Tuesday, November 03, 2020

Evangelism Is Still the Solution and This World, Including the United States, Is Not My Home

At all times I have a much bigger picture in mind than a four or eight year snap shot of the history of the United States.  I always think of the kingdom of God first and especially today.  If where I lived was of the greatest significance, my wife and I would not have moved in a U-Haul truck to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1987.  Very often I say, it's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there, but I still lived there 33 years.  We didn't move there because to us it was a superior place to live.  We went to do the work of the kingdom.  I thought of it as being a missionary to France.

In the run-up to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, you know that God would have preserved them if there were at least ten righteous souls there.  You don't get ten righteous souls by voting in a new president.  You get those through evangelism.  That doesn't mean you would have succeeded, because they may not have listened, probably wouldn't.  We do, however, have well over ten righteous souls at Bethel Baptist Church in El Sobrante, just north of Berkeley in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I don't like what Joe Biden and the Democrat party represents.  I think they'll hurt the country if they get power as most people are predicting.  What am I going to do about it?  The same thing I did while Donald Trump was president -- preach the gospel to every creature.  You don't really care about the solution if you put too much more than a fraction of effort into politics compared to preaching.  It is a serious error that the affections of professing Christians are stirred more by politics and for political issues than for Jesus Christ.

I'm not against it, but I've never given a donation to a political cause.  I think it is right to do, but I've never done it.  I've never been involved in a political campaign, except twice.  I held a sign for a man in our church to be a county supervisor and passed out flyers one afternoon for my father-in-law to be a school board member.  In both cases, it was more to encourage and support those men. They both lost.  I've written blog posts here.  I talk about how to vote for every election in my church.

What I'm doing now is trying to go out preaching the gospel six days a week.  I spend many hours a week doing that.  Then I have evangelistic and discipleship studies. I train others to preach the gospel every week.  I follow-up with people to whom I've already preached the gospel.  I think you know that a few posts about Trump don't mean that I think he is the solution.

When at some future date, the United States has fallen, and I'm alive to comment, I won't say it was because of how people voted in a presidential election.  That is a mere symptom.  Scripture behooves to instruct people on how to think and act regarding the government.  That's part of observing all things whatsoever God commanded us and teaching the whole counsel of God.  The country will have fallen because it did not believe the gospel.  When Jesus went to Israel, He dealt with the souls of the nation, not its politics.

I believe I've got good reasons to think I'll have better and more opportunities to preach the gospel if Donald Trump wins today.  It is less likely, I believe, that my religious freedom will be taken away.  I see new powers hindering and stopping this activity.  I see more persecution ahead if Trump loses.  Freedom to obey scripture will be taken away.  I expect that.  It saddens me to think of that occurring.

My kingdom is not of this world.  I have no continuing city here.  I have a thousand year reign of Jesus Christ and an eternal state to look forward to.  I want people in those.  I'm an ambassador of Jesus Christ.  Since I'm an ambassador, I'm saying I'm not a citizen here.  My citizenship is in heaven.  Let Jesus Christ be praised.

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