Posted on 11/08/2015 11:19:38 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Christianity is under attack from a thousand different directions all at once, and yet many believers have turned their guns on one another. This war among Christians seems to intensify with each passing year, and believers are often fighting for some of the stupidest reasons you can possibly imagine. Meanwhile, people are leaving our churches in droves and church attendance is way down. This is especially true of younger Americans. According to an incredible new report that was just released by the Pew Research Center, only 27 percent of all Millennials (U.S. adults born since 1990) attend religious services on a weekly basis. When you go into many churches in America on Sunday mornings, all you see are “the greys”, and I am not talking about space aliens. But instead of focusing on fixing what has gone wrong, many Christians (including a number of very prominent ministers) spend most of their energy savagely attacking their brothers and sisters in Christ. This is absolutely disgraceful and it needs to stop.
America is on the exact same path to secularization that Europe has already gone down. The Pew Research Center discovered that the percentage of Americans who are “absolutely certain” that God exists declined from 71 percent in 2007 to 63 percent in 2014. Meanwhile, the percentage of those that are “religiously unaffiliated” rose from 16 percent in 2007 to 23 percent today.
Atheism, agnosticism and other religions are on the rise in America, and Christianity is in decline. And as I noted above, this is particularly true among our young people. Here are some more numbers from an excerpt that I pulled directly out of the Pew report…
Millennials -- especially the youngest Millennials, who have entered adulthood since the first Landscape Study was conducted -- are far less religious than their elders. For example, only 27% of Millennials say they attend religious services on a weekly basis, compared with 51% of adults in the Silent generation. Four-in-ten of the youngest Millennials say they pray every day, compared with six-in-ten Baby Boomers and two-thirds of members of the Silent generation. Only about half of Millennials say they believe in God with absolute certainty, compared with seven-in-ten Americans in the Silent and Baby Boom cohorts. And only about four-in-ten Millennials say religion is very important in their lives, compared with more than half in the older generational cohorts.
It has been projected that if current trends continue, the percentage of Americans attending church in 2050 will be about half of what it is today.
So those that are supposedly “leading the church” in America today need to wake up. What you are doing is not working. This nation is falling away from God, but many of you are spending much of your time and energy attacking one another.
Another thing that should deeply, deeply alarm Christian leaders is the fact that a large percentage of “believers” do not even seem to grasp the essential basics of the Christian faith. I am talking about things like who God is, the plan of salvation and the authority of the Bible. Here is more from Pew’s new report…
Among Christians, two-thirds say many religions can lead to eternal life, and most of them (50% of all Christians) say some non-Christian religions can lead to life everlasting. The view that some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life is held by roughly two-thirds of Catholics (68%) and mainline Protestants (65%), as well as 59% of Orthodox Christians. Fewer members of the historically black Protestant tradition (38%), evangelical Protestants (31%) and Mormons (31%) say some non-Christian religions can lead to salvation. Just 5% of Jehovah’s Witnesses say some non-Christian faiths can lead to eternal life.
If other religions can lead to eternal life, then why did Jesus have to die on the cross? Why couldn’t He have just come down and pointed us in the direction of all those other faiths? Many Christians don’t seem to understand that Jesus had to die for us on the cross because there is no other payment for our sins. He took the penalty that we deserved, and now He offers us a new life as a free gift.
Without Him, we would have absolutely no hope and no future. But because of Him, our sins are forgiven and we have been given eternal life.
But a very large percentage of believers does not understand this. Sadly, many Christians seem to think that you can believe whatever you want and it will all be okay in the end.
So as you can see, the church in America today is a mess. As a Christian myself, this pains me greatly.
But instead of working to fix the problems and praying for revival, many believers seem to take glee in tearing down their fellow Christians.
One of the bad things about the anonymity of the Internet is that it gives people an opportunity to show what is really in their hearts. And in many cases, what comes out of the hearts of many supposed “Christians” is absolutely frightening.
If you venture into places where believers hang out on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube and on various Christian websites all over the Internet, you will find some of the most vile things imaginable being said about specific individuals.
I have seen Christians use curse words to describe one another, and good, solid believers that I know personally have been called “whores”, “heretics” and “scumbags” just to give you a few examples. There are even some “Christians” that publicly wish for their brothers and sisters in Christ to die and go to hell.
This kind of thing should not be happening. In Matthew chapter 22, Jesus gave us instructions about how we are to treat one another…
36 Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
37 Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
38 This is the first and great commandment.
39 And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
40 On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
On my websites I talk about some very hard things, but you will notice that I don’t attack specific individuals that are on the same side as me. In this day and age, it is imperative that we all figure out who our friends are. None of us are ever going to agree 100 percent on everything, and that is okay.
Yes, sometimes there are things that need to be addressed, but the vast majority of times they can be taken care of privately. I have had some very honest discussions with people that are on the same side as me in private, but I would never air that stuff publicly.
If we are going to make it through what is coming, we have got to learn how to love one another. And we have got to stop viciously attacking one another over stupid stuff. Yes, there are some things that are so important that they must never be compromised on, but most of the attacks that I see happening are over very petty things.
And without a doubt, there are times when it become necessary to rebuke someone. But when at all possible it should be done in private, and it should always be done in a spirit of love.
Because in the end, if we do not have love, we are nothing. You can have all of the “knowledge” in the world, and you can go around correcting everyone else, but if you are lacking in love you are just a baby.
This is a hard lesson that I had to learn, and hopefully what I have written here will be helpful for someone.
This war among Christians needs to stop. Our faith is under attack like never before, and we desperately need to learn how to start working together.
At some point, hopefully we will begin to actually live the words of our Savior in John chapter 13…
34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
I’m speaking of a hand (member) that leaves the Church (Body of Christ.)
The person is where Gos IS. In each of US. Not in an organization or a building. The Bride of Christ is the church which is it’s people, which is us.
Today that equation is upside down. Today the ‘church’ is it’s leadership and what that leadership says it is.
Can a biblical argument be made that the bride of Christ is a building? A handful of people in bright robes? No. It cannot. Those things are material. The church is in the heart, not the building nor robe.
The people in that building and in those robes have taken power they have no right to and taken positions that 2000 years of doctrine cannot support.
If you get on a cruise ship and end up on Gilligan’s island for the rest of your life, separated from those men in that building, is your soul suddenly in jeopardy because you cannot tithe or attend service of those men in that building?
No? I would agree.
But In fact, Catholics across the world are very much on that island now because the men in the building put up a sign saying ‘Under OUR management. If you think the new boss is the same as the old boss when the new boss has a doctrine running counter to the previous, there’s not a lot for us to discuss. WE are still very much the people before the new boss took over. And without their management, our relationship with god has improved, not declined.
The bride of Christ is doing just fine. Just not in the way that the guys with the building want her to do. There’s no money or power in it.
The Christian Church, as we see in Acts and the Epistles, is the believing people gathered around the Apostles. Not each one all by himself, scorning the others because they are sinners. Every time "Church" is used in the NT, it is used in the context of the believers as a Body, not just as atomized singletons.
St. Paul explains magnificently that this "Body" which we are, has many members, and they are organized: cells, tissues, organs, systems; senses, limbs; "In Christ we form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." (Romans 12:5) "The eye can't say to the hand, I don't need you -the head can't say to the feet, I don't need you." "In the Church, God has appointed first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, helping, administrating, and various kinds of tongues." (I Cor 12:28)
And immediately, starting v 29: "All are not apostles, are they? All are not prophets, are they? All are not teachers, are they? All are not workers of miracles, are they?"
They have different roles, but one Spirit. They are organized, not freelancers: essential to each other.
To use the analogy of oceanic life, there's a difference between one trillion zooplankton, disorganized and dispersed through the sea-water like cell-soup, and one trillion cells organized as a blue whale. The Church is like the living, unified whale, not like the plankton soup.
"Today that equation is upside down. Today the 'church' is its leadership and what that leadership says it is."
No, the Church is the Body of Christ and what Christ says it is. It is He Who gives her, the Church, His authority and His protection.
"Can a biblical argument be made that the bride of Christ is a building? A handful of people in bright robes? No. It cannot. Those things are material. "
I don't know of anybody, at any time in history, who has ever said "the Church is a building" or "the Church is a handful of men wearing robes.". It is a straw man argument: you're arguing against what nobody said.
The Church is not a field of rock-rubble, a heap of sand or a pile of bricks. It is organized, "built," a community, a LIVING building, built of LIVING stones, " Ephesians 2:20 "built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone."
"If you get on a cruise ship and end up on Gilligan's island for the rest of your life, separated from those men in that building, is your soul suddenly in jeopardy because you cannot tithe or attend service of those men in that building?"
Of course not, Another straw man argument.
The history of the Church is replete with men and women, desert fathers, hermitesses, who literally did the Gilligan's Island thing --- off to the desert, off to the mountains, the Irish monks taking off into the North Atlantic in their coracles, living alone or in small groups with nary a steepled building in sight. They did not do this to deny or repudiate the Church, or to cut themselves off from the Apostles and their successors, but to love God and serve His Church with intense prayer, and to spread His Church on whatever shores those coracles would land.
"But In fact, Catholics across the world are very much on that island now because the men in the building (etc etc)... our relationship with god has improved, not declined."
"The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, money-hungry, power-hungry, hypocrites, or even as those guys in the robes in the big church buildings..."
You are aware, I suppose, that the Church is, humanly speaking composed entirely of sinners and has been from the beginning. This is not an argument against Her holiness, since Christ has saved us, is saving us, and will in the end save us entirely from all attachments of sin and all of sin's toxic consequences.
Ignatius of Antioch, third Bishop of Antioch, disciple and successor of John the Apostle, knew what the Church is:
So, Norm, who is your bishop and what do you think he would say about all this?
I don’t have a bishop. I left the building that is today ‘the church’ years ago. For the very reasons I stated previously.
Quoting verse isn’t helping your position. In fact it is making my point. The entire basis of my position is that the church leadership has abandoned everything ‘the church’ stood for. IE, God, and replaced it with material concerns. Because He’s the very thing the Catholic leadership has turned it’s back on with their socialist/homosexual/silence on abortion agenda.
This conduces very much toward that Pharisaism to which we are all tempted: "O God, I thank You that I am not like Tim Dolan. That I am not like that dolt, communist, whatever, Jorge Bergoglio."
You are separated --- not entirely, but to an extent --- from that very Body, built by Christ, which gave you the Scriptures on which you hope to stand.
It leads by a short route to cynicism, callousness, and slander: dismissing with a wave of the hand 2,000 years of living transmission of the words and example of the Apostles, dismissing good popes along with bad, good bishops along with bad, saints with sinners, dismissing a billion fellow Christians whom you say "are" the Church, Christians in every culture, in every century, on every inhabited continent, because you perceive that some of the hierarchy are unfaithful.
To remedy which, you are unfaithful yourself, because separated from the very people who for 20 centuries have been faithful. And why? Because you are surprised, surprised and shocked, shocked that there are sinners in the Church.p> That's a hell of a problem, scandal: I mean it. St. Francis de Sales says that those who GIVE scandal (peeling people away from the Church because of their bad example) are committing spiritual murder; and those who TAKE scandal --- allowing themselves to be peeled off by that bad example --- are committing spiritual suicide.
The Ark was full of sh** (had to be, with all those animals). I'm sure it smelled to high heaven. But no way I'm going to go off on my own rubber raft--- or some hodgepodge flotilla of rubber rafts --- because Noah was a drunkard and the Ark stank.
Those who abandon the Word will never feel the power of the Holy Spirit.
“America is on the exact same path to secularization that Europe has already gone down.”
Secular=Marxist= Civilizational failure. A simple enough formula.
As usual, I don’t think you get what I’m saying here. NO ONE can thwart the work of the Holy Spirit in getting the truth of the gospel to ANYONE who is sincerely seeking to know it. Luther has no power to lead anyone away from the truth just as the Roman Catholic church could not keep one soul out of heaven. Each one of us has the choice to accept or reject the grace of God. Do you understand my point now?
“He took the prideful (I’m right) way.)”
Yeah, the Reformation came about because of some monk’s snit fit. God had nothing to do with it. He had nothing to do with the founding of America, either. It was the work of rebellious pilgrims. These tectonic shifts in history just happen...
The general notion you posited applied to all churches, of which the church I attend is not a “mainstream” apostate ELCA-type accommodation religion. We left them. But I now understand your point, and agree for that segment of “believers”.
I wish it were otherwise, but there has been a multigeneration failure in the pulpits. Over the long haul, the church bears much responsibility for what has become of the country.
no....if you reject the Catholic church, you have rejected Christ.......you don't get to do it your own way.
So you reject your OWN catechism now? Who is the one doing it their own way?
Luther had plenty of courage and he tried for YEARS going to his superiors to work towards solutions that would restore the faith back to how it was originally taught. You haven’t read the collection of Luther’s letters back and forth with bishops and popes? I can give you a link to the English translation of them if you care to make more truthful statements in the future. Let me know.
Pay real close attention now.....The Catholic church is suing the Federal gov't regarding the birth control issue, they are 100% against abortion and homosexual behavior (not homosexuals)...the current Pope is from a socialist background and does lean that way....the church doesn't, the Pope does.
Sigh...what did I say that rejected the Catholic Catechism???
Pay real close attention now...
The pope leads the Catholic church. The Pope is a Socialist. The Pope will lose in court as a diversion for doing his job. Which is to defend Christianity at the White House/Rainbow House face to face with the muslim abortion/gay lover and exComing the POS woman Pelosi that falls under hos authority standing there crapping all over the God the pope CLAIMS to work for.
Not file suits that go nowhere. The court he need to go to is that of public faith and opinion, not the laws of man.
No....if you reject the Catholic church, you have rejected Christ.......you don't get to do it your own way.
You're a smart guy. You can figure it out.
It is interesting that Jesus constantly says :
Mat_11:15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Mar_4:9 And he said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Mar_4:23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Luk_8:8 And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.” As he said these things, he called out, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Luk_14:35 It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
But it changes in revelation:
Rev_2:7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
Rev_2:11 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who conquers will not be hurt by the second death.’
Rev_2:17 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’
Rev_2:29 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Rev_3:6 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Rev_3:13 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’
Rev_3:22 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”
Remember what the blind man who was healed at the pool of Siloam said to the council of elders.
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