What I've Been Reading: The Gathering Storm
On Fridays, I’m going to interact with some books I’ve been reading, sharing things that I’ve found useful or helpful.
Recently I read Al Mohler’s new book The Gathering Storm. Mohler takes the title for this book as well as his approach from Winston Churchill’s warnings prior to World War Two. Churchill warned of the growing menace of Nazi Germany and was ignored. Mohler likens this to the march of secularism across American Culture. He argues that secularization poses the most pressing threat to Western Civilization. Mohler proposes not a fresh political movement to combat secular forces on the march but a fresh theological commitment to the truth of Scripture as the sole authority for Christians today.
Mohler organizes his chapters topically, covering the impact that secularization has had in the church, and then in society at large. He traces how secular thought has impacted matters like the sanctity of human life and abortion, marriage and the family, gender and human sexuality, and the generational divide in America. Mohler devotes one chapter to analyzing the institutional influences on American culture, particularly Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and academia. Mohler saves perhaps the most important issue for the last chapter and shows how all of the aforementioned secularization has impacted religious liberty.
Mohler provides insightful analysis from a biblical worldview on all of these issues. Any Christian who is interested in learning more about these issues would benefit from this book. Mohler also deals with these issues on his daily podcast that I often find helpful. (https://albertmohler.com/the-briefing).
For me, one of the most thought provoking lines in the book was a quote from the late theologian Carl F.H. Henry. Henry, writing in 1983, could easily have written these words about America in 2020: “By aggrandizing law and human rights and welfare to their sovereignty, all manner of earthly leaders eagerly preempt the role of the divine and obscure the living God of scriptural revelation. The alternatives are clear: we return to the God of the Bible or we perish in the pit of lawlessness.” The word lawlessness might be the most appropriate word to describe the moral outlook of American society today. We have a lawless (in terms of God’s law) view of abortion, human life, marriage, the family, sexuality, and gender. For months it has become “normal" to hear of riots in various cities across the nation. Christians have to understand the intellectual and spiritual influences that have brought our culture to this point. When our culture began to abandon the authority of God’s Word, we began to sow the seeds of all that we see today. Lord, help us return to You!