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 is burned with fire; at your rebuke your people perish. Let your hand rest on the man at your right hand, the son of man you have raised up for yourself. Then we will not turn away from you; revive us, and we will call on your name. Restore us, O Lord God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved. [Psalm 80:14-19. NIV] [emphasis added]

The essence of revival of the […] Continue Reading…

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 twenty-first century church. Space does not allow more that a cursory mention of the more significant observations and findings with regard to some of the missing fundamentals of New Testament Christianity. A more extensive examination of these elements can be found in Evangelical Winter – Restoring New Testament Christianity.[1]

To a lesser or greater degree in many evangelical churches, the hallmarks of New Testament Christianity are no longer found. Before the church can make […] Continue Reading…

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 quest for a distorted cultural relevance); return of the church to New Testament Christianity by embracing all of its distinguishing elements; and revival of the body of Christ as it moves and operates in the full power of the Holy Spirit.

Resistance thinking

The church has been captured by the modern humanistic, secularized culture, and this captivity has led to fragmentation of the Christian worldview in the West. This captivity has resulted in a loss of […] Continue Reading…

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 years since that Oxford seminar, the professor’s prediction proved correct, and the “evangelicals and fundamentalists have embraced the modern world with a passion unrivaled in history.”[1]

The truth of this indictment is revealed by the in-depth examination in Part II of the condition of the American evangelical church as a result of its failure to resist the lure of the humanistic spirit of the modern age. The trends and direction of the evangelical church […] Continue Reading…

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 surveyed the religious trends in America, and the results were shocking. The first survey was a nationwide random sample of one thousand adult respondents 18 or older whose demographic profile reflects that of the United States. The second was a national public opinion survey of a sample of five hundred clergy who are part of ACFI’s panel of theologically conservative pastors. Both surveys were conducted in February 2017, and the results revealed the […] Continue Reading…