More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tim Alberta
Started reading
June 8, 2024
God has His own kingdom; no nation in this world can compare. God has His own power; no amount of political, cultural, or social influence can compare. God has His own glory; no exaltation of earthly beings can compare.
We can serve and worship God or we can serve and worship the gods of this world. Too many American evangelicals have tried to do both. And the consequences for the Church have been devastating.
The crisis of American evangelicalism comes down to an obsession with that worldly identity. Instead of fixing our eyes on the unseen, “since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal,” as Paul writes in Second Corinthians, we have become fixated on the here and now. Instead of seeing ourselves as exiles in a metaphorical Babylon, the way Peter describes the first-century Christians living in Rome, we have embraced our imperial citizenship. Instead of fleeing the temptation to rule all the world, like Jesus did, we have made deals with the devil.
Each of these experiences offered a unique insight into the deterioration of American Christianity.
My kingdom is not of this world. —JOHN 18:36
enlisting leading evangelicals to help frame a cosmic spiritual clash between the God-fearing Republicans who supported Trump and the secular leftists who viewed the forty-fifth president as the last obstacle standing between them and a conquest of America’s Judeo-Christian ethos.
The perversion of America’s prevailing religion would forever be associated with this tragedy;
“What’s wrong with American evangelicals?” Winans thought a moment. “America,” he replied. “Too many of them worship America.”
just always found it strange that these Christians relied so infrequently on the words of Christ.
Trump had spent his campaign inciting hatred against his critics, hurling vicious ad hominem insults at his opponents, boasting of his never having asked God’s forgiveness, and generally behaving in ways that were antithetical to the example of Christ.
“God’s people have always been tempted to be like the rest of the nations. It was true back then, and it’s true now,”
I want to be in power, I want to have influence, I want to be prosperous, I want to have security. And even if God gives me some of those things, I’ll try to achieve even more through worldly means.”
blessings often become indistinguishable from entitlements.
Once we become convinced that God has blessed something, that something can become an object of jealousy, obsession—even worship.
“At its root, we’re talking about idolatry. America has become an idol to...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“God told us, this place is not our promised land,” he said. “But they’re trying to make it a promised land.”
“And here’s the thing. The word faith is not just about belief; faith is about allegiance. When you declare faith in Jesus, you transfer your allegiance.
“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine,” he wrote. “Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”
Today, politics is changing the definition of what a Christian is. We’re setting the Bible aside and using a different standard.”
The candidate was serving up a cocktail of discontent—one part cultural displacement, one part religious persecution, one part nationalist fervor—that
It wasn’t just anger over COVID protocols; it was sheer derangement. People were trafficking in conspiracies over everything from the global elites who’d planned the pandemic to the global elites who sacrificed children and drank their blood for sustenance. (Often, they were one and the same.)
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America,
Peter was pursuing victory in the world; Jesus was promising victory over the world.
If Peter could be singled out as “Satan” for putting an earthly kingdom ahead of an eternal kingdom, Torres warned, we’re all fair game.
Indeed, the “things of man” Peter worried about twenty centuries ago are the same things that preoccupy us today: wealth, prestige, control. All of this,
‘What you’ve done is you’ve baptized your worldview and called it Christian.’”
“Usually the people who had strong points of view, they were focused on the mission of the church and what the church believed. But that’s become secondary.”
“Americans always think they deserve to win. And so, naturally, the Church has become about winning, too.”
