[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 ago (1966). But Lennon won’t be the last and he certainly wasn’t the first to predict the demise of Christianity and the Church.
However mild and reasoned their protestations against God and His church are in the beginning, skeptics invariably end with the creature murdering his Creator. The anti-God philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) thought this the most promising and glorious event in human history. He continued his vitriolic harangue about the death of God to the end of his life from a padded cell in a Venetian insane asylum.[2]
What if our modern skeptics could be transported back in time and allowed to stand at the back of the crowds and listen to and observe Jesus during His earthly ministry, eavesdrop on His private conversations as He taught His disciples, and follow Him as He trod down dusty paths and ministered to people along the way such as the Samaritan woman at the well. Would a seeing-is-believing moment change their opinion as to the longevity of the church of Jesus? No, they would have been like the pagan rulers and religious elite of Jesus’ day who most certainly believed that the itinerant preacher who claimed to be the Son of God and his little congregation of twelve were undoubtedly destined for failure, and sooner rather than later. They would call this little church anything except “The Church triumphant.”
They had multiple reasons for their skepticism. The church did not have the right venue to be successful. It was located in a troublesome little backwater country on the fringes of the Roman Empire. The preacher had little formal education and obviously was not born to wealth and privilege. He was the son of a carpenter and trained as a carpenter. Rumor was that the carpenter may not have been His real father. Even members of his own family thought him delusional. The members of His congregation were not found on the social registers of the day. Most of these men would be called blue-collar workers in today’s vernacular—fishermen and other low-ranking occupations and one hated tax collector. Above all, the preacher’s message was too demanding and short on benefits in this life. He called His followers to a life of surrender, sacrifice, and death to self. He told them that in this life they would be hated of men, persecuted, and that many would be killed for their faith. And He was always in trouble with the establishment—both political and religious.
After only three years of ministry, the preacher was executed on a Roman cross, and his little band of followers went into hiding. The skeptics must have felt assured that their original predictions of the demise of the little church had been justified. The skeptics stooped to etch an epitaph on the tombstone being prepared for the little church. It read, “The Church humiliated.” And the skeptics would have been correct except for one thing. The itinerant preacher really was the Son of God.
The Church triumphant
Why did Jesus’ followers believe He was the Son of God? Was it blind faith? Low intelligence? Lack of education? Hysteria? Wishful thinking? Delusion? Kevin Swanson gives us the correct answer. His followers knew Jesus had defeated death and that only God could do that.
It is an indisputable fact: the Lord Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and He is reigning as sovereign Lord on the right hand of the Father, until all of His enemies are under His footstool. For the Christian this is the historical fact by which all other previous and future events are to be understood. It is the most important historical fact of all. Marx and Nietzsche hated this historical reality, and they fought it with all that they had within them…
However the future is viewed, there is no avoiding one stubborn, historical fact—Jesus Christ has risen from the dead, and His kingdom will never fail. Faithless men will put together eschatological scenarios that ignore this fact. Faithless men will minimize the antithesis or compromise with it. Faithless men will give too much credence to the antithesis and not enough to Christ. Contrary to John Lennon’s premature pronouncements, this is not the end of Christian influence in the world. It is only the beginning.[3] [emphasis in original]
The Church and the end of the age
In light of the seeming meltdown of Christianity in America and the Western world, many Christians are exceedingly distraught about the future. Although Christians should be greatly disturbed and dismayed at what is happening in America, they should never be fearful of the future and never believe that the church has been defeated. The words of Isaiah assure God’s people of His and their ultimate victory. “So shall they fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun. When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the LORD shall lift up a standard against him.” [Isiah 59:19. KJV] Even when the ungodly rule the land, Daniel reminds us that God is in charge of the times and seasons and that He removes kings and sets up kings (See: Daniel 2:21). Thus we know that God is sovereign and that He orders the affairs of men in all ages.
As the last scenes of history play out, proud, boastful, and seemingly independent man is oblivious to the reality that he is being drawn as though by a hook in his nose to the prophetic conclusion of the age. Mankind is on its last downward slide and nears the end of the last days. The Bible’s itinerary for a sin-filled world cannot be ignored or changed as it nears its final destination. There is no escaping it. The only questions that remain are the final dispositions of the lives of men and women living at this defining moment in history. Nations are also being sifted, tested, and tried to determine the final outworking of events within each before His soon return.
The circumstances and events in the political, economic, and social arenas that Christians see as disastrous for the church are only passing scenes in the unfolding drama that God is directing as the end of the age approaches. Nations that turn their back on God and His laws are paying a high price for their disobedience. Although Christians are aliens in a foreign and hostile land, they are also citizens of these earthly regimes and will also suffer because of their nation’s descent into wickedness. Even now the body of Christ (the Church) in many nations is experiencing a measure of this suffering before the rapture. But the church must never forget that its real home is in the wonderful and eternal presence of God. His purposes in allowing these momentary afflictions are often beyond our ability to comprehend, but He has assured His followers that, “…all things work together for the good to them that love God, to them who are called according to his purpose.” [Romans 8:28. KJV]
Becoming impossible people
Satan is attempting to destroy the church through the destruction of the Christian culture of America and all of Western civilization. He and his evil empire oppose righteousness, weaken the church through compromise, debauch the truth of God’s word in the minds of men, and pollute the land with a vile stream of wickedness that is flowing into every facet of life. Knowing this, Christians who in the world’s eyes are “impossible people” must have
…hearts that can melt with compassion, but with faces like flint and backbones of steel who are unmanipulable, unbribable, undeterrable and unclubbable (i.e., coercion through comfortable conformity), without ever losing the gentleness, the mercy, the grace and the compassion of our Lord.[4]
Perhaps the best advice for the church in this troublesome age comes from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. First, he makes certain that we understand who the real enemy is that the church battles. Then, he tells it how to prepare for battle.
For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. [Ephesians 6:12-13. RSV]
In his commentary, Donald Stamps gives our modern minds insight into what Paul is saying.
Satan and a host of evil spirits are the spiritual rulers of the world. They empower ungodly men and women to oppose God’s will and attack believers. They form a “vast multitude and are organized into a highly systematized empire of evil…”[5]
The church must confront this empire of evil and does so by putting on the whole armor of God (see Ephesians 6:13-17). And when the battle is heated and defeat seems near at hand, having done all, the Church must continue to stand. It can do so because that itinerate preacher who trod the hills and valleys of ancient Palestine two thousand years ago really was the Son of God, and his kingdom will never fail.
Larry G. Johnson
Sources:
[1] Kevin Swanson, Apostate – The Men who Destroyed the Christian West, (Parker, Colorado: Generations with Vision, 2013), p. 277.
[2] Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), p. 11.
[3] Swanson, pp. 289-290.
[4] Os Guinness, Impossible People – Christian Courage and the Struggle for the Soul of Civilization, (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2016), pp. 31-32.
[5] Donald C. Stamps, Study Notes and Articles, The Full Life Study Bible – New Testament, King James Version, gen. ed. Donald C. Stamps, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1990), p.439.
