Follow - up to the letter “Our Dear America”

Follow
-
up to the letter “Our Dear America”
by Wolfgang
and Mercy
Simson
Our sincere thank you to each and everyone
who has
welcomed
“Our Dear America”
message with an open heart
.
We
are
literally swamped
with
countless e
-
ma
il
s
from all over the world.
Afte
r answering a couple of hund
reds, we decided to publish
this
open follow
-
up letter
addressing the most frequent questions that
keep repeating in the emails
and address a very few next
steps we strongly suggest
.
We
hope you will find the answer to your q
uestion
somewhere here.
This follow
-
up letter is not only
for America, but also to all the Western
European
nations
that find themselves in a similar
political and
economic situation like
the US
.
Many have, for examp
le, asked about the role of political leadership in regards to God blessing or judging a country;
many have asked: what about church; what about economics. We will try to address these in a nutshell, although we know it is
impossible to cover all angles
, s
o please bear with us.
The
“Our Dear America” message
was
not
sen
t
out
a
s a
pacifying,
soothing message for all those that wanted Romney to win
and Obama
to lose
.
This message
is
not meant to
calm down you
r troubled spirit,
so
you can now take a deep breath and think:
“God has mysterious ways”
!
Rather it
is
a wake
-
up call to shake
those in
America
that call themselves after Christ from a toxic
slumber,
and encourage them to seek their
true King,
and to submit to his
rule.
Would
you therefore please a
llow us
take this to
a next level and try to be
as clear and concise as we can
?
First
,
our motive
:
W
e love the US
.
M
y
(Indian)
wife and I
(German/Hungarian/Jewish roots)
have
been given
a passion and
burden for the US
that we can ́t
really
explain
.
For the past 21 years, we have been praying for your nation and we continue to
do so.
We
bought
your
flag and
have
it in our office to remind us to ask
God
for
supernatural love for America.
And sometimes,
love makes you tel
l it as it is
,
without diplomatic language
and
plan,
with
out
scheming
for a certain angle
,
plain
-
just like that.
We know t
hat
this can make us a target for
undue praise, but also
for
misunderstanding,
anger and criticism
–
by now, we have
been called all sorts of
untrue things
, good and bad
-
but we are ready to
remain
vulnerable.
Second
ly
, we
have
cogent
reasons to
believe
that
there is a very real hope for a historic, mind
-
blowing
turnaround and a
possible
re
-
invention of America
–
IF
Jesus would be accepted as
the
ruling
King of his people with the same
or more
passionate
fervor that people went about electing a new president
and spending their hope and money on it
.
What happened during the election time now is that
we felt
God said
,
(
in
our
paraphrase
)
T
hey are missing it again; they are
again
looking for a
nother
Saul to be King, not me; yet another human Messiah
, a political solution for a spiritual problem
.
The
involvement in a process
to elect yet another “most powerful man of the most powerful nation
in the world”
can lead to
a toxic
drunkenness
of
what the Bible calls
-
The Flesh
:
‘
we
-
can
-
do
-
it
’
power
.
I
t is a symptom of the very same spirit
that had people
build the Tower of Babylon.
If that continues, i
t will all come to nothing and
yes,
all
will go
down in flames
,
Christian
churches,
denominations,
ministries, foundations and businesses included
,
with those in leadership wringing their hands in complete,
perplexed despair
–
unless:
Those who claim the name of Jesus would finally emigrate out of a gigantic Babylon
(Mammon
-
driven)
c
aptivity and repatriate
into the Kingdom, seen as
the domain of God’s uncontested rule.
Repatriation
means we
emigrate, decidedly
move
out of one
country
into another country, apply for citizenship and diligently keep the laws and regulations of that country out of
passionate, obedient
love for its
King.
Then we would
no longer
be
Americans first and
Christians second,
but Kingdom Citizens
who happen to be
pilgrims temporarily living in America
–
or any other nation.
That is the right order, anything else is a
deception.
Does God judge or blesses us because of our Government
?
You don ́t expect sheep to behave like goats. And y
ou don ́t expect
pagans to behave
lik
e saints.
God knows that even better. Therefore, all nations (political entities) are
under God
’
s general
merciful blessing, seen in the fact that he has not yet wiped us all out (Psalm 9:17; Isa 8:9; 40:17 etc). But
all nations are not only
under his permissive blessing for a shrinking time window of grace,
but also under God
’
s rightful judgment. One of the puppets
of God is Satan, to whom God has given a
limited but terrible
allo
tment
: “The whole world is under the
control of the evil one”
(1 John 5:19).
A dramatic event is narrated in the Bible that is so sobering
that
it
might heal anyone of all false nationalism or
even patri
otism.
It
is Jesus and Lucifer standing on a mountain (Luke 4
:5
)
, and Lucifer says, in the
face of Jesus: All these
Kingdoms and their splendor have been given to me
–
and I give them to whom I want. This is why,
(
with very few amazing
exceptions
)
, power, money and splendor seems to be always bestowed on the wrong people. People whom Lucifer li
kes and he
definitely
always likes the wrong ones.
This is why nations
–
with one exception
–
the Kingdom of God (Hebrews 12:28)
-
are all
very shakable and fragile. In the coming days, they will all start to face more and more violent and unsolvable proble
ms
(Matthew 24) within themselves, through internal strife. And by flexing their muscles like teenagers on too much testosterone
,
this will lead to more rumors of war, nation at the throat of other nations.
Nations that gave gone spiritually
blind sho
u
ld be
expected to act
like this and
blame
someone else
for its problems.
And what is easier than to blame the others in general, and
the neighbor in particular? There is a Kingdom solution to this, but it will simply not fit into such a short letter.
Our point is this: all nations are
under God
’
s
rightful
judgment,
because all of them have long ago removed themselves from
under his rule
–
Israel, Germany, Australia, Sweden and the USA included. The romantic and sugarcoated myth of a Christian
nation is just that
–
a myth
(A helpful book
here is
Gregory Boyd: The Myth of a Christian Nation
).
Sin is first and foremost a
disposition, not the individual acts that result from our disposition. All have sinned
–
nation
-
states included. Whether they
sin a
lot or
sin
a little, sin they do all the
same.
T
he really big issue, the one we can and should actually do something about,
is that
God is looking at the
level of holiness
of his saints in regards to their align
ment to the constitution of the
Kingdom.
Remember
,
judgment starts at the house of God.
That is where the crux is.
And may we be blunt? We have done empirical
research and statistics all our life. I
f we would
rate the corporate behavior of the
collective body of
Ch
ristians in our Western
nations against t
he
normative
decrees and commands of the King, we would be
at a catastrophic
obedience level of around a 2
-
5%, out of 100.
The Body of Christ in c
ountries like India would be more at a level
of
2
0%; China,
the
same.
My American friend
Curt
is Sergeant
who w
orked in China,
used to describe many Chinese followers of Christ with these three attributes:
quick, costly
obedience.
W
e in the West replaced those attributes with
slow, cheap arguments.
This is just one of the main reasons for God
to
bless his people
there
-
rather than us in the cultural West
.
Unless we change, this will not change.
The
real
pink elephant in the room, the problem so big that hardly anyone can
or wants to
see it, is this:
most
Christians are not
in the Kingdom.
They may have knocked
at the door, but never entered
in
. Or they may have entered, said a quick prayer, raised
a
hand, but quickly walked out of the Kingdom again, unable or unwilling to leave the ways of the world
behind
and submit
themselves to the King.
It really
breaks our
heart to say this,
but we
really mean it:
if Jesus does not evidently rule our lives, he
is not our
King.
For us
,
as your distant lovers and foreigners
who come in
and g
o out of the US,
one thing
hits us in the face like a
sledgehammer
each time we pass emigration
.
It
is the screaming testimony of the lives of
most Christians
that we have met in
the US
,
who live an
ignorant, shameless, or even violent disobedience
,
in regards to
almost all royal commands of Jesus the King
.
They are i
gnorantly or
even
deliberately
trespassing,
with
their heads kept high,
especially in the key areas of sex, money, power
and
church
. Yes, we know a
few precious exceptions,
but it seems to be more
like a modern day group of 7000 who have not
bowed their kn
ee
s
to Baal
.
Christian
p
eople, in the four areas mentioned above,
simply do what
ever
they want, if they want, when they want, with whom
they want, where they want
, thinking this is OK
becau
s
e everybody does it
.
In today’s America, it is j
ust like in th
ose
days when
Israel had no king, and everyone did as he pleased.
This is why most
(not all)
church
-
going, praying, singing, tithing, book
-
writing,
book
-
buying, conference
-
addicted
, small
-
group and Bible
-
study attending Christians with or without a fish stick
er on their car
are, in fact, illegal aliens,
having crept
a few meters
over the border
of the Kingdom
without yet being found out that they
actually don ́t belong here
(Matthew 22)
. They actually are in a spiritual no
-
man’s land, people not at home in the
Kingdom, and
not at home in the world; they have become
people with no legal authority, power nor significance in the Kingdom
–
and the
world ignores them anyway.
Many of you secretly see and admit this powerlessne
ss,
which s
creams
in our
face
s
:
divine
power
cut!
Even after
(because?)
all those years of bible studies,
songs,
retreats, programs,
prayers,
laying on of hands, prophesying
this and decreeing that, driving out that spirit and driving in another,
many don ́t even have the power
to overcome the m
ost
basic
carnal
addictions
(
lust, porn, work,
greed, fear,
fun,
gossiping
, eating, dating,
shopping
, touring
)
,
and compulsions (
buying,
selling, facebooking
-
voicing your opinion
without being asked, writing endlessly,
twittering,
preaching,
giving and
reading
“prophetic” word
s
, chasing after what is new
)
,
just like the folks in Apostle Paul’s Athens (Acts 17
:21
).
Such a life has not even arrived a
t Square O
ne of the Kingdom
-
the
denial of self
(Luke 14:33),
and therefore does not have the
power
to
change th
e life of our
own teenager
s, let alone ou
r neighbor
s, let alone our city, county
or country.
From the
perspective of Jesus and his Kingdom
, this
describes
the life of
rebels; nice rebels, maybe, but rebels all the more.
R
eligious
versions of any o
ther US
-
citizen,
pursuing as their top priority
anything
but the Kingdom: money, toys, happiness, life, fun,
success, selfish significance
o
r
even
the
reli
gious significance
like some of those
who export
a dysfunction
al
cultural religion that
has completely failed to disciple
its own
home base
,
and calling it mission
s
.
The core symptom of an illegal alien from a Kingdom perspective is this:
It is
all about me.
The center of this world is me, my
opinion, my church, my mi
nistry, my book, my, my, my.
But y
ou are not in the Kingdom if you can’t say:
Your Kingdom come
–
my kingdom go!
If you have not kicked your ego out of the driver seat of your life, then you run your life, not God.
So don ́t fool
yourself and your family.
And if you are pledged
–
signed over
-
to this group, that entity, the other purpose, then you have sold
yourself away to something else than God and his Kingdom.
And your heart is divided
and torn
.
And that is idolatry.
You serve
two Gods; God
and
Mammon;
God
and
country; God
and
the NFL. That, however,
is no longer a life that Jesus describes li
ke this:
Make the Kingdom and
life
according to its constitution your first priority
(Matthew 6:33 in its proper translation)
. And that is
why
“everything else”
that
Jesus
talks about in this
foundational
Kingdom
decree is not given to many at all.
But it is not only self
-
centeredness that keeps us from understanding or entering the Kingdom, it is also the phenomenal
delusion that we think far bigger and in unrea
sonable bias and favor of ourselves than what we really are. Statistics tell us that
most
Americans, if asked if they are “born again”, would say yes, even if they don ́t even know what that means.
Similarly, i
f
Christians
hear the word
Kingdom
,
many
automatically respond: Kingdom? Oh yes, absolutely, sure thing, aren ́t we all Kingdom
people
, somehow automatically when we prayed “the sinners prayer” or when we got baptized?
Many truly believe that
therefore
all they do is Kingdom; Kingdom business, Kin
gdom worship, Kingdom church, Kingdom conferences.
This is a huge
deception. It is
therefore
a very healthy start for all of us to take time out and ask ourselves
first,
and God very seriously
,
am I
actually a
legal
citizen in the Kingdom?
Jesus saved me b
y his grace
.
B
ut
,
do I keep his commandments?
Our experience in the US has been
that, with a very few exceptions, the vast majority of Christians
all say
“
Lord, Lord
”
–
but
simpl
y and doggedly do not do what Jesus
say
s, being
disobedient to the core
,
unconstitutional and Kingdom
-
law
-
breaking
(Matthew 7:21
-
23)
.
The King is
utterly
displeased with this, and he wil
l not bless such a disposition. This “lack of b
lessing”, of
Kingdom authority is
evident in the problem
-
driven liv
es many Christians are leadin
g.
They have become
a product of their
environment
–
and
their environment
is no longer
a product of them.
Many keep
r
unning in
ever faster
circles, doing what
Jesus ne
ver told them to do, and not doing what he did tell them to do. This will go on until we
receive a wake
-
up call, someone
stepping int
o our path saying: enough! This letter might be part of such a call, asking you in earnest to get out of any religious
trea
dmill,
leader follower, and
be done with religion
for good! T
ake a healthy time of religious detoxification and quarantine
from
church
-
as
-
we
-
know
-
it. T
h
en
,
repatriate and submit yo
urselves as complete but repentant backsliders to the King and
his
Kingdom
. He will welcome you
with open arms, saying: How long I waited for this moment, let me embrace you,
forgive you,
heal you, deliver you, clean you,
clothe you, and show you your place in the Kingdom, the role and mission that I created you for
in the first
place.
That is when the blessings of God on your life as individuals, as Kingdom communities in your neighborhood
and cities will become evident. And that will ultimately turn
your entire nation on its head.
In other words, Christianity
in the West is a
complete and utter fail.
It is t
he problem, not the solution.
Church
-
as
-
we
-
know
-
it
prevents Church
-
as
-
God
-
wants
-
it. And as judgment starts at the house of God, it
won ́t stop there
;
both sinning saints and
sinning pagans are experiencing God turning his fa
ce away in shame, while we are caught up in useless, self
-
centered rituals. The
tough part of this is that the pagans in our nat
ions have no chance to actually
know
what hit them; they are the innocent victim
s
of collateral damage.
They are judged together and
because of
the lukewarm, obnoxious, disobeying and self
-
sufficient “saints”
that don ́t even know how far they have truly walked away from the Kingdom, all while singing Lord, Lord, shouting Hallelujah,
praying in circles, endle
ssly learning but never understanding, and give testimonies about themselves that is as relevant as a
person who presses the
“
Like
”
button on his
own
Facebook page.
If this is anywhere near a true diagnostics, then we have a therapy
. I
f we know the probl
em, we can become part of the
solution. That is exactly where we need to get started: by sacrificing our personal disobedience, rebellion, anger, selfishne
ss,
egos, grandiose plans, visions, dreams and four
-
color mission statements, place them all on the a
ltar of God and ask for his fire
to fall. What a deliverance that will be.
W
hat happens if nothing happens
-
If you just say “Amen to this, Brother!”, and not change a thing
other than post this
note on
yet another website, but otherwise carry on just the same?
What i
f you find
out its Sunday and you get up like nothing
happened,
trod to the religious building of your choice that you ended up
finding
like the way you choose your supermarkets
and
gas stations (for your convenience),
and you
keep on consuming the same
-
old religious programs, keep on praying and
hoping that somehow,
sometime, maybe at the next con
ference, with the next speaker, with the next book you may read, the
lights will go on a
nd somehow revival will break out
!
Did
you ever allow the thought
that
hoping for revival actually is a mistake,
a cop
-
out? Because
revival means the reviving of
what has been, i
ncluding many
religious
patterns
that are nothing but
“t
raditions of the
e
lder
s
”
(Mark 7:8
-
9)
that God may ha
ve
never
birthed and
endorsed
in the first place
?
And
,
w
ho needs revival,
if we can have the Kingdom?
What should you do?
Say your farewell to man
-
made religion.
Very little of
current Christianity in the US has any
resemblance of what Jesus actually
lived, preached and wanted us to do. I
t is one gigantic deception of people be
ing busy doing religious things,
while Jesus
came to
actuall
y deliver us from religion. C
lassical "sanctuary"
-
driven churches are part of the
problem, not the solution.
Exit
it.
Detox.
Remove yourself of the treadmill of religious tradition and take a significant time
-
out. You have a journey, a migration, to
go on
, and you should prepare for that trip of a lifetime
. It is one thing to get out of the system, it is another to get the system
out of you. If you want to know how to do this, there is a whole chapter called
Apostolic Migration
(chapter 9) in my book
The
Starfish Manifesto.
It could serve you as a travel gu
ide.
Many questions came to us about
economics
. Let us therefore
address this by highlighting
some of the
steps we need to take
if
we ever
seriously
want to return to Kingdom standards in the area of money and work. Remember, Jesus spoke more on
finances than about hell and heaven combined.
In our work in the area of Kingdom Economics, we used to say it like this when
we met a new person:
Show me how y
ou
deal with money, and we
tell you what you really believe.
Our
dealings with money
is a
powerful, unfailing
spiritual thermometer, showing
(
quicker than
probably
anything
else
)
our
true spiritual temperature.
There
is a true saying from
Cotton Mather
, on
e of the Amer
ican Puritan preachers, who said,
“
Religion begat
prosperity
and the
daughter devoured the mother.
”
Stop funding religion, start funding the Kingdom.
This election cost
billions. Imagine if only that part donated by
Christians
for
this 2012 election
would have been spent the Kingdom way? It would have caused
a revolution. In the Kingdom, there are two
main commands about money and resources:
a)
share with each other locally (carry each other
’
s burdens, do not call your stuff
,
your stuff) until you eliminate need in your
neighborhood;
b)
give
the surplus away (whatever is more than you need) and “lay it at the apostles feet” (Luke 8:1
-
4; Acts 4:35)
so it can fuel
the
remaining
apostolic initiatives of God to the ends of the wo
rld
–
and that includes your city!
In the Kingdom, I am excited to tell you, we do not have the
obligation, nor the
right (and the
heavy
burden that comes with it!)
to distribute monies just as we wish, a bit here, a bit there. That is the way of the wor
ld. The flow of money in the Kingdom is
regulated
, not given to anarchy
.
Let us emphasize again the two level
s of fellowship
that
-
although many theologians have
relegated it to the romantic day of the Early Christians who just did not know better
–
are
normative behavior in the Kingdom:
Level a)
Share locally by giving up your individualistic life
and join a community, a Body
. This
involves
l
ocal giving and recei
ving
(not buying and selling)
, a transfer
directly f
rom giver to getter
, with the goal
to
share and
eliminate need
.
That
goes far beyond
a harmless potluck; it means the actual sharing of
cars,
boats,
lawn mowers
, houses, business
-
ideas
, investment opportunities,
inheritances, and real money
. This requires death to the greed
-
based idea that we
all need to maximize our gain (collect as much
money as possible),
and
calls us into a
life that is optimized
–
financially adjusted in such a way that
all can and should have what
they need to fulfill
the task God created them for, not too much, not too l
ittle.
Level b)
Give all
larger
surplus away
to those that are tasked by God to distribute it
(Rom 16:2; Acts 4:35)
. The g
iving of larger
amounts of surplus
always
involves the Treasury, the National Bank of the Kingdom.
The Bible makes it abundantly clear that it is
the apostles that have this role; they are the bankers of the Kingdom, the stewards (a word that can be translated CFO) of th
e
Kingdom
–
not the pastors, evangelists and deacons.
There is an amazing tendency i
n all of us to quickly elect ourselves to be
“
God
’
s Josephs
”
and to be his finance minister. Many who have more resources than they actually need mistakenly often believe
they have the God
-
given right to do with their money as they wish, when they wish, to whom they wish. This is sadly wrong, a
principle of the wor
ld that has no space in the Kingdom.
N
ot every family man in the US has the right to act as the Finance
Minister of the US
and dictate the nation’s budget;
it is the same in the Kingdom. Therefore
,
start to share locally, and then f
ind
those apostles in yo
ur area or nation, and start
handing them your individual and collective surplus, so
that t
he Kin
gdom can
increase in your area as well.
If “the household of God is established on the foundation of apostles and prophets” (Eph. 2:20),
then apostolic and pro
phetic people are the foundational people that are the ones charged and tasked by God to be the
architects of the expression of the Kingdom in your area as well. And if they are not equipped, they cannot equip others, and
the
entire Christian movement is s
topped in its tracks.
However, if we return to those two simple but powerful economic principles of the Kingdom, the two biggest, core foundational
aspects of the economy of the Kingdom, that have been fought tooth and nail throughout the history of the c
hurch, all of
heaven will hold its breath. Because this would define a historic
moment, when
we begin to return to
the fascinating, liberating
and mind
-
blowing
biblical standards
of Kingdom Economics.
Beware, that as there are some few healthy and good
apostles,
there are an abundant many self
-
elected apostles as well. You will recognize the false ones easily by their complete absence of
humility and brokenness. As a rule, only dead apostles are good apostles (Gal. 2:20). With “dead” we mean dead to self
ish
ambition and
a join
-
my
-
winning
-
team mindset, and all that goes with it.
If you do not know where such apostolic people are, I
have the privilege of
know
ing some of
them.
Maybe this surprises you, but many of them are com
pletely underfunded
themselves.
They are
impoverished bankers, trying to survive because they have not sold themselves to a religious machine
which
is happy to fund
those that entertain and please them
-
and teach what their itchy ears wishes to hear. Many true
apostles are dead to this
religious rat race as well
, and
will
(
just like the Apostle Paul
)
, not sell themselves to the religious
consumers, but rather try
their best to
survive as
tentmakers
to avoid bankruptcy. T
he religious world
around them
that do
es
not even take notice of the
m, and, in comparison, swims in money, mindlessly demanding
yet
another
new
building to be added
to the sanctuary
-
infested
America,
that will be
run by yet another fraction of a fraction of a completely disintegrated
,
dysfunctional Body of Christ. This mus
t end, so that the foundational people of the Kingdom can yet again function.
Did we already say you should stop tithing?
Well, we just did.
No matter how many flaming sermons in sanctuary
-
driven
churches (that rely on tithing...) you have endured about tithing, don ́t buy it. Even the Old Testament has at least four tithe
s,
not just one, so if you want to be really serious about tithing, you woul
d end up with a lot more than 10% of your income to be
given away to some centralized temple. However, Jesus “walked away from the temple” (Matthew 24). In the Kingdom, there is
no temple
-
the people of God are his temple.
In the Kingdom, it is not about
giving to God
.
It is about ownership.
A
f
ter buying
you with the currency of the blood of J
esus from the slave market of sin,
God
now
legally owns you,
and everything you own
. So
the
real
question is: what does God want to do with
his
money that is on
your
bank account?
In the Kingdom, the issue
is not
giving 10% to God and keeping 90% for you, but deciding what to keep to
remain afloat
–
and give
the entire
surplus into the
Kingdom Bank to be used according to the King
’
s directives.
So let us put an end to
wasting God
’
s money by
filling out those
tithing
-
slips in churches, or
sending it to yet another
dial
-
a
-
prayer
organization,
or
another TV ministry that promises you a
ridiculous,
dust
-
collecting Golden Eagle, a Golden Calf, a prayed
-
over towel, or some a
nointed book for $29.99
–
this would
simply steal from God
’
s Treasury.
And w
hat could you do
locally
?
G
ather in your neighborhood those that are after the Kingdom, not religion.
Maybe you can
begin with the two documents we made available for starters.
Start sharing your life with each other, and stop fell
owshipping in
artificial set
-
up
s
and auditoriums where you cannot share life, but only a few religious moments
.
We are not trying to invent
something new
here
. We are saying:
please
follow the original
blueprint of the Kingdom found in Acts 2:42
-
47. To begin with, i
f
you
at all
can,
o
pen up your house, your kitchen, your fridge,
and
create a space for this
.
Don ́t pray and sing and sermonize
there