"Trouble Ahead: Prepare To Meet Thy God"

                I am in a Barnes & Noble at least fifty times a year....most of those visits are on Tuesdays....when the new releases come out. It only takes me ten minutes in the store....for I already know what is there in both the 'Current Events' section and what they now label the 'Religion' section....so I only have to walk slowly by....for it is easy to spot books that were put out that morning. 
                 The average B&N bookstore carries about 100,000 titles but some have a lot more. My wife and I have been bibliophiles our whole lives. We met in 1975 as students working at Pitt's Hillman Library....and she went on to be a wonderful....if I do say so myself....but I think that everyone would agree with....a wonderful librarian for 47 years before retiring. Together....thirty years ago....we owned a Christian bookstore.
                 From the moment that I walk in the door at B&N to when I make it to the 'Religion' section....I am almost overcome with sadness....as I pass by people browsing all the various sections....but mostly the fiction....for I know what is out there....and what is popular....and what they are wasting their lives away on.....nonsense fiction....maybe a little romance and a little crime....maybe a fluffy tale of a dog or a cat? I know what the bestseller lists look like....and I know what the children's books consist of.....and the teen sections....and the biographies and the history....and the various business and self-help....and psychology and technical reference sections. As for the Christian books....there are at least a thousand titles in the average B&N....all of them almost worthless....save a few classics from C. S. Lewis....and maybe once a month at most....a good critique on evangelicalism that slips in there....of which is what I am looking for.
                   I'll often look at the faces of the people....and more than once I felt like crying....for there is pure gold out there in the form of books....if you know where to mine for it.....but they don't.....and would have no interest in that kind of gold anyway.
                   The Christian bookstore in America is dead. The best authors are dying off almost on a monthly basis....with very few if any coming up to replace them. Christian television programs are a hundred times more in quantity than in the 80s....with one-hundredth of the quality.
                    No one has to be born again anymore to be a Christian.....for they only have to be conservative church-goers. Holiness is in not voting for Democrats. Preaching is therapy. Sermons are Bible studies....and Bible studies are the level of what should be given to children.
                    This is the church age that we live in.....but have no idea of. As for prayer....we are as if on a catamaran....heading swiftly for a hundred foot waterfall....praying that the boat might soon be paid off....or that grandma or grampa in the rear might be healed....or for another conservative Supreme Court judge....for our preachers told us that God's Word tells us that we will never know when the big waterfall is coming....even though God's Word actually gives a map of the river and the falls....a map of which we are told does not exist.
                     Newspapers are just about dead. Conservative talk radio is long gone. We have no trustworthy news media. Fox News....once 'fair and balances'....is now poison. Podcasts are like drone warfare. AI will strangle us before we know what's happening. In summary....evangelicalism has gone the way of Judah and Samaria....and we are witnessing the fall of the American Empire....along with Israel's final war....but few know any of these things....because we thought that we were invincible....and that God was on our side...."God bless America"....unaware that we were as Nineveh....given time to repent by Jonah....of which from time to time we did....but now we have a message from the prophet Amos....who no one reads....relayed to us by Billy Graham....who at least many of us read...."Trouble ahead....prepare to meet thy God!"