Another huge thank you to Pastor Wayne Edwards from Georgia, USA. for this summary of where humanity finds itself this week. His latest Sermon will feature tomorrow, together with his complete weekly collection of topical articles. Deary me, I feel my zoo getting closer to closing with every passing week. When are you Australian humans going to wake up and grasp what is being done to you again by so few people? History is repeating itself whilst you slumber on. Although this is written about America, it is equally applicable to Australia. (See the biography of Pastor Wayne and the origins of Heritage Baptist Church at the end of this post).

Gibber! Gibber

Chugley

“To Not Speak is to Speak!”  

Wayne J. Edwards – September 18, 2021

The above quote is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran pastor, who spoke out against the rise of Nazism in the early 1940s. After being accused of association with the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. He was tried and hanged on April 9, 1945. The full quote is: “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.” Oh, how Bonhoeffer’s words haunt the American church today!

Many years ago, Charlie Reese published an article regarding the ineptitude and ineffectiveness of those in charge of our federal government. He said:

“The American People are Paying Greatly for Congress’ Actions and/or Inactions. One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices; 545 human beings out of 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. It seems inconceivable that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted, by present facts, of incompetence and irresponsibility.”

Without question, our national leaders are endorsing the most morally wicked agenda in our nation’s history. Sadly, unless God intervenes, our children’s children will suffer greatly for their actions. However, I believe the church’s response to their malfeasance is just as serious, if not worse, for we have become complicit in their iniquity by our silence.

As my friend, William Koenig wrote: “The cause of every major problem our nation is embroiled in today, and the solution to every major problem our nation is facing today is in the Bible.”  

As Oswald Chambers wrote: “sin dwells in human nature, but the Bible makes it very clear that it is an abnormal thing, it has no right there, it does not belong to human nature as God designed it. Sin has come into human nature and perverted and twisted it. The Redemption of God through our Lord Jesus Christ delivers human nature from sin.”

The root cause of every problem we are facing today, whether in our nation’s government or the issues of our personal lives, is sin, and the only remedy for sin is the shed blood of Jesus Christ. However, with only a few exceptions, that is not the message we hear today from the majority of the pulpits.

Even within the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, the priority of saving souls from sin has been replaced with protecting the lost from poverty, and solving the problems caused by racial discrimination, and social injustice. While I believe the gospel must be manifested in our willingness to become involved in the crises of people’s lives, we should not become so engaged in treating the effects of man’s sinfulness upon other men that we forget to address the root cause of their malady, which is sin.

In 1937, Professor H. Richard Niebuhr wrote that protestant liberalism’s message and the social gospel had led to “a God without wrath [who] brought men without sin, into a world without judgment, through the ministrations of Christ without a cross.” While I differ with Niebuhr on many theological issues, he was correct in his analysis of the ineffectiveness of the social gospel, and we see that folly manifested in our culture today.

Nowhere in the Scriptures are we told to “Christianize” the culture. We are told that Satan is the god of this world and will be until Jesus returns as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. Our assignment is to preach the gospel with our lips and to live the gospel with our lives, for it is through such “foolishness” that God is calling out a people for Himself.

Is that the message you hear from today’s pulpits? The majority of people in today’s churches are biblical illiterates; they have little understanding of the Word of God. Sixty-seven percent of those who attend church regularly believe Biblical prophecy is allegorical; i.e., this is the way life will be on earth forever, which means we have no hope for the future. At least fifty percent of those who attend church regularly condone abortion and same-sex unions.

Your education system teaches your children that you evolved from Chimpanzees….

Before we point fingers at the misconduct of our political leaders, we need to be correcting the false teaching coming from our pulpits. While there are 545 people in positions of leadership in Washington, there are 380,000 churches in the U.S. with a membership of more than 90-million people.  Where is the call to prayer, much less repentance? The silence of today’s church is deafening, for “not to speak is to speak, and not to act is to act.”

Christians are called to be a restraining force against the evil of our day. 2 Timothy 3 describes that the time before Jesus’ return will be “perilous.” Nevertheless, it is our responsibility to stand up for Biblical truth. We are not to say that because the times are evil, we might as well sit on our hands. We are called to be salt and light: to delay the decaying process of our increasingly corrupt society and to shine the light of truth to those who live in the darkness of sin.

While the Bible refers to the moon as one of two “great lights,” we know the moon does not produce any light of its own; but instead, it is a reflection of the sun. In Genesis 1:16, God said he put the moon there to “govern the night.”

Such is the call to every born-again believer in Jesus Christ. Humanly speaking, there is no way to win this war because we are up against the “rulers of the darkness of this age, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” However, win or lose, God has called us to be such powerful reflectors of His glory that we hold back the encroaching darkness of depravity until the Lord removes us via the Rapture.

In a recent interview with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, Franklin Graham said:

“The worst thing that could happen is for the Lord Jesus Christ to come back and find us sitting on our hands and keeping our mouths shut. When He comes back, I hope He finds us fighting and standing for truth; I’m talking about standing up against this onslaught, this tsunami, this tidal wave of evil that is coming down on society today.”

As you read the following articles, pray for God to give you discernment to know how to respond to it all. I urge you to read Ephesians 6:12-20 and to prayerfully put on the whole armor of God each day that you may be able to withstand in this evil day.

However, as Paul also said in verses 19-20, pray that “utterance will be given unto you; that you may open your mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel – that you may speak boldly, as you ought to speak,” for to not speak is to speak, and the silence of today’s church is deafening. – Wayne Edwards

THE STORY OF PASTOR EDWARDS AND HERITAGE BAPTIST CHURCH

 PERRY — In 2010, four families decided to organize a church that stood firmly on their traditional Baptist heritage.

Today, that church, in Perry Georgia USA, is called Heritage Baptist Church, a growing congregation “earnestly contending for the faith.”

“That’s a good headline for us: earnestly contending for the faith,” said Wayne Edwards, the church’s pastor.

“Heritage is a Bible preaching and teaching church,” he said. “I think there’s a real hunger for the word of God and we’re trying to offer it. Our people don’t mind a 57-minute sermon and are eager to get in the Bible and learn the word in other ways, too.”

Edwards said one example is the church’s lay Bible institute. He said a significant percentage of the church’s members have graduated from its Bible-college level coursework, including 22 recent graduates. He said the institute consists of two 12-week sessions of two-hour Sunday afternoon classes.

“I guess you could describe us as traditional and Biblical,” Edwards said. “That’s true in our worship style as well as doctrinally. We sort of stand here against the left leaning drift and how many churches are conforming to the culture in order to reach the culture. We’re going to stay conformed to Christ and preach Christ to the culture in order to reach the culture.”

Edwards said the church remains true to historic Baptist distinctives such as the authority and sufficiency of Scripture, the importance of God-focused, Christ-centered and word-based worship, the necessity of strong commitment to doctrinal truth, the requirement of a changed life as evidence of salvation, and the obligation to intentionally disciple those who become a part of the family of faith.

He said the battle of today’s church is not primarily against the flood of evil from the outside, but against a corruption of the truth on the inside.

Edwards, 72, and his wife, Linda, are both originally from Toccoa. He said they’ve been in ministry for 40 years, 16 as senior pastor. Edwards is a graduate of Columbia International University, Columbia, South Carolina.

Edwards brings a wider range to Heritage’s ministry and outreach through his Mature Ministries, which provides encouragement and accountability to Christians and Christian leaders through materials, conferences and discipleship. It also involves others in outreach to Nicaragua, which adds to the church’s commitment to missions through Southern Baptist programs worldwide.