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THE JESUS MANIFESTO: A CALL TO REVOLUTION
Michael
L. Brown
The dawning of the 21st century
finds the
church
of
America
in a moral and spiritual crisis. Decades of self-centered living and
worldliness have taken their toll. Years of compromise and toothless gospel
preaching have had their effect. And now we have reached the moment of truth:
Either we wake up, stand up, speak up, and act up, or we run the risk of
becoming a mere historic curiosity, an irrelevant religious sideshow, an
entertaining, harmless spectacle. Something must change, and it must change now.
There is no other choice.
Thirty-five years ago, a counterculture
revolution swept through
America
, resulting in a sudden, steep moral decline. Since that time (from the early
’60s until today), the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has
tripled, reported violent crime has quadrupled, the prison population has
quintupled, the percentage of babies born out of wedlock has risen six-fold, and
couples living together out of wedlock has risen sevenfold. And the end is not
in sight.
The last generation’s counterculture of
rebellion has become this generation’s establishment of revulsion, and what
was unthinkable thirty years ago – daytime talk shows celebrating adultery and
incest; homosexual love scenes on major network TV; eleven year-old multiple
murderers; massacres in our schools and houses of worship – is a matter of
course today. We need a revolution!
But this revolution will be different than other
revolutions – including the revolution that birthed our nation more than 200
years ago. This revolution will not be fought with earthly weapons of
destruction – not with guns and knives and bullets and bombs. It will not be
fought with hatred, intimidation, or brute force. No. It will be fought with the
message of the gospel, with the love of God, with the power of the Spirit, with
radical holiness, with sacrifice, compassion, and courage. It will be a Jesus
revolution, an intense clash between two spiritual kingdoms, a heavenly attack
on the enemy’s strongholds, a no compromise stand for morality and truth. And
it will impact society in a lasting way. It must!
Revolution means upheaval. Revolution means the
overthrowing of the status quo. We dare not downplay the significance of the
word. Revolution is a matter of life and death, and our revolution flows from
the blood of the Savior to the blood of the martyr. We put down our sword and
take up our cross, overcoming Satan by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our
testimony, and by not loving our lives so much as to shrink from death (Revelation
12:11). Nothing can stop a revolution like this!
Our revolution is fueled by the power of the
gospel, and the gospel does violence to the forces of hell. We must recover the
fullness of the gospel of Jesus! It is nothing less than a direct assault on the
kingdom
of
Satan
, a frontal attack on hostile, spiritual powers, a mortal confrontation of light
against darkness. It brings about the ultimate counterculture conflict.
That’s why Jesus said to His disciples,
"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. If you
belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong
to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world
hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his
master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed
My teaching, they will obey yours also" (John
15:18
-20).
That’s why Paul explained that "everyone
who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted" (II Timothy
3:12), reminding the disciples that, "We must go through many hardships to
enter the
kingdom
of
God" (Acts
14:22). God’s people march to the beat of a different drummer. God’s obedient
people will always offend the world, no matter how much we seek to be
peacemakers and to walk in compassion and love. Our very lifestyles are a
reproof to the ungodly.
That’s why Joseph Parker could say more than a
century ago, "The man whose little sermon is ‘repent’ sets himself
against his age, and will for the time being be battered mercilessly by the age
whose moral tone he challenges. There is but one end for such a man -- ‘off
with his head!’ You had better not try to preach repentance until you have
pledged your head to heaven." The gospel means conflict and confrontation,
and all who stand for righteousness will be resisted.
That’s why Jesus was accused by his own people
of being "a Samaritan and demon-possessed" (John 8:48), why Paul and
Silas were accused of "throwing cities into an uproar" (Acts 16:20)
and "causing trouble all over the world" (Acts 17:6), why Paul himself
was mistaken for being an "Egyptian who started a revolt and led four
thousand terrorists out into the desert" (Acts 21:38). The gospel is
subversive. The gospel is a threat to the kingdom of darkness. The gospel is
revolutionary.
We’re in a war, and war means conflict,
hardship, and sacrifice. As Leonard Ravenhill wrote, "When a nation calls
its prime men to battle, homes are broken, weeping sweethearts say their
good-byes, businesses are closed, college careers are wrecked, factories are
refitted for wartime production, rationing and discomforts are accepted -- all
for war. Can we do less for the greatest fight that this world has ever known
outside of the cross -- this end-time siege on sanity, morality, and
spirituality?"
Satan’s strategy is to institutionalize the
Church, to turn the Body of Christ into a powerless religious system. If that
tactic fails, he tries to desensitize us and lull us to sleep until we lose our
convictions and our sense of outrage is gone. And he is always seeking to seduce
us into sin until we become just like the world, enslaved by its passions and
lusts. And when he thinks he has succeeded, when he no longer feels threatened
by the people of God, then he gets aggressive and brazenly puts forth his
agenda. He’s doing it today. We need a revolution!
The cat is out of the bag. The secret is no
longer a secret. Anti-God forces are after the soul of our nation, and if we
don’t wake up now, if we don’t
take a stand now, if we don’t repent
and pray and rise and speak and act now,
then instead of this great country being "the land of the free and the home
of the brave" our nation could become "the land of sleaze and the home
of depraved." We need a revolution!
DNA tests to find out who fathered the baby are
here. (In fifteen of our nation’s largest cities, more than 90% of the babies
born to teens are illegitimate.) Legalized same-sex "civil unions" are
here. Children’s textbooks encouraging adolescent fornication are here. School
hallways splattered with teenage blood are here. Bans on using the name of Jesus
at our graduations are here. Topless, feminist worship services on our college
campuses are here. We need a revolution!
We live in a time of ethical madness and social
uncertainty, a time when talk of a moral revolution should be everywhere.
Instead, the best-selling "revolutionary" books are books about new
diets. What does this say for us as a people? When we need to be talking about
the call to die for the gospel, we are talking instead about the call to diet
for good looks. What a sad indictment! And what does it say of our
self-deception and lack of discipline when we are at one and the same time the
world’s best-read nation on diet and nutrition and the world’s most obese?
Even our pets are overweight. We need a revolution!
The
United States
boasts the highest percentage of professing evangelicals in the industrialized
world, with more than 36% of Americans – meaning more than 90 million people
– classified as born-again. Yet
America
has:
The highest percentage of single-parent families in the
industrialized world
The highest abortion rate in the industrialized world
The highest rate of sexually transmitted diseases in
the industrialized world (the rates of syphilis and gonorrhea transmission are
almost 500% higher than the highest rates in the other industrialized nations)
The highest teenage birth rate in the industrialized
world (by far!)
The highest rate of teenage drug use in the
industrialized world
We need a revolution!
Our society is deteriorating all around us and
even non-believers sense that something is wrong. Why? It is because we, the
people of God, the army of the Lord Jesus, the messengers of liberation, the
ambassadors of reconciliation, have been sidetracked by the love of this world
and distracted by the cares of this age. As a result, we have not changed this
generation. This generation has changed us!
Rather than seasoning the world like salt and
brightening the world like light, we now smell and taste like the world, and its
darkness is snuffing out our lamps. Rather than setting captives free by the
power of Jesus’ blood, many of us are being ensnared and enslaved, making a
mockery of that sacred blood. Rather than making disciples of sinners and
teaching them the ways of God, many of us are being discipled by them, learning
their ways, imitating their lifestyles, and conforming to their values.
In the last thirty years, whose standards have
changed more, those of the church or those of the society? Who is looking like
whom? A 1997 survey conducted by George Barna used 152 different items to
compare the church and the world. He found virtually no difference between the
two. In fact, the divorce rate today among evangelicals is higher than the
divorce rate among atheists. We need a revolution!
Communist educators visiting
America
have been shocked by the materialism and worldliness of many of our Christian
young people, while Islamic leaders are appalled by the rampant sexual sin and
shameless immodesty among many who profess Christ as Lord. The ideals of the
unsaved are often more lofty than the ideals of the saved. We need a revolution!
Just consider how far things have fallen,
despite decades of 24-hour gospel radio and TV, hundreds of Bible colleges and
seminaries, thousands of Christian schools and bookstores, and churches and
ministries too numerous to count. Thirty years ago, men having sex with men and
women having sex with women was considered perverse. Now it is considered
perverse – homophobic, hateful, mean-spirited, and bigoted – to call such
behavior wrong. We need a revolution!
Thirty years ago, not even science fiction
writers would have predicted that American companies would be making money off
the sale of the skin and brains and limbs and spinal chords of aborted babies.
Today, Congress will not even pass legislation to make this thriving practice
illegal. We need a revolution!
In 1960, only 2.3% of percent of white women had
children out of wedlock. By 1997, more than 25% -- a ten-fold increase! – were
having children out of wedlock (despite millions being aborted before they ever
left the womb). In the African American community, that number rose from 23%
percent to more than 68%. We need a revolution!
In 1962, the Supreme Court outlawed organized,
public prayer in our schools (without citing a single historic precedent to back
its decision), and we complied with that ruling. Now, in the year 2000, the
Court has banned voluntary public
prayer in our schools. Will we comply with this ruling too? At what point do we
say, "We must obey God rather than man"? At what point do we say,
"Enough is enough"? We need a revolution!
On
April 12, 2000
, at
Pearl River
Central
High School
in
Carrierre
,
Mississippi
, the Spirit of God fell upon the students attending a voluntary, pre-class
assembly led by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. As students lined up fifty
deep to confess their sins and get right with God and one another, the
principal, Lolita Lee, herself a Christian, decided to let the meeting go on
through the day. Civil libertarians were outraged, but, as Time
magazine reported (June 5, 2000, p. 61), "The school received hundreds
of congratulatory e-mails. ‘Thank you for your courage,’ wrote an
Ohio
man to Lee. ‘You have done the equivalent of not moving to the back of the
bus.’" Isn’t it time we follow suit? If not now, when? What more needs
to happen?
For more than two hundred years, the Bible was
commonly used as a textbook in our schools, and generations of children learned
the ABC’s with a Scripture truth for each letter. But in 1963, the Supreme
Court banned required reading of the Scriptures from our schools, and once
again, we complied with the ruling. Why? By 1980, the Court had ordered the
removal of the Ten Commandments from public view in our schools and by 1985, it
outlawed benedictions or invocations in formal school activities. Some lower
courts even ruled against students praying out loud over their cafeteria meals.
We need a revolution!
When the governing authorities seized the
apostles and charged them not to speak in Jesus’ name, Peter replied,
"Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken
unto you more than unto God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the things which we
have seen and heard." (Acts
4:19
-20). And they kept speaking! As a result, they were arrested, whipped, and
strictly ordered not to speak any more in Jesus’ name. But, Scripture records,
"The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted
worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name. Day after day, in the temple courts
and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good
news that Jesus is the Messiah" (Acts
5:41
-42). Can we learn something from this?
Christians around the world today are severely
persecuted because they refuse to obey oppressive, unjust laws. Many of them are
model citizens in every way, obedient, respectful and peace loving. But when the
government – or religious establishment – forbids them to read their Bibles,
forbids them to baptize, forbids them to share their faith, forbids them to
gather together, forbids them to make disciples, then they say with the
apostles, "We must obey God rather than man." At what point does this
apply to us?
Our persecuted brothers and sisters around the
world have been discriminated against, deprived of their livelihoods,
imprisoned, tortured, and killed, all because they refused to render to Caesar
that which does not belong to Caesar. Yet we are afraid to take a stand for
Jesus if it would threaten our income, or cost us a scholarship, or make us
unpopular. Why this double standard? Why do they refuse to comply – even when
threatened with imprisonment and death – while we willfully comply, even when
there is no threat? We need a revolution!
When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were
commanded to worship an idol or be subject to a fiery death, they refused to bow
down (Daniel 3). But today, with no one commanding us, we freely worship the
idols of our society, bowing down to the gods of unclean entertainment, sensual
fashion, and unbridled materialism and greed. Our obsession with sports is
idolatrous as well, to the point that many churches throughout the land make
sure their Sunday services end in time for the afternoon football games,
canceling their services entirely the night of the Super Bowl. We need a
revolution!
When Daniel was told that an edict had been
passed declaring that "anyone who prays to any god or man during the next
thirty days, except to [the] king, shall be thrown into the lions’ den . . .
he went home to his upstairs room where the windows opened toward Jerusalem.
Three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God,
just as he had done before" (Daniel 6:10-12). It’s time that we follow
his lead. Godly defiance spells triumph while retreat spells defeat. We need a
revolution!
Year by year our religious freedoms have been
taken away, while special rights and freedoms have been given to those whom the
Bible calls "wicked" (see
I Corinthians 6:9-11; in the Scriptures,
homosexuality is classified along with adultery, fornication, theft,
drunkenness, hatred, anger, greed, and hypocrisy, and all who practice such
things are called "wicked"). Thus the Supreme Court ruled that a
school full of Christians cannot choose to have prayer before a school sporting
event since it would offend and exclude the minority who don’t want to pray.
But when homosexuals introduce children’s textbooks into our schools outlining
in graphic detail the intricacies of gay sex, the offended majority is told to
accept it. Right is now wrong and wrong is now right, and the will of the
godless is imposed on the will of the godly. We need a revolution!
When a gay man is beaten to death because he is
gay – this is a reprehensible, despicable act that every decent person should
abhor – it causes a national uproar, with loud voices in the government
calling for new legislation against hate crimes. And we should
speak out against such deplorable crimes. But when Christians students are shot
to death as they profess their faith in God, the government raises its voice to
forbid the placing of memorial crosses on school property. The handwriting is on
the wall. The strategy is clear. We need a revolution!
Teachers in our public schools can give condom
demonstrations to our teens and use books like "Heather Had Two
Mommies" to teach our kids to read, and we are required to support this
with our own tax dollars. But let a teacher read from the Scriptures to a
seeking, needy student, and that teacher could be out of a job – all because
of the First Amendment’s so-called separation of Church and State.
But that is not what the First Amendment
intended. It simply stated that, "Congress shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,"
meaning, first, that the government could not form a national denomination (like
the Church of England of old) and require all Americans to be part of it, and
second, that there would be religious freedom for all. As emphasized by Stephen
Carter, professor of law at
Yale
University
, "The wall of separation of church and state is not there to protect the
state from the church; it is there to protect the church from the state. It
stands as a divide to preserve religious freedom. And one needs to protect the
church from the state because the latter will utilize its enormous powers to do
what the state has always done – either subvert the religion or destroy it. If
we continue our slide toward a state that breaches the wall of separation
whenever it is convenient, then I worry about the great risk to religious
freedom. In the end, such a breach could destroy our ability to form the
communities of resistance that are crucial if we are going to have a chance to
transform the nation."
Our forefathers wanted to ensure that the
government would not be able to impose its will on the church. For more than one
generation now, this has been totally reversed and stood on its head, and the
price has been very high, with skyrocketing crime rates and plummeting rates of
morality and literacy. And what has become of the First Amendment’s guarantee
of "the free exercise" of religion when the courts tell us that we
cannot use religious symbols on public property, cannot post the Ten
Commandments in government buildings, and cannot use the name of Jesus in public
school events? We have lost our
religious freedom. We need a revolution!
In 1999, a bill was brought before Congress that
would have required churches and religious institutions to hire gays and
lesbians if they were qualified for the job in question – despite their sexual
preference. And the bill failed by only one vote! Even more distressing is that
if the bill did pass, there was another bill ready to follow, calling for a ban
on even speaking against a person’s sexual preference. Such speech would be
deemed hate speech, punishable by law, and potentially meaning that a pastor
simply expounding the Scriptures to his flock could be arrested. Yet this is the
very thing our Founding Fathers were trying to protect us from. So much for the
First Amendment and religious freedom! The fact that such laws could even be
crafted for Congress proves that we have long since passed the breaking point
– yet some Christian leaders would have felt obligated to obey these laws if
they had passed. We need a revolution!
We have gone from debating a woman’s
"right to choose" to sucking out the brains of third trimester babies,
from arguing about the medical definition of death to legalizing
physician-assisted suicide, from needing metal detectors at airports to needing
metal detectors at schools (and soon at houses of worship?), from tracking down
absentee fathers to trying to figure out who the father is, from the outlawing
of mandatory school prayer to the outlawing of voluntary school prayer. We need
a revolution!
Without a holy, counterculture revolution,
America
could become a society where candid religious expression is outlawed, a society
where it is almost impossible to keep our children free from the pollution of
the world, a society teetering perilously close to the thunderous judgments of
God. Such things have happened to other nations, and such things could happen to
us.
But all is not lost! The gospel has changed
societies before, and the gospel can change societies again. For countless
centuries,
India
had the practice of widow-burning, where the widow of a deceased man was
sometimes burned alive with her husband’s corpse. This horrific practice was
outlawed through the tireless efforts of missionary William Carey. Both
slave-trading and unjust child-labor laws were abolished in
Britain
through the fearless work of the Christian political leader William
Wilberforce. And this followed on the heels of
England
’s transformation through the sacrificial labors of John Wesley and his
Methodist followers, saving the nation from the anarchy and violence of the
French Revolution. Around the world today, whole communities are being impacted
by united prayer and evangelism, and here in our land, there is a rising
momentum of concerted, city-wide prayer not seen for decades.
There are pockets of spiritual renewal
throughout the country, and the tides of a radical youth revival are rapidly
rising. Another Jesus people movement could be near, a heaven-sent revolution
far greater than the worldwide Jesus movement of 1971-1975, when hundreds of
thousands of hippies and radicals were swept into the kingdom. Even now, it is
at the door. And not only will multitudes of lost sinners be truly saved, but
multitudes of casual church goers will also be truly saved. Just think of what
would happen if even one-quarter of
America
’s professing believers got totally and uncompromisingly right with God –
and then each of them touched just five or six other people. It would quickly
reverse our nation’s moral decline. Despite our perilous condition, it’s
still not too late!
If our nation could be changed for the worse in
one decade – this is what happened in the 1960s, despite progress in Civil
Rights and some other social areas – it can be changed for the better in one
decade. If angry student protests on college campuses could help stop an
international war (Vietnam
), what could holy student "protests" on our campuses accomplish?
America
can be impacted for the good, and as followers of Jesus, we are called to make
that impact. We do it by walking in the light, as He is in the light; by calling
the lost to turn back to God in repentance; by preaching the gospel and making
disciples; by proclaiming liberty to the captives; by pursuing righteousness in
every area of public and private life; by acts of kindness, mercy, and
compassion, overcoming evil with good; by prayer, fasting, and the power of God;
by living holy lives and setting holy examples; by being a prophetic voice and a
moral conscience to society; by Spirit-led community involvement and godly
political action; by non-violent resistance of injustice and oppression.
What else should Christians do? Should not the
presence of tens of millions of believers be felt in a nation? Should we not
make a difference for God? Should we not be a force for spiritual and moral
reformation? Should we not actively extend the
kingdom
of
God
? Should not the Great Commission leave tangible results in its wake?
This is our sacred moment, our solemn time for
action. If we will unshackle ourselves from the love of this world – from our
lusts, our addictions, our obsessions – and give ourselves wholly to the
purposes of God, we can shake this nation. If we learn the principle that to
save our lives is to lose our lives, while to lose our lives for the Lord is to
save our lives, then we can really live. It’s time we experience life!
The counterculture revolution began when people
said, "Something is missing. Something is wrong. There must be something
greater than this." And they were right! There must be something greater
than eating and drinking, working and sleeping, existing.
There must be something greater than the American dream. There must be something
greater than simply getting a good education so that you can find a good job and
have a good family so that your kids can get a good education and find a good job and have a good family
so that their kids can a get a good education . . . Is this really it? Is this
why God put us here on this earth? There is more!
Our goal is revival, not survival; the
transformation of the human race, not the preservation of the human race. There
is a divine purpose and destiny to our time here on earth. Even atheistic
revolutionaries understand that there must be a higher purpose to life, and they
give themselves for their cause, freely dying for their revolution so that their
families can live in what they hope will be a better world. And they do this
without the promise of heaven or eternal life. How much more should we give
ourselves to the cause of our Master? How much more readily should we hear the
call?
Nate Saint and Jim Elliot, martyred as
missionaries in 1956, understood this well. They recognized that life was far
more meaningful, far more rich, far more significant than most of us ever
realize, even if we live to be 100 years old. As Nate Saint wrote, "People
who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as
missionaries. They forget they too are expending their lives and when the bubble
has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years
they have wasted."
Yes, everyone’s bubble will burst one day. The
dust will return to dust and the spirit will return to God who gave it (see
Ecclesiastes
12:7). On that day, only one thing will matter: Did we fulfill the purpose of
God? Did we make a lasting impact for Jesus? Did we leave behind a blessed
legacy for the generation to come? All the silly little things that seemed so
important to us during our few years here on earth will seem utterly
insignificant when they are viewed in the light of eternity.
How wise it was for Jim Elliot to write these
now-famous words: "That man is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to
gain what he cannot lose." And how wise it was for him to lift up this
petition before the Lord as a young man in college: "God, I pray, Thee,
light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn for Thee. Consume my life, my
God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life, but a full one, like you, Lord
Jesus." Oh, that all of us would lead truly full
lives!
Rachel Scott was not wrong when she wrote in her
journal, "I have no more personal friends at school. But you know what? I
am not going to apologize for speaking the name of Jesus. I am not going to
justify my faith to them, and I am not going to hide the light that God has put
into me. If I have to sacrifice everything, I will. I will take it. If my
friends have to become my enemies for me to be with my best friend Jesus, then
that’s fine with me." Jesus is worth it to the end!
Fellow-soldiers, holy servants of the risen
Lord, blood-bought disciples of the Master, heed the call. It’s now or never,
time to put up or shut up. Either we take a stand once and for all or forever we
hang our heads in shame. History is eagerly anticipating our next move. This is
the hour we have been waiting for. So, on with it – by life or by death. The
revolution won’t wait.
The Jesus Manifesto: A Call to Revolution (Copyright
© 2000, Michael L. Brown) is distributed by ICN Ministries (www.icnministries.org)
and is released in conjunction with The Call DC (September 2, 2000). It may be reproduced
and distributed freely in any form, provided that it is copied unedited, in its
entirety, and with proper attribution, and is not sold or distributed for
profit. Some material in The Jesus Manifesto has been adapted and excerpted from
Michael L. Brown, Revolution! The Call to Holy War (Ventura,
CA: Gospel Light, 2000).
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