For the last seven weeks we have been reading about Prophetic Voices. We discussed how Everybody's Talkin' - both godly voices and ungodly ones, coming at us from all directions, all the time, shaping the world in which we live. We dubbed this cultural phenomenon The Marketplace of Ideas and examined how books, film, and even music, have prophetic qualities to them. We also explored the idea that there really are only Two Messages out there - to serve God or to serve ourselves (ie: the devil). And we talked about how, Officially Speaking, prophetic messages follow a chain of command, coming from a source, through a messenger, and to an audience.

Over the last three weeks, we have been investigating specifically how Voices Launch Nations and even bring them into existence. We discussed how America's Prophetic Seedbed finds its roots in Ancient Israel with God's call to Abraham. We then compared America's seedbed to Nazi Germany's Dark Prophetic Seedbed, where roots from Renaissance, Enlightenment and cultic thinkers developed into a culture of death.

This article will wrap up Part III of our series. Today we are going to examine how ideas delivered by Prophetic Voices carry with them attendant consequences. To begin our exploration of this phenomenon, we will look to Jesus and His disciples.

Shortly before He ascended into heaven, Jesus instructed His disciples to "go and make disciples of nations ..." (Matthew 28:19). Some translations read, "go and teach the nations ..." What came of His instructions, and what kinds of aftereffects did His teachings produce?

Clearly, the effects of Christ's words and ideas are beyond measure in human terms. In the 2000 years since His life on earth, Christianity has spread slowly, yet almost systematically, across the globe. After the Holy Spirit restrained Paul from going into Asia, (Acts 16:6) Paul's ministry, and martyred life, eventually concluded in Rome. Out of Rome came the Catholic Church which later hemorrhaged, spilling into the Protestant Reformation. The Reformation began in Germany but soon jumped the English Channel to the British Isles. God uprooted Protestant believers from Britain and Western Europe and sent them westward, giving them faith to brave the cold Atlantic and settle in North America. Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal, Catholic nations, conquered South and Central America. From the Americas, new missionaries spread out across the globe, especially continuing west, across the International Date Line. Finally, after almost two millennia, the gospel has begun to penetrate Asia.

How can we measure the consequences of Jesus' ideas (teachings)? His ideas, along with His redemptive work on the cross and resurrection, restore all who come to trust in and rely upon Him for their salvation to the status of sonship with the heavenly Father. Jesus elevated not only the woman and the slave, He exposed the hypocrisy of those with religious pretense. He still lifts up everyone who comes to know Him. Destroying the power of sin, He restores human dignity. As the centuries elapsed, human diginity and freedom of conscience gradually toppled kings and birthed new forms of self-government, bringing with them personal liberty. Personal liberty on a large scale eventually gave rise to entrepreneurship, which has moved us from ancient to modern, and slowly changed the face of everything in the world. These are some of the consequences of Christ's ideas.

Could we say then, that to a degree, the Church has partially fulfilled the Great Commission to disciple nations? Surely our nation was, at one time, a "discipled" nation. During those formative years, the Church confidently bore her prophetic mantle as the nation's counselor. But that day has passed. The modern Church struggles to be heard among the cacophony of Prophetic Voices. Today's Church has nearly become the scourge of modern culture.

Even as good ideas inevitably yield good consequences, so bad ideas yield bad consequences. For example, when God created the universe and everything in it, He concluded that His idea to create resulted in good consequences (Genesis 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25). Conversely, when the serpent tendered the bad idea that by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:5), the first couple would "be as gods" (Genesis 3:5), the consequences proved ghastly. Adam and Eve were cast out of Paradise, and the serpent was made to slither on the ground.

Two weeks ago we explored the concept of America's Prophetic Seedbed. We concluded that our American culture and system of government sprang up largely from the twin seedbeds of Judaism and Christianity. But things have gone awry. What kinds of idea-seeds have been sown over the last two hundred years to pollute our garden? What kinds of false prophetic ideas crept into the Church, lured her away from her high call, and stripped her of her prophetic mantle in the nation? Where did we compromise and allow our prophetic voice to be silenced? Have we permitted others to disciple our nation? Consider these few possibilities:

• Racism. America's unique brand of racism should be considered as one of the forces that stripped the Church of her prophetic power in our nation. What kind of evil did our Christian forefathers invite in when they failed to lay the axe to the root of slavery early on? Who discipled our nation during this era of history?
• Manifest Destiny. This popular idea of the "white, Christian man's right" to possess this continent from sea to sea emerged in the mid-1840's. The Church stood by in silence, and in many cases either "amened" or participated as the white man systematically brought death and destruction to the Native Americans who had occupied our land for thousands of years before white, western European Christians ever arrived. What consequences followed these ideas?
• Darwinism. In the mid to late 1800's, Charles Darwin's ideas "On the Origin of Species" brought great controversy into our Christian culture. Many churchmen embraced his pseudo-scientific theories of evolution, not only reducing the garden of Eden account to fairy-tale status, but also eliminating the Biblical idea of original sin. What ungodliness have Darwin's ideas wrought?
• Freudianism. On the heels of Darwin came the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, who dissembled the Biblical idea of man as "spirit, soul, and body," (I Thessalonians 5:23) and recreated man as "id, ego, and superego." Freud's new, non-Biblical version of man paved the way for what one preacher has called, "blame, bolt, and medicate," our modern day approach to dealing with sin. Why do we exchange God's solid ideas for inferior ones?
• Abortion. Jump forward 75 years. Where was the Church when Roe v. Wade was made the law of the land by the U.S. Supreme Court? Who was discipling the nation when murdering the unwanted unborn became legal? Have you considered the long-term consequences of the devaluation of human life? Is there any connection between abortion in the womb and kids shooting kids in public schools? Is there an ideological link between killing the defenseless, unwanted, unborn in the womb, and Darwin's ideas about the survival of the fittest?