The Silence of the Church

  Over the last few days, I am pretty sure you have heard all the uproar about the interview that the Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson gave to GQ magazine. I am pretty sure you have also heard about how A&E TV decided to "suspend" him from the show, which would never have came about if Phil had not invented that duck call 40 years ago in a shed on his property, and which has made A&E a ton of money. Many of you have posted on social media in Phil's defense, many have come out against him calling it homophobic rants and then others have also called him racist for his comments on blacks in his area growing up. After watching many news shows about this over this past weekend, and after reading several articles on it, I have to tell you I have come to one conclusion, the religious persecution we have seen in other countries has come to our shores. The church has become an organization that many believe is outdated, irrelevant, and needs to be placed in the back of the bus so to speak. The church is under fire, and not just from those outside its walls.We have allowed the enemy to infiltrate within and cause division within the body of the church. The church has remained silent for to long and we have allowed the enemy a seat at our table.
       First off let's start with realizing that the reason these comments are "offensive' to many is that they have never heard the Gospel in the true from. Oh many people claim to be christian, because at one time America was known as a christian nation, but no more thanks to our current leadership, but that's another subject. To many churches out there have "watered" down the gospel so as not to offend anyone. Well I realized many years ago that unfortunately, the gospel, is offensive to all those who refuse to hear and obey it. But in our politically correct world today, offending those who do not believe as christian's do is a major no no. If the church would realize the words of Jesus in Mark 16:15 to "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.", then these type of things would not be such major issues and persecution of the church would not be as big in this country as it has become. 
        In this article, the writer of the article says that Phil believes, and I quote from the article, America was a country founded upon Christian values (Thou shalt not kill, etc.), and he believes that the gradual removal of Christian symbolism from public spaces has diluted those founding principles. He then states that “Everything is blurred on what’s right and what’s wrong",and then "sin becomes fine." This is where maybe his terminology could have been not so rough, but his comments were right on target. This is when the interviewer asks him, What in your mind is sinful?" Now I love the fact that Phil did not tell him that in my opinion its this or that, instead he states what he knows to be sin from the Bible, homosexuality, bestiality, and adultery for examples. This is where the LGBT organization known as GLAAD (gay & lesbian alliance against defamation) got all bent out of shape and decided to call A&E TV and start a ruckus that got Phil suspended. Now defamation is defined as s the communication of a false statement that harms the reputation of an individual, business, product, group,government, religion, or nation. to constitute defamation, a claim must generally be false and have been made to someone other than the person defamed. Now after reading his words, I do not see where anything he said was false, since we all know that the Bible is the infallible word of God, and it did not harm any one person, business, groups reputation. 
       What I do notice through out this entire article is that what Phil Robertson does however , is make sure that the world, through this interview, knows he is not ashamed of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I stand and applaud him for this. You see in Luke 9:26 Jesus says " for whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy Angels". This is where many in the church fall short. We are so afraid of offending others, so we keep our faith to ourselves, hence the reason situations like this arise. We are called to be the light of the world, (Matthew 5:14) to let others see Christ in our lives, but as long as we sit quietly by and say nothing, or do nothing, we allow the enemy to invade and defeat the church. We allow our values and principles to be compromised to fit the world rather than the word. One of the men I watched on a news show the other day said "I am a christian as I think all of us on this panel are, and we do not agree that homosexuality is a sin, but we believe he has the right to say he does." Well to this man I say, if you truly believe homosexuality is not a sin, then you need to look deep into the scriptures and see exactly what God says, and look inside of your walk with God and see how real it is. 
         When we the church, stand up and let the world know that the word of God is the same as it was in the beginning, as it was in the time of Noah, as it was in the time of Christ and it is still the same today. Sin is Sin, and Jesus is still the only way to Heaven (John 14:6). In Isaiah 55:11 the Lord says"So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.". The church has remained silent to long, the time is now or never to stand up and let the words of the Almighty God be heard. Then and only then will we see our nation restored and our churches filled with repentant hearts coming to Christ. The time for Revival in our churches is NOW. For to long we have let our mouths be silenced and our hearts be hardened, but no more. The time has come for the body of Christ to stand up and be counted. To go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, that His house may be filled (Luke 14:23)
     I pray that you will stand with me in support of Phil Robertson and not only his right to freedom of speech, but his right to speak the words of God without fear of condemnation. God bless all those who read this and may the blessings of the Lord be with you and your family this Christmas season. MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!

Brother Bill Roy.