Posted on 05/07/2005 8:05:03 AM PDT by churchillbuff
What is the fastest-growing religion on Earth?
Most news reports suggest it is Islam.
But a new book makes a compelling case it is a new, or, perhaps, old form of biblically inspired evangelical Christianity that is sweeping through places like China, Africa, India and Southeast Asia.
In "Megashift," author Jim Rutz coins a new phrase to define this fast-growing segment of the population. He calls them "core apostolics" - or "the new saints who are at the heart of the mushrooming kingdom of God."
Rutz makes the point that Christianity is overlooked as the fastest-growing faith in the world because most surveys look at the traditional Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church while ignoring Christian believers who have no part of either.
He says there are 707 million "switched-on disciples" who fit into this new category and that this "church" is exploding in growth.
"The growing core of Christianity crosses theological lines and includes 707 million born-again people who are increasing by 8 percent a year," he says.
So fast is this group growing that, under current trends, according to Rutz, the entire world will be composed of such believers by the year 2032.
"There will be pockets of resistance and unforeseen breakthroughs," writes Rutz. "Still, at the rate we're growing now, to be comically precise, there would be more Christians than people by the autumn of 2032, about 8.2 billion."
According to the author, until 1960, Western evangelicals outnumbered non-Western evangelicals - mostly Latinos, blacks and Asians - by two to one. As of 2000, non-Western evangelicals outnumbered Westerners by four to one. He says by 2010, the ratio will be seven to one.
"There are now more missionaries sent from non-Western nations than Western nations," he writes.
This trend, says Rutz, has been missed by Westerners because the explosive growth is elsewhere.
Hundreds of millions of these Christians are simply not associated with the institutional churches at all. They meet in homes. They meet underground. They meet in caves. They meet, he says, in secret.
And what is driving this movement?
Miracles, he says.
"Megashift" attempts to document myriad healings and other powerful answers to the sincere prayers of this new category of believer, including, believe it or not, hundreds of dramatic cases of resurrections - not near-death experiences, but real resurrections of actual corpses.
"When I was a kid in Sunday school, I was really impressed that 3,000 people were saved on the Day of Pentecost," he writes. "I thought, 'Wow, that'll never happen again!"
But, Rutz says, it now happens around the globe every 25 minutes.
"By tomorrow, there will be 175,000 more Christians than there are today," he writes.
The essence of Rutz's book is about how Western Christians can tap into what he sees as a mighty work of God on Earth.
"Very few people realize the nature of life on Earth is going through a major change," he writes. "We are seeing a megashift in the basic direction of human history. Until our time, the ancient war between good and evil was hardly better than a stalemate. Now all has changed. The Creator whose epic story flows through the pages of Scripture has begun to dissolve the strongholds of evil. This new drama is being played out every hour around the globe, accompanied sometimes by mind-bending miracles."
I believe a person can be saved and still teach false doctrine. Just because you are saved does not mean that everything out of your mouth is the gospel truth and that The Holy Spirit gave it to you to say.
For instance I am sure you are saved (I have no proof but I believe you are) and I am sure I am saved yet we disagree on some doctrine.
We do however believe on the basics. That Christ is God. He was born of a virgin. He came to the earth in the flesh.He never sinned. He died and was raised from the dead and that He will return.
Those are the important things. But for you to claim that a mere man is infalliable (i realize you didnt utter that exact phrase but you seem to think KH is all that) whereas you have been given documented proof of his false teachings in this thread. Hagin, copeland and duplantis teach BRAND NEW BELIEVERS that they must speak in tongues or they are not saved. Its not just something that they throw out there now and then. It is handed out as you walk in the door as part of thei doctrinal statements.
I have actually talked to babes in Christ who were worried to death that they were not saved because they didnt speak gibberish. I have also met people whose faith was beaten down by pastors like kh who told them they had faith because God didnt heal their sickness.
The problem with translating Euro-language songs into a tonal language (Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, etc.) is that the tunes must follow the tones of the words or one is singing nonsense syllables.Translations that maintain the tunes are generally verbal nonsense or are changed to unrecognizability.
You can't simply change the word order to make the tones fit the tune because word order is more important than it is in English. If you change the word order you change the meanings of the individual words because the tonal languages tend to be highly conceptual- meanings depend a lot on immediate and more general context.
I have heard Amazing Grace rendered in Vietnamese. It is still beautiful but it isn't the same song at all. The words translated into Vietnamese cannot be made to fit the tune so a different set of words must be used that sort of connects with the song in English a little bit.
'a man who has found his own "better way."
is an unwarranted wholesale slam on a man and on what Holy Spirit is doing through him.
I meant they had NO faith.
Rick was not there to preach a sermon .. he was there to talk about his book. The book has PLENTY OF REFERENCES to Jesus. Your offence at Rich is PERSONAL - and it's offensive to me.
Please avoid expecting heavenly reward for throwing out
the baby with the bath
the true with the counterfeit.
Caves? lol. Fiction.
I don't follow any man lockstep.
But I also speak up forcefully in behalf of a brother and his powerfully anointed of Holy Spirit ministry unreasonably and unfittingly blackwashed.
Well .. if people aren't willing to read his book - then no comment is appropriate.
Have I accused you of following some chief naysayer lockstep?
Sheesh.
That's quite obvious, Mr. "secret numbers code" man. LOL.
Very well said.
I do believe though, that some folks get overly inflated with what God HAS shown them; get overly confident in their own astuteness or spiritual stature
and get sloppy in their wording. There is usually a valid Biblical trough underneath somewhere. But their sloppy wording gives the enemy plenty of room to scream.
Please avoid getting me started
on Christian leadership in general and Pastors in particular.
Jesus would return before that rant was done.
Post #144 is but a microscopic slice of the fruit.
Jesus scattered droves, too.
Paul, too.
Truth scatters to a large degree.
Anything very powerful with man involved is also going to have some unavoidable collateral damage because of humanness up and down the line on the part of those within as well as on the part of the onlookers and 'me also's.'
"One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic - The four marks of the true Church."
The "true church" is not a denomination - the true church is a believer - and believers can be found in every denomination that ever was - even the Word of Faith. Jesus told us it was those who believed in HIM - they were the members of HIS church. I don't think Jesus put a denomination in front of that statement.
Thanks for the advice.
Good grief, Charlie Brown!
I don't believe any mortal is infallible.
You publish as many words, sermons and pamphlets as Hagin and let's see if we can give someone a PhD for picking your words to pieces.
You win as many souls to Jesus as Hagin or Warren have and lets then see how many of your methods or pontifications we can pick to pieces.
Yeah, the AoG obsession with absolutely insisting on everyone speaking in tongues is out of balance. And you and your pastor have no such out of balance obsessions? Hogwash. You've shown too much of such on this thread.
When those ranting against tongues have applied Paul's "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all." --when the naysayers have applied that one thoroughly in their lives then I might respect what they say about it more.
Picking and choosing what's comfortable is poor Biblical study and application.
I understand your point.
I think a lot of times, folks use the words and ignore the tonal aspect in music--according to my Chinese friends. The person is expected to know what the words mean in the context of that song.
That's one reason that many nonChristians are clueless about many Christian songs in Chinese.
I thoroughly agree.
Actually, I'm absolutely certain it's pretty offensive to JESUS, too.
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