Almost 100 years ago Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “It’s either Christianity or it’s Germanism...”

By “Germanism” Bonhoeffer was referring to the widely celebrated German “progressive” Church.

2/ That is, those Christians in Germany who were increasingly secularizing, and eventually fully aligned with the Hitler controlled German Reich Church; he weaponized these people against the true Church, those that stayed loyal to God and to His Word.

3/ Christian “progressivism” is not new, as many current activists would have us believe. “Progressive” was a name many Christians hubristically took upon themselves in the decades leading to WW2. The progressives celebrated what Hitler was doing.
They helped him...

4/ They celebrated his economic policies, his national socialistic policies, and eventually his war/occupation policies. They even celebrated his eugenics policies and (stunningly) promoted Hitler’s propaganda from their pulpits, unabashed and unashamed.

5/ The progressive Christians sold out 1000s of true Christians who would not follow the Reich Church. Many were jailed and/or went to their death because of it (it’s an untold, ugly story within our history).

6/ For his day, Hitler had in his employ, a somewhat advanced means of spreading propaganda to persuade a nation (incl. many in the church) that his ideology and its execution (pun intended) was justified.

7/ Hitler could not have dreamed of the highly sophisticated technology, nor the extreme and many-layered levels of propaganda occurring today...

8/ CHRISTIAN: Why is it easier to believe media, or a politician, more than the Word of God and what Holy Spirit is saying?
Why do we put more trust in the evening news than in what God says?
Why are the six o’clock news casters words taken as truth, but God’s Word doubted?

9/ Why does a “breaking headline” lead so many many to fear, frustration, and worry?
Why do we believe the Twitter mob chatter?
Why do we allow resentment and hatred into our hearts over disagreements on Facebook?

10/ But then, simultaneously, not know why we walk around doubting God, overcome by circumstances, struggling in faith, and wondering if He will ever come through????

11/ Can it be that we’ve swallowed far more of the worldly propaganda than Hitlers progressives ever did?

12/ Bonhoeffer also said, “one of the greatest things that can happen to a Christian is disillusionment.”
Why? Because only when we come out from under an illusion are we free to give up our beloved idols that we’ve falsely put our faith in, and live fully dependent upon God.

13/ Full dependency upon God is the place of a free, fearless, faith-filled, joy-filled, peace-filled, overcoming life in God.

We must give the highest weight to God’s words, not men’s, regardless of their stature, “let God be true and every man a liar” (Rom 3:4).

14/ Also Bonhoeffer: we need not “try to make the Bible relevant. Its relevance is axiomatic... Do not defend God’s Word... testify to it... Trust the Word of God.”