When the Light Goes Out

"We don't have to destroy America with missiles. America will destroy itself from within."--Nikita Khrushchev, 1962

The Republic at twilight: In Michigan, Brian Banks, a lifelong Democrat has been elected as a state representative to the 1st District. From 1998 through 2004, Banks was convicted of eight felonies involving credit card fraud and writing bad checks.

From Illinois: Jesse Jackson Jr., who's currently being investigated by a House Ethics Committee for attempting to buy President Barack Obama's former senate seat from disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich. Though he's also under investigation by the FBI for using campaign funds to decorate his Washington D.C. home, he has won reelection to Illinois' 2nd Congressional district.

From Massachusetts: Elizabeth Warren, who has falsely claimed to be the descendant of Cherokee Indians, has been elected to the U.S. Senate, defeating incumbent Scott Brown.

From Chicago: Despite endless scandals, high unemployment, annual trillion dollar deficits and a disastrous foreign policy, President Barack Obama has been reelected to a second term. In fact, his opponent Mitt Romney, garnered even less votes than throwaway candidate John McCain did in 2008.

When you look back at the fall of great nations and empires throughout history you find this common denominator; that every collapse was preceded by moral decay and depravity. The ancient Greeks rose on the wisdom, strength and conviction of their culture and ideas that they felt compelled to share with the world. And they fell because they no longer believed that their ideas and culture were worth defending. The ancient Romans went from the most advanced culture of their time on earth to sloth, apathy, indifference, sexual perversion and dependency. Same with the Turks and then later the British who succeeded the Turks.

Though America's fall from greatness has been often been traced to Vietnam or Roe v. Wade in 1973, her fall actually began in the late 19th Century when Christian seminaries and divinity schools began importing liberal theology from their European counterparts. That poisoned the minds of young pastors and missionaries in training who in turn poisoned their followers. They passed off such poison as this; that Jesus Christ was no longer "the way, the truth and the life" (John 14:6) but rather just one of many paths to God. And they passed off this poison; that man's greatest malady wasn't sin but rather poor self esteem. Or this; that it was up to man to create his own heaven on earth rather than attain to some mythical paradise in the life to come.

Christianity's abdication of the biblical gospel in the 19th Century manifested in the moral rot in the early 20th Century during the Roaring 20s when narcissism, nihilism, hedonism and sexual immorality became the new norms for a burgeoning post-Christian culture. In the 1920s, homosexuality began coming out of the closet and alcohol consumption exploded, leading to the subsequent passage of Prohibition as the solution to combat excessive drinking.

The children of the 1920s became the parents of baby boomers who grew into the hippies, flower children and counterculture revolutionaries of the 1960s. As Christianity continued to wane in America, more and more Christians sought to stem the tide of moral depravity through the ballot box instead of the living gospel of Jesus Christ. The American Church failed to "contend for the faith" (Jude 1:3) and secular humanism spread like a deadly cancer through the culture, from education to the media to the entertainment industry. 

If there's a lesson to be learned from Barack Obama's stunning and unexpected reelection despite his terrible record it's this; that you can't legislate morality or spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through politics. I've been warning Christians for many years that if you try to impose Christianity upon a nation through legislation, secular humanists can just as easily legislate their godlessness upon a society.

Think about some of the issues that the Democratic Party continually promoted during the recent election; gay marriage, abortion rights, taxpayer-funded contraception and the so-called war on women. Despite high unemployment, a enormous national debt that threatens to destroy the U.S. economy and endless scandals such as Fast and Furious and the White House cover up concerning the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, the Democratic Party got Obama reelected because it sold its own moral agenda to a wicked, post-Christian nation. That mattered more to 60 million Americans who voted for Obama than the economy, the national debt and international security.

If America is to ever recover from Tuesday's debacle, then her churches must make the gospel relevant once again to the nation. That means that Christians must be willing to do the dirty work of knocking on doors, preaching in the streets and engaging the culture with the gospel rather than playing church on Sundays. You can't legislate morality. Prohibition proved that. You can't fight sin at the ballot box. If that's where you're going to battle abortion, homosexuality, gay marriage etc. then you're going to lose that battle every time.