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CHUCK COLSON IS RIGHT: THE STATE IS PLAYING GOD
By Julian Mann
http://cranmercurate.blogspot.com/
July 2, 2010
Chuck Colson is right: the politically-correct establishment in the once Christian West thinks the right to worship and serve the living God is conferred by them.
In an urgent alert to Christian journalists and bloggers, Mr Colson warns: You need to know about what may be one of the gravest, most insidious threats to religious freedom I've seen in my lifetime: What may be an attempt, at the very highest levels of government, to RE-DEFINE the very meaning of religious freedom, from "free exercise" to merely private worship.
If what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a speech at Georgetown University reflects a new direction in government policy, then mark my words, our religious liberties are in peril.
That distinction between freedom of religion and freedom of worship, highlighted by Mr Colson, is a vitally important one. Mr Colson hits the nail bang on the head when he says that an Islamic dictatorship such as Saudi Arabia allows freedom of worship - Christians meeting in private - but it will not allow Bibles and church buildings. It will not allow the truth of God out in the public square.
The politically-correct activists running the US and increasingly the UK think government is god and that government action is free of the original sin that taints the actions of private individuals without state supervision. Graciously, the PC state may confer on believers the right of worship, provided we keep our counter-cultural opinions to ourselves.
Political correctness is thus a Westernised version of Islam. It wants to control everything because it thinks it has a monopoly of the truth.
President Nixon's former enforcer understands how power works. We need to listen to him, but more importantly we need to listen to the New Testament.
The book of Revelation describes the ministry of the two witnesses in chapter 11. There are two of them because biblically two witnesses are required to verify the truth of a matter (cf Deuteronomy 19v15). These witnesses in Revelation symbolise the Church of Jesus Christ in its prophetic calling.
Here is how the beast, symbolising deified secular power, treats them: And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them, and shall overwhelm them, and kill them. And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified (Revelation 11v7-8 - Authorised Version).
Our calling to speak the truth of God does not derive from the state; it derives from the living God. So the Church must speak out publicly and openly for freedom of religion in the street of the great city, not merely plead for freedom of worship behind closed doors. The result of so doing is that we get treated as God Incarnate was when He came to the city and told the truth.
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