KNOWING THE TRUE PROPHET, FRUIT, AND RACIAL HARMONY

John 10:7-10 Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Who are the thieves and robbers, and how do we identify them? It is not as easy as you might think. They do not manifest themselves with horns and long red tails. Instead, they are some of the warmest and most likeable people, as Paul had explained:

·       "And what I am doing I will continue to do, in order to undermine the claim of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission they work on the same terms as we do. For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds. (2 Corinthians 11:12-15; ESV)

The false prophets of Israel had been the most popular. How could this happen? They were masters at presenting an appealing and marketable message. They knew how to tell people what they wanted to hear. This had been God’s complaint:

·       “They dress the wound of my people as though it were not serious. "Peace, peace," they say, when there is no peace. Are they ashamed of their loathsome conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush. So they will fall among the fallen; they will be brought down when they are punished,” says the Lord. (Jeremiah 8:11-12)

The people wanted a message of peace, and that is exactly what they were given. They wanted to hear that their lives were perfectly acceptable before God, and this is what they were told:

·       “They continually say to those who despise Me, 'The LORD has said, "You shall have peace" '; And to everyone who walks according to the dictates of his own heart, they say, 'No evil shall come upon you.' I have not sent these prophets, yet they ran. I have not spoken to them, yet they prophesied. But if they had stood in My counsel, and had caused My people to hear My words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings.” (Jeremiah 23:17-22)

Many had regarded the false prophets as their friends. After all, they made the people feel good and secure. However, they weren’t their friends at all. If they had been their friends, ‘they would have turned them from their evil way and from the evil of their doings.” They would have told them the truth in hope of restoring them to their God. Instead, they were the “thieves and robbers who only come to kill and destroy.”

During my forty-five years as a servant of our Lord, I have observed that the false teachers were those who were the most likeable and charismatic, and often even the most talented. How then do we know them? Jesus gave us one test:

·       “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will recognize them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? So, every healthy tree bears good fruit, but the diseased tree bears bad fruit. A healthy tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a diseased tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will recognize them by their fruits.” (Matthew 7:15-20)

What are the fruits that we should observe in the true prophet? Jesus was the true Prophet and Shepherd. He sought the peace and unity of the Church, as His prayer indicates:

·       “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. (John 17:20-23)

I want us to be one as our Lord had prayed. However, I have seen the racial divisions growing with leaps and bounds, and I am terribly grieved about it. I also see the race-baiters, who have come to kill and destroy, always crying “systemic racism” and “white privilege,” things I have not seen in my 35 years in this city.

What is dividing us? False prophets, advocates of Critical Race Theory (CRT), who claim that racism is part of white DNA and that all of the problems are the result of a sinister and unseen attempt to maintain "white privilege" and to keep the blacks on the plantation through webs of systemic racism.

If I were a POC and believed these allegations that the white world was against me and was the cause of my failures, I too would be looting and sucker-punching whites. Would my acting out help me or my people? Certainly not! Inflamed with rage, I would be killing any chance I had for a positive adjustment to any society.

Meanwhile, I would be inflamed by many so-called friends, affirming my feelings and telling me that I am justified to feel rage and even to act out. Are these really my friends? Are they sowing good seed into my life? Yes, they temporarily make me feel good about myself, assuring me that I am not the problem. Instead, it is the white society. It is all their fault. Meanwhile, they are telling me what I want to hear, fueling my addictive and dysfunctional rage. 

As planned, this victimization narrative is sowing the fruit of hatred and division, the opposite of the fruits that Jesus had prayed for.

 Georg] Lukacs of the Marxist Frankfort School wrote:

·       “Simply destroying the status quo, including the destruction of a country’s historical institutions, beliefs and institutions, especially the society’s reliance on Judeo-Christianity would bring about Marxism.” https://bluewaterhealthyliving.com/the-frankfort-school-and-the-history-of-political-correctness/; and all subsequent quotations)

It’s about destruction of the existing system. Max Horkheimer of the Frankfort School coined their attack as “Cultural Marxism” and argued: 

 ·       “It is not economics that creates oppression but rather the nuclear family, traditional institutions, traditional morality and concepts of race, gender and sexual identity. These are the chains of tyranny which must be broken by revolution.”

·       For Horkheimer, critical theory was an infinite and on-going criticism of the status quo. It was designed to be targeted at youth and young adults, by having them learn that it was appropriate and necessary to attack all of society’s rules and norms. (Grimski)

Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfort School described their strategy:

 ·       “One can rightfully speak of a cultural revolution since the protest is directed toward the whole of society and its cultural establishment, including the morality of the existing society. What we must undertake is a diffuse disintegration of the entire societal system.” (Dennis Grimski)

 Perhaps you do not like what I am saying, but please do not be tempted to think that I am your enemy and not your friend. A friend will open your eyes to what is best for you in the long run and not bath them in unjustified rage. The enemy only comes to kill and destroy.

Every bad tree bears bad fruit. What has been the fruit of the last administration and all of its race baiting? Has it helped the Church? Has it made this nation a safer, more just, and a more neighborly place? Has it healed the racial tensions or improved the lives of the people they have claimed to help, apart from increasing their marginalization and addiction to handouts? Have they made this world a safer place to live?

Who are your friends? According to black economist Thomas Sowell, it is not the Left:

·       When it comes to crime and violence, the political Left, including much of the media, are having a great time demonizing the police. Blacks are the biggest victims of the sharp upturn in murders that has followed. But, yet again, hard evidence carries very little weight when the Left is feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake. The absurdity to which this kind of media frenzy about the police can lead is shown by the fact that a black policeman in Charlotte, North Carolina, shooting a black suspect who had a gun, has been blown up into a racial issue across the nation. Have we become so gullible that we are so easily manipulated and stampeded? http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441176/california-ballot-proposition-58-shows-left-taking-school-choices-away-parents

The Left has honed manipulation into a fine art among the minorities by promoting the victimization theme. Instead of helping the marginalized, the Left has inflamed them, making it harder for the marginalized to stand together along with their white neighbors.

According to Sowell:

·       In later years, as the minimum wage was repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from 1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the unemployment rate of whites the same age.

Ironically, the Left continues to unfold their charges of “systemic racism” and the alleged undercover attempts to maintain “white privilege,” creating hatred, distrust, and polarization However, the Left’s attempts to control the legal and economic systems might have done more to un-privilege the black community than anything else:

Sowell charges:

·       The relations between the police and the black community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates have soared in cities where that policy has been followed — and most of the people killed have been black.

Our culture of blame and shame refuses to compare the status of blacks before and after the institution of their liberal policies. However, Sowell wants us to see the larger picture:

·       In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left home in 1948, at age 17 — a high school dropout with no skills or experience. At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4 percent. For white males the same ages, it was 10.2 percent. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell091316.php3#4KH2HlYyLYYSVZxU.99

Other black conservatives, including Frederick Douglass, have called upon white society to leave them alone:

·       “Everybody has asked the question. . .’What shall we do with the Negro?’ I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!”

Why did Douglass call upon the prevailing society to “Let him alone?” Today, it is easy to see why. The various entitlement programs have served to disempower the blacks and to destroy their families and their traditional values, banishing them to the oblivion of State dependency.

You might find these words very disturbing. I just ask you to consider who is the true prophet and friend.