(Subscribers and readers of A Crooked Path — this place went silent for a number of days due to some technical problems. Which have been sorted. I apologize for the absence and not being able to publish letting folks know something was amiss. It’s supposed to be all better now. Or so I’m told — Ken Pullen, administrator of A Crooked Path).
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 2:3 — King James Version
Like a muddied spring or a polluted fountain is a righteous man who gives way before the wicked.
Proverbs 25:26 — English Standard Version
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
False Christs
For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Witnessing to All Nations
(Mark 13:10-13; Luke 21:10-19)
Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come.
Matthew 24:4-14 — King James Version
Let’s be exceedingly clear. Without any variation or debate. According to the inerrant and living word of God — no person is a Christian, no person is a child of God, no person is a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ who does not believe that Jesus is fully God and fully man. That Jesus is God. That the Lord Jesus Christ, Who came to this broken sin-filled earth in the flesh is part of the Godhead of Father, Son (Jesus the Lord), and Holy Spirit.
No person is a Christian, not truly, who thinks Roe v Wade is fine as it is and so is the murder of human babies created by the will, gift, and grace of God.
No person is a Christian, not truly, no matter what they might say, no matter how they may protest, no matter the jumble of unsound words they use who endorses and supports the practice of homosexuality and all the deviancy, all the perversion, all the immorality and abomination that act is.
No matter how they may speak or claim. No matter what church they attend. No matter their argument.
Go to the inerrant Word of God! Seek out the pure, true living Scripture! In it, each person will find unshakable truth that does not change with the decline of any society or the feelings or sinful desires of any people at any time in history! No person can add to or omit or alter the God-breathed words comprising the inerrant living and active Word of God!
Which is exceedingly clear on murder, on homosexuality and immorality, and all aspects of human sexuality including transgenderism.
Which is exceedingly clear on the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Messiah, is the God come to earth in the form of man — being fully God while also being fully man — to live, die and conquer death revealing the promise of eternal life for all who faithfully, obediently take up their cross and follow Him, OBEY Him, serve Him and submit to Him!
No matter what any individual may contort or attempt to shape and corrupt the words in the Holy Bible to suit their lusts, their evil that resides within them. With their itching ears turned to lies and false teachings adhering to the words of their false teachers which soothe their perverted, troubled dark spirits and souls whilst they contend with their tongues, lying, that they are Christians, that they are evangelical Christians! That they are a part of the healthy body of true believers with the Lord Jesus Christ as the Head.
We are in the midst of the great falling away. The great rebellion. The times when Satan has entered the church boldly and taken over many pastors, many so-called leaders, shepherds within what is called the modern times Christian churches.
When consistently 30% or more who claim to be evangelical Christians do not believe that the Lord Jesus Christ IS God, that the murder of human babies is a sin, and that the perverted acts of immoral homosexuality? We dear ones of the remnant, we are in the midst of the Great Falling Away.
There is little time remaining for this fallen broken, dark filled with lost souls consumed in lusts, sins, abominations, and lies world— and those are the many calling and imagining themselves Christians! Not even mentioning then the billions in this dark, sick, sin-filled lost world who don’t even consider or call themselves Christian!
I would never dare place a time, place a date upon the last day of world history as it has been known when the Lord Jesus Christ returns one more time.
But know this — His return is much closer and going to be sooner than later or never as so many believe.
We’re at war dear ones. A violent, thrashing, brutal war of all wars! The most important and longest-running war in world history! The spiritual war. Being waged, raging on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of every year within every person, around every person.
And we no live in the time in which over 30% of those professing to be evangelical Christians are anything but Christians.
Over 3 out of every 10.
What more of a sign, a wonder, an act that aligns with Scripture do people need to have them truly ni the Light, the Way, the Truth leading to the Life!? As they wallow in the darkness calling themselves “Christians!”
Woe to all who do not walk uprightly according to the unchangeable living Word of God.
We do not adapt God’s Word to suit our feelings, how we think things ought to be — we are to submit and if truly transformed? If truly renewed of mind and spirit? If truly converted? If truly a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ? We rush to the Lord’s feet, we rush to the Lord’s arms and humbly, joyfully, willingly submit to His will. His words. His teachings. His ways. Which are not difficult nor dated.
Not only has this world become more corrupted, more lost, more sinful and immoral over the past 60, 70 years — but what passes for Christianity and the Christian church has eroded, declined, decayed, and permitted Satan and his ministers to enter in and teach rather than keeping Christ at the Head and center following the unwavering, unchanging teachings of God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the apostles and the prophets as instruments of God for our edification, our learning, our protection, and strength. Our shield.
Sadly, far, far too many have been on the spiritual war battlefield claiming to be Christians while never ever putting on the whole armour of God (see Ephesians 6:10-18 and also see Romans 1:16-32), and thus they have easily fallen, easily been slain, and laid waste by the Evil One and all those in his throng.
A person cannot be a “Christian” while supporting, stating, or being neutral in denying that the Lord Jesus Christ not only was God but IS God! That the Lord Jesus Christ only experienced death for 3 days. Then He was resurrected fulfilling the Lord’s promise of eternal life! Jesus is the Living God! Jesus is a living part of the Godhead! A person cannot be in favor of the murder of children, of homosexuality, of sexual deviancies, and immoral acts and be counted or called “Christian” which denotes a true child of God rather than a child of the world, thus a child of the devil, nor do such beliefs and practices denote a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
No matter what any pastor, any person, any denomination, any church might write, say, or espouse.
The heart is revealed in the words, actions, beliefs of every individual. And if any individual heart rises in arrogance and disobedience to the whole Word of God that individual reveals clearly they are in opposition to God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit and thus cannot be one of Theirs.
Clearly. Period. No room for debate. No gray area.
Ken Pullen
Saturday, September 12th, 2020
ACP — A Crooked Path
Do We Even Know What An “Evangelical Christian” Is Anymore?
August 31, 2020
By Michael Snyder
Reprinted from The American Dream
Every four years, there is a tremendous amount of discussion about “evangelical voters” and the influence that they will have on the outcome of the presidential election. Most of the pundits on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News speak of evangelicals as if they were this monolithic group that all generally vote the same way and generally believe the same basic things. Perhaps that was somewhat true at one time, but now things have dramatically changed. As you will see below, surveys have found that large numbers of evangelicals are abandoning core evangelical beliefs at a rate that is staggering. In fact, it has gotten to a point where I am not even sure what an “evangelical Christian” is anymore.
I figured that a good place to look for a definition of “evangelical Christian” in 2020 would be on the official website of the organization that is supposed to be representing us on a national level. According to the National Association Of Evangelicals, there are certain distinct beliefs that set evangelical Christians apart from the rest of the population…
Evangelicals take the Bible seriously and believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The term “evangelical” comes from the Greek word euangelion, meaning “the good news” or the “gospel.” Thus, the evangelical faith focuses on the “good news” of salvation brought to sinners by Jesus Christ.
That definition seems quite soft to me, but let’s run with it.
Evangelicals are supposed to believe that Jesus is Lord, but it appears that nearly a third of them do not really understand what that means. According to one recent survey, a whopping 30 percent of all evangelicals believe that “Jesus isn’t God”…
More than half of American adults, including 30% of evangelicals, say Jesus isn’t God but most agree He was a great teacher, according to results from the 2020 State of Theology survey.
Even though the Bible and traditional teachings of the Christian Church hold that Jesus truly existed as both man and God, among the key findings of the biennial State of Theology survey from Ligonier Ministries conducted with LifeWay Research, is that 52% of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more.
Either evangelical churches are doing an exceedingly poor job of teaching basic theology, or evangelicals are rejecting that teaching in staggering numbers.
Let’s take a look at another issue.
According to a survey that was conducted last year, 61 percent of evangelical Christians want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade…
In a 2019 survey, most Americans (70%) said they oppose overturning Roe v. Wade. But several states have enacted laws designed to challenge the ruling in recent years, including bills passed in seven states (among them Louisiana) that seek to ban almost all abortions.
White evangelical Protestants (61%) are much more likely to say they want the high court to completely overturn Roe v. Wade than are Catholics (28%), white Protestants who are not evangelical (26%) and religious “nones” (10%).
It is great that evangelicals are more likely than any other group to want Roe v. Wade overturned, but why isn’t the number for evangelicals 100 percent?
According to the survey, 35 percent of evangelicals actually want the Supreme Court to keep Roe v. Wade in place.
But those two things should be mutually exclusive. If you are an evangelical Christian, it should be impossible for you to support Roe v. Wade.
How in the world could more than a third of all evangelicals want to keep abortion legal?
And when it comes to gay marriage, we see numbers that are even more alarming. The following comes from an article that was authored by Jim Denison…
Two reports caught my eye this week.
One: In 2007, 90 percent of evangelicals said their church forbid (63 percent) or strongly discouraged (27 percent) “homosexual behaviors.” In 2020, that figure has dropped to 65 percent (33.7 percent forbid, while 31.4 percent strongly discourage).
Two: In 2008, 34.4 percent of evangelicals between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five supported same-sex marriage. In 2018, that figure had risen to 56.1 percent.
How are these numbers possible?
In the old days, it was well understood that “evangelical Christians” were against abortion and gay marriage.
But now a new generation of “evangelical Christians” has come along that is changing all of the old definitions.
Like I said, I am not sure that I can even define what an “evangelical Christian” is anymore.
At this point, a lot of “evangelical Christian” young people don’t even like using words that directly relate to evangelism…
For example, 35% of young adults and 38% of teens said the word “convert” tops the list of objectionable mission-related words for them. And 31% of young adults and 30% of teens also rejected the term “winning souls.”
If you don’t believe in “converting” people or “winning souls”, how in the world can you even call yourself an “evangelical”?
I simply don’t understand.
Sadly, this is yet more evidence of the rapid decline of the Christian faith in much of the industrialized world. According to researcher Ronald F. Inglehart, this decline has really picked up speed since 2007…
But since 2007, things have changed with surprising speed. From about 2007 to 2019, the overwhelming majority of the countries we studied—43 out of 49—became less religious. The decline in belief was not confined to high-income countries and appeared across most of the world.
Growing numbers of people no longer find religion a necessary source of support and meaning in their lives. Even the United States—long cited as proof that an economically advanced society can be strongly religious—has now joined other wealthy countries in moving away from religion.
And the decline in the United States has been particularly noticeable. According to Inglehart, since 2007 the U.S. has moved away from religion faster than any other country…
From 1981 to 2007, the United States ranked as one of the world’s more religious countries, with religiosity levels changing very little. Since then, the United States has shown the largest move away from religion of any country for which we have data. Near the end of the initial period studied, Americans’ mean rating of the importance of God in their lives was 8.2 on a ten-point scale. In the most recent U.S. survey, from 2017, the figure had dropped to 4.6, an astonishingly sharp decline.
In a recent interview with Dr. Steve Greene, I discussed the fact that God has been trying to call this nation back to himself for a very long time, but we have been racing the other direction.
The numbers that I have just shared with you are evidence that we desperately need revival, and that is what we should be praying for.
Because the only hope for America is a return to God, and right now that is definitely not happening.
