The Not-So-Good, the Bad, and the Ugly…

If you are concerned about the state of the Church in America, you are in for a real shock!  READ the survey summaries below.   One thing seems very clear… there is a lack of in-depth teaching, very little, if any, teaching on apologetics (how to defend the faith), and a great deal of compromise in many churches—and some of these are the churches who claim to be influential evangelical leaders. 

So many people from churches in America don’t really know what they believe or why, and many don’t really understand the basic principles and concepts of Christianity.

The following survey results show how confusion and compromise have infiltrated the church. NOT a picture we want for the claimed followers of Christ as He prepares for His triumphant return.

64% of Americans agree that “God accepts the worship of all religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam.”

Only 52% agree that “the Bible alone is the written word of God.”

Only 58% agree that “God is the author of Scripture.”

65% agree that “everyone sins a little, but most people are good by nature.”

44% agree that “the Bible, like all sacred writings, contains helpful accounts of ancient myths but is not literally true.”

51% agree that “the Bible was written for each person to interpret as he or she chooses.”

Only 47% agree that “the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches.”

59% of Americans agree that “worshiping alone or with one’s family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church.”

Only 45% agree that “churches that do not preach from the Bible should not be considered a Christian church.”

Only 49% in churches agree that “sex outside of traditional marriage is a sin.”

Only 49% agree that “abortion is a sin.”

42% agree that “the Bible’s condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn’t apply today.”

38% agree that “gender identity is a matter of choice.”

45% agree that “modern science discredits the claims of Christianity.”

52% agree that “by the good deeds that I do, I partly contribute to earning my place in heaven”

Only 60% agree that “Jesus Christ’s death on the cross is the only sacrifice that could remove the penalty of my sin.”

Only 52% agree that “it is very important for me personally to encourage non-Christians to trust Jesus Christ as their Savior.”

Only 54% in churches agree that “only those who trust in Jesus Christ alone as their Savior receive God’s free gift of eternal salvation.”

These numbers are very troubling. They tell a story, and its not pretty. When 40 to 50 percent of Christians don’t believe the Bible is accurate in all that it teaches, that Christ is the only sacrifice for sin and the only means for salvation, or that they should witness to non-Christians, there is something fundamentally wrong with the present Church.

FEW PEOPLE ARE TAUGHT SOLID, BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND, AS A RESULT, BIBLICAL ILLITERACY IS RAMPANT THROUGHOUT OUR COUNTRY.

Sadly, our once-Christian nation has drifted far from its roots. Few people are taught solid, biblical theology and, as a result, biblical illiteracy is rampant throughout our country. The results of our survey, done by America’s Research Group and published in my coauthored book Already Gone, show that for many Christians growing up in the church this lack of teaching can have disastrous results. Additional surveys—such as the follow-up by America’s Research Group and published in my coauthored book Already Compromised—have consistently shown that many Christian colleges are compromising on biblical principles about the authority of the Bible. 

These colleges allegorize or explain away the historicity of Genesis, attacking the very foundation of the faith—the gospel! The pastors and church leaders coming out of these Bible colleges and seminaries are then teaching what they have learned—that the history of the Bible is not to be trusted and that man’s ideas can “reinterpret” God’s Word.

Confused About Who God Is… how is that even possible?

Also disconcerting are the confused and even contradictory answers in the survey responses. While 65% of Americans agree that “God is a perfect being and cannot make a mistake” and 58% agree that “God is the Author of Scripture,” only 47% agree that “the Bible is 100% accurate in all that it teaches.” How can that be? Many just don’t understand what it means that God is the infinite Creator God—infinite in wisdom and knowledge and that “God is not a man, that He should lie” (Numbers 23:19).

Here’s another example. 69% in churches agree that “there is one true God in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit,” but 53% agree that “Jesus is the first and greatest creature created by God” and 56% agree that “the Holy Spirit is a force but is not a personal being.” So here’s the translation of those contradictions… people can believe that Jesus is God yet was created, and that the Holy Spirit is God yet is not a personal being?

God’s clear teachings on His Person and His Word are not understood because they are not clearly taught in many churches. We also see that moral and social issues like marriage, gender, sexuality, and sanctity of life have all been reinterpreted based on man’s fallible opinions and desire to accommodate sin. (See article posted - April 27, 2020 — The Great Confusion…)

The exclusivity of the gospel is considered antiquated and obviously in many churches viewed as “intolerant”, and the Great Commission has been sacrificed to the “all-paths-lead-to-God” mentality. If all paths lead to God, then why did Christ have to come to earth and go to the Cross to die for our sins? This type of theology — all paths are acceptable — makes Christ’s sufferings and sacrifice pointless.

GOD’S WORD IS NO LONGER ACCEPTED AS THE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY ON EARTH’S HISTORY—MAN’S WORD overrides and replaces god, when necessary!

The false evolutionary interpretations of historical science are usurping God’s Word as the foundation of truth—and this is now an epidemic in the church. God’s Word is no longer accepted as the ultimate authority on earth’s history—man’s word is! It should come as no surprise that this compromise hasn’t stayed in Genesis but has spread to how people view the rest of the Bible. After all, if you can’t trust what God says in Genesis, then why trust what He says throughout the rest of Scripture—or for that matter, why trust God at all?

But time and time again it has been shown that science has confirmed the Bible’s history. True science testifies to all that the Creator accomplished! We can trust the Bible, from the very first verse, and that’s why we can trust the theology, morality, and ultimately, the gospel message found in the Bible.

Jesus will return… do you believe that?  I hope you do, with all your heart and mind! I encourage you to equip yourself, your families, and challenge your church to teach the complete Word of God.  Only then will you be able to preach and teach Christ as Savior and Redeemer, providing answers to all who seek Him.  Be part of a revolution… call the church and this culture back to the foundation of the Word of God.

The Great Confusion...

So many contradictory world-views are swirling around humanity these days, its no wonder there is mounting stress and confusion in our culture as to what truth really is.  Most societies and cultures are abandoning Judeo-Christian values for secular concepts void of personal responsibility and accountability.

It’s easy to become confused. Mankind has replaced the order that God put in all creation with a great confusion that leads to no good end.

The scrambling of life’s order and priorities is not the only confusion that is perpetuated by our contemporary and secular way of life. There is profound and growing gender confusion. There is a check-box on the recent U.S. 2020 Census that allows a person to “not identify as male or female” or to decline entirely to declare one’s orientation, leaving only that the person being counted is an “it”, something not associated with God’s created identities for humankind. 

Gender bias is a preference or prejudice toward one gender over the other. Bias can be conscious or unconscious, and may manifest in many ways, both subtle and obvious.  One of the most obvious ways in recent years is the “third” public restroom for those who claim not “male” or female” but another for of identity. We didn’t even think of these issues when I was growing up, a teen and even a young married adult.

You May ask yourself by now if I really am that old fashioned, that I can’t understand that we don’t live in the 20th century anymore? Of course not‚ I do live in the contemporary world‚ but these growing and frightening patterns of disorder‚ brought by apparently simple things like fashion‚ do greatly influence our lives. If our “freedom to choose” now extends to deciding what orientation we will live with from childhood through adulthood, then I would suggest that the confusion of humanity is far more serious than a simple shrug off to one’s personal choice.

The number one victim of this confusion is the family. We see how the God given definition of family is changed today by the political agenda‚ how younger and younger girls drop off school because of a teenage pregnancy‚ how divorce becomes the norm and celibacy with a libertarian lifestyle is looked upon as a viable way of living. These are all consequences of this confusion.

God did not created the world to be this way‚ he did not sow seeds of disorder. He made a child different than an adult and a woman different than a man. Strip away the modern trappings of this world… fashion‚ culture‚ prejudice‚ political correctness, etc. and you will see the true face of the world, that it is still here‚ buried‚ just as it was created by God.

Now, I am going to be very old fashioned here and declare the present state of confusion of humanity to be caused by sin.  Humanity’s desire to choose to go against the natural order of how God created humanity to live. Yes, that is exactly what sin is… making a choice contrary to the goodness God desires for his creation.  The originator of sin, is God’s adversary Satan the Devil.

You see, its through sin that humanity has sacrificed the original purity God endowed mankind with in favor of doing their own thing, their own way.  You might say, mankind has created a false identity‚ an identity that is hiding, masking the goodness of God that is in all of his creation. Do it long enough, and our world becomes a place of confusion and deception.  The secular tendencies, and gender confusion of our contemporary choices are just the latest masking over the truth of God’s given nature, his purpose for humanity and the world, replacing it with the man-made, unholy hodgepodge of ungodly behaviors.

God’s intent for order is very clear in the book of Ecclesiastes “to every thing there is a season‚ and a time to every purpose under the heaven: “A time to be born‚ and a time to die; […] a time to kill and a time to heal‚ a time to tear down and a time to build‚ a time to weep and a time to laugh‚ a time to mourn and a time to dance.” (Ecc 5:1-5). He has created all things with a purpose in mind and when we ignore or change this purpose we miss the very goal of our existence which is to be a glory to God. We can rebel against this fact‚ we can try to mask it‚ but this will only bring pain in our lives because we act against ourselves‚ against who we really are.

All our problems arise when we fight against the faultless order of God and try to replace it with a man-made flawed proposition. We think that we can outsmart God‚ but in doing that we only trade perfection for limitation‚ eternity for a brief lifetime‚ communion for isolation‚ and love for indifference.

We don’t have to reinvent anything: God has already created everything perfect. We only have to shake off these worldly views and ideas, and accept his grace in the person of Jesus Christ, our savior and redeemer.  We can then align our will with His will and rediscover our personal identity by paradoxically uniting ourselves with Him… “He that has my commandments‚ and keeps them‚ he it is that loves me: and he that loves me shall be loved of my Father‚ and I will love him‚ and will manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21)

Master and Commander...

The coronavirus pandemic is confusing and frightening for hundreds of millions of people. Many around the world are sick and many others have died. Unless the situation changes dramatically, many more will fall ill and die around the globe. This crisis raises serious medical, ethical and logistical questions. But it raises additional questions for people of faith.

In situations like this, it’s very easy to lose faith, a blame God for allowing this virus to harm humanity and to live in fear of the headlines and the unknowns.  This week particularly… the headlines say this week will be a grim and dark week with mounting deaths in the U.S..

While this pandemic is frightening and disruptive as never before, the history of humanity is blighted by disasters of one form or another. accompanied by great loss of life.  That is historical fact. Those events affected followers of God as long as there have been people who followed God, pre-Christian times and Christians after Christ.

We wonder, is God in control?  Is He watching over his followers and protecting them?  Does He care what is happening to so many people?

One thing that has been evident as this crisis began to sweep across the U.S., people began to panic.  Hoarding fo food and cleaning, disinfectant supplies became an everyday ordeal.

I know it’s easier to say than exhibit during times of crisis and high stress, but we all need to resist panic. 

This is not to say there is no reason to be concerned, or that we should ignore the sound advice of medical professionals and public health experts. But panic and fear are not from God. Calm and hope are. And it is possible to respond to a crisis seriously and deliberately while maintaining an inner sense of calm and hope.

Panic, causes confusion and fear, causing us to pull away from the help God wants to give us. This time in our lives, living with the threat of exposure to coronavirus is in the hands of God.

Jesus has all knowledge and all authority over the natural and supernatural forces of this world. He knows exactly where the virus started, and where it’s going next. He has complete power to restrain it or not. And that’s what’s happening. Neither sin, nor Satan, nor sickness, nor sabotage is stronger than Jesus. He’s never backed into a corner; he is never forced to tolerate what he does not will. “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations” (Psalm 33:11).

“I know that you can do all things,” Job says in his own repentance, “and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2). So the question is not whether Jesus is overseeing, limiting, guiding, governing all the disasters and all the diseases of the world, including all their sinful and satanic dimensions. He is. The question is, with our Bibles as our guidepost, how are we to understand this? Can we make sense out of it?

All natural disasters — whether floods, famines, locusts, tsunamis, or diseases — are a “loud noise, a call to hear” of divine mercy in the midst of judgment, calling all people everywhere to repent and realign their lives, by grace, with the infinite worth of the glory of God. And the basis for that building block is Luke 13:1-5. Pilate had slaughtered worshipers in the temple. And the tower in Siloam had collapsed and killed eighteen bystanders. And the crowds want to know from Jesus, just like we are asking right now… “Okay, make sense of this, Jesus. Tell us what you think about these natural disasters and this cruelty. These people were just standing there, and now they’re dead.”

Here’s Jesus’s answer in Luke 13:4–5: “Those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent [he shifts from them to you], you will all likewise perish.”

Now, that’s the message of Jesus to the world at this moment in history, under the coronavirus — a message to every single human being. Everybody who’s reading this and praying everyday for understanding of this crisis, every person who hears about this, is receiving a wake-up message of God, saying, “Repent.” Repent and seek God’s mercy to bring your lives — our lives — into alignment with His Will, His Purpose and live harmoniously with Him.

Now, the biblical fact is simple as expressed in Mark 4:41: “Even the wind and the sea obey [Jesus].” That is as true today as it was then. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8).

So, put those two facts together — the historical facts of past disasters and great loss of life and the biblical fact — and you get this truth: Jesus could have stopped any of histories natural disasters, but he did not. Since he always does what is wise and right and just and good, therefore, he had wise and good purposes in everything that affects humanity.

Food for Thought

In the midst of life's difficulties, right now the coronavirus crisis, some folks panic while others are calm.   A calm and peaceful demeanor is a virtue that only true, faithful believers possess. They know that there is nothing to fear, not even death, because God is in control, even when it may seem like He's ignoring our plight. 

God knows that in our desperation we will cry out to Him. Yet far too often we wait until we simply run out of human solutions to our crises, then we call upon God. By then, however, it's often too late. Instead of it being the last thing we do, seeking HIM should be the first thing we do!