Remember several years back when a Baptist preacher in Washington, D.C. began a "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign and drove across the country with his wife in a hybrid Toyota Prius?

According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, the preacher, the Rev. Jim Ball, is now among a core group of "influential evangelical leaders" nationwide applying their substantial political might to the fight against global warming.

In the article, another big-shot evangelical, the Rev. Rich Cizik, testifies that it was after hybrid car-hugging Ball "dragged" him to a conference on climate change in 2002 in Oxford, England, that he had a "conversion" on climate change so profound he likened it to an altar call!

"I don't think God is going to ask us how he created the earth, but he will ask us what we did with what he created," said Cizik, vice president of governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals and reportedly a significant voice in the debate, in the Times article.

Such is the atmospheric state of apostasy in America today where evangelical "leaders" are joining forces to emphasize environmental do-gooding as they coach us all on how we should be pretending to be Jesus Christ, modeling our every move on what we think He'd do.

These same so-called "men of God" outright reject the undeniable reality from Paul's instructions in all his epistles that he's God's appointed man we are to pattern our lives after today as we follow him and his unique gospel, given to him by the resurrected Jesus Christ.

"About 95 percent of churches you go to today, you can just unscrew your head and leave it in the car because you're not going to need it 'til you drive home," says my pastor, Richard Jordan of Shorewood Bible Church in Chicago (www.graceimpact.org), in a sermon I have on tape. "It's a mindless type of thing that comes from an inability to comprehend and know what's going on and make judgments based on sound doctrine. . . If you've ever wondered why it is that the professed church is in such confusion and is so impotent and in disarray today, it comes from simply not recognizing what it is God's doing and being in line with it."

Jesus Christ and Paul go hand-in-hand today and the words of Paul are the words of Christ to both Jew and gentile. In essence, the resurrected Jesus Christ's exhortation is, "Hear my words, listen as I speak the message of love and grace to the world through the chief of sinners and my designated man to give the gospel, Paul."

Look in the Bible and you'll see Paul is the only man outside of Jesus Christ to ever say, "Be ye followers of me, follow me." To use a direct quote, I Cor. 11:1 reads, "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ."

In Titus 1:1-3, he summarizes his ministry this way: "Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness; In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; But hath in due times manifested his word through preaching, which is committed unto me according to the commandment of God our Saviour."

For all the people marching, praying, fasting and weeping over the public endangerment of the Ten Commandments, there's the commandment they ought to be throwing their passion on. What Paul has for today's world is a new revelation for a new program Jesus Christ revealed to him after His death and resurrection.

"Just as God revealed Himself to Moses in 'times past' and spake face-to-face with Moses and gave him the Law for the nation Israel, so it is Jesus Christ reveals himself to the Apostle Paul and gives to Paul the message of grace for the Body of Christ," says Jordan. "God had planned this all along and Paul recognized that. He says God 'separated me from my mother's womb.' The ministry God gave Paul was not some afterthought; some makeshift arrangement made on the spur of the moment. It's part of God's eternal purpose he purposed in Jesus Christ."

In Gal. 1:11-15, Paul summarizes, "But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man.

"For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.

"For ye have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and wasted it:

"And profited in the Jews' religion above many my equals in mine own nation, being more exceedingly zealous of the traditions of my fathers.

"But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace,

"To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen. . ."

So what is Paul's special commission? It's the reconciling of Jew and gentile together in one body, the Body of Christ. By grace through faith plus nothing, Believers are given an eternal place in the heavenlies with Him. They are to finish their course on earth as heaven's agents, or "ambassadors for Christ," as Paul puts it, communicating to others the life-giving truths of the gospel as Christ manifests Himself in the details of their lives. (Editor's note: I'm just getting started on explaining all this. More details to come.)

By definition, grace is the unmerited favor of God. It's God giving us on a free, no-strings-attached basis the thing we need for salvation but can't earn for ourselves—perfect righteousness before God. Through faith in His Son alone, God gives us a position of perfect righteousness in Jesus Christ as a free gift.

This is why going to Jesus Christ's earthly ministry in the four Gospels as a life manual simply minifies what God has magnified through Paul. It's also why so many Christians lead such a defeated spiritual life.

"People try to make the Lord Jesus Christ and His earthly ministry and His earthly life our pattern but you better not go there—that's not a very good place for you to be," says Jordan in a recent audio sermon on his website. "The Lord Jesus Christ was perfect. Well, so you just checked out. You won't make it. People say, 'Well I'm going to follow the Lord.' Oh yeah, try it a little bit.

"He asked His disciples one time, 'Are you able to be baptized of the baptism I'm going to be baptized with' and they said, 'Yes, Lord, we're able." But they weren't. And they didn't and they forsook Him. He's talking about His death and they forsook Him and they weren't (able) because none of us are.

"You take a perfect Savior and you take the chief of sinners, Paul (I Tim. 1:15), and you put them together and then you've got the combination that can work for you. When you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior He gives you the Apostle Paul."

As Paul himself writes so appreciatively to Timothy (I Tim. 1: 12-17), "And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry;
"Who was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.
"And the grace of our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.
"Howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on him to life everlasting.
"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen."

While the religious system influencing much of Christendom today wants to make the gentile like Israel, putting us under Israel's prophetic program and following Jesus Christ's earthly ministry to Israel, God wants Israel—along with the rest of us—under the gentile's program laid out by Paul.