The Marriage Counselor
There are Biblical reasons why we are finding less successful marriages to the Bride of Christ compared to even 100 years ago. If the divorce rate for your converts to the Bride of Christ is over 80% something is wrong! We blame the converts, we blame the lack of turn out for Saturday visitation, we blame the state of the world today. But judgment must begin at the house of God says the Bible and if we want to make any dent in this country as it self destructs in front of our very eyes, we need to repair the foundation.
We first need to junk this unwritten code of refusing to "mark", warn, separate from, cut off, whatever from the founders of this mess. As I stated in earlier posts 1) Pray and Ask the Lord to Save you 2) Agreeing to the Romans Road and then praying a prayer 3) Asking Jesus in your heart 4) Receiving Jesus as your personal savior 5) Getting baptized 6) Having an emotional experience and going to an old fashioned altar and 7) Giving your heart to Jesus are NOT THE SAME as BIBLICAL FAITH AND REPENTANCE.
The Gift of God is eternal life and it is a conditional gift received by anyone who meets God's requirement of saving faith and Biblical Repentance. If you did those two requirements, any of the previous 7 items are the icing on the cake! And it is modern evangelism that is counting the icing and taking credit for the icing! The icing does not save but it is counted like it does!!!!
No it is not turning from all sin, but it is not just the "going from unbelief to belief" that men like Curtis Hudson and Jack Hyles teach.
We need to once and for all see the difference in our evangelism. We need to warn the people about the Hyles Anderson/Jack Hyles "easy prayerism" "want to go to heaven, then pray this prayer" manipulative soul winning. We need to expect dramatic changes from people who say they are born again because this is about God and being careful in presenting the gospel. We look at crowds and determine that means we must be doing something right. That is how the New Evangelicals think. Years ago Billy Sunday preached a revival and a year later bars were closed and people were never the same. Where is that today? Has the gospel lost it's power or did we change the gospel?
Folks, we changed the gospel.
Here is what I mean. Today we are correct for the most part in 1) explaining the cure Jesus 2) explaining there is one cure 3) the consequences for rejecting or neglecting the cure (Hell) and 4) the benefits of the cure (Heaven) .
We fail to convince of the disease and that is why we have to come up with all sorts of manipulation and emphasize the ease of administration and the convenience of a "one time pray the prayer and go to heaven forever" to get them to take the cure. We have to sugar coat the medicine and then we have to downplay the side effects (persecution, temptation, and tribulation) and we have to bribe them with the benefits of the cure.
Yet if they are not convinced of the disease, Jesus is just an experimental flu shot that people will receive just in case we are right. If they are convinced of the disease, Jesus is chemotherapy for the soul and nothing will stop them from coming to the cure.
Modern results are pathetic and we should apologize to the Lord Jesus Christ for using his name and associating our methods with anything he stands for. Today America is full of those who profess they know God but in their works deny him. Everyone says they are saved. Everyone is on their way to heaven. 60% or so of Americans profess to be born again Christians. 91% admit to lying on a regular basis, 50% admit to adultery, 55 million abortions since 1973, 43% divorce rate and raising, open sodomy, billions spent on pornography, casinos, and booze, YET EVERYONE thinks God is ok with their lifestyle. A Gay Pride parade has dozens of churches marching in it, and they are about the only churches willing to at least stand for something. We run and hide with our Bibles between our legs if our pride or our wallets or our TV time is threatened.
What is the solution?
We need to get back to old fashioned evangelism. We need to stop pushing the cure on a country unconvinced of the disease. If they think gay marriage is a wonderful thing and our country is better than ever they are not candidates for the gospel. They are brainwashed by the media and evolution and you need to uproot the foundation. How does merely adding Jesus to a Catholic who wants to go to heaven and is used to praying mantras and used to doing some ritual going to make a difference? Worse, he is adding an idol in his mind, the Catholic Christ of his youth. If convinced of the disease you can address the cult he is in and get him to turn from his church AS HE TURNS to CHRIST. Adding Christ, which PRAY AND ASK THE LORD TO SAVE YOU ALLOWS ONE TO DO, is merely Christian Hinduism. That is not salvation.
In old fashioned evangelism, you preached the LAW, you preached the holiness of God and the righteousness of God. You didn't just talk about how bad hell is or how great heaven is. You appealed to the conscience, not the emotions. Today's special programs, and the bow your heads while the music plays, and the funeral invitations appeal to the emotions. If you use the law to bring a knowledge of sin, you begin to convince of the disease.
I believe today you need to disciple a lost person on the right Christ, the foundation of Genesis, what real genuine Biblical repentance is, and what salvation will do before or after getting them convicted with the Law. They don't know the real Christ, they don't know fornication is a serious sin, they don't know drinking is wrong, and modern soul winners often do not even address these issues or hint their lives will be different when God moves in. There is no point of surrender in today's soulwinning, and no expectation that someone will bow the knee of their heart to the Lordship of Christ.
No you will never be sin free but the point is if convinced of the disease the cure will be appreciated and the cure will not be taken lightly.
I heard of a boy who went camping in Australia with his dad. The father told him to fish in the creek because the shore near their campground was shark infested. After a couple days of fishing the boy grew bored and thought if he was in a boat he could fish safely. He rented a boat and while in the water a great white shark came from underneath and knocked him out of his boat. The boy screamed for help and the dad came running, and dove into the shark infested waters. He grabbed his son, and with all his might brought him to shore. The father pushed his son onto the shore and pulled himself onto the beach next to his son. The father was bleeding profusely as the shark had bitten his leg off above the knee. He lay bleeding to death and the son looked at the dad and said, "Father, I greatly appreciate your sacrifice. Sorry you had to go through that. Bummer. But I really enjoyed being out on that water. I'm going to go back there on the boat again."
No son would do that. He would despise going back to that water and it would cause him to have a love for his father! For a professing Christian to say they are saved and go back to the world is just as absurd. Yet we accept that all the time in our evangelism!!!! The question is WHY?
We need to convince of the disease!!!
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Hope for AMERICA?
Is there any hope for America?
Things do not look good. America's morality is out the window. The judgment of God is on our nation. The Bible says the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. The gods of America do not include the God of the Bible. The Lord Jesus was kicked out of our schools in the 1950's (which explains "where was God in Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Newtown?") when the first act of congress was to print Bibles to teach the schools. Prayer is not allowed in schools, but it is rarely practiced in churches, so most people couldn't give a hoot.
Good is evil and evil is good. Shootings are as common place here as suicide bombings are in the middle east. The economy is not looking better and more places are closing. Landmarks and chains are going under every day. Who would have thought they would live to see the Twinkee vanish off of shelves and wonder what happened to the Wonder bread. The flu epidemic is raging across America. The government is corrupt, trying to take over, and betraying what our country was founded on. They first will take our guns and then our freedom and then a dictator will take over America and try to enslave us all. Those they don't kill first of course.
The Muslim religion and the homosexual agenda are being shoved down our throats and most believe the lies that Islam is a religion of peace and homosexuality is a normal alternative lifestyle. Abortion is a right. The right to die envelope is pushed faster than you can say Dr. Kevorkian. Murder suicides are weekly news. Drugs and drunkenness are common place, and the cry from not just the jobless junkie but the suit and tie politician is to legalize marijuana. American jurors have no common sense and let the clearly guilty free and believe any cop out and any strange possibility than the overwhelming weight of the evidence. Unless the crime is truly bizarre, then it is guilty by insanity.
Movies are increasingly violent and keep pushing the envelope. Storms hit our country at an alarming rate and affect more and more of our country. Revisionists have reinvented what our country was founded on and who our founding fathers were. Our schools teach lies about our country, do not teach our kids to think, push every anti-God way of life on them, and indoctrinate them to think that evolution is fact when it is a fairy tale for grown ups. Our culture is obsessed with pleasure on every level, whether it is perversion and illicit sex and pornography, man worship and idolatry in the form of larger than life Hollywood stars or sports heroes, and had no desire to restrain itself. Child pornography, pedophilia, and all forms of moral perversion are increasing and they are trying to normalize it just like the sodomites did over the last 50 years. We waste money, waste food, and are giving less and less money to charity, and our country and it's members are in substantial debt. We have full fridges yet eat out regularly, we spend tons of money on fast food, booze, and junk food. We are addicted to the TV and to video games and our cell phones and the Internet. We are wasting our lives and poisoning our lives and destroying our lives and we think we are free. We are slaves to the system, slaves to the government, and slaves to the devil. And Americans believe whatever the media tells them to believe.
Yet our churches sleep on.
America's problem is a spiritual problem. And most of the blame is on the church. Not the false churches that have preached false doctrine whether it is catholicism, mormonism, Jehovah witness, or muslim. Not the modern churches that have turned church into a carnal party. America's problem is directly from the churches that preach the truth. It starts with a real Bible, one the devil hasn't messed with. That is the King James Version. You will only find the King James Bible usually in the so called fundamental churches that claim to preach the true gospel, claim to stand behind the King James Bible, and claim to be about getting the gospel out. Yet they don't care enough to do anything about what they claim to believe.
It adds a proper view of the church and it's members. The church is like a lifeboat and the world is the Titanic. Jesus is the captain of our salvation. The proper church teaches it's members they are not to get all they can from the time on the Titanic. They are not to be caught up with the affairs on a sinking ship, unless it means warning the passengers or bringing folks onto the lifeboats. They are not to slip on headphones and stay huddling on the lifeboat singing how great a captain we have, or waiting until they are expert rowers before they will attempt to rescue anyone. Nor do those on the boat get too comfortable to go back in the frigid water, forgetting what they were rescued from. Or sit around and debate who deserves rescuing.
Finally the church teaches a proper doctrine, the whole counsel of God not just parts they love or parts that help just the church. They teach people the truth of the Titanic not try to make the lifeboat sound cozy and wonderful. They don't make the lifeboat compete with the pleasure ship, but the difference is the lifeboat has the presence of the captain. Also, salvation is being on the ship, of being with the captain. It doesn't matter if you cry "Captain save me!" from the water if you aren't willing to get on the boat. Salvation is a person, not a prayer or performance.
If God's people do not have a fear of God and an awe for the Word and a desire for God, the idea for a revival is a joke. And the idea that America will turn around is an even bigger joke.
What is wrong with the church today?
Let's imagine you own a fast food restaurant. You follow the recipes of the chain, you use the food the chain ships you, and you use their advertising. Yet the customers keep getting food poisoning and business is dropping. The customers soon lose interest in the food and don't believe the advertising. Now you have two options --- 1. Rail on the customers for their disloyalty and for their betrayal and for their no longer supporting you. 2. Realize that if you fix the problems the customers will come. Realize it is bad management and a bad foundation and realize you have some major things to address if you expect to properly feed the customers and know they will return if they stop being poisoned.
The church today is full of wrong doctrine. The gospel is not one of happiness, it is one of holiness. Yet, the church tells you to try Jesus, to come to Jesus for love joy and peace. It is a selfish motive and produces false converts. The church's leaders tend to preach "do as I SAY not as I DO". They preach against hollywood, yet rent R rated movies in secret. They preach on working hard yet some accept a full time salary and do nothing more than a couple one hour services a week. They rail on the people to win souls and care about the lost, yet many have never given out a gospel tract.
They teach things that help the church as solid doctrine. Sins against the church are exalted over sins against the Lord Jesus Christ. Example, every church and every denomination that is evangelical teaches dogmatic tithing as new testament doctrine. You must tithe or God will cause your car to break down. You must tithe or you are robbing God. Yet not even 2 baptist churches in the same neighborhood can agree how to get the gospel out or what the gospel is. Most churches will address a married couple who refuses to tithe but wouldn't dare offend a tithing couple living together in fornication.
For one, we are like the Jews in the Old Testament. God is not being mean when in the old testament he told the Jewish people to "kill them all". God wanted sin wiped out. God wanted a purified people he could keep uncontaminated from the world. It is like poison in the water. You are not being mean to want it out of there. Yet the Jews were like Saul. They kept the best for themselves, they didn't think it was a big deal to hang onto this worldly practice, or hang around this group of people.
God's people are supposed to engage the world. Stand for truth. Reprove error. Yet especially in the last 50 years American Christians allow more and more of the world in and see nothing wrong with it. Yes, they may be saved and many separate from the "bad sins". Most won't be seen drinking and at least openly in pornography or attending R rated movies, or smoking. Yet most of us have a love affair with some worldly thing. Disney. Outback steakhouse. NFL. NBA. NHL. Hollywood. Television. I have 4 boys under 5. The world is going after their hearts and the world is relentless.
You can't find a kids movie today, even Veggie Tales, that is not full of rock music. Veggie tales is a perfect example of today's Christianity. It is vague in it's doctrine, it doesn't exalt Jesus but proclaims a generic inoffensive "GOD" that loves you so much he accepts you no matter what (who needs repentance when you have the veggie tales gospel!) , and pushes the envelope with all kinds of worldly spoofs and themes and music. Some of the silly songs sound like rap. Never has Veggie tales pointed me to Jesus Christ. Instead I look at Disney and think, at least they don't pretend they are Christian and try to dupe the average Christian into thinking they will help my walk with the Lord.
Any electronic toy just about today even for 2 year olds is full of rocky tunes and worldly junk. You can't go through wal mart without the world seducing you. There isn't much escape from it and most of us embrace part of the world here and there to the point we don't hate evil, and we are friends of the world. We don't fight it off and our young people are more passionate about movies and video games and cell phones than anything of God. Our teens are more passionate about friends and dating. Our young adults are in love with pro sports and hobbies like hunting and fishing. Our young parents are caught in the affairs of this life. Our music is getting more worldly. We are embracing the new evangelic movies like FireProof and Courageous and put up with the rock and CCM music because we think the overall message is worth the compromise.
We have ministries like Answers in Genesis which attack the cult of evolution. That is good and Genesis is to be defended and taken literally. The problem with these groups is they are big on getting the foundation right. Yet they don't believe the King James and they don't even then have a right foundation themselves.
Further, the church is too inward and loaded down with activities that keep everyone busy but too busy to focus on going into the world. We are basically at war and don't know it until we get saved. Once we are saved we see the truth and want to enlist and want to fight. Hiding in church is like being a bench warmer, instead we are pew warmers. There is no satisfaction in sitting on your butt while the world goes to hell. Yet the church pushes that and makes you feel that if you have a ministry in the church like playing the piano, that is a greater responsibility than going outside the church and telling a lost and dying world about Jesus.
The church spends money and guilt trips a congregation to invite or go after someone, and most lead them with the sinner's prayer make them a 2 fold child of hell, and encapsulate them into the church for the rest of their lives. The majority of professing believers that attend church in America today that attend a fairly conservative Bible preaching fundamental church are still lost in their sins and will shockingly end up in hell. Most have no clue they are still lost. They get saved 5 times in their church lifetime, and have 3 different dates in their bible and have received assurance 112 times from every bible preacher they meet, yet they have never been born again.
Yet the church welcomes them in and don't challenge their profession at all. Doesn't matter they have 1 child out of wedlock and live together. They made professions. Can't dispute that the church says, and "come on in as you are and stay there for the next 10 years! we are just glad to have you! (and your money is welcomed here with open arms!)" Here they attend events and singles ministries and fellowships and concerts and productions and classes and field trips and parties and dinners and men's breakfasts and trips and yet they are not discipled, they are not challenged with the gospel of repentance and faith, and they never have a heart change. Yet there is so much external pressure to conform, they show signs of spirituality and everyone around is backslid and worldly and compromised, so they fit right in. The church is mostly goats trained to act like sheep. And spend the rest of their lives in church only to one day hear depart from me, I never knew you, when they get to Judgment Day and they will be shocked to find themselves cast into hell right next to the sodomites and the satanists.
The church is too inward, to focused on biggering and biggering like the Dr. Seuss stated in his book, the Lorax, and equating a crowd for God's blessings. What you draw them with you draw them to, and today they come to be entertained and we appeal to their emotions and felt needs when we should instead use the law to wake them up and see their need and wake their dead consciouses.
The church regardless of denomination is big on "everyone is wrong but them" and they will preach on sins outside the circles but the forbidden rule is to preach against those in your circles. In my circles it is good preaching to rail on Joel Olsteen and Rick Warren and Billy Graham and the Pope. Unless it is a service where visitors are there so we try to sound warm and fuzzy and won't mention cults like the catholic church by name so no one is offended. Yet it is a no no to mention the Jack Hyles cult. If you forget the rules and preach against the sins inside your circles you will be asked to leave or put on the back burner and not allowed off the bench.
CCM is wicked and good to preach against. But you can't mention how in our circles we hear My Chains fell off by Chris Tomlin or In Christ Alone by Townsend/Getty. You are critical if you preach on sins in the camp. You are a powerful preacher if you preach on sins outside the camp. Where is the most damage going to come from? Sins inside the camp! Wolves in sheep's clothing are more likely to eat the sheep from within because everyone is expecting the attacks only from outside. If we are all the body, the church cannot refuse to listen to it's hurting or starving members. I'd rather have the truth than stay right! Why does the church seem satisfied with refusing to admit any mistakes and refusing to blame itself? If the churches today were half of what they were 200 years ago, America would not be where it is today.
Church dare to look inward and find the courage to wake up, admit it has dropped the ball, start with the leaders and realize then you will have better followers, and accept some blame for the state of our nation.
Church will you do that? If we are just going to play church, we might as well close now. Before the government makes us. If we don't stop playing, when church becomes illegal, no one will care. We need the real thing like never before.
Things do not look good. America's morality is out the window. The judgment of God is on our nation. The Bible says the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. The gods of America do not include the God of the Bible. The Lord Jesus was kicked out of our schools in the 1950's (which explains "where was God in Columbine, Virginia Tech, and Newtown?") when the first act of congress was to print Bibles to teach the schools. Prayer is not allowed in schools, but it is rarely practiced in churches, so most people couldn't give a hoot.
Good is evil and evil is good. Shootings are as common place here as suicide bombings are in the middle east. The economy is not looking better and more places are closing. Landmarks and chains are going under every day. Who would have thought they would live to see the Twinkee vanish off of shelves and wonder what happened to the Wonder bread. The flu epidemic is raging across America. The government is corrupt, trying to take over, and betraying what our country was founded on. They first will take our guns and then our freedom and then a dictator will take over America and try to enslave us all. Those they don't kill first of course.
The Muslim religion and the homosexual agenda are being shoved down our throats and most believe the lies that Islam is a religion of peace and homosexuality is a normal alternative lifestyle. Abortion is a right. The right to die envelope is pushed faster than you can say Dr. Kevorkian. Murder suicides are weekly news. Drugs and drunkenness are common place, and the cry from not just the jobless junkie but the suit and tie politician is to legalize marijuana. American jurors have no common sense and let the clearly guilty free and believe any cop out and any strange possibility than the overwhelming weight of the evidence. Unless the crime is truly bizarre, then it is guilty by insanity.
Movies are increasingly violent and keep pushing the envelope. Storms hit our country at an alarming rate and affect more and more of our country. Revisionists have reinvented what our country was founded on and who our founding fathers were. Our schools teach lies about our country, do not teach our kids to think, push every anti-God way of life on them, and indoctrinate them to think that evolution is fact when it is a fairy tale for grown ups. Our culture is obsessed with pleasure on every level, whether it is perversion and illicit sex and pornography, man worship and idolatry in the form of larger than life Hollywood stars or sports heroes, and had no desire to restrain itself. Child pornography, pedophilia, and all forms of moral perversion are increasing and they are trying to normalize it just like the sodomites did over the last 50 years. We waste money, waste food, and are giving less and less money to charity, and our country and it's members are in substantial debt. We have full fridges yet eat out regularly, we spend tons of money on fast food, booze, and junk food. We are addicted to the TV and to video games and our cell phones and the Internet. We are wasting our lives and poisoning our lives and destroying our lives and we think we are free. We are slaves to the system, slaves to the government, and slaves to the devil. And Americans believe whatever the media tells them to believe.
Yet our churches sleep on.
America's problem is a spiritual problem. And most of the blame is on the church. Not the false churches that have preached false doctrine whether it is catholicism, mormonism, Jehovah witness, or muslim. Not the modern churches that have turned church into a carnal party. America's problem is directly from the churches that preach the truth. It starts with a real Bible, one the devil hasn't messed with. That is the King James Version. You will only find the King James Bible usually in the so called fundamental churches that claim to preach the true gospel, claim to stand behind the King James Bible, and claim to be about getting the gospel out. Yet they don't care enough to do anything about what they claim to believe.
It adds a proper view of the church and it's members. The church is like a lifeboat and the world is the Titanic. Jesus is the captain of our salvation. The proper church teaches it's members they are not to get all they can from the time on the Titanic. They are not to be caught up with the affairs on a sinking ship, unless it means warning the passengers or bringing folks onto the lifeboats. They are not to slip on headphones and stay huddling on the lifeboat singing how great a captain we have, or waiting until they are expert rowers before they will attempt to rescue anyone. Nor do those on the boat get too comfortable to go back in the frigid water, forgetting what they were rescued from. Or sit around and debate who deserves rescuing.
Finally the church teaches a proper doctrine, the whole counsel of God not just parts they love or parts that help just the church. They teach people the truth of the Titanic not try to make the lifeboat sound cozy and wonderful. They don't make the lifeboat compete with the pleasure ship, but the difference is the lifeboat has the presence of the captain. Also, salvation is being on the ship, of being with the captain. It doesn't matter if you cry "Captain save me!" from the water if you aren't willing to get on the boat. Salvation is a person, not a prayer or performance.
If God's people do not have a fear of God and an awe for the Word and a desire for God, the idea for a revival is a joke. And the idea that America will turn around is an even bigger joke.
What is wrong with the church today?
Let's imagine you own a fast food restaurant. You follow the recipes of the chain, you use the food the chain ships you, and you use their advertising. Yet the customers keep getting food poisoning and business is dropping. The customers soon lose interest in the food and don't believe the advertising. Now you have two options --- 1. Rail on the customers for their disloyalty and for their betrayal and for their no longer supporting you. 2. Realize that if you fix the problems the customers will come. Realize it is bad management and a bad foundation and realize you have some major things to address if you expect to properly feed the customers and know they will return if they stop being poisoned.
The church today is full of wrong doctrine. The gospel is not one of happiness, it is one of holiness. Yet, the church tells you to try Jesus, to come to Jesus for love joy and peace. It is a selfish motive and produces false converts. The church's leaders tend to preach "do as I SAY not as I DO". They preach against hollywood, yet rent R rated movies in secret. They preach on working hard yet some accept a full time salary and do nothing more than a couple one hour services a week. They rail on the people to win souls and care about the lost, yet many have never given out a gospel tract.
They teach things that help the church as solid doctrine. Sins against the church are exalted over sins against the Lord Jesus Christ. Example, every church and every denomination that is evangelical teaches dogmatic tithing as new testament doctrine. You must tithe or God will cause your car to break down. You must tithe or you are robbing God. Yet not even 2 baptist churches in the same neighborhood can agree how to get the gospel out or what the gospel is. Most churches will address a married couple who refuses to tithe but wouldn't dare offend a tithing couple living together in fornication.
For one, we are like the Jews in the Old Testament. God is not being mean when in the old testament he told the Jewish people to "kill them all". God wanted sin wiped out. God wanted a purified people he could keep uncontaminated from the world. It is like poison in the water. You are not being mean to want it out of there. Yet the Jews were like Saul. They kept the best for themselves, they didn't think it was a big deal to hang onto this worldly practice, or hang around this group of people.
God's people are supposed to engage the world. Stand for truth. Reprove error. Yet especially in the last 50 years American Christians allow more and more of the world in and see nothing wrong with it. Yes, they may be saved and many separate from the "bad sins". Most won't be seen drinking and at least openly in pornography or attending R rated movies, or smoking. Yet most of us have a love affair with some worldly thing. Disney. Outback steakhouse. NFL. NBA. NHL. Hollywood. Television. I have 4 boys under 5. The world is going after their hearts and the world is relentless.
You can't find a kids movie today, even Veggie Tales, that is not full of rock music. Veggie tales is a perfect example of today's Christianity. It is vague in it's doctrine, it doesn't exalt Jesus but proclaims a generic inoffensive "GOD" that loves you so much he accepts you no matter what (who needs repentance when you have the veggie tales gospel!) , and pushes the envelope with all kinds of worldly spoofs and themes and music. Some of the silly songs sound like rap. Never has Veggie tales pointed me to Jesus Christ. Instead I look at Disney and think, at least they don't pretend they are Christian and try to dupe the average Christian into thinking they will help my walk with the Lord.
Any electronic toy just about today even for 2 year olds is full of rocky tunes and worldly junk. You can't go through wal mart without the world seducing you. There isn't much escape from it and most of us embrace part of the world here and there to the point we don't hate evil, and we are friends of the world. We don't fight it off and our young people are more passionate about movies and video games and cell phones than anything of God. Our teens are more passionate about friends and dating. Our young adults are in love with pro sports and hobbies like hunting and fishing. Our young parents are caught in the affairs of this life. Our music is getting more worldly. We are embracing the new evangelic movies like FireProof and Courageous and put up with the rock and CCM music because we think the overall message is worth the compromise.
We have ministries like Answers in Genesis which attack the cult of evolution. That is good and Genesis is to be defended and taken literally. The problem with these groups is they are big on getting the foundation right. Yet they don't believe the King James and they don't even then have a right foundation themselves.
Further, the church is too inward and loaded down with activities that keep everyone busy but too busy to focus on going into the world. We are basically at war and don't know it until we get saved. Once we are saved we see the truth and want to enlist and want to fight. Hiding in church is like being a bench warmer, instead we are pew warmers. There is no satisfaction in sitting on your butt while the world goes to hell. Yet the church pushes that and makes you feel that if you have a ministry in the church like playing the piano, that is a greater responsibility than going outside the church and telling a lost and dying world about Jesus.
The church spends money and guilt trips a congregation to invite or go after someone, and most lead them with the sinner's prayer make them a 2 fold child of hell, and encapsulate them into the church for the rest of their lives. The majority of professing believers that attend church in America today that attend a fairly conservative Bible preaching fundamental church are still lost in their sins and will shockingly end up in hell. Most have no clue they are still lost. They get saved 5 times in their church lifetime, and have 3 different dates in their bible and have received assurance 112 times from every bible preacher they meet, yet they have never been born again.
Yet the church welcomes them in and don't challenge their profession at all. Doesn't matter they have 1 child out of wedlock and live together. They made professions. Can't dispute that the church says, and "come on in as you are and stay there for the next 10 years! we are just glad to have you! (and your money is welcomed here with open arms!)" Here they attend events and singles ministries and fellowships and concerts and productions and classes and field trips and parties and dinners and men's breakfasts and trips and yet they are not discipled, they are not challenged with the gospel of repentance and faith, and they never have a heart change. Yet there is so much external pressure to conform, they show signs of spirituality and everyone around is backslid and worldly and compromised, so they fit right in. The church is mostly goats trained to act like sheep. And spend the rest of their lives in church only to one day hear depart from me, I never knew you, when they get to Judgment Day and they will be shocked to find themselves cast into hell right next to the sodomites and the satanists.
The church is too inward, to focused on biggering and biggering like the Dr. Seuss stated in his book, the Lorax, and equating a crowd for God's blessings. What you draw them with you draw them to, and today they come to be entertained and we appeal to their emotions and felt needs when we should instead use the law to wake them up and see their need and wake their dead consciouses.
The church regardless of denomination is big on "everyone is wrong but them" and they will preach on sins outside the circles but the forbidden rule is to preach against those in your circles. In my circles it is good preaching to rail on Joel Olsteen and Rick Warren and Billy Graham and the Pope. Unless it is a service where visitors are there so we try to sound warm and fuzzy and won't mention cults like the catholic church by name so no one is offended. Yet it is a no no to mention the Jack Hyles cult. If you forget the rules and preach against the sins inside your circles you will be asked to leave or put on the back burner and not allowed off the bench.
CCM is wicked and good to preach against. But you can't mention how in our circles we hear My Chains fell off by Chris Tomlin or In Christ Alone by Townsend/Getty. You are critical if you preach on sins in the camp. You are a powerful preacher if you preach on sins outside the camp. Where is the most damage going to come from? Sins inside the camp! Wolves in sheep's clothing are more likely to eat the sheep from within because everyone is expecting the attacks only from outside. If we are all the body, the church cannot refuse to listen to it's hurting or starving members. I'd rather have the truth than stay right! Why does the church seem satisfied with refusing to admit any mistakes and refusing to blame itself? If the churches today were half of what they were 200 years ago, America would not be where it is today.
Church dare to look inward and find the courage to wake up, admit it has dropped the ball, start with the leaders and realize then you will have better followers, and accept some blame for the state of our nation.
Church will you do that? If we are just going to play church, we might as well close now. Before the government makes us. If we don't stop playing, when church becomes illegal, no one will care. We need the real thing like never before.
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