The Big(ger) Picture: An Essay on the War Against the Fatherhood of God and Culture of Christ

By Marshall Wood

“Whatever God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it [or] taken from it.”

—Eccles. 3:14-15, NKJV

 

The Big(ger) Picture is a call for Christians everywhere to choose the Word of God as their only basis for Christian living. Author Marshall M. Wood warns the church not to be duped by so-called “new” doctrines, but to live the way the Bible instructs because God’s Word never changes.

 

This clarion call to a dedicated Christian life will show you:

·       Why apostasy is running rampant in the church today.

·       How to recognize it using God’s Word.

·       What you can do to renew your commitment to the Lord.

 

Wood reminds us that, as Christians, we must make a choice. “We cannot live in both worlds,” he states. “It is one or the other.”

 

How will you choose? 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Creation House
• Release date: Jun 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781621367031

Book preview

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THE BIG(GER) PICTURE by Marshall Wood

Published by Creation House

A Charisma Media Company

600 Rinehart Road

Lake Mary, Florida 32746

www.charismamedia.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: The views expressed in this book are not necessarily the views held by the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Design Director: Bill Johnson

Cover design by Terry Clifton

Copyright © 2014 by Marshall Wood

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: 2013952181

International Standard Book Number: HB: 978-1-62136-701-7 / PB: 978-1-62136-702-4

E-book International Standard Book Number: 978-1-62136-703-1

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors or for changes that occur after publication.

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Rev. Clyde Risen and Dr. Johnnie Stallings. In the case of the former, this book would not exist and my life would be much different without Brother Clyde’s patient and loving persistence during 1975 in calling me back to Christ. His faithful ministry impacted a husband, father and all the people with whom I have interacted as a Believer since that year. My present ministry is his.

In the case of the later, if I truly believe the words I’ve written in this book, a little African American woman with a big heart has the most important ministry in my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida, and, in a sense, maybe even the whole country. May God bless them both.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword

Acknowledgements

Introduction: An Unfinished Letter Becomes a Long Essay

1 The Bigger Picture—Christians Need One

2 Divinely Objective—God Must Be Father

3 Demonic Subjectivity—Satan Behind the World

4 Disobedient, Ignorant Men—Mediocre Leadership

5 Wreckage of Ignorant Disobedience—Businesses Small and Large

6 Distaff Deception—Failure to Follow

7 Chains of Rebellion—Fear, Manipulation, and Security Obsession

8 Two Women of Revelation—One Casts a Spell Today

9 Black America—Willing Victim of the Witch

10 The Pope, the Prophet, and the Prince of Peace

Epilogue: Quo Vadis?

Notes

About the Author

Contact the Author

Foreword

THERE ARE TOO MANY ALREADY, SO

WHY WRITE ANOTHER BOOK?

THIS ASSEMBLY of pages you see before you could be easily replaced by a photograph of the one who wrote it holding up a Bible and pointing to it. In fact, by simply turning to John’s three epistles at the end of the New Testament and earnestly pleading with you to meditate on the passages you find there, I could save a lot of work. The Word of God trumps everything else ever written, is fully sufficient by itself to lead any humble soul into the eternal wisdom, knowledge, and understanding we are commanded to seek, and the Holy Spirit is the teacher when truth-seekers pore over His pages.

Yet, of the making of words in the form of books, there is no end. Could you guess the number of pages printed in the course of human history? I can’t. I spend lots of time in bookstores and can see there are books upon books on every possible subject. The Word of God, however—that Book of books—contains the truth of which all these others are but a tiny shadow. It is a book that also quickly reveals the errors of those who miss the mark; voluminous works that have deceived and misled those ignorant of the light of God’s truth. The Bible makes everything else of little value by its sheer completeness and direct applicability to our lives. That I’m adding to the amount of unnecessary words being printed seems pointless and begs the question: why waste my time and yours? Let me explain it this way.

At a significant moment in his life, John penned First, Second, and Third John, as a record of what he knew to be true about God, Jesus Christ, and the mission all believers share, urging them to live the kind of lives that these new Christians ought to live before the world. He was aware that pernicious error had begun spreading like a cancer through the seductive teachings of those he called antichrists and false teachers. He knew he needed to personalize a warning to the church, and important leaders within it, urging them to cling to what they had heard from faithful brothers and not to be beguiled by new doctrines. He wrote the beautiful words of those three short letters with a heart full of love and concern knowing that his time was growing short. In 1 John 2:7 the apostle explained to those to whom he was writing that much of what he was giving them was nothing new; rather, it was something they had heard from the beginning, an old and familiar commandment they should have known, but with a new emphasis—a message hidden in plain sight, as is the case with the Old Testament.

I am not John. His words speak both for themselves and to us today, but I know my productive years are dwindling, so his words and actions have more meaning to me at this point in my life. I understand why he would write those words from Patmos, the unction of God’s Holy Spirit notwithstanding. I’ve learned that I should live every day without assuming that many will follow; to number my days, so to speak, that I not waste the precious time God has assigned to me.

Just as John wanted to write a few letters to those he loved and to those in his sphere of influence telling them what he had learned of our Father and His ways, so do I. As I stated, I am not John. My words are not scripture, but there is a compulsion to get this said regardless of how much better it has already been revealed in the Bible. That compulsion is born of the deep love I have for my family and friends, those people my Father has given me over the course of my life for whom I am responsible in a spiritual sense. My burden is reminiscent of Jesus’s prayer in John 17, the real Lord’s Prayer, wherein He intercedes for those the Father has given Him. My own compulsion is fired by the disturbing belief that we are sliding rapidly away from those old commandments which are so plainly printed on the pages of Holy Scripture but are somehow almost invisible to the majority that casually read over them. What follows is a desperate attempt to call attention to the powerful words that can and will be revealed to anyone whose heart has been energized by the Holy Spirit.

During the course of a life now spanning more than six decades, I went through many phases. In the first, I was constrained as a child under the authority of Christian parents and extended family members to act like a Christian, then to seek to really become one when I reached that point in life we call the age of accountability, the beginning of the second phase. I don’t know the what’s or when’s of that cliché concept, but I do know that at some point I became aware that there was One who loved me and was ready to completely enter my heart in a life-changing way. I was almost eleven, and until I was eighteen there were many loving Christian people willing to teach me; to help me grow on my own without any great effort on my part. I learned a good bit about the milk of the gospel. It sustained me, but did not provide the spiritual muscle necessary to live a fruitful Christian life in a pagan world.

The third phase of my Christian walk was sorrowful. For about ten years after my eighteenth birthday, I falsely believed I knew it all, thanks especially to the heathen influence of a very secular public university. There was only the tiniest of spiritual flames flickering in my soul those years during which, progressively, my career as an air force pilot as well as the role of husband and father preoccupied my mind. Thankfully, God erupted into my life again in such a way that a fourth phase was begun, a phase that was characterized by a voracious hunger for the meat of the gospel born by the shame of my new awareness that I knew almost nothing; that I had totally missed the divine command to seek wisdom, knowledge, and understanding; that my soul was literally starving to death.

I said that to say this, and this is the very short version. God put people and circumstances before me as I read and reread the Bible over the course of the next twenty years that made the realities of Scripture come alive. The ministering brothers that God put in my path and the often painful but necessary circumstances I found myself in taught valuable lessons about faith and proved God to be faithful in all things. I have fed on Scripture and have built a library of edifying books by some very wise people. I will not try to recount here all that has happened, but will simply state that God has shown me the absolute supremacy of Scripture and the value of seeking godly wisdom. Here’s the rub.

At the sunset time of my life, I am now concerned because what I’ve come to know about God, my Father, about my assigned mission in His Creation, and about just how a Christian should live his life differs greatly from what I see in Christendom today. It is as if we’ve forgotten those old commandments of 1 John 2:7 that the disciple that Christ loved was urging those under his authority to heed. Can I not be excused for wanting to do as John did? May I not plead openly with those I love, with those under my authority, to stand like Daniel against error? That is why I’ve penned these words which I pray will ultimately point my readers toward a feasting on God’s Holy Word and, to a lesser—though still very important—extent, those written words of wise people whose works now sit on my library shelf. Since you now hold my essay in your hand, you are important to me. May my imperfect but sincere effort point you on toward the absolute truth.

At the beginning of this foreword, I presented an image of the author holding up the Bible and pointing to it. This effort must put God’s Word first for without it nothing meaningful or wise could ever exist. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. That is the door to all truth; however, attendant with that foundational statement is the further admonition from our Father to seek out those things that are hidden but which He has given us his permission—even his expectation—that we find. That critical understanding of how we are to live in this material world led to the Renaissance and to the establishment of great universities by the Christian communities of Western civilization. I believe that is the meaning of Proverbs 25:2. God hides some things from us and expects His children to dig them out for their benefit.

There is much that God has concealed from us, but there is a whole lot more out there that is in His permitted arena of human knowledge that we are expected to search out. Since an event with my very heathen air force squadron commander in December 1975 at McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, I have been on a dogmatic quest to discover those things that my Father has intended from antiquity for me to find. It was probably December 12, 1975, well before my own great reawakening at Altus Air Force Base in March 1977, that I took the first steps toward wisdom by picking up a copy of a Billy Graham Living Bible paraphrase of Scripture with the intent of reading it through from cover to cover. Praise be to God that I eventually accomplished that for the first time in my life and then made it through several translations including King James, the NIV, and the New King James among others. Armed with the spiritual modem of complete Scripture in my mind and the guidance of the Holy Spirit, I was able to find edifying books by both secular and Christian authors that began to build a base of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom that was lacking to that point in my life. Most of those books now sit on the shelves of a pretty decent library in my home, a library that is precious to me and the source of my final point in this forward. Here it is.

In this essay, I intend to base my opinions on my understanding of Scripture. As I’ve already said, the letters of John from the island of Patmos say much more effectively what will be ultimately contained in this book-length essay, and I want to point to Scripture first and foremost by a significant order of magnitude. However, I still want to complete the dyad of Scripture and human wisdom that has so changed my worldview since December 1975 by citing many of those human works that blessed me so richly after the modem of Scripture was embedded in my mind and spirit. After the Word of God, books like Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, Born Again by Chuck Colson, and In His Steps by Charles M. Sheldon helped motivate and shape my willing pursuit of what God wants me to learn. This work then will be full of references to all those other books that now sit in what is the real place of honor in my home: my personal library. I want my sons and others to know those who have blessed my life through their literary efforts and helped shape my life-guiding worldview. I in turn want to shape the worldview of those who follow after me with the understanding that it all begins with Holy Scripture, the infallible words of Jehovah-Rohi, the Lord my Shepherd.

There is a caution that must close this forward. This book is not for everyone. It is written to those who believe and to those under my authority who know they should if they don’t. We will either listen to the world and cling to it or we will heed the voice of those Father God sends to us, recognizing truth in their words. Let John’s words close out this opening portion of my lengthy essay. It is a letter of love to those God has given to me.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOR

THE BIG(GER) PICTURE

THIS HAS BEEN a solitary effort put together when quietness was most abundant. Several folks influenced what I wrote, but One so impacted the work that, as I reread the final draft, I now admit He is the real author. Prior to the very first keystroke, I asked the Holy Spirit to shape the book by speaking to my spirit as I went and by creating circumstances that would cause the right words and thoughts to be formed at the appropriate time; to clearly and without doubt speak to at least someone through whatever emerged from the tips of my fingers. Because I now tell you that the Holy Spirit is the true author, I do not for a minute mean this is Holy Writ. This is the context in which I acknowledge the One behind The Big(ger) Picture.

This collection of words has spoken to me profoundly. If this long essay speaks to no other soul – though I sincerely pray it is used by our Father to bless many – it has been worth every moment of fear and trembling that went into it. In a process of working out my own salvation somewhat publically (see Philippians 2:12-13), I have gained a full understanding of what I truly believe and what I must do now with the remainder of my days. Father God has used the putting together of this particular book to give me that bigger picture I lacked at the beginning. I openly and sincerely acknowledge the Holy Spirit of Father God as the One behind this work. If none are rightly blessed by it, the truth still remains: He wrote it for my edification. You may read His words to me over my shoulder if you like.

God used some others, too. Without the lifework of men like C.S. Lewis and Chuck Colson, I wouldn’t have responded to those prescient spoken and written words of Michael G. Pat Robertson that so electrified my intellect the moment I encountered them. I acknowledge these three with deepest gratitude for setting me up to be instructed by His Spirit. After these three, I am grateful to a special team: my Dad and my wife. He taught me to finish what I started and expressed that often enough to make it stick. There were times when this work was sitting at flight idle dangerously close to a mission abort. Cindy, my excellent wife of (now) almost forty-four years, tolerated for two decades the obsessive, forced discussions I had with her on the emerging main themes. Most would have simply walked out. She, however, hung in there so my Dad’s admonition to see it through could be carried out. Michael, my second son, had the perfect word at a critical hour that kept the work headed toward publication. The kind and gracious Mandi Jackson Wood (daughter-in-law number five) retyped the nearly completed manuscript that at first seemed forever lost when my hard-drive crashed without anything but a paper backup I‘d thankfully kept up-to-date.

Lastly, I acknowledge with sincere gratitude the forbearance of my associates in the cockpit as I was writing this tome. Captains Larry Serman, Seth Stuart and Mike Weber put up with hours of discussion during long crewrests away from home on topics they otherwise might have preferred to forgo. They eventually learned how to tell when one of those dissertations was brewing during some casual conversation with an opportune third party, then to disengage themselves politely so the victim could fend for himself against my wit and wisdom. They were at all times kind, respectful . . . and wary. My Dad had not instructed them, but they did well just the same. They do not have to buy the book . . . .they’ve heard it already.

Introduction

AN UNFINISHED LETTER

BECOMES A LONG ESSAY

Proverbs 22:6

THIS IS THE first sentence of a long essay I’ve intended to write for some time. Most of the first chapter was written a year before I began this work and is part of a long, unfinished letter to several pastors and strong Christian laymen that have been part of our lives in the various places in which this family has lived over the years by the will of our heavenly Father. I suspected God wanted me to finish those incomplete thoughts after I read them again sometime later, so I assumed His Holy Spirit would guide me and began putting more words on the computer screen. What you now see before you will serve as a written record of my core beliefs for my biological and spiritual children to ponder at those opportune moments of life when they’ve been reminded how important their spiritual heritage is to them. By His grace, Cindy and I have both physical and spiritual offspring; sons and daughters of the flesh and of the spirit. I want to leave a written testimony for them of what I know about my heavenly Father, His great purpose for our existence, and how I desire those under my authority in this world to live their lives; a warning not to stray from the paths of righteousness and a spiritual road map for them to follow. I believe that is my duty as a physical and spiritual father. I also write it to those men who have been the iron that sharpens iron in my life and to any others that may want to know what one man whose hope is in Christ has come to believe in his now sixty-plus years.

As I began writing that unfinished letter to several Christian brothers in church leadership positions around this country, it became clear that a broad outline of the foundation of my Christian belief system was evolving. The intent had been to ask them to stand with me on a matter that I thought would be of grave concern to any believer. Since I was asking them to risk some of their credibility in the Christian community on my behalf, it was necessary to be fully transparent as to my motives and core beliefs, especially since all of them had at least some knowledge of my significant spiritual and moral failures in the past. Many had also at previous times expressed concerns over my views on several matters and had not shown much continuing desire to pursue any of those issues further. One notably strong brother in Christ even counseled that my zeal was misplaced; that I was obsessed about this particular issue that to him was only one among many; not a core concern; certainly not worth the emotional energy I had poured into it. Other brothers, though less direct in their words, still showed a general disinterest in discussing these issues any further. Nevertheless, I sat there at the computer typing out a lengthy letter that was on its way to being a book-length essay as I added to it over the weeks. In time, the writing ceased to be a letter, the opportunity to do the project passed, and the time at the word processor only an exercise in trying to put order to all that was emerging from the tips of my fingers. In the end, overcome by the time constraints of a very busy flight schedule, my efforts at the computer slowed, then ceased all together—at least until about six years ago.

God has a way of leaving us to ourselves for a while, then suddenly erupting in our lives to demand a reordering of our priorities. Such continued to be the case as I repeatedly found myself being drawn into deep spiritual conversations with inquisitive people—often total strangers—or given opportunities to meet needs in the lives of others. Most of these events occurred at inopportune times when distracted by other tasks at hand or just a sullen mood. Those are usually the times when He arrives to shake things up and move us along to the next task He has for us. The opportune conversations all centered on those ideas still languishing in the cyberspace of my computer and the words I spoke seemed to hit home with the inquirers. Likewise, the opportunities to serve led to conversations with men happy for the help, men with whom I’d gained some credibility by my actions. They too asked questions, and the answers all seemed to track back to my unfinished words from the previous year. All suggested my thoughts should be put into written form: too many people in too short a time to be coincidence. Finally, my oldest son, a very successful advertising executive who had strayed from the Christian walk, suddenly reversed course and seemed to be returning to his roots with his wife and a three year-old angel in tow, a little girl from tough circumstances whom they committed to adopt and to raise in a Christian home. It was time to revisit putting words to paper; to define for my physical and spiritual children, my lifelong friends, and these new brothers that had entered my world the core beliefs I fear are quickly disappearing from the governing doctrines of the body of Christ.

Perhaps it is best to define the fabric of my faith as a worldview once held widely by orthodox evangelical believers which is now being rapidly replaced by a man-centered philosophy that will make us like the dead church of Sardis in the Book of Revelation if we do not soon remember the old ways and return to them. I trust this written effort will steer those most important to me in that direction. As fathers, we are supposed to train up our children in the way they should go, which to my mind says that even my adult sons and daughters-in-law are still my children. I want them to know what I believe long after I’m gone so that all those who eventually proceed from my physical and spiritual loins can embrace the old ways, ensure they know God as their Father through Christ alone, fulfill their divine purpose in creation, and live productive lives that are pleasing to Him in spite of all the distracting temptations around us.

Something is very amiss in the church today. I desire that my children (and all those who are special to Cindy and me) either be engines of a revival or be drawn out before God comes in judgment as He warned Sardis (see Revelation 3:1–6 for context) lest they suffer for their error. I don’t want those that Abba has given to me to think they have it right because we have a label saying Southern Baptist on our theological T-shirt. We must know that we know the truth and cling to it. God forbid that any bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh, and spirit of my spirit should perish eternally as the majority at Sardis faced.

Something still seems amiss. This is my attempt to deal with that concern just as John the Apostle wrote his missives to those he loved warning them against the apostasy running rampant within the body of believers during his time. As I proceed, I intend to discuss quite frankly those key issues fundamental to our faith which are being sorely undervalued in our present age. As I go, I will cite the God-inspired Scripture and the books written by men that have most shaped my own worldview. I will also discuss people and events in my life that have done the same thing. Because I am a man of strong views, blunt speech, and less than optimum people skills, it is necessary to be careful how names and events are used in this long essay. Here are the rules that govern all that follows.

When I cite authors of books or mention names of people who have been instrumental in my life thus far, it does not necessarily mean that these people agree with anything I say. It does not even mean that they share the same regard for me personally that I have for them. Many do not. As I said a moment ago, I lack the people skills that my father had—a man with a gregarious nature and an irascible personality that endeared him to most everyone he ran into in this world. Late in life many saw him as a loveable old curmudgeon who could get away with just about anything and still be revered. I am a contemplative soul often with a brooding countenance to whom folks generally do not respond well. My numerous imperfections are not usually overlooked as they were for old M.G., so there is a keen awareness that many wouldn’t want me to name them directly in this compilation of what I want my children and friends to know. To that end, I will use only first names and the position they held (pastor, for example) when discussing all their significant contributions.

On the other hand, I encountered several men in a professional role—mostly in the air force—who also made contributions to my life and whose professional standards merit public recognition. I have long ago lost contact with them but will refer to them in the positions they held. I am pleased to extol their professional excellence because many of them paid a price for the high standards they maintained during their careers. Whether I was considered a good military officer or not, my deep admiration for the excellent leaders I refer to hereafter does not impugn them in any way. It is simply a recognition by one who served with them that they were faithful in carrying out the duties assigned to them by the citizens of this country. They merit more recognition than I can give them due to literary protocols.

Finally, the fact that I mention a particular secular book or author doesn’t mean that I agree with all the author has to say. It also means that the author would possibly not be flattered by having any mention in this work. It is what it is, however, and some books that we read may have profound impact on us or can serve as an example of a significant point without that work itself having some great redeeming value. For example, Sam Harris, a committed atheist, wrote a book entitled The End of Faith. I have little in common with Sam Harris and don’t have much regard for the way his secular mind works. But Sam makes some good points about Islam, and his vitriol aimed at our faith serves well to warn us about what is coming . . . so I write briefly about Sam.

Regardless of how my words eventually turn out—useful or otherwise—I want one thing to be clearly visible: the Word of God. To that end, guiding Scripture in this essay will be put in bold type and will be set apart from the rest of the text. Each chapter will begin and end with Scripture that is the bedrock of that particular section. My intent is that this work be read with the Holy Bible readily at hand. I do not want to simply reprint Scripture in this book; rather, I want to spotlight it for the reader to look up. That technique, I believe, points you back to where the real truth is, and my own ideas, which may well contain some measure of error, receive less emphasis. The words of others that I’ve lifted from the pages of their own books I bring to your attention in smaller print than the Scripture out of respect for it. Lastly, words that I lift from my own poems and letters to illustrate some point are simply placed in small type.

All that said, I’d now like to introduce you to the text of what I believe needs to be said. Whether it does or not in reality will be determined by God, our Father, the One who has given me a solemn duty to provide spiritual instruction to some specific lives. To those who are not under my spiritual authority, I hope my words have meaning for you, too. I am approaching the end of my life, and like John the Apostle, there is a deep inner compulsion to get this said. If nothing else comes through in this work, please know that I am convinced that the key concept of Christianity is simply this: that because of the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, God can be—and must come to be—our Father. We live in evil times, and there is a particular psalm that explains my compulsion to finish this long, long letter. Please read the following passage carefully before you turn the page and begin to share this burden I have for the world around us.

PSALM 78:5–8

Chapter One

THE BIGG ER PICTURE—

CHRISTIANS NEED ONE

Ecclesiastes 3:14–15

FOR SEVERAL YEARS now, I’ve been concerned about the spiritual condition of the body of Christ. While fully and painfully aware of my own sins and dreadful shortcomings, I cannot keep from sounding an alarm however much I may condemn myself in what I decry in others. My concern is not only for my own Southern Baptist kinsmen, but also for those in other denominations who have generally been the backbone of the evangelical movement. In 1998 I began a concerted effort to find out what was going on, with an eye toward writing an essay-style book. That effort required visiting churches in the local area and across America (even a couple overseas), talking with pastors and key laymen in those churches, and reading quite a few books by both Christian and secular authors.

My need to put pen to paper occurred when I finished reading a book by former president Carter, a man I respect for his sincerity and decency but with whom I disagree both theologically and politically in the extreme. That very unfortunate publication, Our Endangered Values, along with the more recent Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid absolutely encapsulates the malaise afoot in Christianity today in that it shows us how very easily a lifelong, wholly dedicated churchman can become thoroughly confused on the most salient beliefs of Christianity. Though only a little closer to finally finishing my work, the facts I have discovered and my experiences along the way have now fanned my spirit to white-hot passion. I see the enemy very clearly, know that the body of Christ is under an increasingly fierce attack, and want to sound my version of a clarion call with the help of pastors and laymen I know to be men of faith, though many of you challenge my worthiness to speak, if not my very sanity.

A particular blockbuster movie lets me provide a metaphor for what really concerns me most. In The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis, my favorite author and Christian apologist, depicts evil as a witch that has seized the kingdom of Narnia turning a once-happy land into one of misery, hopelessness, and despair. The witch hates King Aslan the Lion and does all in her power to preempt his return and subsequent reestablishment of rightful reign.¹ I am sure Lewis chose the witch character intentionally and most precisely. She is very much like Jezebel or Athaliah in the Bible, and her seductive, coldly cruel persona accurately depicts Satan’s own wheedling, conniving demeanor—characteristics which have subdued God’s creation for a season both in the story and in our present world. Lewis, in my opinion, had the firmest grip of all as to the realities of this archenemy of our faith and just exactly what the mission of believers happens to be relative to the evil one. Keeping the picture of a regal male lion and a manipulating, evil witch in mind, let me begin my narrative of what I believe to the soles of my feet; those thoughts I want to pass along without fail.

From here on, I hope to define (though with some uneasiness) this burden I have carried for quite some time; to pinpoint the source of the threat I see to the body of Christ today and what I believe Christians must do collectively to deal with it. My own family has experienced these attacks as has the last church in which I held membership. You should be aware (if you are not) that I have become a pariah to many who previously had been Christian brothers and sisters before I began saying what follows. Regardless of that, I’ve found a large volume of data to support my assertions. There now exist both a widely seen movie to serve as a visual aid and a plethora of both Christian and secular works from the public marketplace that are directly on point relative to what I comment on herein. All of them underscore those truths in the apostle John’s last letters to the church. Here’s the bedrock of what I’ve had acutely embedded in my worldview; that which governs my actions.

I believe there’s no more important aspect of Christian doctrine than the fact that God has chosen to reveal Himself as God, the Father; the bedrock of Christian theology from which all other ideas about God and salvation flow; to my mind, preeminent over all else and the focus of a mighty spiritual battle raging now just as recorded in St. John. A very learned man in a church (SBC) in which I spent some time during 2004 disagreed. His opposition worried me at first. Not only is he one of the brightest Christian minds I know, as well as a gifted teacher, but he has served presidents from the pinnacle of our intelligence system. I’d sought him out to obtain some information I needed and was quite pleased to sit under his teaching for a few months. To him, being found in Christ was the supreme concept for the faithful of Christianity, not the Fatherhood of God. I’ve used this one example because many of you believe as he does, and though I eventually will advocate in this essay that we must—at this very hour—lift up the name and person of Jesus Christ above all else, we should understand that it all really starts with the Father to whom Jesus, the Son, deferred throughout His ministry on Earth. We must be found in Christ to know God as Father, but the chief result of being found in Him is that we may truly know God, the only true and living One, to glorify Him and to enjoy Him for an eternity as many early church fathers have opined. That is only possible through His Son, the means to the end. God, the Father, is the objective. I think that we both eventually came to understand our respective positions and moved on, but this gifted brother never fully accepted my belief. It’s probably why my road so far has been difficult since most tend to think as he does, but I repeat myself again here: God, as our Father, is the bedrock from which all else flows. God describes Himself in decidedly masculine terms, and there are vitally important reasons for it.

That said, I can now explain the nature of the attack I see on that doctrine and the very deleterious effects it has had on the Body. As in ages past, Satan has used the agency of militant feminism to try seizing God’s kingdom, just as the witch sought hegemony over Narnia oblivious to the fact that such treachery is always doomed to failure. Even as God is dangerous in a very real sense, the powerful lion, Aslan, could have destroyed his adversary at will, but there was evidence he restrained himself because of some mysterious agreement about which those in the movie audience knew little. Aslan and the witch discussed this ancient magic in a private caucus away from the ears of the masses. There is such an arrangement in creation made apart from our own permitted arena of knowledge. It is that list of governing rules that God decreed in the beginning when Satan rebelled and El Elyon, the God Most High, set the ultimate judgment of Lucifer in motion. The first chapter of Job hints at that. The great deceiver who moves about freely on Earth is the force behind most of our human institutions and ideologies. This world is his domain for now, and 1 John 5:19 puts it in context: we belong to God, but everything else is controlled by Satan.

1 JOHN 5:19

I am certain that this fallen angel has taken up residence now in the guise of militant feminism and has, perhaps, been in some form of it since antiquity. As example, I suspect that a careful probing of the cult of the Nicolaitans which grew from the pernicious heresy of the gnostic movement that plagued the early first century church (as well as those ideologies of theosophy in the nineteenth that gave rise to Hitler) would uncover feminist roots. I believe the engine for this corrosive feminism can be found readily in the Democrat Party today and its primary supporters like the minions of Hollywood, the media and the arts with their collective predisposition for all things perverse. For Satan and militant feminism to be successful in seizing the kingdom, they must first destroy this idea of God, the Father, and lead a rebellion against His self-assigned masculine traits. They must destroy the authority of His earthly vicars, which are husbands and fathers, Christian and otherwise. They must establish a new order that puts subjective, intuitive reason above objective, proactive behavior; must cause men to question; to prevent moving ahead with purpose and vision. They must create doubt to keep men from pressing ahead in faith, seeking pleasure and avoiding hardship that may come for His own sake; to make men bow to their queen; to force men to put away their tired old King of antiquity. After all, she is the goddess, the Queen Mother of Heaven. It is this historical, persistent attack on the Fatherhood of God that makes me know that such is the bedrock of Christianity. Were it not, the Witch would leave it alone. God wants us to know Him intimately as Father and the Witch is doing all she can to prevent it.

There is more evidence of this than you can bear to read in this essay. It is the stuff by which books are written and have been in increasingly large numbers in recent years. It is one thing for a man professing Christ to write about the deleterious effects of militant feminism, but it’s quite another for liberal (or formerly liberal) women to attack it openly. Two secular books come to mind. The first is The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff Sommers, and the other is Women Who Make the World Worse by Kate O’Beirne. Both books graphically and factually establish the deceptive, relentless feminist attack on traditional male institutions such as fatherhood, contact sports, and the military, as well as those traditionally led by men—the church, for example.² The results have been provably disastrous for society and the Body. I don’t, however, intend to detail all of the losses in this work. Rather, I want to show you the biggest indicator of the frightful direction we are going and then tell you about my own effort to fight back in a later chapter. The central premise of this essay rests on the notion that the Fatherhood of God is the bedrock principle of Christianity.

God mandates that for a society to be enduring it must conform to the idea that it be just, merciful, and led by humble men. It is axiomatic and our forefathers knew it, wrote of it, and tried to bring such about. Unfortunately, because of the human sin nature, we didn’t quite get to where we said we were going. The lingering debate over slavery and the long time it took to go away in America indicate the clay feet of our ancestors. Also unfortunate is the fact that even after the formal end of slavery, men—many of them claiming Christ as Savior—treated black people shamefully. The failure of men to be just and merciful opened the door for Satan to gain a foothold in our nation; to begin the systematic tearing down of the bedrock of our faith, the Fatherhood of God, by the minions of radical feminism, purveyors of goddess worship, and the de facto priestesses today of the pagan Asherah cults from Canaan that corrupted Israel at her outset.

In 1932, I believe the wicked one planted himself firmly in Washington DC through the aegis of the Roosevelt administration. Eleanor Roosevelt, a committed feminist, was the power behind the presidency as proven by many pro-Roosevelt accounts of their years in office. Two particular things of note happened. First, America learned to look to the government for its security rather than God as huge social welfare programs were introduced. Secondly, black Americans began a fateful journey of blind allegiance to the Democrats since Eleanor Roosevelt did the right thing for the wrong reason. She (and many Democrats with her) reached out to black America overtly, creating an illusion that they were lifting them out of their second-class citizenship. Lost on most African Americans was the reality that their entry into mainstream America came at a steep price: the eventual removal of black men as necessary elements of their own family and community. A dysfunctional, dependent matriarchy (government-reliant) evolved and was multiplied even more in Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society that, itself, was influenced by the radical feminist ideologies of the day.

The dreadful result has been a downward spiral of black society, especially black men. Solidly in the pockets of Democrats, African American males are required to be cheerleaders for women’s rights issues as well as the gay and lesbian agenda while they themselves are generally stripped of any meaningful roles. Dispirited and unneeded, black men have seen their crime rate soar, their life expectancy drop, and their spiritual health erode. All the while, feminists have prospered beyond their wildest dreams and have gained a stranglehold on America as evidenced by the spectral shadow cast by Nancy Pelosi as she loomed in high-matriarchal fashion behind President Bush during his last State of the Union speech in January 2007. Beyond the simple issue of the blatant inhumanity and total disregard of Scripture by (particularly Christian) men up to present times in America is another fact with which we had better come to grips. Here it is.

These are the sobering consequences of this travesty of justice. Black culture—black males, in particular—foreshadow America’s collective destiny. The very same feminist forces now decimating Black America are also hard at work destructuring every other culture in this country. Caucasian families in America have far worse social problems today than black Americans had in the 1950s when only about 15 percent of all black births were out of wedlock. Whites today have twice that rate while the latest social data for black Americans shows a number nearing 70 percent!³ In other words, where black Americans have been, other Americans are quickly following. Crime and violence statistics associated with black males will be those for men of other American cultures in the near future. The Coming Anarchy by Robert D. Kaplan lays all this out very clearly. I believe it is due to the attack on the Fatherhood of God and His vicars on Earth, all the husbands and fathers of this nation.⁴

Books now detailing the horrendous effects of the diminished roles and eventual trivialization of men are many and are written by persons of all colors. The facts are sobering. I’m certain that the present waning interest in preaching and sound doctrine in favor of high relationship, feel-good, man-centered religious entertainment is directly proportional to the influence exerted by radical feminism which functions on the principle of Hegel’s dialectic materialism. As the preferred way for Marxists to enslave a society, little by little we are being seduced into accepting hellish ideas that are anathema to classical Christianity. Few (Christians in particular) are yet aware of the real extent of the progressive, corrosive shifting away from cherished beliefs, and black ministers with whom I’ve spoken are even subtly hostile to simply discussing the issue. Tragically, they haven’t read any of the books that are so readily available; so well-documented. They play right into the hands of the evil one just as white males have for so long. The minions of Satan have assaulted the Fatherhood of God while men—black and white—have done nothing in response. Nothing! All the while the witch cackles victoriously from the shadows around us, even the darkening recesses of our own Congress.

There are four simple and generally overlooked scriptures that further explain why men are not recognizing the threat and fighting back; one has already been mentioned. It is 1 John 5:19, and it is where I should start in listing three important reasons that Christian men particularly are so passive in the face of the enemy. In the first of the four documents he wrote while in exile on Patmos, John was very clear on the reality of Satan; an adversary to be actively opposed through the power of the Holy Spirit, not human strength; an evil force that is very much behind the affairs of this world, much like a puppeteer pulling the strings of his marionettes. From my many exchanges with men who have a religious tendency and walk within the shadow cast by Christianity without embracing its real power, I have learned one important thing. All have a very ethereal view of God; none believe in the reality of Satan. To them, the idea that a very dangerous embodied spiritual being might just walk around on this earth is anti-intellectual. To them, Satan is a metaphor, not a reality. I suspect that is why President Carter believes and behaves as he does while still seeming to cling to the cross of Christ. I haven’t yet found proof in his books (and he didn’t answer my lengthy letter), but such would account for his views. I’m confident that 1 John 5:19 is a key verse to understanding why we find ourselves where we do. It is vital that we grasp the intended message of 1 John 5:19.

Besides simply dismissing the reality of Satan, there is a second reason for our passivity. Scripture points out that those who can see the real danger are not men to whom the world will listen. God makes it clear that human beings are respecters of persons to their own demise; that they don’t believe humility and wisdom can coexist in one person. Poor but wise isn’t valid in many eyes!

ECCLESIASTES 9:13–18

Finally, there is the fact that men do not read much; not Scripture, not Christian books, not even well-reasoned secular works. There is a consequence—a severe one—for doctrinal and spiritual ignorance.

HOSEA 4:6; PROVERBS 29:18

These verses show the cause and effect relationship that impacts us so severely today; that is, we pursue wisdom, knowledge, and understanding with so little passion that we have no discernment; no vision by which to address the future and, therefore, no means by which to protect ourselves from the enemy; much like an army trying to fight a war without an effective intelligence system. Unsure of what we believe, we are self-doomed to perish. That’s the lesson that many great secular scholars like the cyclical historian Arnold Toynbee and his peers, Oswald Spengler and Pitirim Sorokin, have discovered; simply that human history has absolutely repeated itself in all major civilizations that ever existed yet without men responding appropriately. All great societies have been found to exhibit the same characteristic life cycle beginning with objective behavior (I need that so I’ll take it) and ending in a decidedly subjective process (not prone to decisive action). Edward Gibbon’s seminal eighteenth century masterpiece, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, epitomizes this concept.⁵

Given all the books showing male behavior to center on adventure, conquest, and accomplishment (Wild at Heart by John Eldredge) and women to focus most on intuitive skills and sustaining relationships (Discovering the Mind of a Woman by Ken Nair), it is very appropriate to say, then, that historical research shows all rising civilizations to be mostly objective (masculine) during their ascendancy and generally subjective (feminine) during the declining phase. This is not pejorative aimed at women, simply a fact that effective leadership is accomplished by bold and decisive people who are indisputably objective in their thinking; men able to meet all the challenges of the physical, emotional, social, and spiritual environment. Such is a trait predominant in males. The opposite doesn’t move a society forward, but it has a vital role in keeping that culture humane. Women civilize men, or so says George Gilder in Men and Marriage, a prescient book that enraged the feminist crowd when it was first released.

Women in the home are not wasting human resource. The role of the mother is the paramount support of human society.⁶

The best book I’ve ever read concerning this issue was written by a Christian scholar, Dr. Harold O.J. Brown. Entitled The Sensate Culture, it neatly summarizes those ominous findings of the previously mentioned historians and puts their discoveries in a context that should be sobering to believers. Spoken from the context that a civilization, as it moves along toward an eventual demise in the late sensate years (of Brown’s three idealistic, ideational, and sensate phases that comprise one complete historical cycle), becomes increasingly subjective and, therefore, more impervious to objective religion. Dr. Brown points out that humans can’t deliver themselves from doom since they continue to move away from the only source of their salvation. Consider his words:

Everyone, not merely religious people, will be impoverished if the agony of our late sensate culture is allowed to run its course without any fundamental change of direction. Perceptive thinkers . . . briefly awakened hundreds of thousands of readers to the problem, but virtually no one has suggested a way out of the impasse, for the simple reason that the way out depends on divine grace (as well as human understanding), and divine grace is precisely the thing that our late sensate culture refuses to take into account. Professional polls as well as everyday experience indicate that most of the people in the United States believe in God, although fewer think that the Bible is really God’s Word to us. Is it possible to get from this vague, habitual assent to the convictions that once produced a vigorous idealistic culture back to the kind of commitments and decisions that can revive a degenerate sensate one?⁷

Brown’s idealistic phase is the objective, ascendancy period of every civilization. His sensate phase is the subjective, declining part of the same cycle. An essay in The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis has a title that summarizes well why civilizations erode in that final sensate (or feminist or subjective) phase. That essay from the gifted mind of Professor Lewis is entitled The Poison of Subjectivism, is found on page 223 of that volume, and dovetails remarkably well with the theme of Dr. Brown’s book with its haunting comment that mankind’s way out of the present mess depends on that same divine grace we are so stubbornly refusing to consider as a necessary reality. Reliance on grace presupposes a belief in God and His natural law without which there can be no value system or truly objective thinking. Let me explain.

The Poison of Subjectivism was written in the time of the Axis powers when the ideologies of the Fascists, Marxists, Communists, humanists, and scientific materialists (to name just a few) were in a literal battle for control of the world.

Each had a way of validating their heinous beliefs through the twisted logic of their depraved minds, but Lewis was able to categorize all of them with the single label of subjectivism because all of them had one critical thing in common: none had an absolute fixed position from which to argue the merits of those value judgments most critical to their respective societies; i.e., what and who is relevant; what and who is irrelevant and, therefore, disposable. All rejected the crude and regressive idea of a sovereign, immoveable, transcendent God by whom all value judgments (as to rightness and wrongness of an idea) are made. Each of the isms in so doing placed itself squarely in the illogical quicksand of arguing against the existence of natural law and advocated instead for a sliding scale of values that was determined by community approval, which in turn was then directly extruded by the agenda of the leadership. In reality, everyone eventually does what seems best to them: in other words, chaos and anarchy. That is why the last paragraph of the essay begins with this sobering sentence:

Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.⁸

A paragraph earlier Mr. Lewis prophetically defines what I believe infects Christianity today, a virus that the secular world has had since the Garden of Eden:

A Christianity which does not see moral and religious experience converging to meet at infinity, not at a negative infinity, but in the positive infinity of the living yet superpersonal God has nothing in the long run to divide it from devil worship; and a philosophy which does not accept value as eternal and objective can lead us only to ruin.⁹

There is one more preposition lifted from the same paragraph just referenced that I’d like to pass along as this first chapter begins to focus on what I believe is the viscera of our malaise. These words are at the core of my misgivings about the condition of the body of Christ and its inexorable relationship to the America of the last 230 or so years. It is a truth that even the most jaded lifelong atheist must eventually have to concede as a valid point. The freedoms we enjoy and the generally functional democracy that has kept us from those destructive national schisms present throughout the rest of human history is rooted in a pervasive Christian value system noted by such disparate individuals as the nineteenth century French historian de Tocqueville plus a New Age guru of the early twentieth century reputed to be the penultimate avatar of Zoroastrianism—at least until he encountered the spiritual blanket protecting America as he arrived aboard a boat in New York harbor and lost all those supernatural abilities with which he had previously dazzled the apostate citizenry of Europe. Christianity, democracy, and freedom are linked by a common objectivity that C.S. Lewis noted in his essay:

The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike. Subjectivism about values is eternally incompatible with democracy. We and our rulers are of one kind only so long we are subject to one law. But if there is no Law of Nature, the ethos of any society is the creation of its rulers, educators and conditioners; and every creator stands above and outside his own creation.¹⁰

As America specifically, and Western civilization in general, continue down the predictable road of subjectivity that other great societies have followed to their eventual demise, so it seems that the contemporary body of Christ will follow along also. Dave Hunt and T.A. McMahon discussed this slide into apostasy in detail in their collaborative work, The Seduction of Christianity,¹¹ and David Jeremiah followed up a decade later with Invasion of Other Gods.¹² In this essay I’ve used the term feminizing of society to reflect the fact that the increasing subjectivism of the present world is directly related to the agency of militant feminism or, if you will, goddess worship.

Throughout history such has been the vehicle of choice for Satan in his attempt to preempt the ultimate will of God the Father by replacing the ordained worship and praise of Elohim, the all-powerful One, with either the adoration of or a preoccupation with feminine theological imposters (and primordial fertility goddesses) or simply with the contemporary feminine mystic. It was the Canaanite worship of the Asherah and the Ashteroths that infected the Israelites throughout their history after they disobeyed God when commanded by Him to rid the Promised Land completely of any evidence of that evil, be it man, woman, child, animal, or material object (see Deuteronomy 20:16–18 for context). God knew just how vile and addictive that particular religious philosophy was, underscoring it by the severity of His instruction to His people and by the penalties ordained when His words