By now you have received my article, “What Are We Thinking and What Must We Do?”

The article violated MailChimp.com compliance standards and resulted in my email delivery account being suspended. If you haven’t read the article yet, you can access it—along with everything else I write—at this link.

I contacted MailChimp.com and appealed to them to reinstate my account and deliver the offending article. Meanwhile, I wrote to you as well, telling you what was transpiring, and asking that you pray.

The good news is that Ralph from MailChimp.com wrote to say my account had been reviewed and was reinstated.

But.

Don’t miss the timing here.

I wrote informing you of my woes and asking you to pray. How did that message get delivered to your Inbox? My mail delivery account was suspended.

Writing “An Update for You” was a test to see how suspended I actually was—just the offending article or the entire account. Ralph answered that when he replied: My account was suspended.

So, two things happened that you should take note of: 1) You received a message from me via a suspended account. 2) You prayed and my account was reinstated.

Thus, God intervened miraculously, you responded in prayers of intercession, and God joined His initiative with your prayer to reinstate my account. MailChimp.com was outgunned.

We believe that God hears us when we pray. We believe He answers our prayers. But both of these beliefs are abstract. Unless we pay attention, it is easy to lapse into abstract belief that is irrelevant to real life. The result of this is a practice of prayer that is abstract—meaning the practice of prayer never becomes a concrete conviction integral to daily living.

The drama of my suspension was indeed dramatic. With the loss of the Lifetime database by my predecessors, the throttling/blocking of my Facebook to communicate with my FB followers, and then the suspension of my MailChimp.com account, the plug was pulled on my ability to communicate. I went dark, as they say.

The gods of Facebook and MailChimp would tell you their blockage is cultural. I disagree.

In my article I referenced multiple sources and alluded to a number of others. None of their accounts are suspended.

Don’t overthink this. Early on, silencing enemies can be nefarious, clandestine, and cloak-and-dagger, but once the silencing begins, the raw power it takes to silence an enemy is blunt force and the power grab is obvious.

But whose enemy am I?

In my article, the message I/we explored is that the writhing of cultural conflict is so significant, so pervasive, so large that only government or God are big enough to remedy what ails us and quell our discontent.

Governmental devotees have brought out the biggest, boldest idea mankind has ever devised: Socialism and Communism. At the heart of these governmental systems is the belief that mankind is capable of self-governance resulting in utopia. This belief is called, humanism.

On paper, these governmental systems make sense. In practice, they have been tried repeatedly and have resulted in the greatest atrocities humankind has ever levied against other humans.

As I write in my book Swagger, the twentieth century was a bloodier century than all other centuries of humanity combined. What made it so? Humankind’s devotion to the belief that men are gods who can perfect themselves if enough impediments are removed and absolute devotion to government, empiricism, and enlightenment are insured. This is what Socialism, Communism, and humanism promise.

These philosophical systems emerged from the Age of (man’s) Enlightenment and were en vogue by the late eighteenth century. Why not give them a try?

So, our forefathers did. The outcome was the twentieth century.

Twenty-one years into a new century, we are off to a poor start. As Americans, we started our fresh century with a computer bug, a terrorist attack, and the longest wars our country has ever known. What to do?

Why not try Socialism and Communism and humanism and relativism again?

If government is your hope, these are the best ideas to ever emerge from humanistic philosophy. As to the dark history of these systems, let’s rewrite them. As to reason, why not just declare what we want our history to be and call it the truth?

This form of reason is called relativism, i.e. truth is relative to me. It’s nothing new. In fact, the recurring theme of the ancient Book of Judges is, “In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

The alternative is God. The abstract idea of God became concrete in Jesus Christ. The application of Jesus Christ is the Gospel, the Good News, the promise that if we—humankind—will look to God in Christ, we will be made whole, forgiven, transformed, loved, and secured. The promise provides everything every human longs to possess, and it does so in perpetuity, pledged to be so by the covenantal honor of God, who cannot lie, and never changes.

Government or God: These are the only two options.

If you are dedicated to self-determination, independence from God, then the Gospel is the singular greatest threat to you and your dark aspirations. This is true for individuals and it’s true for Satan himself. As humanity becomes more and more desperate to make life work, Satan’s darkness becomes more noticeable and pervasive.

But this initiative is not only true for Satan and his dark domain. As the line demarcating darkness and light becomes clearer, the Gospel becomes more obvious as the true solution of God for mankind.

Light and dark move from twilight to either sunrise and the dawn of substantive hope or to the deeper darkness of night and vain hope. Either, or. The apathetic twilight of America’s relationship with God over the last decades is no longer.

Today, it is clearer than ever: Whom will you serve and upon whom will you rely: Government or God, darkness or light, reliance upon humanistic ideals or the sunrise from heaven, Jesus Christ?

The subtleties of Satan’s initiatives remain, but his devotion to subterfuge of the human soul is evident. No tolerance for the Gospel can be quartered. The times are too desperate, the stakes too high. Hints of light in twilight can be managed, but light in the darkness must be extinguished, censored, the account suspended.

At the heart of hope in government is humanism, man’s belief in himself. This is the lie Satan has foisted upon humanity since the Garden of Eden: You too can be like God.

At the heart of God’s Incarnation into the world of humanity is Jesus Christ and the proposal to let Him transform, secure, accept, and love for all eternity.

Either government can make all things right or God can make all things right.

Forgiveness of sin and sinfulness are the promise of the Gospel. Once accepted, eternity with God in heaven is granted and the indwelling of Christ in the Holy Spirit is the guarantee that all of this is true.

The trick is this: The God who makes this offer is King of kings and Lord of lords. By calling out to Him for salvation, mankind must relinquish pride of self-determination and place his hope in Another as opposed to self. There is no room for hubris in the Gospel.

Relinquishing pride is hard for humans. But desperate times require desperate measures. It is easy to believe all is manageable as long as the ship of humanity sails. But if the ship begins going down under us, as it seems to be doing now, the rising waters require realistic assessment. Perhaps my hubris—my excessive devotion to pride—cannot save me.

Lewis writes, “It is a poor thing to strike our colors (to surrender) to God when the ship is going down under us, to offer up our own when our own is no longer worth having. If God was proud, He would hardly have us on such terms. But God is not proud. He stoops to conquer.”

Halfway through 2021, water pours into the hull of humanity. We are torpedoing our own vessel. Our desperation grows.

Nothing is more terrifying than to find yourself in an inky-dark, storm-tossed sea, shrouded in darkness, watching in horror as the great hope of humanism succumbs and sinks beneath the waves. A light—any light, even the light of the Gospel—in that darkness brings realistic, true hope, and with it, a willingness to surrender any terms in order to secure salvation. As the saying goes, there are no atheists in fox holes.

If God was proud, He would hardly have us on such terms, but God is not proud. Even in the midst of our renewed devotion to government and its accompanying necessities, He will stoop to conquer.

This is a terrifying probability if you are the dark lord, Satan. Light must be squelched lest desperate humans turn from self-determination, bow their knees to the King of kings and Lord of lords, and realize salvation.

Heaven and hell. Light and dark. The Kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of darkness. Men and women transformed by the Gospel or fallen, darkened, desperate souls clinging to the detritus of self-determination. Humility or hubris. Saved or desperate. Devotion declared to Jesus Christ who rides upon a raging, glorious, white stallion or devotion to the ancient, red dragon who dragged the stars from heaven upon the birth of Jesus Christ and His Incarnation into the world of men so that light would shine in darkness.

My article was blocked and my account suspended as casualties in a spiritual war for the hearts and lives of mankind. My article was delivered and my account reinstated because you prayed and the Gospel will not be suspended.

We are not lost. Western culture is wavering, but culture is not our confidence. Capitalism is not our dream. Communism is not our enemy.

Our hope is in Christ. The declaration of God’s family throughout history remains: Sola Christos, Christ alone.

Prayer works. God remains. Darkness cannot overcome light.

For future reference: Should you realize one day that I have gone away, understand that I’ve either died or been silenced by the tech gods. In either event, email me directly: preston@prestongillham.com. If necessary, we will rebuild the database that enables us to be lights in dark places.