By Matt Singleton
The Kentucky Family Association (KFA) believes that lost, sinful people need regeneration by the Holy Spirit for salvation.** The KFA believes in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit, by whose indwelling the Christian can live a Godly life.
There are two different views on this world: either our world is a “paradise lost” or our world is “a chaos hoping to the heights of the heavens.”
In the Christian worldview, Heaven cannot be found in a rocketship, no matter how fancy. The only help comes from a loving God who’d send His Son to redeem us.
The secular hope of mastering the universe comes with a rude awakening that we are not self-sufficient.
Ultimately, man’s condition of things like infections and cancers within us causing our physical bodies to die reminds us of the reality that our sin causes us to die in the spirit. However, even if we may never find a solution to avoid physical death, we know a solution to avoid a final spiritual death.
Now, in the precedent-setting court case McGowan vs Maryland, judges ruled that the government can use religious-based law only if it has a secular application.*** They approved “Blue Laws” concerning a Sunday Sabbath due to the positive effect those laws had for giving drunks time to sober up before going to work.
This marked a shift from “one nation under God” to a godless nation. Now, this does not mean that the ruling was entirely wrong, but one thing it does prove is that the government is incapable of being a spiritual force for good, because the government rules the flesh. If we think we are only a few votes away from utopia, we will also be a few votes shy of death.
The problem with man is ultimately spiritual. In Europe, the churches rested upon the kings and magistrates. Whatever is left among those churches has no longer any faith or zeal in the Gospel.
Why? The answer is found in God!
God the Father initiated salvation in sending His Son, and the Son released the gift to mankind through the work of the Holy Spirit.
Often, people have called the Holy Spirit “The Holy Ghost.” After all, when Jesus died and resurrected, the Holy Spirit would proceed from Him, inaugurating the New Testament.
The Holy Spirit gave apostles and believers spiritual power. Many scholars have observed that with the birth of evangelicalism, we see a new emphasis on the Holy Spirit, yet also, we see at the same time the worldwide missions movement.
Evangelizing the world was a goal in Christianity which the Holy Roman Empire failed to achieve previously. When we see revival, we see blessings upon society. So many people long for the “old days,” but if we want those days or better days, we must first be born again!
**On the topic of spiritual regeneration and salvation, see John 3:1-21 and Titus 3:5. (https://www.afaky.org/ourstatementoffaith)
*** On McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420 (1961), the United States upheld that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have a secular purpose.
McGowan v. Maryland
McGowan v. Maryland, 366 U.S. 420, was a United States Supreme Court case in which the court held that laws with religious origins are not unconstitutional if they have secular purpose. A large discount store in Anne Arundel County, Maryland was fined for selling goods on a Sunday, in violation of a local blue law. The Court rejected an establishment clause challenge to laws saying that most large-scale commercial enterprises remain closed on Sundays. The Court's review of the history demonstrated that Sunday closing laws were originally efforts to promote church attendance. "But, despite the strongly religious origin of these laws, non religious arguments for Sunday closing began to be heard more distinctly."