October 13, 2016 @ 12:30 PM
There may be few things that today's Laodicean Church, a spiritually poor church claiming to be rich (Revelation 3:17), is more impoverished of than spiritual discernment. The typical Christian today is as spiritually undiscerning as Pontius Pilate, who was unable to see the truth when it was standing right in front of him (John 18:38). To fail to see through Donald Trump like a pane of glass is, in my personal opinion, equivalent to the spiritual blindness of the hypocritical Pharisees, who kept asking Jesus for a sign to confirm His claims when He was working miracles all around them.
Trump's "Evangelical Advisory Board" reminds me of Bill Clinton's so-called spiritual counselors. Clinton’s counselors were clergymen handpicked by Clinton to counsel him during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Two of Clinton’s handpicked spiritual counselors were guilty of having extramarital affairs themselves and the other has since come out of the closet—not the one in the Oval Office used by Bill and Monica—as an advocate, along with his wife, of same-sex marriage.
Apart from the counsel of Christ, “Repent or perish” (Luke 13:3, 5), what possible biblical counsel could a clergyman offer a promiscuous POTUS? Obviously, Clinton was careful not to pick a prophet like Elijah, one bold enough to fearlessly speak truth to power, as one of his spiritual consolers, I mean counselors. Instead, he carefully chose a trio of milquetoast ministers who would stroke his id, pat his psyche, and inflate his ego, despite his lechery and lying.
According to Ed Stetzer, a contributing editor of Christianity Today, or what I prefer to call, “What Christianity Has Become Today,” a member of Donald Trump’s Evangelical Advisory Board has jumped ship, by daringly declaring what any discerning Christian should have already discerned. According to this Evangelical Advisory Board defector, James MacDonald, the senior pastor at Harvest Bible Chapel, Donald Trump is both "lecherous and worthless.” This scorching denunciation of the Donald by MacDonald was precipitated by the recently released “Access Hollywood” tape exposing Trump as a profanity spewing braggadocios groper of women.
Tragically, my fellow evangelicals, who rightly excoriated Bill Clinton for his licentiousness, are now, in an act of brazen hypocrisy, attempting to excuse Donald Trump for his licentiousness. They argue that the “Access Hollywood” tape was recorded eleven years ago; however, they conveniently forget that Clinton’s Monic Lewinsky scandal was eighteen years ago. If there is a statute of limitation on licentiousness, then, how can evangelicals clear Trump of his eleven-year-old scandalous behavior and still condemn Clinton for his eighteen-year-old scandalous behavior?
Another hypocritical argument being proposed by my fellow evangelicals is that Trump only talked the talk of a sexual predator, but Clinton actually walked the walk of a sexual predator. Of course, the belief that Trump has never been guilty of sexual assault, as he brags he routinely perpetrated on the “Access Hollywood” tape, is based on his current denial of it and his insistence that the tape is nothing more than “locker-room talk.” Yet, women are starting to come out of the woodwork to accuse Trump of multiple instances of improper sexual advances. Well, will my fellow evangelicals denounce and defame these women, like liberals have Clinton’s accusers, women like Kathleen Willey, Paula Jones, and Juanita Broaddrick? And if so, will my fellow evangelicals, who exonerate Trump and excoriate Clinton, in hopes of winning a presidential election, not prove themselves every bit as hypocritical as liberal Democrats, who excoriate Trump and exonerate Clinton, in hopes of winning a presidential election?
Why oh why can’t the contemporary church in America wake up to the fact that its wallowing in the mire of modern-day politics does nothing but undermine its Christian witness? Jesus said that we, His church, were to be the salt of the earth; that is, the preserver of society (Matthew 5:13). We preserve society by standing up against its evils. However, Jesus warned us that our failure to do so would result in us losing all credibility in our society and being tossed to the side by it and trodden under foot of men. Is there any doubt that a Trump supporting evangelical church is losing its saltiness, being scorned in our society, and being discarded by men as despicably duplicitous?