Indeed.
Posted on 12/25/2012 4:59:42 AM PST by Kaslin
For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible.
This date has been the separation point of mankind's time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., anno domino, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today?
"Christianity is in danger off being wiped out in its biblical heartlands," says the British think tank Civitas.
In Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Christians face persecution and pogroms. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, conversion is a capital offense. In a century, two-thirds of all the Christians have vanished from the Islamic world.
In China, Christianity is seen as a subversive ideology of the West to undermine the regime.
In Europe, a century ago, British and German soldiers came out of the trenches to meet in no-man's land to sing Christmas carols and exchange gifts. It did not happen in 1915, or ever again.
In the century since, all the Western empires have vanished. All of their armies and navies have melted away. All have lost their Christian faith. All have seen their birthrates plummet. All their nations are aging, shrinking and dying, and all are witnessing invasions from formerly subject peoples and lands.
In America, too, the decline of Christianity proceeds.
While conservatives believe that culture determines politics, liberals understand politics can change culture.
The systematic purging of Christian teachings and symbols from our public schools and public square has produced a growing population -- 20 percent of the nation, 30 percent of the young -- who answer "none" when asked about their religious beliefs and affiliations.
In the lead essay in the Book Review of Sunday's New York Times, Paul Elie writes of our "post-Christian" fiction, where writers with "Christian convictions" like Walker Percy and Flannery O'Connor are a lost tribe.
"Where has the novel of belief gone?" he asks.
Americans understand why Mao's atheist heirs who have lost their Marxist-Leninist faith and militants Islamists fear and detest the rival belief system of Christianity. But do they understand the animus that lies behind the assault on their faith here at home?
In a recent issue of New Oxford Review, Andrew Seddon ("The New Atheism: All the Rage") describes a "Reason Rally" in Washington, D.C., a "coming out" event sponsored by atheist groups. Among the speakers was Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins, author of "The God Delusion," who claims that "faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument."
Christians have been infected by a "God virus," says Dawkins. They are no longer rational beings. Atheists should treat them with derisory contempt. "Mock Them!" Dawkins shouted. "Ridicule them! In public!"
In "The End of Faith," atheist Sam Harris wrote that "some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people."
"Since the New Atheists believe that religion is evil," notes Seddon, "that it 'poisons everything,' in (Christopher) Hitchens' words -- it doesn't take much effort to see that Harris is referring to religions and the people who follow them."
Now since atheists are still badly outnumbered in America and less well-armed than the God-and-Country boys, and atheists believe this is the only life they have, atheist suggestions to "kill people" of Christian belief is probably a threat Christians need not take too seriously.
With reference to Dawkins' view that the Christian faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," Seddon makes a salient point.
While undeniable that Christianity entails a belief in the supernatural, the miraculous -- God became man that first Christmas, Christ raised people from the dead, rose himself on the first Easter Sunday and ascended into heaven 40 days later -- consider what atheists believe.
They believe that something came out of nothing, that reason came from irrationality, that a complex universe and natural order came out of randomness and chaos, that consciousness came from non-consciousness and that life emerged from non-life.
This is a bridge too far for the Christian for whom faith and reason tell him that for all of this to have been created from nothing is absurd; it presupposes a Creator.
Atheists believe, Seddon writes, that "a multiverse (for which there is no experimental or observational evidence) containing an inconceivably large number of universes spontaneously created itself."
Yet, Hitchens insists, "our belief is not a belief."
Nonsense. Atheism requires a belief in the unbelievable.
Christians believe Christ could raise people from the dead because he is God. That is faith. Atheists believe life came out of non-life. That, too, is faith. They believe in what their god, science, cannot demonstrate, replicate or prove. They believe in miracles but cannot identify, produce or describe the miracle worker.
At Christmas, pray for Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins and the other lost souls at that Reason Rally.
“Turn the other cheek” refers to taking personal revenge. We are authorized to fight to protect ourselves.
2Ti 3:1 This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.
2Ti 3:2 For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
2Ti 3:3 Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,
2Ti 3:4 Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
2Ti 3:5 Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.
This know also, and keep it in mind, that in the last days of the administration of the mystery, perilous times shall come for the professing church, or what is called Christendom.
For religious men and leaders of the time shall be lovers of their own selves seeking all kinds of publicity and praise of men, covetous in that they will be lovers of money and will stoop to most any methods in obtaining it, boasters of all their accomplishments in the world, seeking to outdo all others, proud of their works in the flesh and of their false humility before the people they profess to serve, blasphemers in that they call themselves ministers of the Most High God, but promote racial disturbances, civil disobedience, and rioting for hire by a foreign country, disobedient to parents and all other constituted authority, including colleges and universities, lawless and unthankful, taking charity of society and the blessings of God with no thought of the donors, and with their uncouth appearance and bad manners they have not only repudiated all goodness, but have come to the place that like dogs they return to their own vomit, or like the sow which returns to the mire, they have become most unholy,
And in their lust to others of the same sex, they are without natural affection, coming to the place that they can no longer tell the truth, they have become trucebreakers, and in this condition coupled with their covetousness, they have become false accusers, for they, in their vain imaginations think that others are as low and selfish in their ambitions as they are, and being lovers of their own selves and their consciences seared and no longer having a feeling of sin, they have become incontinent practicing fornication and adultery, making provision for the flesh with all kinds contraceptives they also have become fierce and have lost all the gentleness they may have learned of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ; and in their lusts they have also become despisers of those that are good, with the argument that everybody is doing it and are as bad as they are;
Traitors to fellow Christians, to their own kin, and even to their own government, heady or determined to have their own way with no regard to the rights of others and their claims, highminded or puffed up so that they have no compassion for the less fortunate, and having so fed and nourished the flesh or old nature, they have come to the place that they are the lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;
And in these last days we see on every hand the vain and empty religions having a form of godliness, a ritual in their self-worship which pretends to be a worship of God, sensual, just a social gathering of caste and class in their costly temples and shrines by the wayside, but denying the power thereof: for Christendom today is powerless spiritually in the world, being forced to turn to lobbying and following a social gospel which is in no way Christian, just a fraternity of do-gooders, and the Word is explicit in warning us of these things and further commands us; from such turn away.
Christendom aka Constantinism is dying, and I say good riddance. The Church should never have been wedded to the government in the first place.
Christianity, however, is thriving in the world, and often in the least expected places.
Soon enough it’ll be China sending missionaries into the US.
Indeed.
Re: And what did you expect to happen when the “Turn the Other Cheek” concept meets “Death to the Infidel....
Years ago my Priest told me that does not mean making a doormat out of yourself
When the Son of Man returns, will He find faith in the earth?
Possibly. We can’t exactly speak of ‘what-ifs’ here.
But the question is this: what did it do to the Church? Is a Church/government synthesis helpful or harmful to the proclamation of the Gospel?
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