Newsletter Vol. 2. No. 2

March 2023

What is Freedom Matters Today?

Freedom Matters Today looks at freedom from a Christian perspective. True freedom comes from God. This is freedom from fear and despair, freedom from fascism and tyranny, freedom from guilt and shame, freedom from sin and death, freedom from past and prejudice, and freedom from war and conflict.

At Freedom Matters Today, we will make our stand for freedom, for without freedom we have nothing. Freedom is at the heart of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, a Christian.

A New Year and a New Podcast

The format for the podcast will be slightly different from last year. Our most popular podcast episode was the last one, Following Jesus when the church has lost its way. This podcast went on to become a book with the same title available through Amazon POD.

Our faith is not dependent on the failure of institutional religion. Our faith is in God and God expects us to take responsibility for the choices we make, and the most important choice we are given is in the form of an imperative from Jesus when he tells us to follow him.

Future topics in this series include the relevance of Jesus today, Following Jesus when the church shows you the door, postcards from Ukraine, Following Jesus in a time of war, putting the fear of God back into the church, Church and Taxation, Covid Theology, and faith and flag.

Our recent history is but an epilogue

I was asked a question a month or so ago by a listener after he read my op-ed piece on the Brownstown Institute titled ‘Covid Theology in the Australian Church.’ He asked ‘why is the church dying?’

What we saw in Covid Hysteria was mass apostasy in the church, the promotion of vaccine passports, mandates, and lockdowns were grievous sins against God. We saw the true heart of the church revealed, even evangelicals, that what they care about the most are money and power.

Why is the church dying? The answer is simple. The decline of the church, and its inevitable collapse is great for faith and the future of Christianity. It is better if the past is let go, and we can turn a new page, step out in faith, and follow Jesus.

If you listened to our podcast last year, you would be familiar with one of our slogans: ‘don’t go to church, follow Jesus instead.’ If Christians followed Jesus instead of putting their faith in a building, a denomination, or a ritual, then Christian witness and faithfulness would not be in rapid decline.
When I talk about the church, I am talking about the buildings, the rituals, the denominations, and the meaning of the word ‘church,’ in Western contemporary usage. The Western Church is absolutely dying and is on its last legs.

In English, the word ‘church’ means a physical entity, a building, or a place designed for the worship of God. The word ‘church’ is found nowhere in the Greek New Testament. Some people have said, you are quibbling over semantics. But we are to faithfully proclaim the full counsel of God. That is after all, what the fascists claim to defend on Sunday, but it is fascinating how inaccurate they often are, at least in the West.

Jesus never went to church. The apostles never went to church. The apostles gathered daily for encouragement and treated no day as special. ‘Encourage each other daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’’’ wrote the author of Hebrews, composed before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. There was no infant baptism in Acts, nor was there the evil of the Mass, or the Magic Show of the so-called Holy Communion. Breaking bread for Christians was a phrase not to denote a ritual but a meal. God communes with his people every day, even with sinners such as you and me. It is possible because of the death of Jesus on the cross for sin.

Early Christians, before the government stepped in and replaced Christian freedom with tyranny, sought to follow Jesus, they lived by the power of the Holy Spirit, and in that first generation, walked with God even though they did not possess the scriptures beyond the text of the Hebrew Bible. Remarkable.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, the American founding Fathers, and many European thinkers rediscovered freedom and rebuked a state church that was too busy murdering people that there needs to be clear limits on ecclesiastical power. For over 1,000 years, the church states murdered their way through history. Religious freedom or the separation of church and state was never to protect the church from the state but to protect the state from Christian Fascism.

The Russian Revolution was terrible and awful, but nothing compared to the Hell on Earth that was Russian Orthodoxy under the Czars who kept Russians in utter misery, poverty, and suffering for centuries, while the church was completely corrupt.

The French Revolution, the English Civil War, the American War of Independence, the Protestant Reformation, and Garibaldi’s war against Rome were all wars to secure freedom, echoes of the freedom that God brings. The church had kept freedom locked away behind ritual and religion for centuries.

These revolutionary movements rediscovered what the church states wanted to keep secret – the truth about freedom. The twentieth century was not a new beginning, it was part of the epilogue of a West that had finally wrenched itself free from a Satanic religion called Christendom, that replaced the peace of Christ with a sword, the love of Christ with sectarian hatred, and the joy of Christ with inflexible intolerance. If you want to return to the days of Christendom, you will have to give up your freedoms, because they didn’t have any at all.

You will not find freedom in the church. You will find it fully expressed in the identity, the actions, and the words of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
The church is dying. The church is not Christianity. The church is a thing, while Christianity is about people.

God leaves no one behind

While the church is dying, there is no one sought and found by God who is ever lost again. There is no one who is found by God who is misplaced, forgotten, excluded, marginalized, or cast out. No, that describes the church. The church’s MO is forgetting, marginalizing, excluding, and excommunicating.

But God is rich in mercy, and he does not reject anyone who comes to him in faith. God will not let anyone slip through his fingers, and he will enable, through his Spirit, to ensure that even the frailest of his children, is able to endure. That is God, that is an insight into his kingdom.

God will not rebel against his word that all who believe shall have eternal life. He is not fickle like us, he is not two-faced, like us, and he is not weak, like us. He is God, he doesn’t change his mind. All who come to Christ are never turned back.

Why is the church dying?

The church is dying because it hates freedom, and it hates the God who brings freedom. Christians are simply called to follow Jesus. It is a lifestyle, not a rule. It is a relationship, not a ritual. It is not a Sunday service, but a daily experience.

The church is dying because it is irrelevant, inauthentic, and corrupt. It is irrelevant because it has nothing to say to people beyond ritualism, it is inauthentic because people know hypocrisy when they see it, and it is corrupt because the church only cares about money and power. Why do people refuse to go to church? Because they know the people who do.

The churches are dying because they are fake. They either become inward-looking monasteries or museums for outdated values, mausoleums for the dead. They keep their Bible closed, they don’t listen to God, and they don’t follow Jesus.

The church is dying because they have given up on God, the God they pretend to believe in. When Christians give up on God’s power, they return to human power, and they become fascists. The fascist will say: ‘what would Jesus do,’ but the Christian says, ‘what did Jesus do.’ The Christian tells people about God, and the Christian fascist tells people what to do.

Why is Jesus relevant?

These days in the Culture War, I hear Christians say little about Jesus. We are told that he has his place, and the good news is important, but we need to return our nation to its Christian roots. I would rather talk about freedom, and really explore what that means for us today. To do this, we really need to reconsider the identity, the actions, and the words of Jesus Christ.

If you have time, listen to our podcast, check out our books, comment on our posts or subscribe. Remember, freedom matters today, because you matter to God.

Michael J. Sutton, CEO of Freedom Matters Today, March 2023