It's more than a paradigm change. This isn't simply going from something like Newtonian physics to quantum physics. Americans have changed in how we think. Whether it is because forty or fifty years ago we started learning from the image rather than the word....or whether the digital age and the Internet changed somehow the neurons in our brains....or something altogether different....we can see the same facts and evidence that we did a half century ago....but we interpret it differently....and often come up with totally different answers.
Forty years ago Christian radio...talk radio and teaching....was vital to the burgeoning born again evangelicalism that was everywhere. 1976 was called....the year of the evangelical. Christian bookstores were literally everywhere. We listened and we read! Christian music....90% of it maybe....was like one Christian witnessing to another....about Lazarus....or the blind man given his sight....or the Second Coming. Reagan famously said...."Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." We knew that quote and would repeat it at times. Brothers and sisters....one generation is all that it takes to depart from the gospel of Jesus Christ....and guess what....we are just about there!We memorized Scripture back in the 80s. Those Christian bookstores sold little memorization kits with cards for us to carry. We knew what a cult was. Everyone....everyone I knew anyway....was familiar with and had listened to or read R. C. Sproul's series....The Holiness of God....and everyone could quote Zechariah 4:6...."Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the LORD of hosts." No....this that is upon us is not just a paradigm change....or a chemical imbalance in the brain....but more as when Israel thought that all they had to do was carry the Ark of the Covenant into battle and the battle would be theirs. Eli had not reprimanded his sons....in effect as saying....'Let Hophni and Phinehas....be Hophni and Phinehas." When the Ark was lost to the Philistines....a baby was born to the wife of the departed Phinehas....and she named him...."Ichabod....the glory has departed from Israel." There is our answer....the glory has departed from the church....that relied upon its own power and might....and simply thought that by saying....'God bless America....God bless America....God bless America' ....that the battle would be ours.
