Today’s generation is the most Scripturally ignorant and morally confused and lacking in conscience that America has ever birthed, yet until they reach the secular seminaries ( college), they are relatively open, but open to most anything, and someone will reach them (and is, atheism is growing fastest).
As for why they leave, although perhaps it is implicit in the accommodationist and “deeds not creeds” points, what should be #1 is the lack of strong anointed preaching that works by the Holy Spirit to convict sinners of their damned destitute condition, as law breakers in the eyes of an infinitely holy and perfectly just Almighty God.
And whose life will send them to Hell, not heaven, being utterly destitute of any merit that would gain their escape from their just and eternal punishment and gain them eternal life. And who thus must look toward God for the mercy which is in only found in the Christ, who “once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but resurrected alive by the Spirit (1Pt. 3:18).
And thus by abasing themselves and trusting the risen exalted Lord to save them on His expense and credit, they will find salvation, being washed, sanctified and justified. And which faith decision is shown in baptism, confessing the Lord Jesus in “body language” (not that baptism itself makes one born again) and then living it out.
I have often basically told souls after giving them a gospel tract (which opens the door for an explanation), “God looks at your life and says, “the things you did will send you to Hell,” but He looks at what His Son did and says, “what My Son did can gain you Heaven.”
But the work of an evangelists is not simply to tell them how to be saved, but to bring them to the place Isaiah was when He saw the Lord Jesus (it was: Jn. 12:34ff) high and lifted up in His glory, and thus cried, “Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” (Isaiah 6:5)
And as he found,
“The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. “ (Psalms 34:18)
This message should be preached everywhere, but the church service is usually most conducive for conversion, insomuch as the atmosphere is heavenly and the preaching exalts the Lord by the Spirit.
But lacking this preaching and subsequent regeneration, souls simply have religion at best, and most will fall away or will be inert.
However, this conversion must be followed by discipleship which teaches sacrificial commitment and surrender to and prayerful dependance upon the Lord, versus the world, flesh and devil, and which confronts, in meekness but boldness, the issues which challenge the basic faith once delivered to the saints. (Jude 1:3
Yesterday's sermon...
Amen
A social gospel saves no one , it’s has no power to change lives . Most churches have forgotten this and have been infested with hirelings who themselves are not saved .
We are looking at an America today who is the product of an infestation of a social gospel . Most will say yes Jesus was Messiah but turn around and say that they think they deserve to go to heaven because they have been good people .
There is no power in that gospel to transform anyone’s life because they totally miss the point of why Jesus died for them on that cross and why they needed him to. There is no salvation without true repentance and the realization that you are a sinner who needs to be saved .
I agree as a nation we have become almost totally illiterate of what the Bible says . Most just a few bits and pieces with no idea of how to put those pieces together and that includes most who sit in our pulpits .
Nothing will change here until the people repent and well the nation doesn’t think it needs to and sadly they think they are blessed because they live better than most of the world (well that will soon change at the rate we are going)
It is a sign of the times and this author is misled, also.
"But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, having a form of godliness but denying THE POWER. Have nothing to do with such people." 2 Timothy 3:1,5