When a Captive Church is set free, what can it do? Better yet, what will it do?

My previous post was about Biblical Cyrus' mandate to judge ancient Babylon and I considered the parallel with Trump's role in doing the same thing to our modern-day Babylonian system.

Cyrus had another role to play which was to set God's people free from the captivity they were in. That is what this post is about.

What does it mean that the Church is being set free? What should we be doing if in fact a modern-day Cyrus is being used by God to free us from things that have had us captive? That have been holding us back?

So, let us get back to our Biblical character of Cyrus. Imagine we are in the 6th century BC and God's people have been under judgment during their 70 years of Babylonian captivity. For all those decades, faithful Jews within Babylon were crying out to Yahweh for deliverance AND for God to judge the very ones who God was using to judge them.

And then the deliverer came. Cyrus the PAGAN Persian emperor basically took over the entire Middle East and beyond. The year when Babylon fell to Cyrus was 539 BC. The gate would be opened for God's people to leave the "cage" of their captivity with the mandate to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. They now had the choice: they could stay in Babylon or they could return to their homeland. 

We must not forget that Judaism requires a functioning temple and priesthood for Jews to be obedient to God. Leaving captivity and getting the Jewish temple rebuilt had to be their #1 priority. Without a temple, there is no way for Jews to obey nearly 50% of their revealed law. The year the rebuilt Jewish temple was dedicated was 516 BC which is the year that the Jews consider the 'official end' of the 70-year Babylonian captivity. 

Interesting, that it ended technically in 538 BC, with the decree of Cyrus allowing them to return to Jerusalem, but it wasn't until their temple was up and functioning again that they mark its official end - I guess we can say that 516 BC marked the end of their "spiritual captivity" as the Jews could now fully obey God once again.

History is a bit complicated here but what happened was essentially that there were 4 different waves of Jewish migration out of Babylon beginning in 538 BC when the first wave made their way to Jerusalem. Ezra led one of waves and the final one in 445 BC which included Nehemiah. 

I began to wonder WHY the delays? Why did so many drag their feet and it take so long? 538 BC was when the cage door was open and some didn't leave Babylon until 445 BC with Nehemiah - nearly 100 years later!!

I do not know this for sure, but I am imagining that there were a variety of reasons for the delayed responses with certain Jews living in Babylon. 

Let's face it, we all know the types who jumped into the first wave of migration - adventurous types, the bold, the pioneers, the builders, the ones who think "the grass is always greener somewhere else". 

I also want to believe that there were even purer motives in that initial wave. Those who like the "sons of Issachar" (1 Chon. 12:32) discerned the times and knew what God wanted obedient sons and daughters to do. A faithful remnant was ready to go. And when the cage door was finally opened, they flew out immediately. The 1st wave migrants immediately began to rebuild their Jewish Temple.

What about those who weren't so quick to respond? 

Maybe they figured, "We will let that first wave go and check things out a bit and then we'll decide when (or even if) we will go". Others were so comfortable in Babylon they possibly didn't even want to go. Their faith possibly had gotten so watered down, that prioritizing obedience to God was the last thing on their minds. How would they be able to keep up on all the Babylonian pagan cultural developments if they lived hundreds of miles away?

However, I can think of another group; a religious group actually. These would be the 6th Century BC "virtue-signalers" to use a modern day concept. These were the ones who didn't like WHO GOD CHOSE TO USE TO OPEN THE CAGE DOOR. "How dare the God of Heaven use a pagan, godless man to accomplish His purposes"!! They didn't like the vessel. They refused the package that the God-sent deliverer came in. So, instead of walking out of the cage door, they remained in Babylon offended. I can even imagine them sitting around spending time complaining about Cyrus' character - he was a narcissist for sure. How repulsive!

Part of my motivation in this post is to address the mentality of the same group today - NeverTrumper Christians. First of all, they don't believe for a second that Donald Trump is any type of a God sent Cyrus today. That for them is utter nonsense. They are sure God didn't choose him at all. "That's not the kind of man God uses they reason (or minimally they would see him as a judgment from God on the church rather than any type of liberator!) 

So, they believe God was willing to choose a godless pagan in the 6th century BC to accomplish His purposes, but they refuse to believe he would choose a godless man in 2016 for a similar purpose. Of course, they didn't even realize they were in a type of Babylonian captivity. Their embrace of Marxist/Socialist ideas, Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, Social Justice, elements of the LGBTQ+ agenda, White Privilege, the 'idol' of Climate Change, Systemic Racism and other woke, so-called progressive ideologies are all ways in which Babylonian thinking entered and infected the Church! Many NeverTrumpers (not all of course, i.e. John Piper rejects nearly all of these ideas) are dyed in the wool advocates of many of these neo-Babylonian philosophical ideas. 

I think these NeverTrumper Christians are very much like the religious group of Jews I have just imagined back in Babylon. The cage was opened to some extent back in 2016 with Trump's first election, but they rejected such a notion of freedom and rather opposed him every step of the way. Of course, they refused to vote for him, and virtue-signaled about that! Then, they virtue-signalled endlessly to shame those of us who did. 

How quickly they would believe every lie the media made up about him - i.e. beginning with Russian collusion, the Ukraine stuff, believing he called Neo-Nazis "very fine people" in Charlottesville, believing the 2020 Election was "the fairest and most secure election in U.S. History" and ending with their belief that Trump called for a violent insurrection on January 6th, 2021. None of these things were true and yet most of these NeverTrumpers believed every single one of them!

Even in this 2024 Election, I heard/read about their loud virtue-signaling that "I could never vote for a convicted felon"! (never mind that ALL the charges were bogus and were just the latest lawfare tactics being waged against him). 

Tragically, Christians believing the lies of Babylon only reveals their ongoing captivity to the system. I would try to present the other side to many of my NeverTrumper friends, but most refused to believe any evidence supplied that would challenge their indoctrination. That is exactly what it was/is; programmed indoctrination.

So, instead of getting busy with the opportunities that God opened for us in 2016, NeverTrumpers ended up on the wrong side of God's purposes, and actually ended up 'aiding and abetting' the enemy, if not actually working with the enemy (see "Evangelicals for Biden" in the following paragraph), to hinder anything and everything Donald Trump was attempting to do. They didn't want him to succeed. Because of course, that would only reveal how wrong they had been in their assessment.

Leading up to the 2020 Election a group of them started "Evangelicals for Biden" (which morphed into "Evangelicals for Harris" in this last election). Imagine if Cyrus was coming and religious Jews in Babylon had started, "Jews in Support of Pagan Babylon" to resist the coming of Cyrus!. It reveals just how sick the Church had/has become that professing Christians, would actually stand candidates/support platforms which celebrate infanticide (abortion). That advocate for the genital mutilation of young people's God-assigned genders. That want wide open borders allowing drugs (killing countless Americans), criminals/terrorists and human sex trafficking to pour unmitigated into our country with all the devastating effects this has had on our national economy - just to name of few of their godless, evil policies.

Don't forget that the very Supreme Court justices that Donald J. Trump appointed during his first term led to the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. NeverTrumper Christians couldn't even celebrate that victory in a battle Christians had been fighting for since 1973. They virtue-signaled yet again almost acting like it didn't really matter, but rather Christians they reasoned, "Christians need to be pro-Life from cradle to grave". As if there was ever a time we were not!!! And where did they get that talking point? You got it - directly from the Babylonian Left!

And to this day, the lies that NeverTrumpers still believe and propagate about Donald Trump and the MAGA movement is astonishing - calling him "Hitler", "racist", "misogynist", etc. Calling MAGA supporters - "right wing extremists", "idolatrous Christian nationalists", and even "domestic terrorists" when some of us went to school board meetings to protest Trans Insanity indoctrination in public schools, etc.

But what if the Body of Christ in 2024 (and going forward) can realize a new opportunity is being given to us, that the proverbial cage door is about to be reopened? (I am hopeful even for NeverTrumpers)

I am following these developments. The NeverTrumper Christian crowd has been uncharacteristically silent since November 5th. Yes, there have been some of the most vocal of them who felt obligated to virtue-signal in the wake of his landslide re-election: I am thinking of David French, Phil Vischer, Russell Moore and even John Piper. But even their tone has been different. 

Maybe it was the realization that remaining in Babylon wasn't going to work out very well for anybody. The past four years seems to have awakened millions to the fact that things were far better when "Hitler" was around! Could it also be that the most radical left-wing agenda in American History was just derailed when Harris/Walz were not victorious? I think these thoughts just might be sinking in.

I want to propose an even more positive idea - I think that some of these NeverTrumper Christians are actually discerning that the cage door is now really about to open. And rather than waste all of their considerable energy in protest and what amounted to disdain and/or even hatred of Trump and the MAGA movement (all done of course in "the Name of Jesus" mind you), I believe that something of a fresh new vision is actually arising within some of them. At least, that is what I am praying for. 

And I will pray that they would actually join the 2nd migration wave out of Babylon (if that is where we are at) and get about the Father's business. To extend the Kingdom. To take full advantage of the freedom that God has given us through His ongoing use of Donald Trump. The Church will have a lot more freedom now to do what only the Church can do under a new Trump Administration than it would have had under a Harris Administration. Few would deny this. 

Maybe this time, rather than remain in their offense of the tool God is using, they will say "Thank You" (at least to God :) ) and get busy.

What CAN WE DO in the days head? What WILL WE DO?

God's people eventually took full advantage of Biblical Cyrus' liberation. It took them nearly 100 years but eventually the people of God left their cage and returned to where they could fully live out their faith in obedience to God. 

I for one intend to do exactly the same thing. I didn't like our Cyrus in the beginning. I didn't like the way he treated the other Republicans in the 2015-2016 primaries. But slowly I began to see that God had another purpose with this man. The more they hated him, the more I liked him. Whatever they accused him of, was what they had done or were doing. My emergence from my own Babylonian captivity took time but by the time we got to Covid and a fraudulent 2020 Election, I believe I was free. As I think about it, I got even more free living under 4 years of Biden's Babylon. 

Fast forward 8 years since Trump first came onto the scene politically, and we can see why God chose him and him in particular. Very few realized how widespread and deep "the Swamp" was and what they would do in their multiple attempts to stop him. No one, and I mean NO ONE, could have survived what has been thrown at this man since 2016.

If Donald Trump truly is a type of Cyrus, then let us as Christians believe we can actually do more with far greater impact as we get free from the limitations and negative influence that Babylon has had on the Church. It is on us to REJECT the aforementioned woke, progressive ideologies that had crept into Christianity. They are NOT compatible with the Christian faith. Leaving Babylon means repenting from these infections and teaching a new generation of Christians to think Biblically rather than embracing the counterfeits (i.e. Marxism, Socialism, Feminism, Neo-Darwinism, Scientism, Marxist Critical Theory/Critical Race Theory (CRT), Globalism etc.)

LET US BE A CHURCH THAT WILL ARISE IN THIS HOUR BELIEVING THAT

- We will shape culture instead of the culture shaping us. 

- Instead of losing our children to Babylon, Babylon's will come to Christ.

- We will begin to change laws that no one thought possible. The fact that     Roe v. Wade was overturned during Biden's Administration should have alerted us to what is possible! That was a God thing. And he used Cyrus to accomplish it whether we admit it or not.

- We will see the influence of Babylon decrease in our public schools. We just flipped a local school board here in California from progressive to conservative. The Babylonian system just got uprooted in arguably the most Babylon-like state!

- That the Church will no longer be seen as irrelevant (or "non-essential" as it was deemed during COVID). That will no longer be the case. The most relevant and most essential needs to be our new identity in the culture. 

- That the long-awaited revival, move of God could well be upon us! Yes, I know revivalists that have been claiming revival is already here. But as a guy who goes out on the streets regularly, that is simply not the reality. Having studied revival history for years, America has not seen anything like one since the Jesus People Movement of the 1960s. Of course, God is always at work and many have come to Christ even in the past couple of years. But I wonder if a Church will arise in this next season that has evangelism as one of its defining characteristics! A Church will everyone shares their faith. I only like fishing when I catch fish - and if in fact a Great Awakening is upon us, a lot more of God's people will become fishermen!

What if the Church took seriously the opportunities we would have if in fact the judgment of the Babylonian system is going to be taking place in the upcoming years? And that the Church can now be free from its captivity to that system in a whole new way? I know it is hard to believe, but what if this is the hour in which we find ourselves? 

I could be wrong but what if I am right? What if it is truly a new day for the Church both in America and across the earth? What if God chose a sinful vessel, Donald Trump, to come against Babylon and open the "cage door" for the Church to fly again and to be all that God intends it to be?

I've decided that I'm going to live as if this is in fact the case. I follow Jesus and NOT Cyrus, and I will be busy with His business, the King of Kings.

May this be our finest hour! 

For such a time as this...