It's Still the Cross

This is one of those times when I had an entirely different topic in mind, and the Holy Spirit just slammed the door in my face. I just couldn't sit down and get started on it. As the days clicked by, it seemed as if it was just one thing after another. I couldn't get it going. It wouldn't come together...it just wouldn't gel.

I know from over 10 years of experience that when this happens, it's a signal that God has a different topic for me—He's just waiting for the right moment to lay it on me.

In this case, that "right moment" was a case of viral gastroenteritis.

At least that's what the doctor at a neighborhood clinic called it. He gave me three days' worth of pills and reassured me it wasn't anything serious—just enough to make me slow down to a crawl for a couple of days and stay within a stethoscope's throw of a bathroom.

So down to a crawl I slowed. As it happens, I have a modest collection of .mp3s and .mp4s stored on my computer's hard drive that I have acquired from various sources over the years, and I hadn't listened to many of them for quite awhile. As I was wiling away a few hours browsing through them, I happened to listen to a song recorded by the gospel quartet Gold City in 1997. It was a version of the song I had snagged from YouTube a few years earlier, and this particular performance features Daniel Riley, son of former Gold City bass singer Tim Riley.

The above link will take you to YouTube, and here are the lyrics:

It's Still the Cross
(by Luke Garret)

It's not conservative or liberal, however they're defined;
It's not about interpretation or the judgment of the mind;
It's the opposite of politics, power or prestige;
It's about a simple message and whether we believe.

CHORUS:
It's still the cross—it's still the blood of Calvary
That cleanses sin and sets the captives free;
It's still the name—the name of Jesus
That has power to save the lost...
It's still the cross.

We can water down theology and preach a word to suit our needs;
We can justify sweet subtle lies that are wrapped in noble deeds;
We can alter our convictions to adapt to social whims;
But we cannot change the gospel or the truth contained within.

(CHORUS)

CODA:
Though some may say it's man's religion or ancient history,
The cross of Jesus still remains the price for sin that sets us free.

(CHORUS)

It's still the cross.
It's still the cross.

Before the end of the first chorus, the Holy Spirit had scored a direct hit with His personal RPG-7 rocket-propelled grenade launcher—a handy little piece of hardware He reserves for especially hardheaded individuals such as yours truly. Next thing I knew I was fighting back the tears as the Holy Spirit got the simple, powerful message through to me, and I knew the Lord was laying His choice of topics on my heart.

What I had been feebly trying to put together was an article pertaining to the oh so conveniently timed re-emergence of one Barack Hussein Obama, who came out of hiding from his Washington townhouse long enough to press the flesh with the liberal elite at a D.C. gala celebrating the 12th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. Oh, and make a calculated effort to humiliate Joe Biden and send the not-so-subtle message to the Democratic Party that Joe's days as a placeholder president are numbered.

That, and how all this has my beastometer twitching all of a sudden.

But anyway...perhaps if I can come up with a bit more substance on the topic, I may yet take another shot at it—but not now. You might say I got issued a new set of orders.

What I want to do in this article is talk about a few of the things that seem to be holding our attention hostage these days, and that have become the overriding focus of many believers. I've narrowed it down to five topics that have dominated the narratives we are exposed to on a daily basis, and I want to consider how these topics stack up to what we really should be focusing our attention on in these last moments of the last days.

1. The coronavirus and COVID lunacy.

Arguably the number one topic that has held the world's attention in a death grip is the coronavirus and all the associated COVID lunacy.

For over two years, the entire world has been plunged into a raging cauldron of fear: fear of a novel coronavirus; fear of its highly trumped-up symptoms; fear of the possibility of having it and spreading it to others unknowingly; fear of the effects of experimental and woefully undertested vaccines that were rushed to the market under blatantly fraudulent circumstances by the government and Big Pharma and forced on an unsuspecting public with the help of their media lapdogs who incessantly touted them as "safe and effective"; fear of draconian and demonstrably ineffective measures such as crippling lockdowns (and the business closures that inevitably result), mask mandates, vaccine mandates, remote learning for children who desperately need to be in school, ad infinitum, ad insaniam.

No small number of believers seem to have made it their mission in life to fight the COVID insanity that has gripped the world, and dissuade others from giving in to the mainstream media narrative surrounding the biggest plandemic in human history.

For example, many rail against the vaccines, some of which (namely Pfizer and Moderna) used aborted fetal cell tissue in the research and development phase. A number of believers have gotten caught up in this crusade, and some go so far as to devote their time and energy to condemning the act of getting vaccinated as a grievous sin (it is only if it defiles your conscience).

Some have joined organized demonstrations against vaccine mandates, and some have taken the ultimate step of walking off their jobs in protest. Some have shown up at school board meetings to passionately protest harmful mask mandates for their young children, only to be marked and targeted as domestic terrorists and hauled off in handcuffs.

But should this be the primary concern of believers? Should this issue be the laser focus of the Church?

No.

Then what should be?

It's still the cross.

2. The theft of the 2020 election.

In my humble opinion, the theft of the 2020 election stands alone as the single greatest political crime in American history.

Millions of Americans went to bed the evening of November 3, 2020 assuming that Trump's lead in several key states would stand and that the president had clearly won a hard-earned second term. But something just seemed...off.

For example, for reasons that were never clearly or credibly enunciated (one place actually blamed it on a leaky toilet), the counting was halted in several swing states—something that is never done, ever. It has long been the norm in American elections for the counting to continue throughout the night, and often in the wee hours of the morning a result is finally announced.

But not in the 2020 election, oh no. In key areas in several swing states, poll workers were told the counting was to be stopped and that they should go home, while a handful of staff remained behind. And in the late night hours, strange things began occurring in these states:

• In at least one location, shortly after poll workers were told to go home, trunks full of fake mail-in ballots were pulled out from under tables to be run repeatedly through vote-counting machines—all caught on video.

• It was determined (and subsequently demonstrated in a courtroom before the disbelieving eyes of Georgia officials) that Dominion voting machines in that state could readily be hacked and illegally connected to the Internet, thus allowing external manipulation by unknown actors.

• Vans showed up at certain locations in the middle of the night to drop off loads of fake mail-in ballots (virtually all for Biden), which were both illegally received and illegally counted...and caught on video.

• Legions of people were hired to physically stuff drop-off boxes with stacks of fake mail-in ballots for Biden (also caught on video). This is the topic of the documentary film 2,000 Mules.

• Vote tabulations in key areas in several states exhibited what later became known as a "drop and roll," where a large number of votes for Biden were deposited during the night (the "drop") that were just enough to give Biden the lead in that state. Afterwards, subsequent count updates (the "roll") were invariably a fixed percentage for Biden and a (slightly smaller) fixed percentage for Trump. Thus, Biden's lead was preserved and he was handed the win.

For example, one big load of votes would be tabulated all at once that gave Biden the lead. Then, every single count update following that would be, say, 51.7 percent for Biden and 48.3 percent for Trump. And that pattern would be repeated until all the "votes" were "counted." It would be exactly the same:

51.7–48.3 . . . 51.7–48.3 . . . 51.7–48.3 . . . 51.7–48.3 . . . 

Every. Single. Time. Odd? Suspicious? No. Statistically impossible—and those are not my words. Those are the words of professional statisticians with many years of experience in this field who have studied the situation.

And it just goes on and on and on—this is just the tip of the iceberg. And I haven't even mentioned a slew of clumsy, frantic efforts to destroy evidence of fraud or to cover it up.

From day one, before any real investigation of any kind could get off the ground, the mainstream media began trumpeting their new official narrative from the rooftops:

All the allegations of fraud are baseless.

CNN's Word of the Month for November 2020: baseless. Of course, ever since November 3, 2020, there has been a number of dedicated people who have worked tirelessly to expose and gather evidence of this fraud.

Think hard: Ya know, I just can't figure it...but for some strange reason the Democrats have fought them tooth and nail every single step of the way. If this election was so secure and these allegations are so baseless, then why would they do that? Take your time.

The biggest problem has been getting people who persistently deny the fraud for the simple reason that the candidate they hate lost to simply open their eyes and look at the copious amount of evidence that has been uncovered.

As you would expect, a number of born-again believers—who generally tend to be conservative in their politics and have a greater propensity to support Republican candidates (such as Trump)—have made the fraud of the 2020 election their cause of choice. Some of them remain fiercely determined to see Trump reinstated and people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, et al. thrown in prison (which is where they belong). They dream of it—they live for it.

But should the fraud of the 2020 election and the exposing thereof be what believers live for? Should we allow this issue to be our consuming passion above all else?

No.

Then what should be?

It's still the cross.

3. The train wreck of the Biden administration.

Closely related to and immediately following the previous item is the disastrous Biden administration that was installed following the Democrats' theft of the 2020 presidential election.

Since day one, Joe Biden has proved to be a pitifully unqualified puppet of a prezzzident who has a cabal of deep state actors led by the likes of Barack Obama making policy decisions behind the scenes. They tell him what to do, they tell him what to say, and they tell him what to sign. Meanwhile, Joe is nearing the end of a nearly five-decade career as a do-nothing Democrat who has sat in Washington with a "for sale" sign on his back, and now dementia has rendered him incapable of making any decisions more complex than what flavor of ice cream to order.

Ahh...where to begin. Here are a few of the "achievements" of the Biden administration that began on January 20, 2021:

• On his very first day in office, Biden canceled the Keystone Pipeline. More precisely, he signed an executive order revoking permission to complete cross-border Keystone XL Pipeline (Phase IV), the final and arguably most important phase of the Keystone Pipeline project. This would have involved the construction of a larger-capacity pipeline from Hardisty, Alberta to Steele City, Nebraska which would have connected to other already completed segments of the pipeline. Thousands of American workers lost their jobs, and the country was given its first of several hard shoves away from the energy independence it enjoyed under President Trump.

• In August 2021, the Taliban successfully occupied Kabul and took over the government of Afghanistan. Biden's response?

Yikes! Let's scram!

On August 30, the last U.S. military plane departed from Afghanistan, leaving behind several thousand innocent American citizens and Afghans who had been friendly toward America, not to mention $85 billion worth of top-grade military hardware. The fall of Afghanistan and the ensuing chaotic departure of American forces was a national humiliation for the United States, and made us look weak and inept in the eyes of our both our friends and our enemies.

• Inflation is as high as it's been in decades and set to get worse. A perfect storm of crippling factors, both real and contrived, is congealing to send prices of things that everyday people need every day through the roof, and there is no end in sight. Meanwhile, Biden shuffles about, shaking hands with the air, blaming it all on Putin, and patting himself on the back for his many outstanding accomplishments.

• The Biden administration has done nothing but scream bloody murder at Republicans who want to require voter ID across the nation and do away with mail-in ballots (which the Democrats insisted on in early 2020 with the plandemic as their excuse), and howl about how this would constitute "voter suppression." Of course, when you consider it was primarily fraudulent mail-in ballots that got Biden "elected" in the first place, desperately clinging to a key tactic that made it all possible does sorta make sense.

I could go on, but I fear for my blood pressure. The bottom line is that the Biden administration seems intent on weakening and ultimately destroying America as rapidly as possible, and its track record over the past 15 months is sad testimony to the truth of that statement.

(P.S. I'm kidding about my blood pressure—it's actually a bit on the low side.)

Naturally, many born-again believers seek to staunch the bleeding and help our country survive this administration. For many, getting rid of our current three-ring circus and saving the constitutional republic that our Founding Fathers envisioned from the wicked individuals who installed that circus and who seek to tear our country down is of paramount importance.

But should repairing the damage done to our government and our nation by a covert gaggle of globalists be believers' primary mission?

No.

Then what should be?

It's still the cross.

4. Woke politics.

All White people are racists and owe Black people "reparations"—and this needs to be drilled into the minds of innocent young children.

You're either a BOY or a GIRL?! Oh, please...how positively binary! There is an endless smorgasbord of genders to choose from—and if you so much as smirk at that idea, it proves you're an intolerant, homophobic bigot. Oh, and this needs to be drilled into the minds of innocent young children, too.

Tearing down statues of American heroes that built this nation is the duty of social justice warriors, as is staging violent riots in the streets of American cities to protest the injustice du jour. And if you voice a word of criticism or lift a finger to try and stop them, it's more proof that you're a racist.

According to Wikipedia, "woke" is a word that means "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination" that originated in the African-American community.

However...

Today, the idea of being "woke" is a cat o' nine tails that is used to whip anyone who so much as hesitates to pander to a nauseating range of liberal, left-wing ideologies—from racism under every rock to flights of gender fantasy that tax the most licentious of imaginations.

I am pleased to say that there are legions of born-again believers who are sufficiently well-grounded in the Word of God to spot out and shoot down these perverted birds of prey. But for many, attacking woke politics has become something more—it has become a bit of a calling as they insist and seek to convince others they are not racists in spite of being White. They rightly argue that one is either male or female because Scripture says those are the only two choices and politely point out that being born a boy or a girl has never been particularly complex up until now.

But should sending the rats of woke politics scurrying be what we live and breathe for? Should it be believers' highest calling?

No.

Then what should be?

It's still the cross.

5. The Russian invasion of Ukraine.

On February 24 Russia invaded Ukraine, and since that day this has been one of the top news stories that has gripped the world. Before you could say "down with the Russkies," the media had turned this into a black-and-white affair, with Vladimir "Big Bad Vlad" Putin as the evil villain and Volodymyr "Z" Zelenskyy as the heroic underdog.

The mainstream media has done its best to make this all about the regional aggression of the Russians, but there's a bit more to the story than that. For decades, Ukraine had been the breeding grounds for endless layers of corruption and nefarious biochemical activity, and Russia had been warning them for well over a decade that they wouldn't tolerate such activities going on near their border. Finally, taking full advantage of the leadership vacuum in Washington, they took the initiative to put a stop to it.

The bottom line, however, is that the entire world is being goaded into punishing Russia. Countries are being pushed into supporting Ukraine and sanctioning Russia in different ways, and one of the most popular ways to punish Russia has become to ban imports of Russian gas.

I have stated before that I agree with those who believe the next boogeyman after the coronavirus begins to wane a bit is going to be climate change, although it wasn't apparent to me up until recently exactly how that was going to work. After all, climate change isn't really scary. It lacks the immediacy of something like a virus. It's not threatening to us today—it's 20 or 30 years down the road (unless your name is Al Gore). It wasn't obvious to me how they were going to manage to add that required element of urgency to it.

Now it's crystal clear.

I hesitate to be vein-poppingly dogmatic about it, but based on what I have read the push toward green energy is going to be married to the push to punish Russia. Going green—moving away from fossil fuels and switching to renewable energy sources—will be cast as a way to hurt the big Russian bully (no matter how much it may hurt us in the process). It will be a supremely politically correct way to punish Russia and support Ukraine all in one fell swoop.

Going green won't just be environmentally
friendly—it will be the green badge of courage.

Going green will be the premier way of denouncing the tyrant Putin and honoring the hero Zelenskyy—of sticking it to Russian bad guys and showing support for Ukrainian good guys.

And the world will be watching.

As you might imagine, some believers have come out swinging against Putin and Russia. They have made the Russian invasion of Ukraine their number one issue, and make a point of demonstrating their unwavering condemnation of Russia and support for Ukraine at every opportunity.

But should disdain for Putin and Russia and support for Zelenskyy and Ukraine be the face a believer shows to the world? Should denouncing the Russian invasion of Ukraine be a believer's end all be all?

No.

Then what should be?

It's still the cross.

Exciting times

Now, don't think for a second that I'm suggesting that believers should blow these things off, or remain unconcerned about them. I'm certain that one of the reasons God led me to write this article is because I do care about these issues—to some extent, I'm preaching in the mirror here.

• I'm not saying believers should ignore the plandemic, or passively believe whatever the government, the mainstream media, and Big Pharma say about the virus and the vaccines. It's good to question what we are told—it can save our lives. And it would be naive in the extreme to fail to see that we are being lied to on a routine basis by all of the above.

• I'm not saying believers should forget about the fraud that stole the 2020 election, or pooh-pooh it as if it were a trivial matter—it's not. And it's certainly not all about Trump. As Americans, the integrity of our elections should be a matter of grave concern to all of us, regardless of who wins or loses. And as for those who still insist there was no fraud...sigh. Go back to sleep.

• I'm not saying believers should passively accept everything Joe Biden says and does. But the Bible does say we should pray for our leaders—such as they are—so that we may live in peace (1 Tim. 2:1–2). Besides, he is nothing but an elderly man suffering from pronounced cognitive decline who needs Christ and who is being manipulated by some very sinister people.

• I'm not saying believers should accept or tolerate all the trendy woke politics. It's nothing but a stinking pile of contrived falsehoods—falsehoods that warrant being vigorously confronted, exposed, and refuted.

• And I'm not saying believers should blow off the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Innocent people are suffering and dying as Russia seeks to impose their will on the political situation in the region, not to mention the fact that it has prophetic significance as an event that may possibly help set the stage for the Ezekiel 38–39 scenario.

It's right and good for us to know about and be concerned with these and other things that impact our lives and plague this fallen world. But we gravely err if we allow these things—anything, in fact—to ever overshadow the cross of Christ and divert our attention away from the promulgation of the gospel of His salvation in any way.

The cross is where a holy, just, loving God gave us His best, and it's where our Lord and Savior laid down His life so that we could be forgiven of sin, born of the Spirit, and eternally reconciled to the Father. So...

It's still the cross of Christ and the advancement
of the gospel that should be the laser focus, the
consuming passion, the primary mission, the highest
calling, and the end all be all for every believer.

And in these trying times—these exciting times, as the last few precious souls are being brought into the kingdom before God pulls the trigger on the Rapture and His final round of judgment on a rebellious, Christ-rejecting world, it sure wouldn't hurt to remind ourselves of that from time to time:

It's still the cross.

Greg Lauer — APR '22

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