It never happened in Jesus' time and it will not happen in our time simply because it is not the government's job to evangelize, bring revival to, and save the lost. If it was God's will for Jesus to have legislated righetousness, Jesus could have overthrown the Romans with one snap of his finger and legislated righetousness from a political office, but Jesus did not. Jesus came to do the will of the father by atonning for our sins and showing us how to conquer temptations, transgressions, taboos, and totems to where we could enter into the Holy of Holies and experience the Holy Spirit in our lives also known as a temple of Christ. It is our job to reach the lost, spread revival, proclaim the good news, set the captives free, fulfill the Great Commission, and disciple people to follow the words of the Scriptures to obtain personal and Godly holiness, morals, ethics, and servantude in our lives and the lives of others. It is neither the government's job nor is it in our right to take a commandment God gave us to do and to pass the buck of responsibility to a government in order to legislate righetousness (or self-righetousness) by the elimination of temptation and evil. We tried substituting government for church in the sixties with benevolence and the feeding the needy and the homeless by letting government do the work of the church in a disaster known as the LBJ Great Society. We tried eliminating temptation and evil in the Prohibition era of America and we found the creation of organized crime and people who did not want to repent went further and further in their sins to the point of finding sneaky and covert ways of sinning. Instead of the church becoming proactive and telling the people about Jesus and giving these pain driven people real soultions to their real life's real problems, we said "let's outlaw alcohol and this evil and temptation to drink will disappear" with no evident solutions to help people in their addictions.

Before I go further, I personally do not drink alcohol and I support measures to keep drunks off the streets from taking automobiles and killing innocent people. I do not believe in the legalization of drugs. I have to state these points to where we do not enter another equal and opposite extreme of permissiveness. What I am trying to get across here is that for too long, the church has passed the buck of responsibility of Christian benevolence to the government. Now the church of today desires to pass the buck of instilling character, values, and righetousness, and Godly principles to the government. The last time we saw a legislation of righetousness was in England where many of our forefathers left England because of religious persecution from the Anglicans. In England, the king wanted a divorce from his wife. The Pope refused to grant that divorce based on scriptures. Therefore, what did the king do. The king set up his own religion called Anglicanism (called the Episcopal church in America), made himself the head of the Anglican church and outlawed the Catholic church. Therefore, since the King was the ruler of the state and now the self-proclaimed ruler of the church that he designated as the "official religion" of the state, the Anglican church ran the state to the point where the State of England ran the church and dictated the meaning of 'true christianity' where any Christian who did not agree with the anglican principles were persecuted, beaten, and killed. This is the real reason why Thomas Jefferson wanted a 'seperation of church and state', here in America to avoid the same atrocities England forced on it's people, not because he was an 'antichrist' like some in the religious right revise him to be and not because he was a "humanist" like the secular humanists portrayed him to be.

Before we begin to tell others how to live, we better have the power to overcome temptation, transgreession, taboo, and totem working in our lives. Before we cry over the speck in our brother's eye, we better have the plank removed from our eye. Many Christians thought that we were over the waves of failure, adultery, and divorces that affected American Christianity in the late 1980's. However, we are seeing many of the same shortcomings exposed in the late 1980's now manifest again. Within the past two years, we have seen four prominent pastors who are well respected within Christianity today become divorced and a prominent Christian radio host step down because of "emotional adultery". One pastor, married for almost forty years, had a wife who got tired of the "ministry" who wanted a divorce. Instead of stepping down temporarily, he continued the ministry while neglecting the family. In fact, he promised to step down and leave the ministry if he got divorced but to this day, this minister has not fulfilled his vow and continues to be on the airwaves. Another pastor of a prominent 10,000 member church divorced his wife of 16 years over "irreconcilable differences" (what about Ephesians 4:26 and Matthew 5:23-25). When his denomination questioned their seperation, this pastor pulled his church from the denomination and took the church to become independent of any denomination. After their divorce, this pastor married another woman in a private ceremony seven days after the divorce. When his ex-wife finally spoke out, she stated that this pastor told her to file for divorce because "it would look bad if he divorced me--which could hurt his ministry." In other words, the man who wanted out now looks like the victim in everyone's eyes. The third pastor, a well respected youth evangelist with superhuman strength, divorced his wife of 16 years over "irreconcilable differences" (what about Ephesians 4:26 and Matthew 5:23-25) with both parties refusing to comment about the divorce over a "confidentiality agreement" signed in the divorce proceedings. No matter what you hide, it always comes out to the light.

The fourth pastor, a self-proclaimed "demonologist", secretly divorced his wife and had an extramarital affair with a secretary while attending a "demonology" conference. In fact, when callers of his radio talk show bring up the secret divorce and the accusations of adultery, he automatically hangs the phone up on the caller and calls it "technical difficulties". In fact, the ex secretary who broke news concerning the affair to this "demonologist" was later sued by the "demonologist" for violating her "proprietary and confidentiality" agreement she signed prior to her employment with the "demonologist". In fact, the "demonologist" convinced a jury that since she was referring to a "work-related" incident at the "demonology" conference in a hotel room paid for by the ministry, she was therefore on the job at that time and therefore violated her "proprietary and confidentiality" agreement by bringing up the adultery outside the walls of the ministry. The radio announcer from a "family focused" organization designed to implement the "official Christian perspective" in America, has admitted responsibility for his own personal actions, but in a spin-doctored move, focused the blame from his ministry to himself stating that the ministry was not at fault. This is true in one realm of thought. However, it shows that the philosophies of the ministry are evidently not working like they claim to. In other words, we have to protect the corporate ministry machines along with ourselves at all costs. Did we not learn our lessions from the failures of Bakker, Swaggart, Grant, Lea, and Tilton in the late 1980's, or did we raise up a new breed worse than these men because the punishments did not appear serious enough to wake us up. Before we tell others how to live and how to avoid temptation, we need to have this lifestyle of temple living and the pathways to overcome temptation, transgressions, taboos, and totems working in our life with easily seen results.

Click here for part four of Temptation to Temple.