The American Church: Three Strikes and You Are Out
Three giants of the Christian faith warned the American Church. Their warnings were heard, but largely unheeded.
There comes a point when warnings can no longer be dismissed as isolated voices, unfortunate timing, or uncomfortable preaching. There comes a point when a pattern emerges. And there comes a point when the Church must ask: How many times can God warn His people before judgment follows?
Looking back over the past two decades, I see three extraordinary warnings to the American Church. Three opportunities. Three moments when the message was unmistakably clear:
Wake up. Stop looking to politics. Preach the Gospel.
Yet the American Church, particularly much of its influential evangelical leadership, repeatedly chose another path. So I will put it plainly:
Three strikes.
And unless there is repentance, the American Church should not presume there will be a fourth.
STRIKE ONE: WAKE UP!
On September 27, 2004, Oral Roberts publicly recounted what he described as a visitation from Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church. The message was not about elections. It was not about reclaiming Washington. It was not about putting the right judges on the Supreme Court. It was not about taking the Seven Mountains. It was not about Christian political power.
It was about the Church's failure to fulfill the Great Commission.
Roberts recounted the warning that the Church had been commanded to preach the Gospel throughout the world, yet what was being accomplished amounted to only a fraction of what Jesus had commanded. The message culminated in an unmistakable cry:
The Church must wake up.
The warning centered upon preaching with spiritual fire, the anointing of the Holy Spirit, and recovering the Church's responsibility to proclaim Jesus Christ.
That was Strike One.
And what happened? Instead of an American Church increasingly consumed by Christ, evangelism, the Great Commission, repentance, prayer, and demonstrations of the Holy Spirit's power, much of American Christianity continued to drift toward entertainment, celebrity Christianity, institutional expansion, self-help preaching, cultural accommodation, and eventually political obsession.
Twenty years passed. The vision and warning were ignored as if they did not matter.
Jesus warned the Church at Ephesus: “Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works, or else I will come to you quickly and remove your lampstand from its place—unless you repent. –Revelation 2:5 NKJV
That is not language suggesting that churches are immune from consequences. A church can still have buildings. It can have money. It can have television networks. It can have political influence. It can have conferences. It can have millions of social-media followers. And its lampstand can still be gone.
Strike One: WAKE UP. The warning was sounded.
STRIKE TWO: THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR AMERICA
Then came another warning. On May 16, 2011, during The Great Awakening — Night 135, Rodney Howard-Browne stood in his pulpit and declared something that should sound almost prophetic in hindsight:
THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR AMERICA.
Not less politics. Not better politics. Not merely different politicians. No political solution.
That does not mean Christians lack civic responsibilities. We vote. We participate in government. We defend righteousness. We speak prophetically to those in power. John the Baptist confronted Herod, and Paul exercised his rights as a Roman citizen.
But none of those things is the Gospel. And political power has never possessed the ability to regenerate the human heart. Government can restrain conduct. Legislation can establish boundaries. Courts can protect rights. Elections can change rulers.
None of them can make a dead spirit alive. Only Jesus Christ can do that.
Yet within only a few years of Howard-Browne's warning, enormous segments of American evangelicalism would pour extraordinary amounts of money, energy, preaching time, media exposure, prophetic rhetoric, organizational infrastructure, and spiritual credibility into electoral politics.
Politics did not merely become something Christians participated in. For too many ministries, politics became the message.
Campaign rallies began resembling revival meetings. Candidates were spoken of with biblical language. Access to political leaders was paraded before believers as evidence of spiritual influence.
Photographs from the White House became trophies. Pastors became political operatives. Prophets became election forecasters. Pulpits became campaign platforms.
The Gospel was not formally denied. Something more subtle happened. It was displaced. That is the danger. Jesus does not have to be publicly rejected for Him to cease being first. Something else simply has to take His place.
And the results are now impossible to ignore. Evangelical political power may have produced genuine political victories, including substantial judicial, religious-liberty, and policy victories, but America's underlying spiritual condition has continued deteriorating.
That paradox should terrify the Church. We learned how to win elections while losing generations.
We learned how to organize voters while failing to make disciples. We learned how to gain access to politicians while losing spiritual authority with the lost. We learned how to fight culture wars while forgetting that sinners need new hearts. We treated spiritual problems as though they could be solved politically. They cannot.
America's fundamental problem is not sitting in the Oval Office. It is not sitting in Congress. It is not sitting on the Supreme Court.
America's fundamental problem is the fallen condition of the human heart. And there is only one cure: The Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Paul did not arrive in Corinth carrying a voter-registration strategy. Peter did not walk into Jerusalem on Pentecost demanding political reform. The early Church did not conquer the Roman Empire by gaining access to Caesar.
They preached Christ. They preached His death. They preached His burial. They preached His resurrection. They called men to repentance. And empowered by the Holy Spirit, they turned the world upside down.
Strike Two: THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR AMERICA.
The warning was sounded.
STRIKE THREE: AMERICA SHALL BE SAVED
Beginning in 2013, one of the greatest evangelists turned his attention toward the United States. Reinhard Bonnke had spent decades preaching Jesus Christ across Africa. Massive crowds came. Millions responded to the Gospel. The sick were healed. Entire regions were shaken by the public proclamation of Jesus Christ. The power of God shook nations with the proclamation of the Gospel in the power of the Holy Spirit.
And then Bonnke came to America carrying a simple declaration:
AMERICA SHALL BE SAVED!
This should have been the moment. If American evangelical leaders truly believed that America's greatest need was revival, they had before them a man whose entire ministry had demonstrated what mass evangelism could achieve.
Bonnke did not come offering political access. He came preaching Jesus. He did not come with a campaign strategy. He came with the Gospel. He did not come promising Christians cultural dominance. He came looking for lost souls.
From 2013 to 2016, Christ for all Nations held major Gospel crusades in cities such as Orlando, Greensboro, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta, and Oklahoma City. And what happened?
Large portions of the American evangelical leadership establishment effectively shrugged. Churches that should have mobilized thousands did not. Leaders who should have recognized the hour did not.
The urgency was not there. The fire was not there. The mobilization was not there.
The American Church was being presented with an opportunity to join one of history's great evangelists in proclaiming Christ to America. Much of it passed.
Then came 2016. Suddenly there was energy. Suddenly there was mobilization. Suddenly pastors had time. Suddenly Christian television had airtime. Suddenly conferences could organize. Suddenly ministers could travel. Suddenly evangelical leaders could fill rooms. Suddenly everybody understood urgency.
But the urgency was political.
Leaders who displayed little urgency about mobilizing behind Bonnke's Gospel crusades found tremendous enthusiasm for political engagement once Donald Trump emerged as the Republican nominee.
That contrast is devastating.
They failed to rally for Bonnke. They did not fail to rally for Trump.
Let those words sink in. This is not fundamentally an indictment of Donald Trump. It is an indictment of the Church.
Trump was doing what politicians do: seeking votes, building coalitions, pursuing political power, and advancing an agenda.
The scandal is that ministers of the Gospel began behaving as though political victory could accomplish what only Jesus Christ can accomplish.
The Church cannot blame a politician for allowing itself to become politicized. The Church made that choice. And Bonnke had warned us about inactivity.
Prayer has always been essential, but it was never meant to be an excuse for refusing to evangelize. His message was brutally practical: eventually, somebody has to leave the prayer meeting and tell a lost person that Jesus saves.
Instead, much of evangelical America left the prayer meeting and headed to the political rally.
That was Strike Three
THREE WARNINGS, ONE MESSAGE
Look at them together.
2004 — Oral Roberts: WAKE UP. PREACH THE GOSPEL.
2011 — Rodney Howard-Browne: THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION FOR AMERICA.
2013–2016 — Reinhard Bonnke: AMERICA SHALL BE SAVED—GO PREACH JESUS.
Different men. Different ministries. Different moments. But the same fundamental warning.
Return to Jesus. Return to the Gospel. Return to the Great Commission. Return to the power of the Holy Spirit. Return to repentance. And stop expecting political power to accomplish a spiritual work.
The message could scarcely have been clearer. Yet here we are.
LOOK AT THE FRUIT
Jesus said: “You will know them by their fruits.”— Matthew 7:16 NKJV
So let us examine the fruit. After decades of evangelical political mobilization, America has not experienced a Great Awakening. The country remains profoundly divided. Secularization has continued. Christian identification has declined dramatically from previous generations. Church participation has weakened. Millions have abandoned institutional Christianity. Political rhetoric has become increasingly poisonous. Christians increasingly view one another through partisan identity.
And perhaps most tragically, the name of Jesus Christ has too often become associated in the public mind not first with the cross, repentance, forgiveness, salvation, healing, mercy, holiness, or eternal life, but with politics.
This is a catastrophe.
Meanwhile, evangelical political power became formidable. Election victories were won. Judges were appointed. Roe v. Wade was overturned. Religious-liberty protections advanced. Conservative policy objectives moved forward. Those accomplishments can be acknowledged without pretending they amount to revival. They do not.
Legislation is not regeneration. Conservatism is not Christianity. Republicanism is not the Kingdom of God. Winning an election is not winning a soul. Political power is not Holy Ghost power. And access to the White House is not access to the throne room of God.
THE CHURCH DOES NOT NEED ANOTHER POLITICAL STRATEGY
America does not need another Christian political conference. It does not need another preacher telling believers which politician has supposedly received some modern Cyrus anointing. It does not need another prophetic election circus. It does not need ministers competing for photographs with presidents. It does not need another political rally masquerading as revival. It does not need another election presented as the most important spiritual event of our lifetime.
We have heard that sermon long enough. America needs Jesus Christ.
The lost need to hear the Gospel. The Church needs repentance. The Word must be preached. Pastors need to preach the Word. Evangelism needs to be ramped up. Believers need to leave the four walls of their churches and tell sinners that Jesus saves. The sick need the laying on of hands. The oppressed need deliverance. The broken need restoration. And a generation that knows Christianity primarily through political combat desperately needs to encounter the living Christ.
THREE STRIKES AND YOU ARE OUT
Some will object to the title. Surely God gives another chance. Thank God He does. His mercy is extraordinary. But how many have died without hearing the Gospel preached because of our disobedience? Only God knows.
Nineveh was warned and repented. The churches of Revelation were rebuked and commanded to repent. Throughout Scripture, God's warnings are evidence of His mercy because He speaks before judgment. But mercy must never be confused with permission to continue in disobedience. Jesus told churches to repent.
He also warned of consequences if they refused. To Ephesus: the lampstand could be removed. To Laodicea: He warned that lukewarmness would result in being vomited from His mouth. Those are not the words of a God who treats perpetual ecclesiastical disobedience casually.
So when I say three strikes and you are out, I am not declaring that God has abandoned America or that revival is impossible. Quite the opposite.
I am saying:
The American Church has no biblical basis for believing it can continually ignore the warnings of God and suffer no consequences.
We have been warned. Again. And again. And again.
How many more warnings do we expect?
How many more prophets?
How many more evangelists?
How many more elections?
How much further must the nation deteriorate?
How powerless must Christianity appear before we finally admit:
WE HAVE BEEN PLAYING THE WRONG GAME.
The commission was never:
Go into all the world and elect Christians.
The commission was:
“Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”— Mark 16:15 NKJV
There is our assignment. There is our power. There is our message. There is America's hope. Not Washington. Not Republicans. Not Democrats. Not Trump. Not another political movement.
JESUS CHRIST IS THE ANSWER.
His death. His burial. His resurrection. Repentance toward God. Faith in Jesus Christ. The power of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel preached to every creature.
That is how Nineveh turned.
That is how Jerusalem was shaken.
That is how the Roman world was turned upside down.
That is how the Great Awakenings came.
That is how Wales burned.
That is how the Gospel swept across Africa.
And if America is ever to experience another genuine Great Awakening, that is how America will be saved.
The warnings have already been sounded.
Strike One: Wake up.
Strike Two: There is no political solution for America.
Strike Three: We were given an opportunity to mobilize behind the Gospel—and much of the Church chose politics instead.
Three strikes.
The question now is not whether God has spoken. The question is whether the American Church will finally listen.
