Articles

Reverence for God and the things that represent His person and presence are dead or near death in many American churches and lives of those who profess to belong to the body of Christ. In some instances reverence and respect may be used interchangeably, but they are not identical. While respect is a special regard, esteem, or consideration, reverence has a much narrower focus and rises to a higher level such as worship, adoration, awe, veneration, or devotion. The demise of respect for authority and hierarchy Without a doubt, the decline in reverence within the church and the lives of individual Christians is a reflection of the decline of respect for authority and hierarchy in the larger culture and has led to a general loss […]

The third and final prescription for the church is to seek a broad spiritual awakening across the body of Christ as well as revival of individual Christians and the local church. The pattern of sin and falling away from God followed by repentance, revival, and restoration of His people is a recurrent theme in the history of God’s dealings with the Israelites in the Old Testament. This pattern is illustrated in Psalm 80 as the author pleads with God to once again revive and restore His chosen people. Return to us, O God Almighty! Look down from heaven and see! Watch over this vine, the root your right hand has planted, the son you have raised up for yourself. Your vine is cut down, it […]

In Part IV, we saw that resistance thinking is an essential prescription for what ails the evangelical church in American and Western civilization and is a characteristic of God’s prophetically untimely people who have the courage to give voice to a message that stands against the church’s cultural captivity by the humanistic spirit of the age. The second prescription for the church is a return to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements found in the first century church. Restoring New Testament Christianity There are several norms or hallmarks that give shape, definition, and context to New Testament Christianity. All of the distinguishing elements found in the early church (except for the writing of the New Testament Scripture) are available to the […]

The American church is dying and parts of it are already dead. If one needs proof of its condition, a re-reading of Part II will reveal the severity of its illness. This is not to say that Christianity is dying for Jesus said, “And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” [Matthew 16:18. KJV] [emphasis added] The remnant church will always survive, perhaps bloodied and bent for the moment, but it will survive. There are three prescriptions for what ails the evangelical church in the West: development of the art of resistance thinking to challenge the forces of cultural captivity (conformity, popularity, and a […]

One eminent European scholar at Oxford University asked the question, “By the end of the 1970s who will be the worldliest Christians in America?” Following the silence of his stunned audience, he answered, “It will be the evangelicals and fundamentalists.” At the time this assessment was made, it seemed almost irrational because evangelicals and fundamentalists were considered to have been at the vanguard of understanding the dangers of the world and worldliness which had been exhibited by their forthright resistance to such for almost three centuries. The form of this legendary resistance was both rational and cultural, that is, their inner thought life and their outer life within the culture had stood as the bulwarks against a rapacious world and worldliness. But in the intervening […]

Part I ended with Os Guinness’ words which call for individual Christians and the church “…to regain the courage of “prophetic untimeliness” and develop the art of “resistance thinking” and so become followers of Jesus who have the courage to become “untimely people” despite the mesmerizing lure of the present age and its fixation with the future.”[1] But resistance must be preceded by an accurate assessment of the condition of the church, recognition of the nature of the mesmerizing lure of the spirit of the age, and how that spirit has wheedled its way into the church. The evangelical church in America and much of Western civilization is in a deplorable state and declining. George Barna[2] and the American Culture and Faith Institute (ACFI)[3] recently […]

Satan hates God. Satan was cast out of heaven because of his pride in his position and his beauty rose to the point of placing himself on the level of God. As a result of his rebellion, Satan was not only demoted and stripped of every precious stone that was his covering, he was cast out of heaven. So Satan really hates God. It is a vicious, snarling, consuming hatred—something almost beyond our human ability to comprehend. But Satan had no power to strike back at God directly. His only alternative was to strike at God by robbing the Creator of His relationship with man—His special creation. Humanism’s opposition to God’s plan for mankind encompasses all of human history. The humanistic spirit of the world […]