Replies

I suppose that you know it all better than I, but to debate you on the matters I pointed out (perhaps inadequately) would be to deviate from the point of Arthor's piece.

Arthor's posting is concerning "God has One Foot Out the Door." And my response was to ask the question, from my listing, are we, as a nation, on the verge of destruction? or at the point of Sodom & Gomorrah? And my point was that though we are divided as a nation, I don't think that we are completely apostate.

Besides, I can give you a long list of very large churches that are not "entertainment chrches".

The gospel that is growing around the world, I believe is God-centered. People who have become Christians in countries like China, Sudan, Pakistan, India, Indonesia and elsewhere are willing to suffer die for their faith, rather that deny their faith in Christ or switch to Islam. Doesn't sound like "man-centered" gospel to me. But, of course, you probably know better about all that. I'm uneducated and not a seminary trained theologian.

I fear if you think the points I set forth esp. about the irrelevance of the Church resulting from the shift from a God-centered Gospel to a man-centered one are outside the scope of the discussion, you are gravely mistaken and blind to a root cause of the problem. This is imminently relevant to Arthur's piece, "God has One Foot Out the Door", and the subtitle of this particular thread - "Infanticide and the NEA" - describes atrocities that were restrained in better times when the Church was stronger and more biblically rooted. There is a causal relationship and it's no accident that in states and nations where Christianity is weak, the tolerance for such abominations is strong.

In conversions you mentioned in nations openly hostile to Christianity, you are probably right about the genuiness of their faith. Faced with death, they must believe in the sovereign God who rules the Universe and trust in Him as they face torture, imprisonment, and even execution. But other groups - Mormons for instance - are also in the fields collecting a harvest.

In our case, in America, we're so used to being entertained that we've in essense subjugated the worship of God and even His very character to our whims. And a God like that - stripped of His holiness, righteousness and justice - leaving only His love, patience, and other attributes palatable to sinful human nature, is not the kind of God whose majesty will lead to the kind of cultural transformation that is so sorely needed in our own day and already occurred in the Reformation and the Great Awakening.

Therefore, this is one part of the discussion we ought not to overlook if we would have our nation repent of its wickedness.

One last thing I would say: A major mistake we (conservative Christians) make from time to time is to identify the problem as being "out there". Jerry Falwell got himself into hot water after 9/11 when he identified the homosexuals and abortionists as an ultimate cause in the terrible judgment that day. The problem is "in here", in the heart. We must ALL repent, not just the unregenerate heathen. Arthur won my respect by identifying himself as being far from a model Christian. I must do the same. Other Christians upon honest self-assessment would likewise do well. "Judgment begins in the House of the Lord."