If just one-tenth of the churches in our generation had been true to their ordained commission, the world today would have been ten times less wicked. This estimate is analogous, but it has a Biblical principle. The Bible says that five of God’s people will pursue a hundred of their enemies, and a hundred will chase ten thousand. That is, if the chosen people obeyed God. But if not, one enemy will chase a thousand of God’s people, and two will put ten thousand of the chosen ones to flight. Lev 26:8, Deut 32:30.
According to a 2011 Pew Research Center survey, there were more than 3.2 billion Christians around the world in 2010, more than three times as many as the 600 million recorded in 1910. Over the 2010-2050 period, Christians will remain the largest religious group with around 31% of the world’s population. By 2050, Christianity will be the first to reach 3 billion. More than 3.4 billion people will be Christians then, according to the Gordon Conwell projections. Taking those figures, there are about three people for every ten non-Christians. And if these Christians had really been doing their job, then how dramatic would have been the change in the world’s state today!
But what do we see in reality? Just look at your city, your country. Are the people more friendly, do you find them more helpful, more loving than they were ten or twenty years ago? Look at the major nations of Christianity, the US and the UK. These nations have become so Godless, violent, and sinful, that what Billy Graham said is becoming more prophetically true each day. Billy Graham said, ‘If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.’
The pandemic forced the churches to close down their services. The mammoth halls where praise and worship sessions were conducted with such fervor have fallen silent. Christmas shopping is become subdued, the boisterous merriness is gone. And, despite the prayers of Christians everywhere, God does not seem the least inclined to intervene and let the churches resume their services and the Christian singers start crooning on the stages. Sooner or later, they will, and the churches and the pastors and the preachers and the prophets will be back to business as usual. The halleluiahs and hosannas will resound from the worship halls again. Christianity will resume its global evangelization, and continue to grow in every nation. And as they grow, the world continues to accelerate toward doomsday, because more people everywhere are forsaking God and turning to wickedness.
But you, if you are a follower of Christ, can be different from the mainstream Christians. You, as an individual or a family, can draw closer to God as the world draws further away from God, and as Christianity becomes increasingly less effective in saving the world from the prophesied endtime destructions. As the churches become louder in their worship sessions and broader in their evangelizations, without causing any real change in the hearts of the people, you can become more Christlike in the sight of God.
In a sermon in 1905, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, said, “Our Christianity – yours and mine – has become a falsehood and a disgrace.” He said that more than a hundred years ago. How much more has Christianity become a disgrace to the name of Christ today!
You don’t have to be part of the Christianity that has become a falsehood and a disgrace. You can turn your heart to God today, and ask him to show you how you can grow as an individual Christian who is a joy and delight to the heart of your Savior.
Pappa Joseph 