We don’t have to labor the point of how bad things are outside the Christian framework. We all know that, the readers and contributors of RaptureReady. The world’s agenda is fast in decline in its philosophy and its direction. I am appalled at the wicked Marxist leadership in my own State and in my nation (Australia). It is so godless, so evil.
I know certain ones in the United States would say the same thing. Christians who live in California would feel the same way. It is my opinion that California is probably the world center of all that is repulsive.
The tech companies are so anti-Christian and use their immense power and influence to distort the truth in censorship and in monetary contributions to anti-Christian political Parties. The left agenda is promoted through their sites. Facebook is out of control, spewing out Democrat agendas and silencing what is often Christian and what supports the opposite viewpoint. Google is well into censorship.
I set my homepage on Safari to the Google News page. It used to give me State, Australian, and overseas news with all the links that were somewhat balanced. They have just changed that page, and nearly all their sources link to the left-wing media. The moderate channels are gone. Facebook (I think), Google, and Apple are in Silicon Valley. Apple is in decline with links to China and has become an arrogant company once Steve Jobs died and a sodomite took over control. I have had Apple computers since 1983. I am so saddened by this.
The porn industry is well-anchored in California. Modern Hollywood is terrible. All these big industries are artificial and great supporters of the Democrats, morally and financially. Sometimes I am surprised that God has not walked in on judgment on California. I don’t wish it, but it is such a nest of vipers. Maybe we must think in terms of “their sins go before them.” There will be a day of reckoning very soon, and God may stay His hand until the Tribulation.
BUT WHAT OF THE CHURCHES?
So much for the outside world. What is distressing me is the way the “Christian” world is walking away from God. The churches we once counted as sound in doctrine are adopting the world’s “progressive agenda,” and liberalism is showing up everywhere. That is part of the reason I put the current series on Liberal Theology in the Churches on RaptureReady.
Recently I was away on a cruise and visiting family. Even my own family is adopting strange views, especially in the matter of eschatology. There is a rejection of the Rapture and strange interpretations. One even pushed the point with me that we are in the Tribulation, and whatever I raised was counteracted with another wrong position.
This is distressing. I have quite a bit to do with churches and keep my finger on the pulse of what is happening. One major church in my area has split because the Bishop of that denomination is now authorizing “same-sex marriage” in that church. Liberal Theology is overtaking our churches. The single factor of concern is that the average man and woman in the church show little concern about these things. Many just go with the tide.
Until very recently, I used to think the bastion of conservative Christian belief was the Southern Baptists, mainly in the southern half of the USA. I have found out I am living in the past, and as I am not American, I don’t want to say much. The termites are eating away at the Southern Baptists.
In the recent half-term election, there was some focus on one man from Georgia. He is a black man, and I read that he is a Baptist church pastor, so I researched it. He is Senator Warnock, senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church Atlanta for 16 years, but he is also a Democrat Senator. I thought this was strange, as I do not believe any true Christian can be a member of the Democrats or the Australian Labor Party in Australia (probably worse than the Democrats).
I wrote to this man and asked him how he can support the Democrats with their universal agenda on abortion and homosexuality and gender destruction of young people and their anti-Israeli stand. I told him it is a disgrace. I got no reply. However, this seems to be what the church stands for. What has happened to the Baptist denomination? Once we step outside the Bible as our sole inspired reference, we are in trouble.
While writing this article, I had a look at the home site for the Ebenezer Baptist Church and could not believe what I read. On Sunday, 15th January 2023, the special guest speaker at the 11 A.M. service is/was President Joseph Biden. This is no better than the following situation – Nehemiah 13:7-8 “and I came to Jerusalem and learned about the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, by preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God, and it was very displeasing to me, so I threw all of Tobiah’s household goods out of the room.” When a church allows a Tobiah to take its Sunday service, it is a sad day indeed!
How have we gotten to that position? I know you have seen statistics before and ones I have given, but here is another list from the USA: It was in the latest Magazine from The Barnabas Fund.
EVANGELICALISM IN THE WEST TODAY
What remains of the Evangelical Revival today?
A 2022 survey by Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research found that many American evangelical Christians held non-Biblical, even heretical, beliefs, especially about the nature of God.
- 73% agreed with the claim that Jesus is the “first and greatest being created by God.”
- 55% believed the Holy Spirit is a force but not a personal being.
- 44% said that Jesus was a great teacher, but He was not God.
- 38% considered that “religious belief is a matter of personal opinion; it is not about objective truth.”
A separate survey, also conducted in the USA in 2022, but this time by the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University, looked at the beliefs of pastors. Among the evangelical pastors surveyed:
- 39% considered that there is no absolute moral truth and that “each individual must determine their own truth.”
- 37% said that having faith in general is more important than the question of in what or in Whom that faith is placed.
- 30% did not agree that their salvation was based only on having confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Saviour.
It is clear that the Church in the West stands once again on the brink of destruction. But what happened to bring her there?
There has been a watering down of basic Christian doctrine and behavior. Churches are too casual about conduct and belief. Some are content with “anything goes.” What is saddest of all is that people in churches do not know what is right or wrong, what is biblical or not, and what is required of them.
The fault is with the church leadership, with the ministers and their training, but it is also related to calling and commitment. I know a certain once biblically-sound denomination in Australia that now lists pastors’ positions as “career moves.” What! What happened to the calling and moving of the Holy Spirit in service for the King?
Many books are coming out from “Christian publishers” that are of no substance whatsoever. They are superficial and, in a lot of cases, rather meaningless in dealing with true spiritual problems. People no longer want to read books on theology or doctrine. They don’t understand it, and yet doctrine is the framework on which is built the Christian life and everything that pertains to spirituality and growth and understanding. Doctrine and theology must never be neglected.
There is one more thing pertinent to RaptureReady. In my experience in churches, as I study them, there is very little interest in eschatology – prophecy and the Rapture. If one reads this and disagrees with me, then you probably come from a church that correctly upholds that position, but you are in the small minority. People in churches are not too interested in the Rapture or don’t believe it.
As one proof of that, I want to state something in my own field. There is a major site where one can place sermons/messages, etc. I have just completed a series on 1Thessalonians with 21 messages, most around the 3000/3100-word mark (that takes me about 40 minutes in delivery).
The full names of the messages are clear to see, and some have views of hundreds; yet the two that mention the Rapture in the title (for 1 Thessalonians 4) only have a few dozen, the decisive lowest.
That is pretty conclusive.
I just heard the US debt is 34 trillion dollars. That is utterly unsustainable. Nations are in disarray, so it is essential that our eyes remain open and we are aware of the world and then from where our faith is sustained. There is a verse the Lord spoke that does not pertain to our Church age but rather to the Tribulation for the Jewish saints waiting for the Second Coming, and it is this – Matthew 24:33 “Even so you too, when you see all these things, recognize that He is near, right at the door.”
The truth of this verse can be applied in a sense to the coming Rapture, even though that is not its interpretation. We are seeing things in the world today that strongly point us to the Rapture. Jesus is close, even at the door of heaven, about to open it.
Revelation 4:1 “After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open in heaven, and the first voice which I had heard like the sound of a trumpet speaking with me said, ‘Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after these things.'”
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!