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Growing Apostasy in the Last Days – Part III
The second area that must be examined to determine if there is hope for finding common ground between Islam and Christianity is love. If there are fundamental differences in the concepts and practices of love between Islam and Christianity, then love cannot provide a common ground. Are the Islamic and Christian understandings of love the same? As they did in addressing questions presented in Part II, the Yale Covenant authors point to the difficulties in identifying the similarities between the Islamic and Christian understandings of love. These difficulties include several issues. A major difference noted was whether God’s love was conditional or non-conditional. The Bible says that God’s love is unconditional whereas in the Quran it appears that Allah’s love is conditional. Another concern raised […]
Growing Apostasy in the Last Days – Part II
The Muslim scholars in their 2007 open letter to the Christian world (“A Common Word between Us and You”) and the response (the Yale Covenant) signed by three hundred Christian leaders identified two areas that were supposed to be common ground between Muslims and Christians: the commands to love God and to love one’s neighbor.[1] However, the truth or falsity of this claimed common ground can only be determined after a thoughtful examination of the nature of the Islam’s Allah and the Christian God of the Bible and their respective teachings and commandments with regard to love. In other words, the evidence of any common ground between the two religions must ultimately be found in the natures of the respective Gods. If there are essential […]
Growing Apostasy in the Last Days – Part I
The Apostle Paul’s second letter to Timothy speaks of the last days. This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. [2 Timothy 3:1-5. KJV] Before we discuss the growing apostasy of the church, we must place it in context with the end times. The last days spoken of by Paul include the entire Christian era that began with Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and the […]
The American Church – 36 – Restoring New Testament Christianity
If the church (the body of Christ) desires to restore New Testament Christianity, it must first understand what the term encompasses and requires. Where better to find that understanding than the New Testament itself. The history of Christianity begins with the life of Jesus and His ministry as recorded in the four gospels. The history of the church begins with Christ’s ascension and the beginning of the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. Luke, the beloved physician, gave an account of the former in the Gospel of Luke and the latter in the Acts of the Apostles. What better account than that of a close friend and traveling companion of Paul. With precision, clarity, and thoroughness befitting an educated man of medicine, Luke’s inspired account spans […]
The American Church – 35 – Evangelicalism and the culture
To this point the book has been largely an examination of the condition of the American evangelical church and the reasons for its decline which has resulted in a diagnosis from which we derive the book’s title—Evangelical Winter. The final two chapters are prescriptive in nature. This chapter deals with the church and its position within and relationship to a hostile culture. The final chapter presents prescriptive remedies for evangelicalism’s departure from its roots described in the subtitle of this book—Restoring New Testament Christianity. As mentioned several times, the central theme of this book is that over the course of its history, the church has suffered attack from within (theological compromise) and without (cultural compromise), but the principal thrust of both attacks can be described […]
The American Church – 34 – Evangelical Winter
Max Lucado is a wonderful and inspiring writer. Few can match his ability to bring fresh insights, infuse substance, and bring clarity to both the commonplace and complex things of life. One of his website posts was titled “Simply ‘Church’.” He posed two questions, “…what would happen if all the churches agreed, on a given day, to change their names simply to ‘church’?…if there’s no denominations in heaven, why do we have denominations on earth?”[1] His point was that we should not attend a church based on the sign outside, but we should join our hearts to the hearts of the people on the inside.[2] This is a noble sentiment and reflects the Apostle Paul’s admonition to the Romans, “Now the God of patience and […]
The American Church – 33 – Modern American evangelicalism – Reaping the whirlwind
For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it. [Hosea 8:7. RSV] Many modern evangelical churches have foolishly sown to the wind and are reaping a whirlwind. As a result, many of their once faithful members are abandoning evangelicalism and seeking solace elsewhere, having found that much (though not all) of modern evangelicalism is merely a confused and pitiful shadow of the once stalwart champion and defender of New Testament Christianity but which now has little to offer other than what the world already has given. The abandonment of evangelical New Testament Christianity in America is being hastened by two significant occurrences—one of […]
The American Church – 32 – Evangelicalism’s Frail Vessels
As noted in Chapter 1, the church over the course of its history has suffered attack from within (theological compromise) and without (cultural compromise), but the principal thrust of both attacks can be described as nothing less than the diminution and final abandonment of biblical truth. Within the theological realm, the diminution and abandonment of truth has occurred because the church has failed to recognize and resist the spirit of the world which has invaded the church. The spirit of the world during an age of rampant humanism has redefined and compartmentalized the meaning of truth in all spheres of American life. Decades of this humanistic view of truth has been absorbed in varying degrees by most American Christians and many evangelical churches. As a […]