The Fight Is Worth Fighting and the Foe Is Worthy
Shepherds and Sheep: Lead, Follow, Or Get Out of the Way
What does it mean that the fight is worth fighting? And more particularly, what fight? Better yet, what foe? Over the last 20 years we have witnessed the rapid loss of our inalienable rights and freedoms. This should alert one to the fact that something is drastically wrong in the country and our world. Our happiness has diminished and what happiness we do experience often amounts to nothing more than remote islands in chaotic seas. The consequence of not making a stand (a euphemism for fight) is severe; it’s life altering, if not life ending. Thus, the fight is more than worthy for the fact that the aim of the foe is the eradication of a civilization, built layer upon layer, since at least Magna Carta in 1215. Those who were supposed to protect us have failed. The terms Shepherds and Leaders are used interchangeably as the nature of their position they assumed was burdened with the requirement that they serve, protect and lead the sheep, or if you will, those whose heads are down providing for themselves and their families. They are the masses that give the shepherds and the leaders relevance.
Why do I say the foe is worthy? The foe we face is worthy (not in a virtuous sense) but because he is formidable and not limited by truth, goodness and righteousness. That in itself should answer any question of whether the fight is worth fighting. Whether the fight that has been brought to us is being prosecuted by a closed cabal or a determined individual, the foe’s agenda is the the same: “deconstruction” and/or the toppling of civilization’s pillars and our way of life. Thus, they are worthy—worthy of defeat.
To expand upon the theme of the worthiness of the fight let’s also consider this fight from the perspective of the bookends of our lives. Within the next 80 years, 8 billion people are guaranteed to die. That’s a pretty sobering thought. There’s no escape. We all have an expiration date, even the foe. This theme is the title of my upcoming book, “Expiration Date: We All Have One.” Life is serious and short and how you live it will have consequences. Further, you have no choice but to live it. All too often how you live it, whether as free or slave, is determined by the leaders you choose and the fights you fight in protection of the life you desire to live. By the time you mature sufficiently to grasp the eternal truth of the fight, you will have already used up a significant portion of your life. Let’s say you awaken to the realities of life by the age of thirty, then, generously, you have 50 years left. As you aspire to the heavenly kingdom you come to recognize the growing urgencies upon you, because the time is short before you will give an account of your life.
The Sheep
It is long known that the multitude, like sheep, are concerned with daily life-supports, largely of their own families and holdings. That’s life’s first economy. Providing protection, food and shelter, are the basics of the home economy and for most require a heads-down occupation. Or in more colloquial terms, putting one’s nose to the grindstone. They don’t know much more of the world than the daily grind. They don’t see what is coming over the horizon. There is no shame in that, for the sheep’s existence forms the basis of life. However, the reality is the sheep are preoccupied and will never understand the dangers until it’s too late. Nor will they or should they lead. They need to be led.
The sheep are followers and if well led, allows for their good follower-ship and likewise a productiveness that benefits society. Yes, there are some sheep, who wrongly enter or are inducted into leadership positions they are ill-equipped to handle. They quickly succumb to the “Peter Principle,” rising to the level of their incompetence. Or they become what Lenin called “useful idiots,” easy prey for the puppet masters who hide while pulling the strings.
Without adequate leadership or shepherds, the sheep are easily influenced by the cabal. Socrates warned of this and said that the sheep (those who essentially did not have the mental wherewithal to cast an informed vote) are easy prey for the demagogues.
For example, every major US city today, for most of the last 50 years has been dominated by the demagogues whose broad corruption has left once great and thriving cities to decay, being overrun with crime and death. Chicago and San Francisco are prime examples. Yet the mass of voters, the sheep, time and time again, cast their votes for these wolves in sheep’s clothing. Like dogs returning to their vomit, they select the chains of their bondage. Unfortunately they are bringing the societal roof in on the rest of us.
In reality, the demagogue is the thief that beckons at their front door. In spite of the failures of this most dismissive cabal, they find the sheep convenient sacrifices in their highly profitable wars perpetually waged across the world. Sheep are either led by a good shepherd, or are at risk of becoming sacrificial pawns. If it is not the sheep tearing down society with the exercise of their ill informed voting then it is the tyranny of the weaker brother assuming leadership for which he is ill prepared. He is more concerned about himself (knowing he is not fit) than he is guarding and protecting those his position requires him to do.
This writing is directed to the shepherds (leaders) of today, who ascended rightly or wrongly to their positions, quickened by the urgency of the world’s situation and their ticking clocks. In a perfect world there would be no need for a shepherd. But this is not a perfect world. A shepherd is required to be a right and selfless guide provided to protect the sheep in an imperfect world, that will never be perfect. A world that is full of evil and destruction.
Why would sheep need protection? And protection from what? Death comes for the sheep and the shepherd alike. Undoing the supports of civilization (which is the foe’s agenda) brings inevitable and unnatural death quickly, unjustly, cruelly, and massively. A good shepherd is one who perceives the danger. He serves the interests of the sheep, and not distracted by selfishly serving himself. I will never forget the remark a waiter told me during a conference in Orlando whereupon he said, “I have never presumed that anyone in Washington was up there for me.” How right he was. What a sad commentary on the shepherds of today who took an oath to protect the nation of sheep.
Good shepherds who have heard the call must do their due diligence and prepare mentally and physically for the battle that is guaranteed to come. In fact, it is already upon us. The fight is not an elective. It is not optional. Either we accept the challenge or die. We might die anyway. That is the only choice the foe leaves us. For the cognitively aware it’s no choice at all and thus the fight is mandated yet too many a shepherd live in denial to their own demise. In one respect or another many of us are shepherds. In the family the Father is to shepherd, care for, provide and protect his family. The pastor is to shepherd his congregation. Too many in the pulpit today are failing to meet the minimum requirements of the shepherd and woefully uninformed as to the destructive forces in the country his sheep are helping to bring forth by virtue of their conduct.
When the leaders today awaken to the battle in their short-time of service, they find choices are limited in large part due to the wolves currently amongst them. Wolves that were sadly permitted access to the sheep by cowardly and wayward shepherds, who constitute too many of our leaders today.
Now that we have what should be an obvious ”given” that is the years we have been given, you will either be free or a slave. You will either live out your life in bondage, or prosper and enjoy the fruits that only freedom can provide. You will live out a natural life or have it cut short and in terror.
Clearly, the fight is worth fighting. We fight because the alternative is unthinkable. The alternative is not life, liberty and happiness we desire, but death. You desire your freedoms and life because you have been created in God’s image, meant to glorify Him in all that you do and in all the ways that you can and are intended to prosper. In your sentience, your consciousness, and your awareness, you long to transcend at the end of your time here into the eternity that exists in the kingdom of God as opposed to hell. That is why the fight is worth fighting. You have no choice lest you be psychotic, ignoring the realities crashing down upon us.
Again, why is the foe worthy? Because the foe is the destroyer of life. The foe is smarter and more intelligent, cunning and equipped with every means and ability to destroy you, and he will, if you are not of a Gideon mindset or have failed to choose shepherds that are.
Real Shepherds: An Example From American History
What does it look like to be prepared? Peter Muhlenberg was a Lutheran preacher during the Revolutionary War who took his sermon text one day from the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. And after reading the eighth verse, "a time of war, and a time of peace," he declared, "And this is the time of war," removing his clerical robe to reveal his Colonel's uniform. The next day he led out 300 men from the county to war. Few pastors today are of that caliber at a time when post-flood evil has never been more pronounced in a global way.
Peter Muhlenberg, Lutheran pastor and Colonel in the American War for Independence
Muhlenberg put the Word to action, He was a Gideon. The Christian faith is not only one of soft-spoken words, but one where on occasion Jesus Himself drove the money lenders out of the temple with a whip. He called the Pharisees vipers and their work amongst the sheep yielded only whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones. The Goliath in every generation needs to be brought down by God’s anointed. The Jordan needs to be crossed and the land cleansed of the death and wickedness that reigns within. The fight is worth fighting and the foe is as deadly and wicked as ever. So, where are the shepherds? Where are the Gideons of the age? Sadly, many are either fighting amongst themselves (as with the current controversy between Christian Nationalism and other Christians) or compromising with the foe if not negotiating a surrender.
To face the destroyers of life one must know thy enemy because they know us better than we know ourselves. In our contemporary world we are at an inflection point. The Shepards are asleep. Commissions are routinely given to those not called to be a leader or shepherd. They never had the character nor ability to shepherd. Today we see that in the conservative cause, mainly shepherded by the Republican Party. While it is the only alternative in a binary system that can speak to truth and shepherd the sheep toward a safer and healthier existence it is itself crippled with Judases, the pusillanimous, the pretenders and those woefully ignorant of the foe they face. They see leadership as a career, not a service, to be maintained at any cost, even the cost of the nation. They are not the Navy Seals or the Special Forces. There is no devotion to a right cause but only to one’s self.
The wickedness we see today has totally consumed and overtaken the Democrat Party. The wolves, the foe, is far more adept, intelligent, cunning, ruthless and agenda driven than those who are in leadership suspect. All too often the Republican Party has shown itself ineffective in battling the foe. They wrongly give a moral equivalency to the foe. The wolves take delight in the evil they commit and plan in this world. All the while, on the Republican side, the shepherds make the job of the Democrats, the wolves, the foe, as easy as taking candy from a baby. Why? The Shepherd knows not the enemy they face, or are at worse closeted sympathizers within their own party.
Within the ranks of the Republican Party, they are clueless as to the Judas’ within their own camp. No matter what your cause, group, or church, the Judases must always be ferreted out and removed.
The Foe: Not Our Moral Equal
Yes, the foe is worthy because he is deadly. Some shepherds wrongly see the foe, the wolf, as equal and morally equivalent, as if their disagreements are just a matter of a difference of opinion. They are not. There is no equivalency between good and bad. There is no equivalency between evil and righteousness and no compromise of principle. Yes, the get-a-long gang is the leaven in the loaf and the fatal error of mankind. It is the error of the sheep and the error of Republicans as they know not the enemy and seek the impossible compromise on the eternal pillars.
The shepherds today and sadly the remaining defenders of humanity, the Republicans, church pastors and seminary professors, cannot recognize the enemy. The sheep are to be cared for, but today only crippled shepherds are to be found. In the hideous experiment of what we call or think of as “democracy” the sheep are found leading. The shepherd’s are useless. What insanity. The adults have left a room full of two-year-olds to rule the world. What chaos. It is the Lord of the Flies all over again. The chaos we suffer today is the empirical proof of this message.
Shame and penalty await those shepherds who turn aside from their commissions or abandon their posts. They are the Samsons of the day, shamefully indulging with the Philistines, whose primary motivation is the destruction of life as we know it. Yes, the overly confident, falsely assured Samson shepherds today will perish with the sheep. This is the tyranny of the “weaker brother,” with men assuming positions of leadership were they do not belong.
I and other like-minded leaders are here to speak to the shepherds, the leaders today, not the sheep. You cannot argue with the irrational or the fool. The chaos we suffer today comes from the leaders who have failed to lead. The foe knows us better than we know the foe. The foe rails against God and while they will go to their graves fighting all the way to the end they will bring destruction and death as they do. As the adage goes, the heathen rage. Oh, indeed they do and will do so for eternity. They are a deadly lot and not to be trifled with.
A shepherd is needed but not just any old shepherd. In fact, there is only one. The Good Shepherd who is on guard, equipped, savvy to the enemy and ready for the fight. He knows the fight is worth fighting for the reasons stated and the unacceptable alternative. He knows his foe, mankind’s foe, (in the bodily form of other humans) a worthy adversary, not to be underestimated nor played with. There is no coexistence with a force whose sole purpose is to destroy and kill.
So, be prepared to die either on your feet or on your knees. As for me, let me go out on my feet, having inflicted a mortal wound on the evil of this world in protection of the sheep; for I long for another world, a better world, and this one is not it. The fight is worth fighting and the foe is worthy because he brings death.