Preach the Gospel
My wife and I live in a mobile home in small town rural Indiana, evangelizing Decatur County as well as a 25 minute radius of our church building. I preach the gospel almost every day to someone. We do discipleship, Bible studies, and meet for church. Her and I exist in our own little bubble. We walk twice a day by fields of beans, corn, and wheat.
I do think that the work of our church here transcends other contemporary narratives. We keep our eye on the ball, staying focused on the real problem in the world and its actual solution. It glorifies God, gives Him pleasure. Someone might say our little lives here epitomize one of many micronarratives within a larger macro one. I could argue, however, that we represent the macro and the popular larger narrative equals the micro. The gospel overshadows politics or what occurs to a nation in a window of history.
No one in the future kingdom of Christ and then the eternal state will look back and think that the American government was the main theme. Neither will anyone in that kingdom consider the decline of the United States to be the major issue of that day. The way back to Paradise, lost in the Fall, comes through Jesus Christ.
Slow Motion Car Crash
As a backdrop to serving God in a church, I observe now a slow motion car crash. Two cars now careen toward each other and a future wreck. Maybe I could use another metaphor, like the trajectory of an asteroid in the path of earth on schedule to collide in November of 2024. It might not matter what your side of the political spectrum, you see this crash coming too.
I don’t write to say, “You read it here first.” You could have read it somewhere else first. However, I haven’t read yet about the collision of which I explain and describe. When you read it somewhere else, you might say, I read it first at What Is Truth. Who cares, really? As I write about this here, first or last, you might anticipate this inevitable demolition derby.
Trump
Donald Trump leads the polls on the Republican side. He embodies a large faction of the country, bigger than any single cohesive body of people. That car continues rolling forward at a larger than ever fifty plus percent of Republican voters. Even in Iowa and New Hampshire he dominates his opposition right now 16 months before the next presidential election.
As Trump moves along his path, so do four different legal prosecutions against him, all very suspect in nature, especially in comparison to others (I understand this will trigger a portion of the readers). Trump voters saw the Russia hoax impeachment. They also witnessed the Zelensky phone call impeachment. The government spied on his campaign. The Clinton campaign paid for the fabricated Steele dossier used for a FISA warrant. The FBI lied about it and then covered it up. And all that is less than half of everything Trump supporters know.
Still, Trump enemies continue to use the legal system to impede or stop Trump, what people call weaponization of government. Every prosecution looks shady, questionable, like political persecution. The present administration targets its number one political enemy. Nevertheless, the Trump car rumbles down the road, even gaining in momentum the more legal woes he faces.
Biden
Joe Biden comes from the other direction. Even though he couldn’t fill an average sized local gymnasium to see him, he tallied the most votes ever in 2020. Zuckerbucks influenced local election offices all over the country. Courts changed laws to favor ballot harvesting with little to no voter identification. Social media giants censored news unfavorable to the Democrat. In addition, lies, lies, lies, lies, and more lies.
The Biden car and the Trump car head toward each other. They’re moving fast, but they’re so far away, that it’s like watching from thirty thousand feet. The cars move at an imperceptible pace, yet moving on an identical line.
Criminal prosecution hovers around Joe Biden. Massive corruption on an unprecedented scale looks obvious. It seems like no repercussions for him. Like the Clintons, nothing will happen more than verbiage.
A crash looks inevitable. No one knows what will happen in 2023-24. Will they prosecute Trump and try to put him behind bars? Might the Bidens skate again or face their comeuppance? Could a third party enter the race?
The Great American Divorce
Many more questions remain. What would Trump supporters do if this government convicted him? Would they accept that verdict? With the way the progressives use the system like a banana republic, will people stand by and let this happen? A large percentage of United States citizens see their government as dirty. Those people are waiting and watching right now from that thirty-thousand feet. A big gap separates the two biggest factions in the country. The two sides are irreconcilable. One of them is especially unhappy.
The country doesn’t neatly divide like the north and the south in 1860. Both factions live in the same states. Red citizens are fleeing blue states to red ones. A few years ago some started calling this, the great American divorce (here and here) or American secession (here and here). Historian Victor Davis Hanson says we’re on the verge of our French Revolution. He also called it, “The Impending Thermidor Reaction in Jacobin America.”
The Only Remedy
To go back to the way I began this essay, I call this slow motion car crash just a backdrop to the most important. The belief and practice of an individual true church surpasses the miserable condition of the nation. It seems obvious a future collision is coming. No one knows the outcome of this monumental head-on crash, but scripture says the remedy is still the same, the gospel.
Elevation of the gospel starts with the church. Turn and look to the message of the cross as the prescription. Judgment must begin in the house of God.
Dear Bro Brandenburg,
Thanks for the thoughts.
Could you deal with the view that at least some of the Democrat prosecution of Trump is to get Republicans to rally around him so that he becomes the nominee and drags them down like he did in 2022, 2020, and 2018? Even before January 6 he seemed to have a hard ceiling of less than 50% voting (46-47%) for him, which is not going to win without a big third party candidate sucking away Democrat votes, or someone as corrupt as Hillary being the opposing candidate. It is difficult for me to see him winning when he is writing that his loss in 2020 “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”
I have a hard time seeing him getting all the prosecutions if the Democrats thought it would help a more electable Republican (although having top secret documents floating around in one’s house and showing them to random people actually clearly puts US security at risk and deserves a raid; did Hillary do it, too? Yes, of course she did, and of course she should have been prosecuted, but she was smarter at hiding the evidence than Trump, and it doesn’t matter that Hillary did it too, since Trump would not be running against her again.)
What if Biden knows he looks weak and doesn’t fire people up, so the Democrats are waiting for Trump to become the nominee, and then Biden will step aside for someone who is more attractive to a broader percentage of the left and swing voters?
Thanks.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for your comment.
I think what I’m writing is the truth. Trump has a hard, cohesive core of support and for good reason. Romney didn’t have this. McCain didn’t have this. Bob Dole didn’t have this. Even George W. Bush didn’t have this. Right now, no Republican candidate has this, and it’s not because of the genius of Democrat legal prosecution, playing tri-level chess.
Not since Reagan has there been a candidate with such an intense amount of support. Perhaps you don’t understand that. I’ve never heard you attempt to explain it. It’s not because of me. What do you think that is? I’m curious about what you would say.
I mean this with the greatest possible affection, but perhaps you could explain to all those with sub 20 percent support on the Republican side how they could defeat Trump. I know why people support Trump and if someone were to defeat him, they would still want the vote of Trump supporters. I skimmed an article last night that argued a tectonic shift in the Republican electorate that results in many more Republicans voting in a presidential election with Trump than don’t. This was by someone in the middle for the Republicans, not with Trump or with the Democrats, a Mike Shields, former RNC chief of staff.
Why do these people come out to vote when Trump runs? This results in a lot of support for him. When I read you, the implication is that these people are stupid. I don’t think, “you’re stupid,” will work to persuade them. If they feel like you think they’re stupid for voting for Trump, they’ll more likely keep voting for him.
One last thing, I’m writing about a slow motion car crash. Do you think or agree this will occur between now and November 2024? I think it will.
Thanks for your comment.
Dear Bro Brandenburg,
I would not make a very good politician–I think surveys of the incredible ignorance of the average American on basics like whether we have three branches of government or how many people there in the House of Representatives shows that most Americans are politically stupid, on both the left and the right (hopefully a lower percentage on the right, but still a lot). To win you have to get lots and lots of dumb people to vote for you, not just the smart ones. I don’t think everyone who supports Trump is dumb or that everyone who opposes Trump is dumb (and I don’t think you are dumb), but I think a lot of people who do both are. There are millions of Trump supporters and Trump opponents who can’t tell if Judge Roberts or Judge Judy is on the Supreme Court. (I also think it is only the grace of God if any of us is not dumb.) It is not only in Ukraine that you can become president by being an actor who acted as president in a TV show (and, let me add, who is doing quite a good job in light of his extreme lack of prior qualification and his very difficult circumstances to run a country, IMO).
I do not know how to win a campaign for the Republican nomination for president and do not have much advice to give, and even if I did, nobody would be likely to even hear about it, anyway, much less follow it. Trump is very old and could die next Tuesday. Trying to predict the fickle feelings of the electorate is very difficult. I think if a majority of Republicans want to nominate someone who says his 2020 loss “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” and does not back down from it, but makes this sort of thing a central plank of his campaign, then we are going to get what we deserve. A lot of it relates to what the Federalist Papers says about party spirit–your guy is always right and the other guy is always wrong, as well as the legitimate fears of the awful policies and totalitarian instincts on the left.
No matter how intense Trump’s followers are, they only get to cast one vote, and when he couldn’t get above 46-47% before January 6, while nothing is impossible–his Democrat opponent and VP could get struck by lightning a week before the election; Chicago could get nuked by Putin the day before the election, etc.–I believe Trump has about the chance of David Duke of winning the presidency, and that he would be prosecuted far less right now if the biased prosecutors thought it would drive up the numbers of a more electable opponent instead of causing Republicans to rally around him. That is also why leftist media sources are (now-but oh how different after the nominating process ends!) talking about how electable Trump is, propping him up while also giving all his prosecutions as much TV time as reasonably possible to cause Republicans to rally around “their man.”
I am 100% with you on the remedy being the gospel. Everything outside the gospel will come crashing down.
You can have the last word, if you like. Thanks.
By the way, I know you don’t think I’m stupid, but I’m saying that people would get the impression that you think they are. Maybe they are, but giving that impression is not going to win them.
I like the analogy of the long, slow crash.
When they raided his house & indicted him on everything they could (and everyone close to him), it made me very angry. It is cliched, but I agree with the idea that they are attacking me when they attack him. For the better part, I agreed with the things he ran on (I know he did not fulfill all of it & some was politicians lies / exaggerations), and I feel attacked when they attack him.
I have felt for years that we are on the verge of a civil war. I have watched many divorces over the years. I don’t see this as a divorce, with the blue states getting the windmills & the red states getting the oil wells. The left is not willing to let us walk away and find a new life. I live in NM, which 30 years ago was deep red. We now are waiting for the state to outlaw our firearms and enact other draconian leftist policies. They are not willing to leave us alone.
I’m far more interested in finding solid Bible on what to do when this situation spirals out of control.
My $.02
I agree with you, Jim.
Since I wrote this of course Trump was indicted for crimes around January 6. What actual crime did Trump commit? Anyone got a sure handle on this? It looks like the crime of saying the election was stolen by the Democrats in various ways. Serious articles by Democrats are calling this the most important trial in American history.
As I understand it, he is being prosecuted for something akin to yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. Free speech has its limitations as the above example is frequently used to illustrate. The Justice Dept.’s argument would be that his rhetoric incited false beliefs in his supporters and that he stirred them up and encouraged to them “fight like hell” when going to the Capitol. This led to material harm of the building, injuries of many involved in defending the building, not to mention attempting to subvert the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to next. These things are illegal regardless of whether he really thought he won the election or not, although there have been testimonies from many within his own administration that he privately admitted many times that he knew he lost the election.
Hi David,
My post here was written before the indictment of the 1/6 case. Two words I understand the prosecution left out of his speech, which seems dishonest, are peacefully and patriotically. “Fight like Hell” can be understood as a figure of speech. It can be used so many different ways without speaking of violence. There are precedents set for not prosecuting speech worse than what Trump made. Nevertheless, the point of my post is that this crash is coming.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/08/14/justice_shrugged_the_persecution_of_donald_trump_149619.html
I agree with this post. There are many, many what people have called “useful idiots” on this issue. People defending the left in essence by carrying the bag against Trump.