An Eroding Culture (Still Eroding)

1. Hayden 4-24-16, revised 7-28-20

Last night, in a fit of prayer, I felt led to crack open an old favorite book of mine, Chuck Swindoll’s text “The Church Awakening: An Urgent Call For Renewal.” In a nation that continues to drift further and further away from the moral moorings that were considered at one time common sense, the Church is in desperate need for spiritual renewal. On the back cover of Swindoll’s book, we read this quote, “Postmodernism (there is no absolute truth or reality) began in the academic community, oozed into leadership, then morphed into Congress, public schools, and our homes. Sadly, the slumbering evangelical church has also now slid into the murky waters of a post-Christian swamp.” This is often the result of a church that, rather than seek to draw closer in a holy relationship with God, settles for a shallow, religious form having no power. A church that is more interested in being accepted, and better yet, liked by our politically correct world, escaping the persecution that Jesus said all who live Godly in Christ Jesus would suffer (2 Timothy 3:12).

Some feel that we are in the process of the great “falling away” in the church, spoken of in the Scriptures, as we see denomination after denomination buckle to the pressures of the world to accept more and more behaviors, lifestyles, and faiths as acceptable alternatives to Biblical truths held by the church for the last 20 centuries. Could this be the great falling away linked to the revealing of the anti-Christ spoken of in the Bible? In 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3 we read, “Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition;” There has always been societies filled with eroded morality (maybe every society). But now many sectors of the church, after holding to standards of Biblical holiness and truth, are voting (and have voted) to not only affirm alternative faiths and lifestyles as acceptable to God but actually plotting to weave these changes into the church. We need to continue to pray that the church will be renewed in the Holy Spirit, be salt and light for the world, leading people to repentance and forgiveness in Christ rather than allow the world to lead the church into a politically correct social club based on good feelings rather than God’s Word. It is time for the Church to rise up, be bold in Christ, speak truth to counter the deception out to destroy our world, call the church to revival and preach repentance and faith in Jesus to a lost world.

Be blessed even more!!

Pastor Chris