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Talk, trust, and truth – Polarization of American society

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Mark Brewin is an associate professor and chairperson of the Department of Communications at the University of Tulsa. Mr. Brewin’s guest editorial for the Tulsa World’s Sunday Opinion section titled “Can we talk?” states that there are remarkably high levels of distrust in America which is creating an unhealthy nation. He says that, “We owe it to ourselves, and to each other to make a more conscious effort to listen to different voices, to forcibly and consciously move ourselves out of our networks.[1] Brewin believes that the opposing ideological sides evident in 2016 presidential election have created this unhealthy situation. Brewin described the opponents. At times over the course of the fall election period, it seemed as though half the country existed of mean-spirited racist […]

The Church triumphant – Part II

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[Part II was intentionally written before the results of the November 8, 2016 elections were known. It was released for posting on November 11, 2016.] Will the church of Jesus Christ survive in Western civilization? If Christianity does not survive, then the church must also die, and there have been many predictions of the imminent death of both over the last three centuries. The skeptics Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock n’ roll or Christianity.[1] These are the words of John Lennon of Beatles fame who made these statements during an interview for a magazine article fifty years […]

The Church triumphant – Part I

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Christians in the West are living in a grand clarifying moment. The gap between Christians and the wider culture is widening, and many formerly nominal Christians are becoming “religious nones”… We face a solemn hour for humanity at large and a momentous showdown for the Western church. At stake is the attempted completion of the centuries-long assault on the Jewish and Christian faiths and their replacement by progressive secularism as the defining faith of the West and the ideology said to be the best suited to the conditions of advanced modernity. The gathering crisis is therefore about nothing less than a struggle for the soul of the West…[1] So wrote Os Guinness wrote in Impossible People. One aspect of this grand clarifying moment for Christians […]

Take heed that no man deceive you – Part V

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The apostasy of the liberal Protestant churches in the early part of the twentieth century has now entered much of the evangelical church. The fundamentalist churches of that era that stayed true to the fundamentals of New Testament Christianity were demeaned and marginalized in a society that was becoming increasingly secular and humanistic. By the 1940s the fundamentalists emerged as neo-evangelicals and once again engaged the culture with the inerrant truth of God’s word. But as America progressed through the remainder of the century and into the twenty-first century, a large portion of the evangelical church had succumbed to the spirit of the age and slid into apostasy. The apostasy of Pope Francis described in Parts II through IV of this series centered on the […]

Take heed that no man deceive you – Part IV

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This series of articles deals with the great apostasy in the church during the end of the last days as described by Christ in Matthew 24. Perhaps there is no man alive that has accelerated the church’s descent into apostasy more than Pope Francis. He is aggressively pursuing a progressive, liberal agenda in an attempt to fundamentally change the face of the Catholic Church and its doctrines and teachings, and two recent initiatives reflect his agenda. The first was dealt with in Part III and concerned heretical views of Islam and its relationship with Christianity. This article deals with the actions of the Pope which have dramatically accelerated the ascendancy of the homosexual agenda in both the culture and the church. Homosexuality On July 28, […]

Take heed that no man deceive you – Part III

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The apostasy of Pope Francis has accelerated both in frequency and severity since the beginning of his papacy. This has caused a great turmoil within the Catholic Church between conservative dissidents and liberal supporters of the Francis papacy. His words and actions have caused growing alarm among many Catholics, and resistance to the Pope’s liberalization of the church is widespread among strict conservatives in the powerful Catholic hierarchy. This riff is being described by many as a culture war within the Catholic Church. American born Cardinal Raymond Burke is a staunch conservative and veteran Vatican bureaucrat who was recently demoted by Pope Francis. Burke has continued to openly warn the Pope that papal power “is not absolute…The pope does not have the power to change […]

Take heed that no man deceive you – Part II

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The leaders of the great apostasy are popular and well-respected by the majority of the church. Their defenders are legion, but as we examine the leaders of the great apostasy, it is well to remember the words of Christ. “And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.” [Matthew 24:11. KJV] Here Christ is speaking of the end of the last days before the rapture of the church. At that time a large portion of the Christian church will be in an apostate condition. Loyalty to God’s house, commitment to the truth of God’s word, and biblical righteousness (virtue, morality, justice, and decency) will be in a minority amongst those who profess to follow Christ. Apostate leaders will preach “new revelations” which will lead […]

Take heed that no man deceive you – Part I

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The Apostle Paul’s second letter to Thessalonians speaks of the great falling away from the Christian faith in last days of the age just before the rapture of the church. Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand. Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition…[2 Thessalonians 2:1-3. KJV] As the end of the last days nears, […]

The insidious nature of humanism

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The great majority of people who understand humanism and embrace its philosophies and worldview are atheists or at best non-theistic agnostics. They must be so for the Humanist Manifestos I and II state that they “…can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species…the human species is an emergence from natural evolutionary forces.”[1] Yet, over the last several decades millions of people who believe in the Christian God and the biblical creation have quietly and unknowingly incorporated many of the tenets of humanism into their worldviews. This number includes a large number of evangelical leaders and church members in America who have accepted these tenants because of the insidious nature of humanism. It is a sinister, treacherous, and deceptive philosophy whose followers have […]

Pacifist Christians in the Culture Wars – Part II

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Two paradigms for cultural engagement: persuasion v. warfare In his book Thriving in Babylon Larry Osborne describes two opposing paradigms of cultural engagement: persuasion and warfare. He has chosen Daniel of the Old Testament as the role-model for the persuasive, non-combative approach of Christians to a hostile culture. He describes those in the warfare paradigm as focusing on fighting the spread of sin on all fronts and who envision themselves as “frontline soldiers in a great spiritual battle between the forces of evil and those who uphold biblical values.”[1] Osborne believes that modern evangelicals who see the culture in terms of spiritual warfare have gotten it all wrong and should emulate Daniel. When the biblical authors speak of spiritual warfare, it’s always framed in the […]

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