Over the years....forty that I have observed directly but it extends further back....there has been quite a number of serious....negative 'events'....in American Christianity. I could probably think for a while and come with at least twenty times that some news within the church overall was discouraging....at times seemingly overwhelmingly discouraging. It might involve a personality or a movement....sometimes involving a cult....or something related to end-times prophesy....or something in the entertainment field....a new film on Christianity for example that may have strayed far beyond the Bible....but time passed and there was no serious damage done. Or was there serious damage done....because as that time passed....and generations changed....the whole country began to process facts differently....actually using their brains in a different way....at times in a direct rejection of ethical norms and values and sound reasoning that had stood the test of time for thousands of years.
In other words....the individual events....in retrospect.....did not simply pass on....but over time there has been a cumulative effect....as biblical Christianity seems to have fallen to the status of a remnant today. The Reformation distinctives were clearly visible twenty years ago....so much so that major battles were taking place....but where are those battles today?
This paradigm change in the way that we process information would normally cause me great distress....but there is something that transcends even what is happening today.....and that is that what is happening should be expected as the Lord Jesus is about to return in judgment. The demonic that is so prevalent in society today should be expected....as well as the violence....and the disdain for truth for truth's sake....and the overall lack of love....replaced by caring primarily for the self.
We really should have to look no further than our own pilgrimage....if you are anything like me....where more than once we may have had to escape from Giant Despair....recognizing our own sin....and then cling to Jeremiah's Spirit breathed words in Lamentations 3:22-23...."The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness."
We believers do not readily or easily recognize each other anymore....but that will surely change if things continue as they are going....and although the difficulty of what would be ahead is something that we should not dwell upon....the fog that we live in today will surely dissipate in the heat of the fires coming upon us all. A simpler way to put it is that a winnowing must be ahead. So prepare to be unpopular....but at the same time have a truer fellowship with other believers....or as Billy Graham wrote to America as a rebellious people almost thirty years ago in his book....Storm Warning...."Trouble ahead....prepare to meet thy God."
