The Church and Civil Leadership

Billy Falling

Guest essay by Billy Falling

Candidates are already lining up for the 2016 presidential election.  Straw polls on both sides of the isle are indicating the front-runners.  Now that America has absolved itself of any collective guilt of racism by electing the first black president (twice), no more novelty elections are in order.  The next president will be held to a much higher standard than a “first this or a first that.”    A much more important criterion should be considered:  What candidate-to-be understands and would promote America’s mission from God and role in the world today?  Without that understanding and commitment, we will have just more of the same, regardless of what party or what candidate wins the White House.

America’s greatest problems are not gender orientated or racially orientated:  America’s greatest problems are spiritual and moral.  The greatest moral decline in the history of the country has occurred in our nation in the last fifty years.  A National Spiritual Awakening is the answer. That requires national leadership, both in the church and the state, who are ready to abandon the practices that got us into this present status, and turn this country around.  We didn’t acquire an eighteen-trillion dollar national debt by practicing biblical economics, and the gay-marriage issue didn’t just come into existence overnight.  Both are a glaring indication of the failure of our leaders since World War II.  For the state, the heresy of “separation of church and state” has driven our God-centered nation into secularism.  For the church, “Rapture Fever” and the betrayal of the Great Commission has the church focused on themselves, looking internally, rather than on changing the world with the Gospel.  The good news is, all of these problems can be fixed, and will be fixed, with a National Spiritual Awakening.

 In 1740, George Whitfield ignited the First Spiritual Awakening as he preached from Boston, MA to Savanna, GA to the colonists, who were, for the most part, protestant Christians, “Ye Must Be Born Again.”  The Holy Spirit became the spiritual glue that united the colonists to fight a revolutionary war, based on their conviction that America was the “Promised Land for The Gentiles.”  Twenty-six thousand people died in that war, but at the conclusion, the king’s word was no longer law; The Constitution was.  In the early 1800’s, a New York Attorney named Charles Finney was born again and filled with the Holy Spirit.  He led in the second spiritual awakening, resulting in one-half million souls saved, that gave birth to the abolitionist movement, and the Civil War.  At the conclusion of that war, after over 500,000 lives were given, slavery was eradicated from the land. America took the lead in the war against slavery in the world.  We are still fighting that war.  We still have eighty-one nations to go.

Ever since 1517 and Martin Luther, God has been restoring to the Church New Testament Christianity, both in doctrine and in experience.  The Great Falling Away, spoken of in II Thessalonians 2:3 bottomed out in 1517.  Since that date, the great outpouring of the Holy Spirit spoken of by Joel in 2:28, 29 has been spreading throughout the world.  Nothing can stand in the way of the Church.  God establishes churches and if they backslide, God revives them.  (Excerpt from The Miracle of America’s Future, soon to be released.) 


Billy Falling is pastor and headmaster, The Internet Church, International, P.O. Box 440, Chula Vista, CA 91912. He is Pastor Emeritus of Faith Center of Escondido, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, and the author of My Cherokee Roots: Out of the Dog Creek Hills. 

This article is from a circular email published January 2015.

© 2015. Used by Permission

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One Response to The Church and Civil Leadership

  1. John M. Frame February 20, 2015 at 2:26 pm #

    Billy, I remember you well from Escondido days. Great to see that you are still writing such good stuff. In Jesus, John Frame

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