I think one of the devil’s tactics with respect to the church on the Right today is to make them so hate everybody else that at the end of the day they can’t be believed anywhere, not even the proclamation of the gospel.  

(Blogger’s Note:  The other day as I was listening online to D. A. Carson lecture on Revelation, I came across a very insightful and relevant snippet and decided to transcribe what he said here. The following quotation comes from Part 18 of Carson’s lectures on Revelation, posted at The Gospel Coalition Resource page on June 17, 2005. It is taken from the portion of the audio file that runs from 18:48 to 22:00. You can listen to the entire lecture here.)

One of the things that troubles me about American society—about North America, and I include Canada in this, and Western European Christian society, to some extent, but it’s stronger here; it’s stronger here because of America’s particular heritage—there is a great deal of anger on the American Right at the moment. Have I thrashed this one over with you before? Let me just say a little bit about it, because it is troubling. It’s hard to know what to do.  

If you want to make a lot of money with a Christian book in this country, write a book that says what’s wrong with America, listing all the bad things that you possibly can on the Left, demonize the Left. It’ll sell like hotcakes on the Right. If you want to raise money for Focus on the Family, or a whole lot of other institutions that are really good institutions in many ways, if they really want to raise a lot of money in a hurry, let them tell you the worst horror stories of the month. The money flows in!  

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