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Remember Them — Especially This Year

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👉🏿 I published the post repeated below in 2019 with the title 75 Years Ago Today. With the major [much needed in my opinion] changes underway in our country since 11/5/24, I consider it especially apropos this year. …

[Posted in 2019] 75 Years Ago Today — D-Day, June 6, 1944 — the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy, 73,000 of whom were American.  That successful invasion was a key turning point in quelling Adolph Hitler’s quest for world domination.

It would do us all some good to put ourselves in the place of the person who took the first picture shown above [sequence is left to right]. Knowing that in the next few seconds the door would swing down and we’d see the next scene, we’d be acutely aware that our very-near-term future could be the path depicted by the third and fourth scenes.

As I mentioned in my recent post on Memorial Day, in all of many international travels my wife and I have had the privilege of enjoying over the past twenty-plus years, seeing the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial [above pic taken by me in 2016] and nearby Omaha Beach [the worst of the landing areas where scenes like the photo sequence above unfolded that day] was one of the most memorable and moving experiences for me. The cemetery covers 172.5 acres and contains 9,388 graves.

I highly recommend watching this video clip [a little less than six minutes] of the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan [warning — very unpleasant imagery:] Clip From Saving Private Ryan. I was never in the military, but I expect that part of that film depicts about as accurately as possible the carnage suffered on our behalf by thousands of our fellow Americans — and thousands of citizens of the other Allied nations — on D-Day. We should never forget what they did for us.

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Charles M. Jones

The Paradigm Shift Is Accelerating Exponentially!

On March 7, 2017 [<—note: 8 years ago] I published a post entitled Lessons From The Great Horse Manure Crisis Of 1894. Of course, that title was a “teaser” to pique interest in reading it because it had much deeper content directly related to the reason I had set up the web site USAparadigm.com [where my Blog posts are published] the preceding year. That reason was that I could see that a major paradigm shift was taking place in the second decade of this millennium.

I’m publishing this Post now and pausing writing of an upcoming three-part series entitled What Is Driving The Trump Resistance? Why? Because in all of 2024 and through April 2025 the number of people per month accessing the “Horse Manure” Post jumped to 216% higher than the average monthly number in the years 2018-2023. I realized after rereading that post that it actually contains a major component of the answer to the upcoming series mentioned above.

So instead of covering the same material in this Post, I’m going to ask that you just read the 2017 Post at Lessons From The Great Horse Manure Crisis Of 1894. I’d highly recommend also reading the web site page A Major Paradigm Shift Well Underway — keep in mind that it was written in 2016, but it’s a fairly concise definition of the term Paradigm Shift.

Be on the lookout for Part 1 of the upcoming series What Is Driving The Trump Resistance? Until then, …

Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

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Charles M. Jones

Our Two-Party System Is On Life Support


On 9/28/16, I published a post to this blog entitled Binary Party Affiliation Choices — We Need Something Better. In it, I proposed what I believed then [and still believe now] would be a much better conceptual framework [paradigm] for selecting our leaders and governing our country under its Constitution. I said then that I’m basically a “one man show,” so I don’t have the resources or funding to build a following large enough to become widely visible on a national scale — which on something of this magnitude could actually cause it to gain enough traction to attract potential investors who have the capacity to move it from concept to reality. So at that time I felt that maybe I had planted a seed that could catch at least some wind that might take it to fertile soil. On 10/4/21, I published a follow-up post entitled Our Two-Party System Is Gasping For Breath because despite the success of the Trump administration, the 2020 election dramatically reigned in acceleration of the New Paradigm’s overtaking of the Current Paradigm [which of course would make it the Old Paradigm.] Today, there is overwhelming evidence plastering all media outlets every day that the massive paradigm shift that has been underway since 2016 has been accelerating exponentially since 11/5/2024. But nobody who has the power and resources necessary to shape our overall direction — including the current administration — seems to have noticed it from this perspective. Or, the current administration clearly sees it, knows that its decisions and actions are an integral part of it, but doesn’t have a clear component within its overall strategy that sets a vision for this part of the New Paradigm.

What Makes Me Doubt That A Clear Vision Exists?

I gave this post the title Our Two-Party System Is On Life Support because the “atmosphere” in our country since the 11/5/24 election is unlike anything I’ve witnessed in my lifetime [I’ll become an Octogenarian this year,] and clearly demonstrates that huge changes in how our government operates are underway at lightning speed [a term used often in media coverage.] I really believe we need a vision for what the New Paradigm will look like — and that it needs to be announced by President Trump as succinctly and definitively as President Kennedy announced in 1961 that this nation “should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.” The force of that directive drove an unprecedented decade of scientific innovation, but perhaps even more importantly, it became the most unifying force in America since World War II. What makes me doubt that a clear vision for this part of our government [i.e., what the replacement of the two-party system will look like] exists at this point is simply that there is no mention of it in the media. President Kennedy no doubt realized that just four months since taking office was good timing to announce something that bold.

It Won’t Take Nine Years — How About Less Than Two?

I hope that I’m wrong in concluding at this point that the vision I’m saying is needed is not yet being actively developed. Elon Musk is the ideal profile of an individual capable of conceptualizing this vision, and President Trump has demonstrated already that he is an “out of the box” thinker who is not timid about making decisions that those seeing through the lens of the Current Paradigm may regard as too harsh or too hastily made. I sincerely hope that President Trump will make a speech about this vision by the end of his fourth month in office if not much sooner.

There were many skeptics in the early stages of the “moon race,” possibly justly because there were materials and technologies known to be needed that did not yet exist [two examples being materials that would be needed for space suits and information and communications technology capabilities far beyond those that existed at that time.] Today, a relatively small team of the right minds could outline the path to successful implementation of something like what I outlined in my 9/28/16 post   Binary Party Affiliation Choices — We Need Something Better this year, and it could be in operation for the mid-term elections next year. Aside from being far more effective operationally, it would make party conventions obsolete and be much more relevant to a very different electorate than the one that was satisfied with [or at least tolerated] the current modus operandi for 90% of the last hundred years.

I’ll close with the same challenge I posed to readers of my 9/28/16 post referenced above: to consider what I’ve written here in context with these words from our first two Presidents:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled [people] will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” George Washington

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” John Adams

Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

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Charles M. Jones

A Seminal Time In Our History?



In my last post, I alluded to the current “atmosphere” in our country since the recent election: the excitement of both our still-forming leadership team and a wide swath of our population, contrasted by the anger and even “backlash” and openly-articulated resistance in Democrat leadership and a narrower swath of our population [and most of the “legacy” media] to President Trump‘s agenda. In this one, I will try to express from a much broader historical perspective how this “atmosphere” in this decade mirrors in many ways two of the decades in our history that most historians agree were arguably the most seminal points. Obviously, that poses the question “Is this a seminal time in our history?”

Something that is seriously lacking in our culture nowadays, particularly in many people in leadership roles, is a perspective broad enough to rise above the din of day-to-day news and commentary and draw conclusions about how current events fit into an inception-to-date view of our country. Even our leaders seem to be down in the forest among the trees rather than viewing the situation from an airplane at least hundreds of feet above the forest, or perhaps even 30,000 feet, or even from a capsule orbiting the planet. The “atmosphere” I described in my opening paragraph clearly paints the picture that polarization in our leadership has actually intensified since the November 2024 election. The Democrat party has now even formally developed a resistance-based platform, which if followed its leaders appear to believe will result in a massive shift of legislative majority power back to them in 2026 and a full reversal by 2028 of the path chosen by a majority of our citizens three months ago.

So who is “right?”

So who is “right?” Who defines what is “right” for our country? Will the current path and direction result in a better situation as of 10/31/2028? Who should define what situation on 10/31/2028 would be “better” than the situation on 10/31/2024? Who will define what situation on 10/31/2028 would be “better” than the situation on 10/31/2024? These are questions that can only be answered from a much broader perspective than appears to currently be in the mix. For me, the bigger question is the title I gave this post: Is this a seminal time in our history? In considering it, we would be well served as a nation to understand that our perspective is never the broadest: “‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ says the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts’” [Isaiah 55:8-9 NKJV.]

Are we in a seminal period in our country’s history?

I recently watched a ten-minute discussion between a media commentator and a well-known college president. At one point in that discussion the college president expressed his sense that this is a seminal decade in our country’s history, likening it to the 1770s [resulting in a revolution and our founding] and the 1850s [resulting in the Civil War.] Being well-versed and widely published in history, particularly American history, he described very enlightening similarities in the “atmosphere” in America during those seminal decades and the “atmosphere” in this decade.

In closing, I’d offer this thought to challenge those reading this post to consider what I’ve written here in context with these words from our first two Presidents:

“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled [people] will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” George Washington

“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” John Adams

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Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

Charles M. Jones

What Now Shall We Do?

This is my first post to this blog since October 30, 2024, just six days prior to what I believe will be viewed retrospectively as one of the most — and from a Christian perspective, possibly the most — critical and impactful presidential election in our country’s history. That post, Christians Can Determine Who Becomes Next U.S. President, was a plea that began with the sentence “If you are a born-again, God-fearing, Bible-studying, praying Christian, I implore you to read this post.” My purpose now is to offer my observations about the overall “atmosphere” in the country since that election, and share very apropos insights from prominent Christian leaders through a 1976 book, a 1999 book, and a 2025 article that I believe collectively answer the question What Now Shall We Do?

The “atmosphere” in our country

The “atmosphere” in our country from the last month or so of the election campaign through Election Day and the ensuing months has been interesting. Reactions among pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions in our extremely polarized country to the realization of what a landslide-level change-of-direction mandate the American people issued have obviously been many and varied. There is understandably almost uniform  jubilation among Trump’s supporters. What is most interesting to me, though, is the vastness of the range of words needed to describe the reactions among anti-Trump factions — understandably, frustration and disappointment, but many others like denial, rejection, and resistance, manifesting themselves in the form of delay tactics by Legislators in approving the President’s cabinet nominees, open refusal of state and local leaders to comply with new legally-promulgated federal directives, organized demonstrations [although vastly diminished in size from 2017,] and even state and local laws and ordinances rushed to quick passage in some jurisdictions.

Recent polls indicate that a solid majority of Americans approve of the direction shaping up rapidly even during the first week of this Administration, so resistance among legislators is particularly puzzling. Not surprising is the “legacy” press’ lingering denial and an attitude of “hunkering down” on negative coverage that has prevailed in that arena since Donald Trump began his first campaign for the presidency in 2016. Only what appears to me to be a very small number of media pundits have an attitude that shows they have heard and understand what the People have said and seem to be trying to find where they can “fit in” to a “new normal” despite their vicious coverage in the past. 

Three generations of apropos insights from prominent Christian leaders

In his 1976 book [200 years  How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, Francis Schaeffer examined the preceding 200 years of Western civilization, arguing that its decline to that point stemmed from abandoning a Biblical worldview. He traced cultural, philosophical, and moral developments from Ancient Rome to the modern era, highlighting how a society’s worldview shapes its trajectory.

A generation later [1999,] Charles Colson wrote How Now Shall We Live?, in which he postulated that Christianity provides a comprehensive framework for understanding reality, addressing life’s fundamental questions: Where did we come from? What has gone wrong with the world? And how can it be fixed? Colson also argued [as did Schaeffer] that the decline of Western culture had been a result of rejecting Biblical truth in favor of secularism, relativism, and materialism. These ideologies, Colson contended, fail to offer meaningful answers to humanity’s deepest needs. By contrast, the Christian worldview provides a coherent understanding of Creation, the Fall, and Redemption, offering hope and purpose. He urged Christians to challenge cultural norms and influence society through active engagement in areas such as politics, education, science, and the arts, and to defend their faith, confront cultural challenges, and offer hope to a world in crisis.

Another generation later [about two months after President Trump’s landslide election to his second term,] Franklin Graham published an 1/1/25 article entitled Pray for Donald J. Trump. On January 20th, he was one of the pastors who offered invocation prayers at the inauguration. I believe this article boils down to a single admonition the philosophical/theological warnings articulated by Schaeffer and Colson in those generations and Graham’s in this and many other articles, speeches and sermons in this generation. That admonition: pray for our country, our President and those in other leadership positions in our government, and above all that God will not continue to remove His mighty hand of protection from us as a nation as the massive change in direction now underway unfolds.

Pray for our country, our President, and those in other leadership positions in our Government

Below my auto-signature are specific things Franklin Graham outlined in the above-referenced article that he believes should be included in our prayers — an excellent guide that I am certainly including in my prayers. And I like the way it ends:

So pray. Pray fervently. Pray diligently.

A Closing Remark

Although one could argue that the motivations that led us to where we are now were not all expressed as Christian by the general public, the current major change in direction and path forward are clearly more in line with Biblical principles than they have been in many years. So in my opinion, tightly coupled with that admonition is my personal desire that our actions going forward will be clear and convincing evidence that as a nation we have at least taken a major step toward “humbling (our)selves, and pray(ing) and seek(ing) (God’s) face, and turn(ing) from (our) wicked ways,” resulting in God‘s “hear(ing) from heaven, and … forgiv(ing) (our) sin and heal(ing) (our) land” [II Chronicles 7:14 NKJV.]

Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

Charles M. Jones

Things We Should Include In Our Prayers [from Pray for Donald J. Trump]

That President Trump will look to God each and every day for wisdom, guidance and discernment. Since the Bible says God’s purposes will prevail, our leaders need to seek God’s counsel for wise, lasting progress. “The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord” [Psalm 33:10-12.]

And how should we pray in particular for our president?

  • First and foremost, that he and his advisers will bend their hearts toward God and humbly seek His will. The Bible says “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes” [Proverbs 21:1.] Almighty God, the King of Kings, rules over all presidents, prime ministers, chancellors, kings and queens. This also implies that a “king” should be ever humbling himself before the Lord and asking for His will to be done.
  • That he will surround himself with men and women who will give him Godly counsel. No one person has enough wisdom to always make the right decisions. A president receives an abundance of information from dozens of different sources, but what he especially needs is the wisdom and discernment that comes from people who know God and His ways.
  • That the Lord will protect him from harm. There are plenty of adversaries around the world who would love nothing more than to see President Trump fail, not to mention our adversary the devil, who especially targets those in leadership. Never underestimate the wiles of Satan, but don’t overestimate him either. Christ defeated him on the cross and one day soon will cast him into Hades.

So pray. Pray fervently. Pray diligently.

Christians Can Determine Who Becomes Next U.S. President

If you are a born-again, God-fearing, Bible-studying, praying Christian, I implore you to read this post. If not, it’s too late for you to have the impact what I’ll say here that Christians can have on the outcome of the election on the seventh day from now, but I implore you to access resources that can help you understand what I mean in using those terms and find your path to becoming a Christian [I recommend the Billy Graham Evangelical Association [Note 1.]

Religion is a potent factor in elections, and the role of Christianity in 2024’s political landscape will be significant. With the rise of newer organized movements, such as Christian nationalism, and the impact of polarized news and social media outlets, the voting behaviors of practicing Christians may have an even more pronounced impact on results than in past election cycles [Note 2.]

In one of many examples in the Bible, God enabled the Israelites to achieve victories that odds-makers would have said were beyond their capabilities — the capture of the city of Jericho. The sixth chapter of Joshua describes the “battle” in detail. I will attempt to draw some parallels here between that event and our challenge as a nation between now and November 5th.

I strongly encourage you to read about the event in detail [Note 3,] but in a nutshell the Israelites took the city in seven days because they did exactly as God instructed them even though it might seem “odd” —even “silly” — from a secular viewpoint. As you read God’s instructions in the next paragraph, consider them in the following context:

  • Jericho — A degenerate culture. America’s current economic problems are significant, but more serious is our rapidly-accelerating moral decline.
    • Walls — what is referred to in politics as “the Swamp” — the political “machine” that our government has become.
  • Rahab — Born-again, God-fearing, Bible-studying, praying Christians today.
  • Daily Trumpets — the “tools of battle” in preparatory mode for the first six days
  • Trumpets on 7th day — the “tools of battle” activated
  • Shout on 7th day — the final “strike”
  • Joshua — the leader [each of us needs to decide which candidate — for President, and for Senate and House of Representatives seats — best parallels this role in our current situation and is most in line with God’s principles as stated in His Word.]

The “battle plan” was simple and straightforward:

  • March around the city, all you men of war; you shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days. And seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of rams’ horns before the ark.
  • But the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall come to pass, when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, that all the people shall shout with a great shout; then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up every man straight before him.”

The winner of this election will simply be the next leader who is subject to God’s Will for our nation, because “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water; He turns it wherever He wishes” Proverbs 21:1 NKJV.] Advisers to people who post blogs suggest avoiding numbers and details, so I won’t get that granular here. I did, however, publish a post to this blog during the 2020 election cycle that included statistics demonstrating that if all Christians who are registered to vote actually voted, that alone would have been enough votes to swing the result one way or the other.

So in summary, I’m asking all born-again, God-fearing, Bible-studying, praying Christians to pray every day from now through November 4th — and at seven different times during the day on November 5th — asking God to speak to them about why they should appreciate and exercise their precious right to vote, and vote.

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Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

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Notes

  1. Billy Graham: Peace With God
  2. Source:  Michael O. Emerson, Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, September 17, 2024.
  3. [Joshua 6 – quoted above, Joshua 6:3-5 NKJV.]

Our Two-Party System Is Gasping For Breath

There Has To Be

Something Better!


On 9/28/16, I published a post to this blog entitled Binary Party Affiliation Choices — We Need Something Better. In it, I proposed what I believed then [and still believe now] would be a much better conceptual framework [paradigm] for selecting our leaders and governing our country under its Constitution. I’m basically a “one man show,” so I don’t have the resources or funding to build a following large enough to become widely visible on a national scale — which on something of this magnitude could actually cause it to gain enough traction to attract potential investors who have the capacity to move it from concept to reality. So at that time I felt that maybe I had planted a seed that could catch at least some wind that might take it to fertile soil.

Well, I can’t claim to have been the sower of the seed that prompted a 9/8/21 New York Times article entitled Quiz: If America Had Six Parties, Which Would You Belong To?, but reading it immediately brought to mind my 2016 blog post. The basic concept of that 2021 article was the same as the basic concept in my Blog post almost exactly five years earlier. However, the methodology used to produce the subject matter for the article [which was a six-party framework] via a survey was much less compressive than the methodology I had outlined in 2016 for two reasons: 1) the questions they asked were worded too succinctly; and 2) the answer choices forced you to extremes. Had their process been more like the one I described in my Blog post, the result would have been a significantly larger number of “parties,” although the term “parties” would not be an accurate description for what would essentially be “large clusters of people who are very like-minded but not ‘dyed in the wool’ party loyalists.” Although I think I’ve presented here a sufficient gist of the New York Times article for purposes of the remainder of this post, you can access the article directly at this link and decide that for yourself:  NYT — 6 Parties Concept.

I formed my USAparadigm.com web site and began posting to this Blog in the Summer of 2016. I felt at that time [as I do now] that a major paradigm shift in our political and governmental system was underway [see note below about the term paradigm and why I use it it often.] However, I’ve since learned two things that were new and surprising to me: 1) that paradigm shifts of this magnitude can take much longer than I envisioned at that time to unfold as the Current Paradigm is displaced by a New Paradigm that “takes over” because it has become more effective [and therefore more widely accepted] than its predecessor; 2) the road from Current Paradigm to New Paradigm can be very treacherous because major influential players in the Current Paradigm have the power to make it so. “Miss Stella,” my high school English teacher who challenged her graduating seniors to learn at least one new thing every day for the rest of their lives, would be proud of me now. Not only have I tried to meet her challenge all these years, but these two new things I’ve learned may be the most significant of all if my writings ultimately have even the slightest effect on bringing this paradigm shift to fruition in its best form.

For a year or so beginning in mid 2016, I published weekly posts to this Blog — and frankly, I was amazed at the number of people who read them — many times the number of people I know personally. After that, until I published what I felt was an “emergency” three-part series of posts in October 2020 entitled A Choice Between Two Futures, I published very few posts. However, the current situation after only eight months since January 20th and the direction in which we’re headed at an alarming pace have prompted me to begin regular posts again — probably not weekly as I did in 2016-2018, but on a more ad hoc frequency depending on what is happening week to week and month to month. If you are among those who’ve read my posts to this Blog in the past, thank you for doing so. If not, I appreciate your reading this one. In any event, I hope you will take what I write in upcoming posts into consideration as you form your opinions on matters affecting our country’s future.

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Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

Note. I have written extensively on the concept of paradigm shifts, so elaborating here would be redundant for regular readers of my posts. If you are a new reader and that term and why I use it is something you’d like to delve into a little deeper, I’d suggest visiting the A Major Paradigm Shift Underway page at my web site, which begins by defining “paradigm” [according to dictionaries] as “the way things work — the pattern, the model, the system, the set of rules, the modus operandi.” If after reading that page you want to delve deeper, then click the Search box and type in the word paradigm. That will bring up several Blog posts, the titles of some of which might look interesting to you.

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Thanks for reading this post, and if you regularly follow my Blog, for that, too. Please consider sharing this or other posts with your friends, colleagues and associates.

The Word, The Whole Word, And Nothing But The Word

In my last post, Transitioning To The One Thing That Matters Most Now, I said I believe the future of America CAN be driven by the Church (which unfortunately is nowhere near the number of people who say they “attend church,”) but the one thing that matters most now is whether or not the Church will provide that impetus. I closed it by saying I would begin explaining in my next post why I think the jury is still out on the question of whether or not the Church WILL provide the impetus needed to bring us to our senses. This is that post.

The Word, The Whole Word, And Nothing But The Word

Every time a witness is about to testify in a court of law, he/she is “sworn in” with an oath something like “Do you affirm that all the testimony you are about to give in the case now before the court will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; this you do affirm under the pains and penalties of perjury?” [Unfortunately, our society has replaced “so help you God?” with the part after the semicolon.] I’m writing this post to speak directly to pastors of local Christian churches and “megachurches,” Christian TV/radio evangelists, and writers of books intended for Christian readers by stating up front that they should all take a similar oath before speaking or writing to their intended audiences: “I affirm before God that what I say to you in this [sermon / article / book / broadcast] will be the Word, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word, so help me God.”

Frankly, I believe that if this oath had been taken — and lived up to — by Church [capital C, the Universal Body Of Christ] leaders over the decades we have been drifting away from God, we would not be in our current condition. In their 2020 State of the Church report, the Barna Group cited a recent survey of pastors that asked them about their current concerns for the Christian church in the United States. Almost all of them were related to adapting to a changing culture — our culture’s shift to a secular age; addressing complex social issues with Biblical integrity; political polarization in the country; negative perceptions of the church; diminished influence of churches in the community; church leader burnout/exhaustion; changing attitudes towards evangelism; hostile culture towards Christianity; increased influence of media; religious liberty/freedom; diminished influence of Pastors in the community; challenges to the traditional church model (e.g., house churches, online churches,) and keeping up with the latest digital and technological trends. These ranged in the order listed from 66% expressing that concern down to 7%. But the top concern [72% expressed it] was Watered Down Gospel Teachings [www.barna.com/research.]

Just What Is Meant By “Watered Down Gospel Teachings?

The word of God is full of verses and sections that speak to His love for us and His desire to support us in our daily lives. To quote a few … “[His] Word is a lamp for [our] feet, a light on [our] path[s]” [Psalms 119:105 NIV.] / “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is loyal to Him” [II Chronicles 16:9 NKJV.] / “Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in him” [Proverbs 30:5 NIV.] / “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go” [Joshua 1:9 NIV.] / “His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” [Psalms 30:5 NIV.]

But the Word of God is not just another book on a shelf among other books. It is “alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrat[ing] even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judg[ing] the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” [Hebrews 4:12 NIV.] It is also full of verses and sections that reveal His understanding that we are not perfect, His intolerance for our sinful acts, His provision [Jesus] for forgiving us of them, and how we obtain that forgiveness. … “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” [Romans 3:23 NKJV.] / “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” / [John 3:17 NKJV.] / “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” [I John 1:9 NKJV.]

The concern pastors expressed about “watered down gospel teachings” is another way of saying they are concerned that there are too many of them who are not preaching/teaching “the Word, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word.” To avoid diminishing audiences, they have to focus on preaching “feel good” parts of the Bible.

Unfortunately for those who hear and read only the “feel-good” parts of God’s Word, the Bible is not a cafeteria, where you pick the sections you like and eschew the ones you don’t like. God warned preachers and teachers about the exact situation that exists today. … “The time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” [2 Timothy 4:3-4 NIV.] And He told them to continue preaching the Word, the whole Word, and nothing but the Word anyway … “But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry” [2 Timothy 4:5 NIV.] “Every word of God is flawless; He is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar” [Proverbs 30:5-6 NIV.]

It’s Time For The Church To Wake Up!

This year, we are witnessing an astonishing acceleration of our country’s drift away from God that has been in motion for many decades. Worse yet, a considerable element within the Church is capitulating to cultural pressure for change, and the pace of that pressure is also accelerating dramatically this year. In his book We Will Not Be Silenced first published November 2020, Erwin Lutzer describes the situation this way: “Like a deer caught in headlights, we don’t quite know what to do and whether we are willing to pay the price of fidelity to Scripture. We are shamed into silence.” In his endorsement of that book, Tony Evans said “[Erwin Lutzer] has given us a challenging, inspirational, and provocative work that will call all serious Christians to clearly represent our God and his Word in the public square. He has strategically balanced biblical authority, cultural relevance, and spiritual sensitivity in this must-read book. … You will be both righteously provoked and personally convicted not to be a silent secret agent Christian after being confronted by the truth in this excellent resource” [emphasis mine.]

Obviously, no statement as broad as Dr. Lutzer’s can be said to apply to all Christians, but his point is that in his judgment it seems to be an appropriate description of the Church as a whole. We are all a part of that whole, and that makes it incumbent on all of us to at least be aware of the perspective he brings to light, and to ask God’s guidance as to what if anything we should consider changing in our daily walk with Him.

Franklin Graham described the current situation seven years ago with a similar tone of alarm. “Followers of Jesus Christ, and especially pastors and church leaders, have a responsibility to speak the truth of Scripture, calling sin what it is, and acknowledging that it has always reigned in the hearts of the human race. …  [Widely debated issues of today are] not just a debate about [those issues]; all sin is immorality — and all immorality is evil. … In America today we are experiencing an epic drought. It is not just the basic misunderstanding of the Word of God; it is the absence of God’s complete Word. … God’s servants cannot preach part of the Gospel. They must preach the entire Word, regardless of how it may impact church attendance or trigger unfavorable tweets!  …  If God’s people do not stand strong, who will? …  Let’s overcome cowardice with courage. Let’s be fearless ambassadors of Christ and stand strong for the glory of God our Savior, pulling others from the fire of eternal judgment” [Franklin Graham, July/August 2014 Issue of Decision Magazine, emphasis mine.]

I’ll close by saying this a time in which I believe we should all consider the wise counsel of these stalwarts of Christian thought. …

“If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.”

Martin Luther

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. NOT to speak IS to speak, NOT to act, IS to act”.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“In any successful attack on freedom, the state can only be an accomplice. The chief culprit is the citizen who forgets his duty, wastes away his strength in the sleep of sin and sexual pleasure, and so loses the power of his own initiative.”

Abraham Kuyper

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Transitioning To The One Thing That Matters Most Now

The Transition — What It Is and Why I’m Making It

This is my first post to this Blog since the one entitled Time To Wake Up, Church! on 10/26/20, but with this post I’m beginning to get back into regular posts. They won’t be weekly as they were mid 2016 to late 2017; I’ll be going to an ad hoc frequency based on what’s going on week to week and month to month. If you are not a Christian, but have read my posts and/or the Home Page of this web site in the past, you should click the link and read that post because it will explain why in that post, the 3-part series of posts that preceded it, this post and most future posts until at least November 2022 and perhaps until November 2024, I am departing from my original writing philosophy when I first published the site in the Summer of 2016. That philosophy was to try to appeal to both Christians and non-Christians by intentionally avoiding words and phrases that would cause a non-Christian reader to label the site as a Christian site, thereby causing many people to miss what I felt was content that should be understood by all Americans. However, as you will see clearly on the Home Page, and in more depth through links there, I intentionally have never “hidden” the fact that I am a Christian. I have made it clear from the beginning that I am a Christian, and that my faith underlies my Worldview and the perspective from which I write. It is my sincere hope that this change in my writing philosophy will not keep you from reading my posts. Who knows? Maybe something in my recent past and future posts will cause you to rethink your own Worldview.

However, if you are a true, born again, Bible believing Christian, I think you could relate more closely to what I will say in this post by reading — or re-reading — that relatively brief 10/26/20 post. And, if you do that and want to “get a little deeper into my head” as I wrote both that post and this one, you can do so by reading at least Part 1 of the three-part series of posts that preceded it [there’s a link to Part 1 of the series in the above-mentioned post, and links in it and Part 2 to the next post in the series.]

The One Thing That Matters Most Now

Frankly, it took me several months to absorb the magnitude of the directional shift my country took the week after my 10/26/20 post. But rather than continuing then in the vein of my pre-election posts, I decided to sit back and just observe the transition to the new Administration in its “first 100 days.” After that, more or less in a state of shock over how rapidly the radical changes being made under extreme pressure from the far-left radical wing of the majority party were being made, I decided to continue in observation mode. Now, here we sit at the nine month mark and the pace is not only continuing but accelerating.

In my next post, I will outline why I believe the future of America can be driven by the Church (which unfortunately is nowhere near the number of people who say they “attend church,”) but the one thing that matters most now is whether or not the Church will provide that impetus. I am not trying to suggest that we need to become a theocracy, which was never the intention of our Founding Fathers — only that we desperately need to change our direction toward understanding and retaining closer adherence to the founding principles in our Declaration Of Independence and our Constitution [and, I would add, what many of our Founding Fathers said — in some cases, warning us what might happen — in the Federalist Papers.]

I will begin explaining why I think the jury is still out on the question of whether or not the Church will provide the impetus needed to bring us to our senses in an upcoming post entitled The Word, The Whole Word, And Nothing But The Word. Stay tuned!

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Time To Wake Up, Church!

A critical crossroads for our country.


At the beginning of Part 1 of my three-part series of posts last week entitled A Choice Between Two Futures, I explained for the benefit of all my readers, regardless of their religious beliefs, my rationale for addressing that series and other posts I am publishing in the two weeks prior to the upcoming election specifically to any Christians who follow this Blog — even more specifically, to Christians who are eligible to vote but have not yet done so. If you haven’t read that series, please consider doing so — it explains why I am so passionate about communicating those thoughts and those I’m expressing here to any Christians who will read my posts [you can access Part 1 by clicking here:] Part 1.

In this post, I am recommending that every Christian reading it watch every second of the one hour and six minutes of the video to which I’ll include the YouTube link within a few sentences below as I close this brief introduction to it.

The video is the 10/25/20 sermon called Election Day Sermon by Gary Hamrick, Pastor of Cornerstone Chapel in Leesburg, Virginia. I had never heard of him until I watched this sermon after receiving the link in an email from two of my dearest friends in Christ. His introduction of the topic [first 12 minutes or so] is extremely important for all people of faith because it sets the context for the sermon, but it’s particularly important for Christians. Expanding the “math” of the “one picture is worth a thousand words” adage to a video [which shows 30 frames (pictures) per second,] the remainder of this post is the equivalent of 118,000 words! I’ll simply give you the link because nothing I could write here — even in 118,000 words — could express my thoughts as succinctly and accurately as this pastor did in this sermon. This pastor is preaching what every pastor in America should be preaching at this critical crossroads in our nation’s history. Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/EpehM9M5_xE.

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