Spiritual Influence

Have you ever wondered what the world was like before Christianity? For us Christians, we have the Old Testament, and we can read how God interacted with Israel and the Hebrew people. We see a little about what life was like in Babylon and Egypt as we read of the Jews being slaves. The Old Testament also mentions other “gods,” including Baal, Ashtoreth, and Molech. But have you ever considered that, as we read of Israel worshiping the one true God, the rest of the planet was worshiping pagan gods?

I remember learning about the Roman and Greek gods in school as part of history. Still, as we learned about these mythical gods, it never occurred to us that millions of people were building altars to them, keeping statues in their homes to bow down and worship them, and praying to them. It wasn’t only the Greeks and the Romans; other areas had their own religions and, therefore, their own gods. The world was overwhelmingly pagan.

Then God’s Son is born of a virgin. He is God in the flesh, God incarnate, the creator of the universe, the Lamb of God, the provider of salvation. His own creation crucified him, but He allowed it to happen because His death, the spilling of His sinless blood, is the only sacrifice God the Father would accept for our sins. He arose from the dead on the third day, seen by at least five hundred witnesses, and ascended back to heaven and now sits on the right hand of the Father, and one day, He is coming back to this earth.

Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, had arrived. He preached repentance and the gospel of the kingdom. He performed miracles:  healing the sick, casting out demons, and walking on water, to name a few (Matthew 4:17; Luke 7:22).

After Jesus’ ascension, His disciples spread the gospel of salvation. As it spread across Europe, interest in the pagan gods faded away. The Holy Spirit now controlled the land’s spiritual influence. With the discovery of the New World, Christianity spread throughout the Americas.

The current teaching that the United States was not founded as a Christian nation is a lie. There are hundreds of quotes from our Founding Fathers about Christianity being the cornerstone of our country, but John Quincy Adams may have said it best: “The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”

However, over time, America did what the Hebrews of the Old Testament did. We pushed God out. In the early 1960s, we removed prayer and the Bible from schools. By the end of the decade, many of those schoolchildren were in their twenties, and the sexual revolution was in full swing.

As we rolled into the 1970s and 80s, we began to see things that were unthinkable a few years before. Not only did we start to see them, but many of them became common.

Before the early 1960s, waiting until marriage to sleep with someone was the norm. Yes, it would be foolish to think that fornication never happened, but it was socially unacceptable. The sexual revolution of the late 60s and early 70s made sexual sins acceptable to many. By the time the 1990s started, if there was no sex by the third or fourth date, something was wrong with the relationship.

Before the twentieth century closed, we saw the unfathomable. Someone walked into a school and randomly shot people. No one in America ever dreamed that anything close to this would happen. Today, mass shootings take place in schools, churches, restaurants, theaters, bars, and nightclubs. We moved from a society that never dreamed something like this could happen to a society that wonders when the next one will take place.

We pushed God out.

We’ve pushed God out of nearly every aspect of our lives, including the church.

Churches in America have always had doctrinal differences. Oftentimes, Christians did not act Christ-like. But the one thing the churches had in common, they preached the gospel of Christ; the same gospel the early disciples preached – we are all sinners, there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, Jesus Christ is the sacrifice for our sins, and only through faith in Him can we become a new creation, have a better life on this earth and eternal life in heaven with God.

Instead of preaching a gospel of repentance as Jesus did, many churches started preaching to people’s feelings. Churches evolved from salvation centers to entertainment centers as preachers gave people what they wanted to hear rather than what they needed to hear (2 Timothy 4:1-5).

As we move further into the twenty-first century, the things God said are abominable are becoming more commonplace. The unthinkable is becoming increasingly common.

How can this be?

Matthew tells us of an evil spirit that leaves a man. After a time of unsettledness, the spirit decides to return to man. When he returns, he finds the inside of the man “empty, swept, and garnished.” The spirit goes and finds seven other spirits “more wicked than himself,” and the eight of them come back and possess the man.

What does that have to do with America?

We pushed God out. What we are witnessing now is that, over several decades of pushing God from our society and churches, the evil spirits are finding themselves places to live.

The solutions to America’s problems are not political; they are spiritual. When God’s disciples preach the gospel of the kingdom, calling out sin and introducing people to the Saviour, then, just as in the early days of Christianity, the influence of the Holy Spirit will push out the other gods and the evil spirits that are setting up residence throughout our society.

It will not be easy. Remember, the early Christians were persecuted and killed for their efforts. Someone killed for stating their religious beliefs was unthinkable in this country. Still, we all witnessed it happen just over a month ago.

The murder of Charlie Kirk should cause everyone, Christian or non-Christian, to step back and look. Everything mentioned in this column at one time was unthinkable and now is commonplace. The nation has pushed out God. The natural next item on the list would be God’s people. Will the murder of people with Biblical opinions be commonplace in a decade or two, or three? Our nation needs a revival of the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, and His salvation.