Many words in this age have become corrupted and perverted. Satan using the tongues and minds of many to aid him, add to the confusion, the lies, the mayhem, and noise in his constant attempt to draw people away from God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the truth.

And far too many listen to him. Just as Eve did in the Garden of Eden. No different. Except one occasion happened a while ago and the others are happening recently. Today. And tomorrow…

The Great Falling Away is well underway.

The Great Apostasy is well along in its work of supplanting the truth with false teachers and their unsound false doctrines. Their serving Satan as they stand in the pulpits proclaiming they are Christian.

Words and their true meanings matter.

But not so much to many these days. Permitting the corruption, perversion of language at an alarming rate. And seeming to have no problem, no understanding of their doing wrong in doing so. They call it progress. Working towards a more “tolerant” “inclusive” “compassionate” and a better world.

I will have to give an accounting before the Lord as will everyone. Everyone. And I certainly would not want to have to in my accounting, where no shading, no lying, no tweaking, no excuses will come out from the tongues being judged have to confess before the Lord — can you begin to understand the massive meaning and impact of that? BEFORE THE LORD! — have to confess why I determined to disobey Him and His Word and to serve Satan in the perversion and corruption of language, in the corruption and perversion of what being a disciple means, what being a Christian means and to rather adopt the worldview and ways over the Biblical view and ways.

Serve the world, and thus Satan.

Or serve the Lord. And His Word. His ways. In obedience which means RESISTANCE to everything the world comes up with. Holding firmly to the FAITH, which means THE WORD OF GOD.

All of it. Every word within the Word. Not wavering. Not falling for the lie the modern age is different from any other and thus the church must adapt and fit the times.

Just another lie — and one from which many will eternally die. Remain cut off from God.

Words matter.

Thoughts matter.

Actions have consequences. Every single one. The small and the large.

God knows all. God sees all. God hears all. God is what it’s all about my friends.

And words such as “evangelical,” “evangelism,” “born again,” and such have been as corrupted and perverted in this post-Christian age have been.

Want clarity? To understand clearly? To RIGHTLY DIVIDE? Then go to the Word of God. Go to the source. In prayer. In and with an open heart. A trusting heart. In faith. And learn, take hold of, and do not waver. More concerned about the judgment of others here on earth over the coming judgment from God.

Forget the labels and categories.

Learn what it is to be and then be a true disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Learn what it is to be and then be a true child of God.

Learn what it is to be truly regenerated, transformed, and renewed — made into a new being — by the Supernatural power of the Spirit of God. And then live that way. For eternity.

Fighting the good fight, and it is more than a knock-down-drag-out kicking and screaming fight every person is in here. This is war. Stop the passive soft mindset and adopt the mind of one being at war, in a war, not on the sidelines. Not merely watching something on TV.

This is reality. We’re all in this escalating spiritual war. And we’re either fighting daily for the Lord and His Word and ways — or we’re permitting the Enemy to gain ground and cause more casualties.

Ken Pullen

Wednesday, August 11th, 2021

ACP — A Crooked Path

Mainline Church Decline and Evangelical Exile (Audio)

8/9/2021

By John Stonestreet & Shane Morris

Reprinted from BREAKPOINT

Dotting many U.S. main streets are the steeples and towers of beautiful and historic buildings, originally built as houses of worship. From its founding, mainline denominations gave America a kind of Protestant consensus, much of our nation’s charity, many of its most prestigious schools, and a significant number of congressional leaders and even presidents. Today, many of these buildings, especially those draped with rainbow flags, lie empty. On Sundays, only a small number of worshipers, mostly white and grey-haired, sit in the pews.

Back in 2017, missiologist Ed Stetzer made a dramatic prediction in the Washington Post. “If it doesn’t stem its decline,” he wrote, “Mainline Protestantism has just 23 Easters left.” Stetzer blamed the Mainline church’s impending extinction on abysmally low birth rates, and the fact that many of them long ago “abandoned central doctrines that were deemed ‘offensive’ to the surrounding culture.”

However, last month a new survey from the Public Religion Institute challenged Stetzer’s prediction. Called “The 2020 Census of American Religion,” the report claimed that Mainline churches in America have experienced a dramatic recovery. According to this survey of 50,000 Americans, Mainline Protestants grew from 13 percent of the population five years ago to over 16 percent in 2020. Meanwhile, evangelicals seem to have entered rapid decline, tumbling from 23 percent of the U.S. population in 2006 to just 14 percent in 2020.

Over at The New Yorker, Bill McKibben celebrated the “unlikely rebound” of Mainline Protestantism, and made conclusions that a political shift had happened in American Christianity.

Others joined the celebration. Progressive church historian Diana Bass Butler declared, “A really important moment is here. The story of an old religious tradition hasn’t ended the way critics once thought.” Paraphrasing Monty Python she joked, “We’re ‘not dead yet,’ we’ve just been awaiting resurrection.”

However, as Lyman Stone of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out, the methodology used by the PRRI survey suffers from serious flaws. For example, all self-identifying white Christians who did not use the labels “evangelical” or “born again” were categorized as “white mainline Protestants.” Stone called this categorization “bonkers,” a little like assuming that anyone who doesn’t identify as a New York Yankees fan must prefer hockey. More importantly, the terms “evangelical” and “born again” are “generationally-coded” as Stone puts it, not reliable indicators of beliefs or denominational affiliation. In fact, Stone points out, around 40 percent of members in evangelical churches would not describe themselves as “born again,” while 20 percent of those in Mainline bodies would. A conservative resurgence in a handful of the mainline denominations would also be a problem for PRRI’s methodology.

A better measure of evangelical affiliation, suggest Stone and Stetzer, is what’s known as the Bebbington Quadrilateral. David Bebbington, a British historian, distinguished evangelical identity by four essential beliefs: Biblicism, crucicentrism (a focus on Christ’s atoning work on the cross), conversionism (believing that human beings need to be saved at a personal level), and activism.

Any announcement of a resurgence of Mainline liberalism is premature and probably exaggerated. These aging, shrinking communions will probably become irrelevant within our lifetimes, but it’s not because evangelical Christianity is “winning” in any real sense. Liberal churches are shrinking because they are impossible to distinguish from the larger culture. Why get up and go to church on the weekend when the same teaching is available on NPR every day of the week? At the same time, evangelicalism is suffering an identity crisis featuring high-profile deconversions, scandals, and theological anemia. How many evangelical churches today could be described by Bebbington’s four essentials? In some ways evangelicalism may be repeating the mistakes of mainline liberalism.

Recently, on the Colson Center’s Upstream podcast, my colleague Shane Morris spoke with Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, about the so-called “rebound” of Mainline churches. As a longtime member and observer of United Methodism, Mark gave a spirited defense of the good Mainline Protestant churches did in American history, and explained why permanent cultural exile isn’t something evangelicals should be celebrating.

Resources:

True Evangelism 

The rapid decline of White evangelical America?
 
How to Reach the West (Again)
 
Why Revival is America’s Only Hope!
 
‘Evangelical’ Lutheran Church Descends Into Complete Apostasy
 
Three Dangers Currently Confronting Evangelicals
 
MACARTHUR: How ‘Evangelical’ Is The Evangelical Movement?
 
What can today’s evangelicals learn from John Stott, 100 years after his birth?