When I read the news and reports of the vast span of wickedness, and the growing vacillation and cowardice of leaders, I wonder how so many millions of professing Christians can maintain their compromise with nonchalance. I realize that millions of individuals are on drugs to eliminate guilt and control their mood swings. But could that alone be the reason so many professing Christians confidently and casually ignore the insanity of stark, wicked behavior in secular society with malignant apostasy in Christianity? What will it take to awaken them?

The fact is, America’s world system has gone far down a dark path to convergence with apostate Christianity and false religions. No amount of pontificating is going to change it now. We are well beyond critical mass and there is no going back. Warnings about this convergence have gone forth for years. However, the great sleep of death has arrived. Professing Christians (PCs) refuse to wake up, repent, return to their first love, and infect the world with truth and the influence of godliness. If they won’t do that, the horrendous consequences are inevitable.

My point is that the secular society has always done whatever it wished to do. The only factor that abates that determination is fiery Christianity. Now that Christianity is primarily apostate, the restraints have been removed. Evidence in the collapse and failure of Christian influence is evident in PCs being willing to do whatever they must to have a political savior. God already sent us a true Savior, and the means to be light and salt to the world. But the light is a flicker and the salt has lost its savor. All that is left the hope of legislating morality. Good luck with that plan because luck is its only hope for success.

If people who claim to be Christians do not have enough passion for and dedication to God to affect their share of society, they should not expect politics or a politician to save them. Every Christian and Christian leader must do what it takes to be fire-bathed, truth-speaking, irritating, agitating, nemeses of spiritual doldrums, heresy, deception, and apostasy. They need to lay down their toys and pick up the rod of God. All efforts should be focused on exhorting fellow PCs to repent and return to God. Otherwise, our society will be infected with much worse than the present flagrant and unadulterated wickedness. Pedophiles are kicking at the gate.

Sadly, too many professing Christians have joined the great herd in a mad rush to escape reality. They are blasé about the raging danger of the present hour. The watchmen are writing and speaking warnings, but the faces of PCs glow with surly condescension as they turn their backs. Tribulation is swirling at the door. It is tearing the shingles off the house. The windows are rattling, the shutters are banging, and the siding is slapping. The majority of PCs are partying inside as if they can endure its fullness by ignoring it. They are religious elitists ignorantly expecting God to snatch them away before the storm crashes in with its catastrophic results.

Here is the harsh truth. If a pre-tribulation rapture occurred next Sunday morning, I believe that millions would depart from China, India, parts of Africa, certain areas of the Mid-East, et cetera.  However, there would not be enough PCs depart from America and most of the rest of Christendom to make it news worthy. I doubt that a single soul would be missing from the Vatican and most churches, including Episcopalian, Seeker/Emergent, et cetera. Teleheriticswould vehemently deny from their mega church pulpits and on television that it had occurred.    Continue reading

The number of prayer requests from people having a really difficult time sometimes overwhelms me. Some are dealing with being out of a job, and other ones are fighting to stay alive or have a loved one in that battle. Whether it is life threatening or non-life-threatening, there is still stress, a sense of helplessness, and an overwhelming desire to do something to end the trial or reduce it to a livable level. Anyone who has been in harsh trial knows that it doesn’t come to a finish by our timetable. So we often cry for help.

I have pity for people who do not know God, and that have never had the experience of the Holy Spirit comforting their souls. They do not know the One that is at the other end of a genuine prayer of faith. Their almost immediate response when something knocks their life into a spin is to find a solution in the world system. They turn to alcohol, to a doctor for a prescription drug that will dull the effect of what they are dealing with, or illegal drugs that shut out reality by making them unable to recognize it. But that’s like sleeping drunk in a pen full of snakes. They’ll still be there when they wake up and will likely strike if they move.

Someone may ask, “Okay, so people of the world have hardships, but why do bad things happen to Christians?” As Solomon wrote long ago, “time and chance happens to us all.” Although the true Christian may avoid many of the dangers associated with sinfulness, we are susceptible to the woes that come with living in a sin-cursed world. We get sick, have accidents, and may suffer because of someone else’s mistakes or bad decisions, or we may die. Christ warned us that in the world we would have tribulation.

But here’s my point. Lost people must try to make do with what is available to them in this temporalness. However, the child of God reaches into eternity when the desperation of a crushing trial drapes its smothering dread around his or her shoulders. It doesn’t always end the trial, but we find strength to endure until we can come out the other side of it.

I remember when I was in a trial so brutal and suffocating that I literally reached the end of my hope. No matter how long I live I will never forget its crush on my spirit. I thought I was tough, that I could stand no matter how difficult the battle became. But I was wrong. I was out of options and out of hope. All that I could do was to stumble out the back door, go halfway down the porch steps, sit down and say, “God, I hurt.” Then I wept profusely. God gave me the strength to endure it.

Why did God let me go through that? For what possible good purpose was it that one of His children should suffer to such a degree? The answer is that some changes that must occur in us can only happen painfully. Additionally, some experiences essential to understanding how to effectively use the gifts God imparts to us are acquired with pain.

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