Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Barack Hussein Obama
He said red, yellow, black or white
All are equal in his sight.
"The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Scribes of this day, this age or any age are those who misrepresent the truth. Those who proclaim, or purvey false religion, a false Christ, a false Gospel and there are a myriad: certainly you can start with the cults, the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Mormons who have a false God, a false Christ, a false Gospel, a false everything.
You can talk about Roman Catholicism and sacramental religions that believe salvation is a matter of ceremony and ritual and works. You can talk about Judaism today which is a rejection of the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ, which is as pagan and damning a religion as Buddhism or the worship of a rock or a stick in some kind of Aboriginal culture."
John MacArthur
We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.
Within two generations, evangelicalism will be a house deserted of half its occupants. (Between 25 and 35 percent of Americans today are Evangelicals.) In the "Protestant" 20th century, Evangelicals flourished. But they will soon be living in a very secular and religiously antagonistic 21st century.
This collapse will herald the arrival of an anti-Christian chapter of the post-Christian West. Intolerance of Christianity will rise to levels many of us have not believed possible in our lifetimes, and public policy will become hostile toward evangelical Christianity, seeing it as the opponent of the common good.
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I'm convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.
Why is this going to happen?
1. Evangelicals have identified their movement with the culture war and with political conservatism. This will prove to be a very costly mistake. Evangelicals will increasingly be seen as a threat to cultural progress. Public leaders will consider us bad for America, bad for education, bad for children, and bad for society.
The evangelical investment in moral, social, and political issues has depleted our resources and exposed our weaknesses. Being against gay marriage and being rhetorically pro-life will not make up for the fact that massive majorities of Evangelicals can't articulate the Gospel with any coherence. We fell for the trap of believing in a cause more than a faith.
2. We Evangelicals have failed to pass on to our young people an orthodox form of faith that can take root and survive the secular onslaught. Ironically, the billions of dollars we've spent on youth ministers, Christian music, publishing, and media has produced a culture of young Christians who know next to nothing about their own faith except how they feel about it. Our young people have deep beliefs about the culture war, but do not know why they should obey scripture, the essentials of theology, or the experience of spiritual discipline and community. Coming generations of Christians are going to be monumentally ignorant and unprepared for culture-wide pressures.
3. There are three kinds of evangelical churches today: consumer-driven megachurches, dying churches, and new churches whose future is fragile. Denominations will shrink, even vanish, while fewer and fewer evangelical churches will survive and thrive.
4. Despite some very successful developments in the past 25 years, Christian education has not produced a product that can withstand the rising tide of secularism. Evangelicalism has used its educational system primarily to staff its own needs and talk to itself.
5. The confrontation between cultural secularism and the faith at the core of evangelical efforts to "do good" is rapidly approaching. We will soon see that the good Evangelicals want to do will be viewed as bad by so many, and much of that work will not be done. Look for ministries to take on a less and less distinctively Christian face in order to survive.
6. Even in areas where Evangelicals imagine themselves strong (like the Bible Belt), we will find a great inability to pass on to our children a vital evangelical confidence in the Bible and the importance of the faith.
7. The money will dry up.
What will be left?
•Expect evangelicalism to look more like the pragmatic, therapeutic, church-growth oriented megachurches that have defined success. Emphasis will shift from doctrine to relevance, motivation, and personal success – resulting in churches further compromised and weakened in their ability to pass on the faith.
•Two of the beneficiaries will be the Roman Catholic and Orthodox communions. Evangelicals have been entering these churches in recent decades and that trend will continue, with more efforts aimed at the "conversion" of Evangelicals to the Catholic and Orthodox traditions.
•A small band will work hard to rescue the movement from its demise through theological renewal. This is an attractive, innovative, and tireless community with outstanding media, publishing, and leadership development. Nonetheless, I believe the coming evangelical collapse will not result in a second reformation, though it may result in benefits for many churches and the beginnings of new churches.
•The emerging church will largely vanish from the evangelical landscape, becoming part of the small segment of progressive mainline Protestants that remain true to the liberal vision.
•Aggressively evangelistic fundamentalist churches will begin to disappear.
•Charismatic-Pentecostal Christianity will become the majority report in evangelicalism. Can this community withstand heresy, relativism, and confusion? To do so, it must make a priority of biblical authority, responsible leadership, and a reemergence of orthodoxy.
•Evangelicalism needs a "rescue mission" from the world Christian community. It is time for missionaries to come to America from Asia and Africa. Will they come? Will they be able to bring to our culture a more vital form of Christianity?
•Expect a fragmented response to the culture war. Some Evangelicals will work to create their own countercultures, rather than try to change the culture at large. Some will continue to see conservatism and Christianity through one lens and will engage the culture war much as before – a status quo the media will be all too happy to perpetuate. A significant number, however, may give up political engagement for a discipleship of deeper impact.
Is all of this a bad thing?
Evangelicalism doesn't need a bailout. Much of it needs a funeral. But what about what remains?
Is it a good thing that denominations are going to become largely irrelevant? Only if the networks that replace them are able to marshal resources, training, and vision to the mission field and into the planting and equipping of churches.
Is it a good thing that many marginal believers will depart? Possibly, if churches begin and continue the work of renewing serious church membership. We must change the conversation from the maintenance of traditional churches to developing new and culturally appropriate ones.
The ascendency of Charismatic-Pentecostal-influenced worship around the world can be a major positive for the evangelical movement if reformation can reach those churches and if it is joined with the calling, training, and mentoring of leaders. If American churches come under more of the influence of the movement of the Holy Spirit in Africa and Asia, this will be a good thing.
Will the evangelicalizing of Catholic and Orthodox communions be a good development? One can hope for greater unity and appreciation, but the history of these developments seems to be much more about a renewed vigor to "evangelize" Protestantism in the name of unity.
Will the coming collapse get Evangelicals past the pragmatism and shallowness that has brought about the loss of substance and power? Probably not. The purveyors of the evangelical circus will be in fine form, selling their wares as the promised solution to every church's problems. I expect the landscape of megachurch vacuity to be around for a very long time.
Will it shake lose the prosperity Gospel from its parasitical place on the evangelical body of Christ? Evidence from similar periods is not encouraging. American Christians seldom seem to be able to separate their theology from an overall idea of personal affluence and success.
The loss of their political clout may impel many Evangelicals to reconsider the wisdom of trying to create a "godly society." That doesn't mean they'll focus solely on saving souls, but the increasing concern will be how to keep secularism out of church, not stop it altogether. The integrity of the church as a countercultural movement with a message of "empire subversion" will increasingly replace a message of cultural and political entitlement.
Despite all of these challenges, it is impossible not to be hopeful. As one commenter has already said, "Christianity loves a crumbling empire."
We can rejoice that in the ruins, new forms of Christian vitality and ministry will be born. I expect to see a vital and growing house church movement. This cannot help but be good for an evangelicalism that has made buildings, numbers, and paid staff its drugs for half a century.
We need new evangelicalism that learns from the past and listens more carefully to what God says about being His people in the midst of a powerful, idolatrous culture.
I'm not a prophet. My view of evangelicalism is not authoritative or infallible. I am certainly wrong in some of these predictions. But is there anyone who is observing evangelicalism in these times who does not sense that the future of our movement holds many dangers and much potential?
They believe in Christ, but it is a Christ without his crown, his atonement, his judgment-seat, or even his Godhead. They mock us with orthodox phrases, from which the essential truth is gone. They pretend that they believe in the atonement, and when we listen to their atonement we find that it does not effectually atone for anyone. It is a mere fiction, and not a fact. It saves nobody, but is a mere sham.
They have eviscerated the gospel, and then they hold up the empty carcass, and claim that they are Christians still. Christians who have murdered Christianity! Believers who doubt whether there is anything to be believed! Yet we are entreated in our charity to hug such traitors to our bosom. We shall do nothing of the kind. We would sooner believe in infidels outright than in those who pretend to be Christians and are infidels at heart.
"Our anchor and foundation is God's unchanging Word...Postmodern leaders resist such truth. It doesn't fit the collective thinking of the new managed society. It clashes with the pluralistic vision of unity in diversity: all gods are equally valid. All lead to the same end.
Unlike noble visions and humanist idealism, God's actual Word can't be manipulated by today's clever facilitators. His unchanging truth is poison to the consensus process...As the apostle Paul wrote two millennia ago,
"...the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables. But you be watchful in all things..." 2 Timothy 4:2-5."
This Scripture gives us three crucial facts about pagans in the last days:
1. They will follow many teachers;
2. They will not listen to God's truth;
3. They will turn instead to fables -- such as the myth that "all religions pray to the same god."
"So how can we use truth to ward off contemporary myths, lies and distortions? We read, study, memorize and follow God's Word. It builds an unshakable foundation for our thoughts and values."
In other words, we put into practice the teaching of God's word in Romans 12:2: "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind."
We also follow the teaching of Scripture, "Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you..." II Cor. 6:17
One year ago, I posted on this blog about the Easter Sunday sermon at my church. That post is here. I also sent a letter to one of the elders containing basically the same comments. The only response it got was that one of the other elders commented that they needed to do more to “protect” the younger members of the pastoral staff (the implication being, from letters like mine).
If anything, the sermon given one year later on this past Easter Sunday, by the same pastor incidentally, was even worse. It was a truncated, carefully sanitized re-packaging of the Gospel that deliberately omitted: (1) any reference to judgment; (2) any explanation of the fact that we are all sinners by nature and that we are therefore under the just wrath of an omnipotent God; (3) any reference to the Atonement or why it was necessary; (4) any valid Scriptural explanation for why Jesus had to die; and (5) any valid Scriptural explanation for why Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus did not die to “change your tomb into a womb” or any such thing. Any connection between “change your tomb into a womb” and the text of Acts 2:24 (“God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death…”) is so grossly attenuated that it is almost laughable. This presentation (I hesitate to call it a sermon) was not even on speaking terms with the true Gospel.
But when these empty words are preached on Easter Sunday morning at one of the largest churches in Wheaton, Illinois, it is hardly a laughing matter. Instead it is cause for weeping and righteous indignation. To soft-pedal the offense of the Gospel in this manner is wrong. What is worse, the church leadership, by all its venerable history of faithful preaching and teaching, should know it is wrong. Apparently they either do not know or do not care.
This poor young man has evidently gotten no instruction or guidance from the seminary he attended, from the senior members of the pastoral staff or the elders. What is more, the elders apparently think they have nothing better to do than to harass a few members for writing a letter questioning one of their proposals that was ultimately voted down by the congregation, while this kind of liberalism goes out unchecked from the pulpit week after week.
What is this but straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel? What is this but hypocrisy on a massive scale?
...while the followers of Mohammed may display various levels of human goodness, which they do, and human evil, which they do, their religion itself rejects the divinity of Christ and His substitutionary atonement, and thus bases its theology on a wicked blasphemy. Such a view rides on evil, and such a view will be judged by God.
No one could possibly have walked away from this sermon thinking that Christians and Muslims worship "the same God." Yet, the letter Dr. Litfin signed reads from beginning to end as if, in fact, they do. (more on this point later) "The Christian Post reported the following in a November 23rd article titled,
Christian Leaders Invite Muslims to Love God, Neighbors Together:
Christian leaders across denominational lines responded to the unprecedented open letter signed last month by 138 representative Muslim leaders with their own letter, calling on the two Abrahamic faiths to love God and neighbors together.The key word here is 'together.'"
To read the complete text of the so-called "Christian response" to the Muslims letter, click here.
(HT: World Net Daily; Paul Proctor)
As usual, Dr. MacArthur minces no words:
One of the professors at the Master’s College, Dr. John Pilky (sp.), very astute (teaches in our English Lit. Dept), wrote me a little memo. Listen to what it says,
The phrase "Pro Choice" (which is what the Pro abortionists use) strikes me as one of the most depraved, apocalyptically wicked, rhetorical facts in the history of western civilization in the Christian era. The phrase means "Pro Sin" or "Free to Chose Sin." The phrase would actually be less dreadful if it were "Pro Abortion" because that would confine it to the sphere of a particular moral problem, but by turning it to what seems a euphemism, the "Pro Choice" people have rung the final rhetorical "death knell" to the entire Democratic experiment.
The phrase "Pro Choice" means "without conscience, or without inhibition, or without restraint," and it parades itself under the Jeffersonian banner of liberty of conscience and separation of Church and State. As a rhetorical gesture, perfectly designed to function as a political banner, this phrase constitutes the last word: the official formulation of official apostate defiance against the God of Christianity. I am confident that God will answer it apocalyptically.
Yes, I believe that he is right. I believe abortion is the last official stand of the defiant apostate against God. It says, "God, you will not determine who lives or dies—I will!" The ultimate apostasy.
Amen.
We gather also to drink deeply of the religious streams which have refreshed parched peoples for many generations. We gather together, weeping. Yes, we weep with an agony too deep for words and sighs that are inexpressible. But also we gather affirming the sovereignty of life over death.
At a time such as this, the darkness of evil seems powerful indeed. . . And yet, we come to this place to testify that the light of love cannot be defeated.
Amid all our pain, we confess that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. We cannot do everything, but we can do something. We cannot banish all darkness, but we can by joining together, push it back. We can not undue yesterday’s tragic events, but we can sit in patient silence with those who mourn as they seek for a way forward.
As we share light, one with another, we reclaim our campus, let us deny death’s power to rob us of all that we have loved about Virginia Tech, this our community. Let us cast our lot with hope in defiance of despair. I invite you to observe a moment of silence.
There is nothing of the gospel, nothing of Christ, nothing of sin, and nothing of salvation. In short, there is no hope. The listener is left without God and without hope in this world. There is only one oblique reference to scripture, but it is left unexplained -- who is "the light" that shines in the darkness, and why has the darkness never overcome it? What is "the darkness" anyway? All of this is left unexplained.
Sadly, this is all too often what we hear from the pulpits of our churches; the apostasy is only more easily visible in the ELCA.
How many listeners, I wonder, who believed themselves to be Christian, thought they were hearing a "Christian" message?
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