Once upon a time, when the Church of Jesus Christ was given the respect she deserves in our country and the recognition as a valid government established among men for their moral good, the other Divinely ordained governments, the family and the state, accepted critique and instruction from her pulpits. I do not mean to insinuate that all men and nations did so, but for that group of principalities known today as Western Civilization or once as Western Christendom, it was understood that while there may be differences in earthly allegiances and ethnicity, there was a common understanding that every knee, including that of the king, must bow to the Lord Jesus, who wields all authority in heaven and on earth. This notion is not some sort of commendation of a raw ecclesiocracy, in which the church reigns supreme over the family and the state. This sort of despotism, along with that of absolute dictatorships in the civil and familial realms, is foreign to the pages of scripture. My reference is instead to the proper biblically informed distribution and delegation of power among multiple institutions each with a particular function and each given certain checks on the others. In those days of old, the pulpit was a force to be reckoned with among the several states; the magistrate, if obedient to the Lord in carrying out his appointed duty, was given the honor he justly deserved and supported by the words of each local parson, but in the event the civil ruler overstepped his bounds morally or did not uphold his oath of service, he would rightly receive rebuke in the Lord’s Day sermon. This was not a case of pastoral meddling in the political realm, but the proper and necessary admonishment of one of God’s ministers faithfully serving in the church, addressing another of God’s ministers unfaithfully serving in the state. It is not that the pastor preaching to the prince has committed some sort of grievance, but on the contrary it is the despot prince that has broken covenant, with both church and state that is in error and must be told so by the dutiful pastor. While this idea sounds all sorts of alarms and may even cause the minute hairs on the nap of our necks to come to attention in this modern age of “separation of church and state”, it is the true American view of government founded upon the Scripture. Our current civil government is the tax grabbing, morally destitute, God dismissing, Allah reverencing bully that it is because the Church has bought the lie that she must only address spiritual needs, as if the workings of the spiritual and physical realms had no effect on each other. However, this simply is not true, since we are taught to pray “thy kingdom come, thy will be done on EARTH as it is in heaven” and since the resurrected Jesus told us before his ascension that all authority in heaven and on EARTH had been given to Him. Well to cut to the chase, it is time once again as Providence would have it that the errant prince (President Obama in our case) be chastened by the dutiful pastor (Douglas Wilson).
The incident to which I refer is the recent sermon preached by Pastor Wilson to President Obama from the pulpit of Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho. While Pastor Wilson and I have more that just a few theological hairs that could be split between us of various sizes, I do complement him on standing up and rendering faithful service to the Prince of the Kings of the earth on this occasion. I suppose there was a day when a sermon preached to the president was more common place, but ours is not such a day. It seems down right odd and for some even offensive to consider that a local pastor, from the likes of Moscow, Idaho, might actually speak words of admonition and caution to a sitting president of the United States. But this fact alone is a problem in itself. I pray that each faithful minister of the Gospel might consider and emulate Pastor Wilson in his stalwart stand of Godliness in calling a skunk and skunk and trusting the Lord for the results. If the Lord does such a work in the men behind the pulpits of our land there must certainly first be repentance which, by His grace, may result revival or even full blown reformation. With this said, I offer the link to Pastor Wilson’s excellent sermon http://www.christkirk.com/Sermons/mp3/1514.mp3 and a link to the manuscript http://dougwils.com/index.asp?Action=Anchor&CategoryID=1&BlogID=6593. May God begin to bless America once again.
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