide divided highway with many exits and only a narrow lane at the end going to our desired destination.  Some people get off in not believing the Bible.  Others with secular ideas. Still others not willing to obey the Lord.  It is not easy to get to heaven, but if we follow the Lord, we will surely get there because it is due to his righteousness, not ours.  We simply have to trust and obey him and follow him wherever he goes.

My friends, I was considering joining a church over thirty years ago that later became very successful. I went to the initial meeting where there were 40 people who became charter members.   I enquired of the Lord about it and he showed me four cracks in their foundational principles. Most people would have ignored those.  In fact, everyone else in the room either did not recognize them or ignored those tell-tale warning signs. That was it for me.  I maintained friendship to the degree I could, and did some work for them, but like a drumbeat I heard more and more what would seem to most like relatively minor but very persistent deviations from scripture.  Then one time when I visited the pastor spoke about abortion, homosexuality, and marijuana use in absurd ways, still adored by his congregation because they were following a man instead of God.  There are people there today telling unbelievable lies and hating people like me who stand on the Word of God once delivered to the saints.

Unfortunately, many of the big-name ministries you see on TV have cracked foundations. They accept the ways of man rather than the ways of God.  They have compromised in many ways, sometimes in even shocking ways.  If God’s people were thoroughly equipped, they would have withdrawn support long ago, but because these men and women appeal to the lusts of the flesh, money, and the pride of life, they are flourishing financially.  Some people post spiritual nonsense they hear from them on Facebook  taking umbrage if you point out the unscriptural nature of just about everything they say.

People of God, do not tolerate apostasy.  Do not build on cracked foundations.  Get into the word and be taught by people who actually BELIEVE the Bible – not by people who come from seminaries where the Bible is parsed and mocked and ignored.  Plunge yourself into a life with God.  Pray at length every day and get to know God and ask for the spiritual gift of discernment so you can separate truth from error. Ours minds have to be renewed constantly and we must possess the mind of Christ.  The world will grind us down, but if we are continually being filled with the Holy Spirit and renewed in our minds, we will be able to do wonders.  I do not believe we have much time left – do not be a virgin without oil.  Do not be a rich young tithing ruler unwilling to give God what he really wants.  Do not be a Laodicean whom Jesus want to vomit out.   Be a follower and brother of Jesus Christ. Be one of those he will proudly plant a crown on.  Be one Jesus will acknowledge  before the Father. Exalt Christ, defend Christ, support Christ.  Speak what Christ speaks, Do what Christ does. Acts like Christ acts.

May God bless you!