From The Desk Of Pastor Paul Viggiano
Falwell's impact will remain
Minister isn't being judged by the espousers of modern liberalism and apostasy. He's facing a higher judge and will have little reason to apologize.
By Pastor Paul Viggiano
I never considered myself a huge Jerry Falwell fan - at least until now. The hue and cry cascading off the walls of the dark caves of Western paganism at the mere sound of Falwell's name leads me to conclude that the man was acutely efficient at leading a vanguard of righteousness.
It appears men would have preferred a duplicitous Falwell. For all the talk of hypocrisy and double-mindedness in the church, Falwell is castigated for being single-minded and a man of conviction. "No," his detractors say, "it was not his convictions. It's was his binding of conservative Christianity with conservative politics." As if his particular world view is not allowed to penetrate the sacred halls of government - where, by the way, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are commonly ground in granite.
Falwell is no longer suffering the cackling hens of modern liberalism and apostasy. He stands before God and will, I suspect, apologize less than most of us for not acknowledging Jesus as king of kings.
It's telling to hear the caviling of those who have no bones speaking ill of the dead. Falwell made a huge difference, and the enemies of biblical ethics would exhume his bones, grind them to powder and have them cast off the Golden Gate.
Leftist angst against Falwell is due in large part to his success. I doubt that Falwell will go down in history as a master theologian. A broader historical examination will reveal that it was the ethical anarchy of the 1960s that made Falwell's career. As we slid into a moral freefall, those who were maintaining their sanity (not me, I saw Woodstock six times in my banana pants and tye-died shirt) wanted to know if God cared about cultural licentiousness or if the Bible had any significance when it came to the reality of a society and its laws and leadership.
Falwell, mirroring historical, biblical Christianity, said yes.
Crimes, by their very nature, are (or at least should be) immoral. The popular slogan that you can't legislate morality is a staggeringly daft proposition. Why in the world would something be a crime if it were not immoral? Falwell's simple argument was that morality makes a difference in terms of the success and happiness of a nation - or as the Bible would put it, "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."
Those who take part in the political process, at some level, do what Falwell did - they marshal their efforts to promote what they believe to be in the best interests of the people. There is a veiled hypocrisy lurking in the bosom of those who seek to chastise Falwell simply because they disagree with the source of his value system, which happened to be the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Why should his sources be excluded form the marketplace and other sources accepted? People hated his ethics and thought they should be excluded, but they love their own ethics and promote them with gusto.
There is truly a sad irony that so many would seek to vilify a Christian man simply because he sought to be faithful to the very God the vast majority of our founding fathers appealed to in the process of creating this nation. It would be helpful if his detractors showed us their sacred text so that we might hold it under the same scrutiny.
Minister isn't being judged by the espousers of modern liberalism and apostasy. He's facing a higher judge and will have little reason to apologize.
By Pastor Paul Viggiano
I never considered myself a huge Jerry Falwell fan - at least until now. The hue and cry cascading off the walls of the dark caves of Western paganism at the mere sound of Falwell's name leads me to conclude that the man was acutely efficient at leading a vanguard of righteousness.
It appears men would have preferred a duplicitous Falwell. For all the talk of hypocrisy and double-mindedness in the church, Falwell is castigated for being single-minded and a man of conviction. "No," his detractors say, "it was not his convictions. It's was his binding of conservative Christianity with conservative politics." As if his particular world view is not allowed to penetrate the sacred halls of government - where, by the way, the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are commonly ground in granite.
Falwell is no longer suffering the cackling hens of modern liberalism and apostasy. He stands before God and will, I suspect, apologize less than most of us for not acknowledging Jesus as king of kings.
It's telling to hear the caviling of those who have no bones speaking ill of the dead. Falwell made a huge difference, and the enemies of biblical ethics would exhume his bones, grind them to powder and have them cast off the Golden Gate.
Leftist angst against Falwell is due in large part to his success. I doubt that Falwell will go down in history as a master theologian. A broader historical examination will reveal that it was the ethical anarchy of the 1960s that made Falwell's career. As we slid into a moral freefall, those who were maintaining their sanity (not me, I saw Woodstock six times in my banana pants and tye-died shirt) wanted to know if God cared about cultural licentiousness or if the Bible had any significance when it came to the reality of a society and its laws and leadership.
Falwell, mirroring historical, biblical Christianity, said yes.
Crimes, by their very nature, are (or at least should be) immoral. The popular slogan that you can't legislate morality is a staggeringly daft proposition. Why in the world would something be a crime if it were not immoral? Falwell's simple argument was that morality makes a difference in terms of the success and happiness of a nation - or as the Bible would put it, "blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord."
Those who take part in the political process, at some level, do what Falwell did - they marshal their efforts to promote what they believe to be in the best interests of the people. There is a veiled hypocrisy lurking in the bosom of those who seek to chastise Falwell simply because they disagree with the source of his value system, which happened to be the texts of the Old and New Testaments. Why should his sources be excluded form the marketplace and other sources accepted? People hated his ethics and thought they should be excluded, but they love their own ethics and promote them with gusto.
There is truly a sad irony that so many would seek to vilify a Christian man simply because he sought to be faithful to the very God the vast majority of our founding fathers appealed to in the process of creating this nation. It would be helpful if his detractors showed us their sacred text so that we might hold it under the same scrutiny.
posted by Soli Deo Gloria | 6/05/2007 04:44:00 AM
1 Comments:
You wrote this about Falwell: "the man was acutely efficient at leading a vanguard of righteousness." No, he was not. In Mt 6:33a, we are all commanded to seek first God's Kingdom and God's Righteousness. As Abraham was given something very specific to believe before he was credited with Righteousness from God, so are we. Those of us with the Scriptures have something very, very specific to have faith in. What we must find first and believe must become very precious to us, more important than our reputations, more important than our physical lives or more important than anything or anyone else. This is the very beginning of Salvation. Falwell never obeyed Jesus Christ's command in Mt 6:33a or he could never have been the person he was. True Christians can easily identify a wolf in sheep's clothing, almost without exception, and Falwell was not saved although i certainly wish he had believed, repented and obeyed God's exact original Gospel Truth but he didn't. Multitudes have not obeyed the real Jesus Christ but they have followed "another Jesus" described in Scriptures such as 2Co 11:1-15. Multitudes will hear Jesus Christ tell them that He never "knew" them and He will throw them out where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, Mt 5-7. If we cannot be trusted with little things, we cannot be trusted with anything else. Salvation begins with what we must find first according to Mt 6:33a. Everyone must start over and begin there or you will never find the narrow Gate that opens to the narrow Road. Jesus Christ said few will find it but not because it is hard to find, it isn't hard to find at all, but most people would rather follow lies than His exact original Gospel Truth that begins with Mt 6:33a. Contact me regarding this if you want to discuss it. anne robare / canawedding at aol dot com
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