Posted on 11/08/2015 11:19:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Christianity is under attack from a thousand different directions all at once, and yet many believers have turned their guns on one another. This war among Christians seems to intensify with each passing year, and believers are often fighting for some of the stupidest reasons you can possibly imagine. Meanwhile, people are leaving our churches in droves and church attendance is way down. This is especially true of younger Americans. According to an incredible new report that was just released by the Pew Research Center, only 27 percent of all Millennials (U.S. adults born since 1990) attend religious services on a weekly basis. When you go into many churches in America on Sunday mornings, all you see are “the greys”, and I am not talking about space aliens. But instead of focusing on fixing what has gone wrong, many Christians (including a number of very prominent ministers) spend most of their energy savagely attacking their brothers and sisters in Christ. This is absolutely disgraceful and it needs to stop.
America is on the exact same path to secularization that Europe has already gone down. The Pew Research Center discovered that the percentage of Americans who are “absolutely certain” that God exists declined from 71 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, the percentage of those that are “religiously unaffiliated” rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent today.
Atheism, agnosticism and other religions are on the rise in America, and Christianity is in decline. And as I noted above, this is particularly true among our young people. Here are some more numbers from an excerpt that I pulled directly out of the Pew report…
Millennials -- especially the youngest Millennials, who have entered adulthood since the first Landscape Study was conducted -- are far less religious than their elders. For example, only 27% of Millennials say they attend religious services on a weekly basis, compared with 51% of adults in the Silent generation. Four-in-ten of the youngest Millennials say they pray every day, compared with six-in-ten Baby Boomers and two-thirds of members of the Silent generation. Only about half of Millennials say they believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with seven-in-ten Americans in the Silent and Baby Boom cohorts. And only about four-in-ten Millennials say religion is very important in their lives, compared with more than half in the older generational cohorts.
It has been projected that if current trends continue, the percentage of Americans attending church in 2050 will be about half of what it is today.
So those that are supposedly “leading the church” in America today need to wake up. What you are doing is not working. This nation is falling away from God, but many of you are spending much of your time and energy attacking one another.
Another thing that should deeply, deeply alarm Christian leaders is the fact that a large percentage of “believers” do not even seem to grasp the essential basics of the Christian faith. I am talking about things like who God is, the plan of salvation and the authority of the Bible. Here is more from Pew’s new report…
Among Christians, two-thirds say many religions can lead to eternal life, and most of them (50% of all Christians) say some non-Christian religions can lead to life everlasting. The view that some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life is held by roughly two-thirds of Catholics (68%) and mainline Protestants (65%), as well as 59% of Orthodox Christians. Fewer members of the historically black Protestant tradition (38%), evangelical Protestants (31%) and Mormons (31%) say some non-Christian religions can lead to salvation. Just 5% of Jehovah’s Witnesses say some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life.
If other religions can lead to eternal life, then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why couldn’t He have just come down and pointed us in the direction of all those other faiths? Many Christians don’t seem to understand that Jesus had to die for us on the cross because there is no other payment for our sins. He took the penalty that we deserved, and now He offers us a new life as a free gift.
Without Him, we would have absolutely no hope and no future. But because of Him, our sins are forgiven and we have been given eternal life.
But a very large percentage of believers does not understand this. Sadly, many Christians seem to think that you can believe whatever you want and it will all be okay in the end.
So as you can see, the church in America today is a mess. As a Christian myself, this pains me greatly.
But instead of working to fix the problems and praying for revival, many believers seem to take glee in tearing down their fellow Christians.
One of the bad things about the anonymity of the Internet is that it gives people an opportunity to show what is really in their hearts. And in many cases, what comes out of the hearts of many supposed “Christians” is absolutely frightening.
If you venture into places where believers hang out on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube and on various Christian websites all over the Internet, you will find some of the most vile things imaginable being said about specific individuals.
I have seen Christians use curse words to describe one another, and good, solid believers that I know personally have been called “whores”, “heretics” and “scumbags” just to give you a few examples. There are even some “Christians” that publicly wish for their brothers and sisters in Christ to die and go to hell.
This kind of thing should not be happening. In Matthew chapter 22, Jesus gave us instructions about how we are to treat one another…
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
On my websites I talk about some very hard things, but you will notice that I don’t attack specific individuals that are on the same side as me. In this day and age, it is imperative that we all figure out who our friends are. None of us are ever going to agree 100 percent on everything, and that is okay.
Yes, sometimes there are things that need to be addressed, but the vast majority of times they can be taken care of privately. I have had some very honest discussions with people that are on the same side as me in private, but I would never air that stuff publicly.
If we are going to make it through what is coming, we have got to learn how to love one another. And we have got to stop viciously attacking one another over stupid stuff. Yes, there are some things that are so important that they must never be compromised on, but most of the attacks that I see happening are over very petty things.
And without a doubt, there are times when it become necessary to rebuke someone. But when at all possible it should be done in private, and it should always be done in a spirit of love.
Because in the end, if we do not have love, we are nothing. You can have all of the “knowledge” in the world, and you can go around correcting everyone else, but if you are lacking in love you are just a baby.
This is a hard lesson that I had to learn, and hopefully what I have written here will be helpful for someone.
This war among Christians needs to stop. Our faith is under attack like never before, and we desperately need to learn how to start working together.
At some point, hopefully we will begin to actually live the words of our Savior in John chapter 13…
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
Many of those people are reachable. They don't like the strictures of "churchy" religion, but many of them are spiritual people with a strong faith. And many will be back in a few years.
The question is how to reach that audience and keep them. Perhaps it would be good to find the younger people who do attend and ask them what drew them and what holds them.
--- then this "organized group" is evidently plotting the destruction of Catholic faith and morals. They are to be resisted.
Millennials may not want to be part of that, but it does seem that millennials have a strong taste for paganism, depravity, pageantry, self-righteous parading of “good works” while their hearts stay corrupt, ignorance and mysticism, in no particular order.
That group is the Vatican and leadership of all the major denominations allowing the crap we see today.
So there arent a lot of options for having ones cake and eating it too.
Ultimately God does not require their intercession to us, nor do we, them, to God. Thus they have no purpose other than to create a stumbling block. an encumbered. At best. At worst they are intentionally steering us to the wrong team. Which is what I maintain their actions define.
What I find most interesting is that many here consider this a bad thing........
Luk_12:51 Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to divide people against each other!
AMEN Mrs. Don-o....!!! Thank You....
I believe Jesus had it right at the beginning when he founded the Catholic Church on the Apostles, the first bishops.
People stop going to church because they figure that the so called Christians inside the building are no different in life style or values than the heathen world on the outside.
People inside the Church manifest the same attitudes as the unsaved world, that is a problem.
Be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind by the word of God.
Mark 9:38-41. He knew how we would be.
NONSENSE!!
If Luther had courage he would have gone to his superior and worked internally for solutions.
He took the prideful (I’m right) way.)
Trouble was and still is that he was wrong.
Odd article. The author starts out admonishing Christians for being at war with one another, then cites statistics about church attendance dropping, then goes on to criticize those who misunderstand the message of the Gosel, and finally returns to the premise about not being at war. The body of the article doesn’t support the title. I’d like to see the author’s opinion of what being at war entitles other than not criticizing others by name in public.
It might make a good English lesson, though, now that I think of it.
With all respect, Martin Luther was the best thing that ever happened to The Catholic Church.
The trouble with the term is its ambiguity. It could mean the Vatican City-State, or the Roman Curia, or anybody in a red hat living within the little walled swuare. Mueller over at CDF is "Vatican." Sarah over at Liturgy is "Vatican." So is financial chief Cardinal Pell, and they're as orthodox as you can get.
In addition, the interfaith conference on the "Complementarity of Man and Woman" of November 2014, and the International Conference of family and life movements (sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Family) were expressions of "The Vatican."
When "The Vatican" is used as a metonym for the Catholic Church, in terms of doctrines, you have to read the Catechism (not La Civilta Cattolica ) to see what the authentic Vatican doctrines are.
Despite the fact that Pope Francis had that neuralgic, bafflegabbing 2015 Synod structured by his doctrinally allergic periti and packed with his Modernist geriatric cronies, even that last dad-blasted Realtio soundly rejected the pro-practicing-homosexual and adulterous remarriage agendas.
Don't be fooled by the fact that Marx, Forte, Baldisseri and their lot run right over to the microphones and tell their media allies (heads up, Philip Pullella!) that their position has been affirmed, they're flushed with triumph, whatever. It's what Alinskyites do: declare victory and act accordingly, no matter what the facts are on the ground.
So watch what you say about "The Vatican." It's still -- like the Church --- Catholic.
And the Church is still Christ's--- because he said He would not abandon His Bride --- in the Holy Spirit and to the glory of God the Father.
To be specific, the communist pope and the leftist he has surrounded himself with. But his analoges in the Lutherans, Presbs, Baptists and others are really no different.
They stand with evil. They refuse to openly condem what the bible tells them to. They refuse to excomm people like Pelosi who flaunt abortion directly in their faces.
How can we bleieve in the words of the Bible and at the same time pretend and make excuses for the purely unbiblical and political positions of the church leadership?
There is nothing in scripture toat allows for ignoring Gods word for mans politically or otherwide. This is binary. We are to either be of God or of the world.
Sure we are human and we fail all the time. But there is a world of difference between failing because whoops, I screwed up and failing because I knowingly and intentionally saw two clear paths and decided to follow the one God told me and everyone else, including the Pope and Cardinal/Bishops/Priests (and their other counterparts) was the one to hell. Or at minimum, the wrong path.
This or any other pope is Gods rep on earth. Likewise in descending order, are the cards, bishops and priests. When each of those people are saying that 2000 years of doctrine is now changing, thats their idea. not Gods. When I got schooled by the Nuns, God wasn’t big on changing his mind often. And certainly not because the times were different. Yet that is exactly what the church leadership would now have us believe. The eternal word of God has changed because PEOPLE changed.
There is ZERO about that which has any basis in doctrine or theology. So it is coming from man. Not God. They call evil good and we have a specific warning about people doing ecactly that. It does not grant an indulgence to the church leaders. In fact we are warned about them too.
They among all men have the greatest moral responsibility of all. And they have used it to promote more acceptance of gays counter to the Bible, belief in paganism via environmental concerns and Ball worship via their refusal to stand and defend against the evil of abortion by Catholics/non catholics forcing it on humanity via government.
They are unworthy of us as followers and they are unworthy to represent or instruct on the word of God because as the facts show, they do not believe in it enough to act on it themselves. When we align with such people, we align with the evil they actively partake in. That path is easy.
“Broad” actually. Not narrow.
They are a parenthesis in history. They will pass. They are passing even as we speak.
There is nothing in Catholic Doctrine that OK's sexual vice or sequential marriages while the original lawful wedded spouse is still living. And never will be.
The holiness of the Church does not depend on sinlessness on the part of her individual members. If it did, the Church would have been stillborn that night when one Apostle betrayed the Lord for money, one denied Him three times, and the rest abandoned Him and headed for the tall grass.
Where was the Church? John. Mary. At the foot of the Cross.
But they do equal the Vatican. They control it. they control the faith.
They will pass into what? Morlike them because now that they are in full controll of the process, there are no JP2s on the horizon. We see what they did to Benedict.
America is Obama. It has been for 7 years. Because regardless of what you and I say, He has the money, authority and power. So You and I do not get a vote even when we actually do vote. He does what he does.
The Vatican now rules likewise and is top down with other leftists. Remember, he did not appear. He was elected by the Cardinals that KNEW KIM. They emplaced the man THEY wanted. And if lightning struck him down, they are not going to call the Panzer Pope from the service bay. they are going to select another leftist. And when a Card dies, they will promote a leftist Bishop.
This is exactly the same as GOP politics or Dem politics in that they promote their own. We have Ryan as speaker for the EXACT reason we have Frank as pope. People just like him wanted him where he is.
That is the Church. they ARE the church because they make the rules. The rules are evil.
LOL
Pope Francis has changed nothing.
Whatever he intended from this low point in his pontificate, the Synod of 2015, it ended up upholding Catholicism and not caving on a single point.
As a new-addict I know I am tempted to mistake the Media Narrative for reality but it is not so. Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus Imperat.
It is the same Church. It's had a hefty share of popes who were dumb, naive, incompetent, frail, vacillating, or occasionally evil, but the Church has always survived by the grace of God and the skin of our teeth. Read a bit of history. After the shock passes it tends to steady one.
I heard this anecdote just the other day. After spending the better part of 15 years locked in constant conflict with Pope Pius VII (which included putting the pope in prison), Napoleon Bonaparte told Pius’ adept Secretary of State, Cardinal Consalvi, that he would “crush†the Roman Catholic Church.
( The cardinal sighed and shook his head over the emperor’s naivete) and answered. "If in 1,800 years we clergy have failed to destroy the Church, do you really think that you'll be able to do it?"
Sorry, Sarg, but there is, in general, no more useless, poorly informed group of alleged leaders than evangelical pastors. The mainline pastors, of course, are explicitly on the other side. Of course, I know a few pastors in various denominations (or no denomination), who are smart and tough. Unfortunately, they are few and far between
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