CHRISTIANITY EXPLODING WORLDWIDE; 3RD WORLD SENDING MISSIONARIES [V ENCOURAGING DOC]

ANDREW STROM VIA MERI BURLINGAME EMAIL LIST ^ | 28 APR 2005 | WORLD NET DAILY

[Quix]

"CHRISTIANITY EXPLODING Worldwide"

"THIRD WORLD sending MISSIONARIES"

[from 'WorldNetDaily'- http://www.worldnetdaily.com ]

Christianity taking over planet?

New book makes case it's fastest growing faith on Earth.

[-April 28, 2005 © 2005 WorldNetDaily.com ]

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 out-numbered 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."

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[mike182d]

Ever notice how the rock throwers usually slink away silently or at least ignore hard facts that flush their notions and assumptions down the proper porcelain fixture!

...or have jobs and are getting in trouble for typing lengthy posts here instead of attending to work that desperately needs to be finished. :-)

[mike182d]

Yep. Only IN CHRIST do we find salvation and in HIM alone, not religious rites from any church.

Christ gave us an institutional Church. Why do you rebel against this teaching?

[Quix]

STRONGLY AGREE.

And then there's the BEING WITH HIM vs worshipping DOING things for him. Still a growing edge for me.

Thanks tons for your exhortations and prayers.

[Quix]

Which part of a dead man 3 days in the morgue

resurrected in Africa

and dozens of others--actually probably 100's in Mexico and in China etc.

which part of that do you not understand?

Is the part you can't or won't understand close to the part of your assumptions that say it couldn't possibly happen?

Ahhhhhh, and we are supposed to think that your assumptions are more logical than the evidence God provides confirming His Word?

And how is that remotely logical?

[Quix]

Didn't realize we'd chained your fingers to this thread.

Work has lots of priority.

Though, hopefully, not over family.

And we'd wish, certainly not over God.

[Quix]

We aren't in the least rebelling against Christ's teachings.

We do rebel against the same horrid RELIGION JUNK that Christ railed at most fiercely when He walked dusty paths.

[mike182d]

I'm not saying that what is in the Bible isn't true. What I'm saying is that it is absurd to think that the Bible is true simply because it says it is. Like I said, this post is inspired by the Holy Spirit. How do I know? Because this post says it is inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Disprove the latter statement without contradicting your reason for believing that the Bible is the inspired Word of God.

[bray]

Jesus Saves!!

Pray for W and Our Troops

[mike182d]

We do rebel against the same horrid RELIGION JUNK that Christ railed at most fiercely when He walked dusty paths.

Correction: Christ never railed at "religion" as an institution. He railed at hypocrites within a religion. Jesus scorned the Pharisees because they placed burdens on people that they would not carry themselves. It was not because they were an organized institution. I have no problem with criticizing hypocrites within a religious institution.

Here are some writings of St. Irenaeus, a Church Father, from ~189 A.D.

"As I said before, the Church, having received this preaching and this faith, although she is disseminated throughout the whole world, yet guarded it, as if she occupied but one house. She likewise believes these things just as if she had but one soul and one and the same heart; and harmoniously she proclaims them and teaches them and hands them down, as if she possessed but one mouth. For, while the languages of the world are diverse, nevertheless, the authority of the tradition is one and the same" (Against Heresies 1:10:2 [A.D. 189]).

"That is why it is surely necessary to avoid them [heretics], while cherishing with the utmost diligence the things pertaining to the Church, and to lay hold of the tradition of truth. . . . What if the apostles had not in fact left writings to us? Would it not be necessary to follow the order of tradition, which was handed down to those to whom they entrusted the churches?" (ibid., 3:4:1).

"It is possible, then, for everyone in every church, who may wish to know the truth, to contemplate the tradition of the apostles which has been made known throughout the whole world. And we are in a position to enumerate those who were instituted bishops by the apostles and their successors to our own times—men who neither knew nor taught anything like these heretics rave about.

"But since it would be too long to enumerate in such a volume as this the successions of all the churches, we shall confound all those who, in whatever manner, whether through self-satisfaction or vainglory, or through blindness and wicked opinion, assemble other than where it is proper, by pointing out here the successions of the bishops of the greatest and most ancient church known to all, founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul, that church which has the tradition and the faith which comes down to us after having been announced to men by the apostles.

"With this church, because of its superior origin, all churches must agree—that is, all the faithful in the whole world—and it is in her that the faithful everywhere have maintained the apostolic tradition" (ibid., 3:3:1–2).

Apparently the first Christians did not hold the same view you do about the nature of authority and Church as an institution. Is your interpretation more accurate than those of the first Christians?

[Quix]

As the Bible teaches and I have found true,

Holy Spirit within authentic believers bears a witness of that which is also of Him outside of the believer--including such a document. With practice, one's discernment and hearing improve.

Also, with purifying refiner's fires.

--The Bible describes accurately life as I observe it.
--The Bible describes accurately how to establish and maintain a relationship with Almighty God who then confirms such with signs following--as mentioned above.
--The Bible describes the human condition and human nature very accurately.
--Biblical prophecies have been fulfilled to the tiniest detail over and over again. The last 100-150 years there has been a school of textual criticism as well as of archeology which has 100's of times declared that such and such a city, tribe, individual etc. COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE EXISTED, THEREFORE THE BIBLE IS WRONG, FALSE. 100's of times they have been proven wrong. In every case where new evidence has appeared to decide such a case, the idiots have been proven wrong and the Bible has been proven true.

Foolish folks can bet against The Bible if they wish.

I won't be one of them.

[Quix]

YUP on all counts. THX.

[PetroniusMaximus]

***If the Church has always been subjected to the Bible, what were the early Church fathers subjected to before the Bible even existed? Apostolic authority.***

The OT Scriptures.



Additionally, according to earliest reports, the Gospels were in circulation almost immediately after the dying off of the Apostles. As early as 150 AD (IIRC) the universal authority of the 4 Gospels was referred to by Church Fathers as axiomatically as the reality of the 4 corners of the world.

[Quix]

I find throughout the Bible a Godly aversion to stereotypic institutionalized religion

contrasted with

a preference for individual, spontaneous, authentic, heart-felt RELATIONSHIP.

God has used organization and even leadership for The Kingdom.

But His model of SERVANT LEADERSHIP has routinely and consistently been left in the dust. When an insitution demonstrates by such wholesale modeling of the opposite of servant leadership--then I have to conclude that a list of other Biblical stuff has also been trashed and gone in the opposite direction from.

If you really have a hard time seeing the flaws in institutionalized Christianity, then I'm skeptical that your discernment and perceptiveness are alert or accurate enough for you to hear God as well as you will likely need to in the coming months and years.

I'm not interested in throwing the baby totally out with the bath. But I try to follow Jesus when He censures RELIGIOUS LEADERS and folk of similar attitude and ilk.

[mollynme]

You make very good points but your beliefs are anathema to those who are so strongly wedded to the idea of the organized church.

When the first early church “fathers” used opportunistic interpretations of the Holy Scriptures to claim that God intended for men to be controlled by other men within the structure of a powerful organization, the corruption started.

They ignored the pattern evident in Paul’s letters, where the first Churches he planted were small, self-governing bodies which took instruction from Paul’s teaching, the Scriptures and the leading of the Holy Spirit but which were never organized into one large institution. They were “one in the Spirit” and shared with one another which gave them some unity, but there was not any one governing body.
That came later when, with the best of intentions (I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt here), the “fathers” of what became the organized church decided that they needed to keep close control over these scattered congregations.

With the power centers came corruption and the gradual creeping in of men’s traditions which were not necessarily God’s will.

While I agree with you about “not throwing the baby out with the bath water”, I don’t think that we have much say in the matter. I truly believe that we are currently seeing the fruits of the corruption inherent in these large organizations and they are destroying themselves from the inside out.

I also believe that the spread of Christianity outside of the powerful organizations is what God meant for His Church all along. It is the "outsiders" who are truly the "Bride of Christ".

[Salvation]

Excellent point.

[Salvation]

I find it odod that the article does not address the growth of Roman Catholicism in the world also. Just one line.

[Salvation]

Catholic Parishes Flourish in Southern U.S.

Bible-belt Catholics

Number of Catholics Rises by 15 Million (Diocesan Priests Increase; Religious Decrease)

Spanish Catholicism still very robust (3 shrines and The Sagrada Familia)

Catholics outsource praying to India

Catholic Priests in India 'Outsourced' to Meet Clergy Shortage in West

Christian Coalition head (in Ala.) becomes Catholic

Church growth continues for Catholic and Pentecostals; six mainline denominations decline

Young people turn against their parents' 'church lite'

Pope calls US Church to repentance and renewal

A father for the 11th time - Widower becomes Catholic priest

Number of Adults Who Don't Attend Church Service Doubles

Huge Christian growth shocks China's leaders

Church Attendance Increased : Protestants have now clearly overtaken Catholics in church attendance

Catholics Trail Protestants in Church Attendance [Gallup]

Church Attendance Linked to Longer Life

Church Growth and Eveangelism

Dozens of Episcopalians Follow Leader into Catholic Church

Thousands prepare to join U.S. Catholic Church this Easter

Where Have All the People in the Pews Gone?

More Than 150,000 People to Join Catholic Church Holy Saturday

Spirituality on the rise on college campuses

Analysis: Rome up, Protestantism down?

Benedict's Logic: A Church Contracting & Expanding Simultaneously

CHRISTIANITY EXPLODING WORLDWIDE; 3RD WORLD SENDING MISSIONARIES [V ENCOURAGING DOC]

[Marysecretary]

Are you talking about the Catholic church or some other organized church? Salvation comes from Christ alone. Yes, we have organized churches but how many of them preach salvation in Him alone and not through doing good works? How many of them preach Christ period any more. Rites have their place within the church but you aren't saved because you do them. You are saved because you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your savior. That's the point I'm trying to make.

[Marysecretary]

Are you talking about the Catholic church or some other organized church? Salvation comes from Christ alone. Yes, we have organized churches but how many of them preach salvation in Him alone and not through doing good works? How many of them preach Christ period any more. Rites have their place within the church but you aren't saved because you do them. You are saved because you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your savior. That's the point I'm trying to make.

[Marysecretary]

Are you talking about the Catholic church or some other organized church? Salvation comes from Christ alone. Yes, we have organized churches but how many of them preach salvation in Him alone and not through doing good works? How many of them preach Christ period any more. Rites have their place within the church but you aren't saved because you do them. You are saved because you put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ as your savior. That's the point I'm trying to make.