Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth
As it is in heaven.

Speech Given by Dr. Grimstead to Transform World Connections, USA

MP3 Recording of the speech (not edited)

ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS FOR REBUILDING AMERICA ON BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES

    Dr. Jay Grimstead’s message given at the Transform World USA meeting in D.C. 7-5-07

 My mentor, friend and co-worker, Dr. Francis Schaeffer, in the opening paragraph of his book, How Should We Then Live, stated that, “There is a flow to history and culture…which is rooted…in the thoughts of people. The results of their thought world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo’s chisel, and it is true of a dictator’s sword.” Truly, ideas do have consequences and bad ideas inevitably have bad consequences. The false, anti-biblical ideas of the humanistic, atheistic, relativistic leaders in America  the past 100 years, and especially the past 35 years in the fields of Law, Government, Education, Economics, Science, the Media and the Arts have reaped the consequences of our beloved America now being on the brink of moral, social and economic disaster to such a degree that this nation is about to go over the cliff into becoming a tyrannical, socialistic police state if we Christian leaders do not turn America around in the next 10 years.

 And this terrible condition in which America now finds herself is the result, not of humanism’s superior ideas, or superior power, but primarily because our Christian leaders, thinkers, pastors and teachers of the past 100 years allowed it to happen by leaving the playing field altogether, and allowing the humanistic team to take over the major areas of American society by our default. In the minds of many Christian leaders and pastors of the past 100 years was the false dichotomy worldview which told them that God and the Bible were interested only in the spiritual, religious, matters of the invisible world (what Dr. Schaeffer called the “upper story” of life), and that they were not supposed to be concerned about who in this country was in charge of the fields of Law, Government, Economics, Education, Science or the Arts and Media. So we Christians allowed the humanists to just walk in and take over the major leadership of all those fields without a serious fight whereas, previously, those areas of society were all under the control of responsible Christians or Christian sympathizers. This was a far cry from the Puritans and Pilgrims and Founding Fathers who generally founded this nation upon the principles of the Bible and the Christian worldview.

So now a large number of us Christian leaders have awakened to this terrible national crisis and why and how it happened and we are ready to take revolutionary action to get America back on the right track and attempt to save her from her present course of ultimate self-destruction. And the question before us is, how do we accomplish that task of REBUILDING AMERICA UPON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE BIBLE so she is once again a nation that is moral, just, strong, safe, productive and is basically Christian enough to be a “city set upon a hill” for the rest of the world to see and follow.

 At this critical moment of history, may I offer you distinguished Christian leaders in America what I believe is a list of the ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS NECESSARY FOR REBUILDING AMERICA UPON THE PRINCIPLES OF THE BIBLE. By “essential ingredients”, I mean that I am convinced that America will not and cannot be turned around unless a united effort of us Christian leaders make a point of accomplishing these exact items. There are many wonderful things we can make happen, but if we do not make these specific items happen, all our other efforts combined will not turn America around as good or godly as they may be. Following is this list of essential ingredients for rebuilding America upon biblical principles.                                                                     

1. THE BIBLE WHICH HAS ALL THE ANSWERS TO ALL OUR PROBLEMS MUST BE DEFENDED BY US AS INERRANT. IT IS NOT AUTHORITATIVE IF IT IS NOT INERRANT!

 Dr. Abraham Kuyper of Holland said that “The Holy Scripture does not only cause us to find justification by faith, but also discloses the foundation of all human life, the holy ordinances which must govern all human existence in Society and State.”  Nothing else really works in society or state! In the Bible, God has given mankind the proper, just, workable principles for how all areas of life are to operate and how society and governments are to function for the good of mankind. To operate any area of life contrary to those biblical principles causes social dysfunction, injustice, inefficiency and eventually, self-destruction of that society.

 You people may or may not know that in America, evangelical Christianity is split into two distinct groups. On the one hand are those neo-orthodox, liberalized evangelicals who believe and teach that the Bible is part true and part false and their experts must tell us which parts are true or false. And on the other side are  those evangelicals who stand with Christ and the apostles and with the mainstream teaching of the Church for the past 2000 years and believe the Bible, in the original manuscripts, is all true and inerrant, word for word, not only where it speaks of spiritual matters but also where it speaks of those areas of interest to science and history. I can tell you with certainty that those evangelicals who have accepted a soft, relativistic, neo-orthodox view of the Bible (taught in many evangelical colleges and seminaries even as we speak), however much they may love Jesus and be sincere and be doing great things for God, they are offering the next generation of Christians a foundation on which to stand and live and minister made out of Jello, tofu, vapor and sand! With the philosophical, moral and political pressures we now face in America, the next generation of Christians cannot stand and fight or win if they do not have a Bible which is absolutely inerrant.

 The Bible cannot be authoritative if it is not inerrant. This is what the 60 world scholars of the I.C.B.I. which I gathered together in 1978 proclaimed when we created the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy that has now become the standard theological statement on biblical inspiration among historic evangelicals. I say all this to tell you that as we gather fellow leaders together into a national team to attempt to turn America around in our lifetime, we cannot count on any Christian brother being a strong, long-term, fellow warrior for this cause if that brother does not heartily, with conviction, believe that the Bible, from which we take our directions and our standards for society, IS AN INERRANT BIBLE! If you have any doubts about this, please read R.C. Sproul’s commentary on the ICBI inerrancy statement called, Explaining Inerrancy , published by Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, FL and Dr. Schaeffer’s book, The Great Evangelical Disaster published by Crossway Books, in Westchester, IL.

 Many sincere brothers graduating from a liberalized, evangelical seminary have a false view of the Bible and are not aware of that fact. And because neo-orthodoxy is a complex and sophisticated form of liberalism it is not easily detected. So to help the average Christian pastor or leader to identify which fellow Christians have been infected with this liberal perspective, we have created two sets of tests that reveal a person’s liberalism if they are liberal (if they are  honest when they take the tests). In the handout packet for this message under Section A are two tests we encourage you to use especially if you are hiring a new staff person or are on a pastor seeking committee. One test is called the TWENTY QUESTIONS, with the correct answer for all questions being a “yes”. This test reveals those 20 items on which a person tends to go liberal when he does go liberal. The other test parallels our ICBI statement on inerrancy and gives the neo-orthodox, unbiblical position on those very points we created the ICBI statement to clarify and denounce. The correct answer for all those questions is “no”.

2. OUR CO-WORKER, FELLOW WARRIORS MUST BE HUMBLE, HOLY PEOPLE WHO ARE WILLING TO DIE FOR CHRIST’S CAUSE AND BE WILLING TO BE HELD MUTUALLY ACCOUNTABLE TO LIVE IN OBEDIENCE TO THE BIBLE IN EVERY AREA OF LIFE.

 The past 100 years of Christian churches and Christian teaching has tended to produce several  generations of Christian men and women who are uncourageous, theologically fuzzy, luke-warm and unwilling or unable to appropriately confront anyone over matters of sin or heresy. Therefore, to mobilize a spiritual, political, activist army of Christians who are not afraid to lose their lives, their fortunes or their sacred honor to get “God’s will done on earth as it is done in heaven” and establish His Kingdom as much as possible here in America before Christ returns (without having to agree  in advance just how far we can take it before Christ’s return), wisdom tells us we should ONLY look for fellow warriors among those REMNANT, GIDEON TYPE WARRIORS, who have far more courage, clear thinking and commitment than the average Christian we find in most evangelical churches today. These Gideon soldiers must be willing to hold each other mutually accountable to live in obedience to the Bible and to exercise Matt. 18 church discipline on each other if anyone falls into sin. Out of all the existing Christians we only need a small percentage of this kind of Christian to turn this country around in our lifetime.

 Included in your packet as Section E is a sheet from our 24 Year Plan for Rebuilding America on the Bible which states the spiritual and worldview standards we are requiring for the 7324 Christian leaders we are seeking to find to create the national team we believe is necessary to turn America around. You may not want to require all those things of people you are recruiting for your team, but I wanted you to see what our National Elder Team believes is necessary in the way of character traits and worldview understanding for people we are recruiting for our 24 Year Plan. We believe emergency, radical action is needed, all within constitutional boundaries & means, and radical, burdened people are needed now.

 We developed then signed the COR Manifesto for the Christian Church at the Lincoln Memorial in 1986 at our Solemn Assembly to clarify on paper the kind of Christianity that was needed in order to fulfill the Great Commission and to begin turning America around from her unbiblical, suicidal course. I suggest you use that Manifesto as a tool to measure the thinking and commitment of those you are trying to recruit. Fuzzy thinking, uncommitted Christians fear and avoid that Manifesto. Courageous warrior type Christians love and embrace it. It is downloadable from our website at www.Reformation.net. Also included in your packet is a short article under Section D which I wrote on the Kingdom of God. It is my conviction that the false dichotomy view of Christianity coming to us from Emanuel Kant in 1781 and from pietistic Christianity, which separated life into two air-tight, disconnected compartments that unbiblically divided the invisible, spiritual world from the visible, physical world, is much to blame for the present sad condition of the Church and America. This dichotomy gave Christians a false view of the Kingdom of God.

 3. THOUGH POLITICS IS NOT THE MAIN GOAL OR THE MAJOR SOLUTION, WE CANNOT MAKE AMERICA BIBLICAL AGAIN UNLESS WE DELIBERATELY COMMIT TO HAVING GODLY, CAPABLE STATESMEN CAPTURE A MAJORITY OF SEATS IN THE U.S. CONGRESS, MOST OF THE STATE LEGISLATURES, MOST OF THE CITY COUNCILS AND COUNTY BOARD SEATS AND GETTING MATURE CHRISTIANS ELECTED TO MOST OF THE SEATS AS MAYOR , SHERIFFS, GOVERNORS, ATTORNEY GENERALS AND THE U.S. PRESIDENT.

 To attempt to turn America around and see a reformation, revival and rebuilding of society happen without  accomplishing the above political goals by constitutional means and by getting more people to the poles than do the humanists, is foolish and utopian beyond words. We still have a window of opportunity while we can still travel, meet, speak, vote and put forth our own candidates for office according to the constitution. If we allow the humanistic, anti-God devastation and deterioration to continue for a few more years, these freedoms we take for granted could evaporate quickly in a tyrannical police state brought about by any number of crisis to which we are now extremely vulnerable. To just think we can solve America’s problem by evangelism, worship, prayer and education etc. without also engaging in deliberate political, legal and financial action is foolish and unbiblical. The unprincipled men and women (however well intentioned they may be) that make up over half of our U.S. Congress and much of our state legislatures must be replaced over the next few years by Christian and conservative, mature, principled candidates. Many of those now running the courts, the government, the schools, the economics and the media who are driving our “bus of society and state” are blind drivers, with no road map, on a bus without brakes who are  heading our “bus” over the cliff. We must arise and, by constitutional means still available to us with free speech and the vote, grab the steering wheel of this “bus” and turn it back onto the right road. We are at a major crisis point of American and world history and God wants us Christians to arise and take the leadership of our nation to make it once again the kind of nation He ordained it to be and which it once was to a large degree in past history.

 4. BEFORE WE CAN EXPECT GOD TO BLESS OUR EFFORTS TO TURN AMERICA AROUND, PORTIONS OF THE AWAKENED CHURCH IN AMERICA MUST REPENT, CITY BY CITY, BY HOLDING A “SOLEMN ASSEMBLY” AND PUBLICLY REPENTING FOR NOT BEING THE PROPER SALT AND LIGHT TO AMERICA  AND THUS LETTING HER ROT AND GO FAR ASTRAY.

 Of urgent, critical importance is the great need for us Christians, in every city and hamlet in America where Christians are awake, to hold a Solemn Assembly as occurred in Neh. 9 and many times in the history of the Church and the history of America to repent for allowing our culture to rot because we were not the kind of light-bearing Church we should have been and for being “asleep at the switch” to let America go astray.

 Included in your packet in Section F is a brochure from our Solemn Assembly Committee listed on the back explaining why these are needed and how to proceed with a biblical Solemn Assembly. When you go back home please immediately gather a few leaders and pastors together to organize your city’s own Solemn Assembly as quickly as possible to help stay the Hand of God from giving us the judgment we deserve. We are now experiencing God’s remedial judgments. If we do not mobilize the thinking, awakened Body of Christ (a small percent we believe) to hold Solemn Assemblies across this land, we can expect God to let loose His devastating  judgments upon America in the way He brought judgment upon Jerusalem both in 587 BC and again in 70 AD.  Though we are not in control of anything you do in this regard in your own town, we are keeping a “clearing house” record of which cities hold their Solemn Assemblies when, so we would like to know when you plan to hold your own Solemn Assembly and what program you have developed for it. Our national Solemn Assembly website is www.solemnassembly.org. On that website, eventually you will be able to download the programs and plans of what other committees are doing in other cities of America.

 5. A LIST OF BASIC, STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES MUST BE ENACTED SUCH AS WE HAVE OUTLINED IN THE “24 YEAR PLAN TO REBUILD AMERICA ON THE BIBLE” IF WE ARE TO WIN THIS WAR FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA. WE WILL LOSE THIS WAR IF THESE BASIC STRATEGIES ARE NOT IMPLEMENTED.

 Following is the list of essential strategies listed in page 2 of the “24 YEAR PLAN”. (I have brought a few copies of the 24 Year Plan for any of you leaders who may wish to consider connecting with this plan.)

 MISSION STATEMENT: “To rebuild American civilization upon the principles of the Bible”.

       1) Local city-county, self-governing, united, “spiritual armies” must be formed which take the responsibility of Christianizing their local society and government made up of many different organizations, local churches, Christian businessmen and government leaders etc. This cannot be done “top down” as it has been tried by most organizations the past 30 years. An entire, “mobilizable army” on the ground, (the TEAM) must come into existence in the major & midsize cities or America cannot be turned around at this point. This is the key essential, missing ingredient in every major effort by all the “good guys” and every national organization that has attempted to turn America around these 30 years.  Up until now this has basically not been attempted or accomplished in any city as far as we know. NOTE: We cannot win this war for the soul of America if we wage it the next 25 years the way it has been waged the past 25 years! This fact entails a paradigm shift that must take place in all leader’s minds.

           2) A long-term, comprehensive, “master plan” for turning one’s city & county around must be created in writing, by the consensus of those pastors and local leaders from different fields of life and different organizations who are capable of working together as a coalition and who have a godly  passion to implement that plan in their lifetime. (That plan has to be: in writing, long-term, comprehensive, and by consensus or it will be nearly worthless!!) By “comprehensive”, we mean that the plan must include capturing the leadership in the fields of Law, Government, Education, Economics, Science, the Arts and the Media as the Great Commission requires.

Up until now this has not been attempted or accomplished in any city as far as we know.

A set of “blueprints” for how to apply the Bible to all these areas of life just mentioned is downloadable from our COR website at www.Reformation.net. Many of these COR Worldview Documents have been boiled down and distributed to you in the handbook for this conference.

For you who are interested, I can later share a copy of our 24 Year Master Plan for Rebuilding America upon Biblical Principles. This plan calls for establishing 7, interconnected, state networks in each state such as the Pastor’s Council Network we discuss in the next point.

       3) A significant number of senior pastors (10% or more) with their churches & boards behind them, must be involved at the ground level in the leadership and the planning of this cultural turn-around effort. No significant cultural changes can or will happen in any city without the involvement of God’s local churches, even though most evangelical churches will be reticent to participate. And it is nearly a waste of time to try to mobilize any church without first mobilizing their senior pastor. (This is another basic mistake our Christian political organizations have made the past 30 years.) Up until now this has basically not been attempted or accomplished in any city in America as far as we know. A major breakthrough on how to mobilize pastors to unite to take social and political action to turn their own city around has  happened in Houston, TX where Dave Welch has formed a team of 130 senior pastors into a social-change team. This is the best thing for activating local churches I have seen in the past 30 years. You may download all their information from their website at www.uspastorcouncil.org.

      4) A well-defined list of long-range social, political and legal goals must be created by consensus that will clarify what exact changes that local TEAM thinks God wants made in their city and state in the areas of Law, Government, Economics, Education, the Arts & Media, Medicine, Science,  social morals etc. No revolution can ever happen without the activists knowing the changes they are attempting to make!! Up until now such specific, comprehensive goals have not been written down or attempted in any city as far as we know.  As an example of what we mean by specific goals, we have placed in your handout packet under Section B a list of the political, legal and economic goals our 24 Year Team is hoping to accomplish within 24 years.

NOTE: Though we advocate long-range planning, we operate at present with serious urgency regarding our immediate danger of America having been taken over by philosophically “brain-damaged”, misguided, God-haters who will drive our nation’s “bus” over the cliff if we are not successful. We are on a “collision course” and the next 6 to 12 years will determine America’s future in either direction. To see why it is reasonable for us to be optimistic that we really could turn America around in our lifetime, see my article in the handout packet under Section C.

 In closing, I must mention three things.  First, I wish to invite all you leaders who have a deep burden for the dangerous condition of our beloved America to join us in this 24 Year Plan to Rebuild America on the Bible, or to join with others of your choice and come up with a similar, revolutionary plan to turn the country around, then let us encourage each other in this urgent, mighty task. By “revolutionary” I simply mean that we are attempting to change, by constitutional means, who is leading our nation. The definition of a revolution is simply a change of leadership in a country. America will not be turned around if the present leaders at the state and federal level continue in power. Our political and legal task is to replace unprincipled leaders in America who make our laws at all levels of government with principled people who are committed to the kind of America that was founded by George Washington, Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, James Madison, John Jay and the others wise, godly, Christian brothers.

 Second, I plan to take a national reform message similar to this to 80 other countries on our planet in the next few years and, in the process, to establish in each country a National Council on Theology to discuss, edit and hopefully affirm the 24 Theological Documents we have written the past 30 years which state the biblical and historical position on 24 issues that are now controversial among evangelicals. Those 24 documents are downloadable on our theological website at www.ChurchCouncil.org. I have included in your packet an old brochure from 2003 telling of our Theological Consultation at Knox Seminary where we officially accepted these documents. I could greatly use any help you could give me in suggesting contacts in other countries around the world who might be interested either in bringing a Christian reformation to their nation’s laws, governments, economics, education our media, or in clarifying any of the 24 issues now dividing evangelicals around the globe. You may contact me by phone at 209-728-2582 or by writing to me at P.O. Box 1139, Murphys, CA 95247, or by e-mailing my administrator, Rev. Eugene Clingman, at admin@churchcouncil.org.

 Third, as we prepare others to take up this battle properly and to help them understand the biblical worldview, I urge you to suggest that they read Dr. Abraham Kuyper’s classic from 1898, Lectures on Calvinism  and Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s four key books, How Should We Then Live, The Great Evangelical Disaster, A Christian Manifesto & Escape From Reason.

 May our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rev. 1:5) lead us, anoint us and empower us to turn our dear, broken America around and back to the point that her leaders bow their knees to Him Who “works all things after the council of His will” (Eph. 1:11). Amen and amen.