"I don’t know what’s going to happen to Christianity in America, but I’ve asked God that if it takes persecution to bring us to the place where we get a grip on what we ought to be, then let it happen."
John, I and others know exactly what is happening to Christianity in America and across the world, and why. John, you are misinterpreting the passage in The Revelation. You are attributing the admonishment as being directed toward the church, and that the accusation "You have left your first love" means that the whole church is rejecting (or at least growing cold) the Person of Jesus.
This is incorrect. Why?
(1) Because though being sent to the seven churches in view (Rev. 1:11), the portions directed toward one of the churches was written to the angel/messenger/guiding speaker (a star sent to give light to the church)(Rev. 1:20; specific to the Ephesus angel Rev. 2:1). The warning is given directly and primarily to one single person. Today's "Bibles" grossly fail in transmitting the singularity of this accusation, "Thou has left thy first love" (excerpt from Rev. 2:4). Modern versions are ambiguous in this type of rendering, whereas the Authorized English Version is not, in that it always distinguishes the second person singular from the second person plural. Always.
(2) The context of Rev. 2:2-5 is the sphere of the tasks assigned to that angel, not of his regard for the person of The Christ. The love of this "angel" toward Jesus is not claimed to have diminished. It is his commitment to the first and most important work which Jesus has assigned him that has diminished--yea, even ceased.
(3) And what is that First (in time as well as in importance) Work, which should be his first love? Clearly, it is the recruitment, induction, and personally supervised indoctrination of disciples on an individual basis to keep watchfully secure without changing whatsoever Christ as Chief Officer has commanded. It is the execution of The Great Commission, following the preaching of salvation by grace through faith, and subsequent conviction of sin, with forgiveness made possible by the Shed Blood of Christ.
(3) It is in this necessity of personal and individual training of regenerated believers that both the great denominations and the independent non-denominational assemblies have abysmally failed to obey the prime command of The Lord Jesus Christ.
(4) It is the lack of an interlocking force of spiritually matured and trained regenerated believer-disciple-priests, that has given rise to a plethora of denominations differing in translations, interpretations, and applications of God's Will as determined from His Word, that has caused the weakness, the febrile display of powerlessness to guide men and governments in Providential strength of character.
(5) The only way to walk this back at all is to lay aside the opinions and methods devised by humans that seek to streamline the growth of Christianity, the methods that only serve to suffocate it, and go back to the original plan exemplified by the exemplary illustration of it by Jesus in His Earthly ministry.(6) (6) Failure to do this is going to finish the general rejection of God's principles as well as His professing believers that is now in the last stages of execution throughout the public American social arena by the humanist educators applying the very same methodology that Churchianity has long abandoned.
(7) One of the first signs of abandoning the Great Commission is the mistaken policy of water-sprinkling infants, claiming it to be the method of induction of individuals the Christian culture (which it cannot). That methodology completely erases the concept of the Biblical plan for guiding worldlings into rational conviction of sin and sinfulness, which ought to result in a permanent change of mind as to how to have fellowship with The Father God and His Only Begotten Son, with commitment to continuing followership recognized by induction by means of the ritual of water immersion to publicly signify that enlistment.
(8) No matter how well John MacArthur treats other Biblical truths (and in many cases he does very well), he has already left the first work that ought to have predominance over anything else in the Christian's life, and that is recruiting and baptizing only truly committed disciples, not merely new converts (as do the Baptists), nor (God forbid) little infants who have no idea of what is happening to them (as do Romanists and all the Reformers that exited from them).
(9) And that is exactly why he does not know what is going to happen to Christianity. He is blind to the causative principle.
<10> The result is that in America people confessing ownership of the Lord Jesus Christ by their lives, rather than merely professing it with their mouths, shall be persecuted even more thoroughly than they are now:
"Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution" (2 Tim 3:12 AV).
Bro John MacArthur has many good and profitable things to say, and for those I love him; but in this matter he needs to be corrected. Or the contingent of his followers will be removed from his influence.
"Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent" (Rev. 2:5)
Submitted with respect --
All the Christians/churches/denominations that exist today need to hear and apply this counsel.