The following is from this past April:
This topic is not new. It weighs upon me and I feel it necessary to return to it again and again.....but let me begin with this....we have a family member who has only months and maybe weeks left to live. In fact the hospital called the immediate family in about a week ago. From my experience hospitals are usually right on this type of call but in this case they were not....but still....unless God intervenes....this family member will not have much longer to live.
We essentially have no Christian bookstores in America anymore. Yes you can find them here and there but overall they have withered away. My wife and I used to own one. There were five or six Christian bookstores within a ten or fifteen minutes drive from our house at one time. Today there are none. There are no Billy Graham crusades in which in times past a couple of times a year with only thirteen to fifteen television channels you could not help but stumbling across a crusade. If it weren't for a certain Christian bookstore that I just walked in because I had nothing else to do....this 37 years ago....I'd probably be watching Saturday Night Live right now.
What we have today are big churches where people from little churches go because there is a lot more to do there. I spent about a half an hour a few weeks ago walking down the Christian book section at a Barnes & Noble looking at just about every book title.....hundreds and hundreds of them...and it is sad....there were not more than five or six that I would even pass out if I had them in my possession. America....unless God intervenes....does not have much time to live.
You do not agree with me? What do you base your opinion on? Have you at least observed America....and studied it....maybe for years on end.....for decades? There is a verse in the book of Daniel that is easy to pass over but if you do stop at it and consider it....it speaks volumes. Daniel had a severe vision....and because of it had no strength. He was told this...."....Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have cone in response to your words."
Daniel racked his mind trying to figure out what God was doing....but today we don't rack our minds....we barely exercise them.....and yet we seem to think that we know all that we should know about what God is doing. Here's something to ponder....one may be a brain surgeon....or a pastor of a megachurch....or may flip hamburgers for a living.....in God's eyes they are the same....neither one has any more innate ability than the other apart from the Holy Spirit to see what God is doing. In fact it is much more unlikely that the brain surgeon will trouble himself with such things....and the pastor probably thinks that he knows it already. My point....if you don't put the sweat and tears into it....you will get nothing out of it.
We do not have the resources that we did forty years ago. God has recalled our resupply line due to our lack of interest. My wife and I were travelling recently and on the Lord's Day I perused the local paper on worship services. I Googled the churches and went to the websites. There was not one that was encouraging. We stayed in the hotel room and listened to a couple of R. C. Sproul sermons. The monk Luther knew that the church in Rome was bad but he went there anyway.....and found that it was much worse than he even imagined. Is there something unbiblical about saying that the church age that you live in is in trouble?
We get no warnings from the pulpit today....unless that warning is to beware of warnings. If you but would play amateur futurist for curiosity sake you might see that the world that is rapidly developing has dystopia written all over it. Artificial intelligence alone should be enough for us to call out...'come Lord Jesus.' When is the last time that you....Christian.....actually uttered those words....'come Lord Jesus'....or words to that effect?
This topic is not new. It weighs upon me and I feel it necessary to return to it again and again.....but let me begin with this....we have a family member who has only months and maybe weeks left to live. In fact the hospital called the immediate family in about a week ago. From my experience hospitals are usually right on this type of call but in this case they were not....but still....unless God intervenes....this family member will not have much longer to live.
We essentially have no Christian bookstores in America anymore. Yes you can find them here and there but overall they have withered away. My wife and I used to own one. There were five or six Christian bookstores within a ten or fifteen minutes drive from our house at one time. Today there are none. There are no Billy Graham crusades in which in times past a couple of times a year with only thirteen to fifteen television channels you could not help but stumbling across a crusade. If it weren't for a certain Christian bookstore that I just walked in because I had nothing else to do....this 37 years ago....I'd probably be watching Saturday Night Live right now.
What we have today are big churches where people from little churches go because there is a lot more to do there. I spent about a half an hour a few weeks ago walking down the Christian book section at a Barnes & Noble looking at just about every book title.....hundreds and hundreds of them...and it is sad....there were not more than five or six that I would even pass out if I had them in my possession. America....unless God intervenes....does not have much time to live.
You do not agree with me? What do you base your opinion on? Have you at least observed America....and studied it....maybe for years on end.....for decades? There is a verse in the book of Daniel that is easy to pass over but if you do stop at it and consider it....it speaks volumes. Daniel had a severe vision....and because of it had no strength. He was told this...."....Do not be afraid, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart on understanding this and on humbling yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have cone in response to your words."
Daniel racked his mind trying to figure out what God was doing....but today we don't rack our minds....we barely exercise them.....and yet we seem to think that we know all that we should know about what God is doing. Here's something to ponder....one may be a brain surgeon....or a pastor of a megachurch....or may flip hamburgers for a living.....in God's eyes they are the same....neither one has any more innate ability than the other apart from the Holy Spirit to see what God is doing. In fact it is much more unlikely that the brain surgeon will trouble himself with such things....and the pastor probably thinks that he knows it already. My point....if you don't put the sweat and tears into it....you will get nothing out of it.
We do not have the resources that we did forty years ago. God has recalled our resupply line due to our lack of interest. My wife and I were travelling recently and on the Lord's Day I perused the local paper on worship services. I Googled the churches and went to the websites. There was not one that was encouraging. We stayed in the hotel room and listened to a couple of R. C. Sproul sermons. The monk Luther knew that the church in Rome was bad but he went there anyway.....and found that it was much worse than he even imagined. Is there something unbiblical about saying that the church age that you live in is in trouble?
We get no warnings from the pulpit today....unless that warning is to beware of warnings. If you but would play amateur futurist for curiosity sake you might see that the world that is rapidly developing has dystopia written all over it. Artificial intelligence alone should be enough for us to call out...'come Lord Jesus.' When is the last time that you....Christian.....actually uttered those words....'come Lord Jesus'....or words to that effect?
