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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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