Sunday, April 27, 2014

Awake or in Slumber?


While popular churchmen are announcing the next great awakening and the latest revival, I'm noticing exactly the opposite. I'm hearing from many believers who have been to every church in town, only to find heresy in the bookstores and church events featuring religious fads and gimmicks. Church attendance is at an all-time low and desperate pastors whose livelihood depends upon tithes and offerings jump on every spiritual bandwagon to attract pew-warmers. Truth no longer sells.

Rather than an 'awakening' the church is asleep. Christendom is in a slump. Screaming loudly into deaf ears does no good. Shining a light into the eyes of the blind gets no response. Professing Christianity overall is worldly and apathetic about its own condition.

The spirit of the age seems to be in command -- calling the shots. He (it) determines the talking points in the world and the church. All are following his (its) lead onto the Broad Road that leads to destruction. The slogans? "Be all that you can be!" "The guy who dies with the most toys wins!" "The wealth of the wicked is yours for the taking!" "Live your best life now!" ad nauseum - Jesus is only the means to an end.

Pew sitters are being recruited, not regenerated. 

I see the hand of restraint being lifted from the world. Evil is now on the increase. The faith that was delivered to the saints 2,000 years ago has adapted the ways of the heathen using Christian labels. It is a repeat of how the children of Israel adopted the practices of the idolaters of that land from whom God had taken away and given to them. History repeating itself.

"And now you know what is restraining, that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way." - 2 Thes 2:6-7

Could this restraint against evil be gradually removed as men harden their hearts against the LORD and His Word? Is God saying "let the wicked be wicked still?" Does His offer of salvation to those who repent have an expiration date?

"No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day." John 6:44

Is the LORD no longer drawing men? Is He withdrawing from those who no longer call on His name?

"And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh" Gen. 6:3

As judgment on sin nears, and Jesus and the true faith are totally outlawed in our country and abroad, will He quit striving with man? 

Perhaps -- but we who are His have confidence in His mercy -- for His lovingkindness endures forever toward us who have put our faith in Him and Him alone.

"I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work." - John 9:4

"Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says: 'Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, In the day of trial in the wilderness, Where your fathers tested Me, tried Me, And saw My works forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, And said, ‘They always go astray in their heart, And they have not known My ways.’ So I swore in My wrath, ‘They shall not enter My rest.’ Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called “Today,” lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end, while it is said: 'Today, if you will hear His voice, Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.'” Heb 3: 7-15

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