It’s not politics, it’s spiritual war — and the church is still sitting on the sidelines

Never has it been more obvious that politics are spiritual in nature. The partisan battles over authority, morality, justice, life, and truth can no longer mask the supernatural war raging between good and evil in the unseen realm.

Although the great war has already been won through Christ, the forces of good often lose earthly battles because Christians refuse to enter the fray. Progressives have a zeal and commitment to their doctrine more ferocious than the majority of Christians these days.

We’re “dealing with a rival religion,” says Steve Deace, BlazeTV host of the “Steve Deace Show.”

“If you aren’t as convicted in yours, you cannot defeat [your progressive opponents]. They’ll just keep beating you.”

So what needs to happen in order to flip the script?

To explore this query, Deace spoke with former U.S. senator, author, and devout Christian Jim DeMint.

“The great divide in Washington and across America really comes down to whether or not you believe the Bible is true. Our whole culture, all of Western civilization, is built on Judeo-Christian ideas that come from the Bible,” says DeMint. “Everything from the moral laws that we see in the Old Testament to how families are formed to marriage, concepts of compassion and charity — everything we take for granted as a country is derived from the Bible.”

Twenty-five years ago, both parties acknowledged and respected this reality, he says. But today, that isn’t true. One party has departed so far from any sort of moral standard that it fights for nationwide abortion through all three trimesters, equating the barbaric murder of babies to essential health care.

When these progressive policies are successful, it’s a win for Team Satan, but Christians at large tend to just shrug and hope for better days.

But they need to pick up their sword and fight. “Pastors and Christian leaders and folks who call themselves Christians [need] to step out of the shadows and start to participate more in deciding how we’re governed as a nation,” says DeMint.

DeMint has a brand-new book out that tackles this subject. Titled “What the Bible Really Says: About Creation, End Times, Politics, and You,” it dives into how centuries of theological misinterpretation and church tradition have neutralized the Bible’s explosive political power, leaving Christians defenseless in today’s spiritual war. It also argues that returning to the plain, unfiltered text of Scripture can re-arm believers to fight and win the battles over authority, life, marriage, justice, and truth that now define our culture.

Today’s churches are often too “watered down,” “lukewarm,” and “you-centered” to be effective in the political sphere, Deace adds.

But if Christians got biblically serious, they’d see that Washington’s war is God’s war.

“Republicans have their flaws, and I spent most of my time in the House and the Senate criticizing Republicans for not doing what they said they were going to do, [but] their platform is built on Judeo-Christian concepts. But the Democrat platform is not,” say DeMint.

But while political victories should be important to Christians, they aren’t the end-all, be-all. “We can’t win the battle that way,” says DeMint.

The real battle remains in each individual heart, where people must finally settle the question DeMint keeps asking: Is the Bible actually true — or isn’t it? Because until we bet our lives that every word is God-breathed, we’ll keep losing the culture to a rival religion that is far more convinced of its own lies.

To hear more of Deace and DeMint’s conversation, watch the episode above.

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