The Lukewarm Church, or Failure to Report. Part 2

First, let me apologize. In my last post, I reported that the Wycliffe Translators had "over 1700 languages" yet to translate. After publishing said post, I went to get my mail. I found the recent copy of their newsletter In Focus (Vol. 23, No. 2) wherein I read the following statement:

"Pray for the remaining languages that still likely need Bible translation to begin--under 1700 worldwide!"

I stand corrected. Obviously this is underreporting by myself.

I have, since the last post, also seen several small, but encouraging signs, consisting of reports regarding the strengthening of the Church, and the furtherance of the spread of the gospel, including to unreached people groups. Small but significant steps to be sure. We aren't on fire yet, but we are warming up. "The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."

So, is failure to report the news of increased activity in advancing the Church's mission of preaching the Gospel to every nation, people, tribe, and tongue (Mat.t 28:19; Rev. 5;9) the real issue? Well, it is probably at least part of it.

On the part of the Church itself, I think that we have a tendency to refrain from "tooting our own horn" on matters like this. This attitude of humility, hopefully inspired by our Lord Himself, is indeed a Christ-like trait. I do find a renewed, yet somewhat subdued excitement regarding our mission in the world, including this aspect of it. Yet I continue to marvel, whenever I bring up this subject, how many act as though they are being introduced to it for the first time. Furthermore, I am surprised at how many have mistakenly been taught that this all-important task has been complete.

I continue to be persuaded that our efforts are being underreported by the mainstream media in particular. For one reason, they just don't care! I think that secretly, and often even openly, they look upon evangelical Christianity as a quaint, irrelevant offshoot of political conservatism that doesn't particularly deserve their attention regardless of what we do, or how newsworthy it may be.

A second, and perhaps more disturbing reason may be (and I'm speculating here)  that they do realized that, quaint and irrelevant (to them) though we may be, we were able to help in overthrowing their candidate of choice in the last election. Those of them who recognize this perhaps secretly fear us and our political influence on the undecided voters, and if they do not allow us a voice we will influence fewer of those who are uncommitted ideologically, or perhaps may even sway some of those who formerly espoused their ideology and are disheartened in how that ideology has failed to work itself out in real life.

In any case, I have heard and read enough since the last post (largely in Christian media) to lead me to believe that we are not dealing with the "Lukewarm Church". At least not yet.

Please  bear with me in the weeks and months ahead. We have entered that busy time of year where it is harder for me to post regularly. I hope to take a little more time off (due to Doctor appointments) this year and perhaps will be able to squeeze in a couple extra posts in the process.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.

The Lukewarm Church, or Failure to Report? Part 1

"I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say , I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."        Revelation 3:15-17. (ESV)

I have long thought that the letters to the seven Churches of Revelation represent a total overview of the condition of the whole Church in any and all eras of history. This unlike many of  my peers who try to look at them as seven progressive descriptions of the condition of the church in seven progressive eras of history.

In the past, I have had occasion to rethink my positions on numerous biblical issues. I have begun, in just the past few days to rethink this position. It still seems awkward to me, at best, to try to make the other six churches fit into the particular eras of history in which these interpreters wish to place them. It kind of reminds me of trying to fit a size six shoe on a size nine foot! The only thing that they have in common is that they are feet, and that they belong in a shoe!

The reason I am wondering if I am wrong about my interpretation is that today's Church seems to be indifferent, lukewarm if you will, to the challenge that is before them. Moreover, I am failing to see any evidence to the contrary.

In recent days we have had a tremendous door of opportunity open before us. The persecution of the Obama era (yes, that is an exaggeration, but only a slight one) and the potential continuation of that persecution under Mrs. Clinton has been temporarily stayed. Instead of occupying ourselves with self-defense and self-preservation, we now have opportunity to focus on the task before us of taking the gospel to ". . . every nation, people, tribe, and language . . ." (Rev. 5:9).

So the question that I am asking myself which gives rise to this two-part series is: "Is the Church becoming lukewarm in the pursuit of our Christ-given mission, or is the world of media simply failing to report what we are doing? It could be either one, frankly, and my jury is presently still out as to which it actually is. I am increasingly troubled, however, that I am seeing no indication that we are making progress toward bringing the good news to the unreached people-groups.

In this first segment, I will explore the thought of the lukewarm Church.

There seems, first of all, to be a total lack of awareness that this all-important task is as of yet unfinished. In talking with others, there seems to be a pervasive, but erroneous belief that this task has been long-since completed. As I have pointed out many times in the past, nothing could be farther from the truth! I haven't checked Wycliffe recently, but the last time I did they were over 1700 languages short (check my post of January, 2016, "What Part of the word, "glosses" don't you understand" for a brief overview). And speaking of Wycliffe, even they don't seem as excited about completing this task as perhaps they should be. The exact number of untranslated languages can be a bit hard to find on their website, and usually requires a bit of exploration. It seems to me that the countdown to zero should be prominently featured on their homepage.

As I have also pointed out in the past, few, if any missionary organizations are making mention of progress in this regard. Most, if they are reporting any progress at all, are reporting increasing numbers in areas where they are already operating. I am currently a Southern Baptist. Our foreign missions organization is probably the largest in the world. The literature that is coming from them to the churches indicates not only that they are not reaching out to unreached language-people groups, but that they are not even so much as setting goals to do so. It is as if they are totally unaware that there is even such a thing as an unreached people group. This seems to be typical of the attitude I see  expressed (or being failed to express) in literature of other missionary organizations.

As, I stated, this may be a case of failure to report what is really going in the missionary world. I will explore that idea in my next post. In the meantime, let us pray that the Lord will send forth laborers to the harvest, and that we will not be lukewarm and indifferent to the important task before us.

This state of lukewarmness goes beyond indifference to missionary outreach. As I have also pointed out in previous posts, we are indifferent to the pursuit of the things that make us different from the world at large. We gauge our blessings in terms of material wealth. Many of our Churches even measure their success by their attendance and the size of their offerings. As our Lord says to the church  Laodicea above:

"you say , I am rich, I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked." 

Does that sound like us, or what?

Let us pray that we will not be like the lukewarm church like Laodicea. Let us pray that we will approach our mission and our life and witness before our own communities as our Lord has commissioned us to do.

Let us also pray for the peace of Jerusalem (and all of Israel)

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.

A Word from Isaiah

A few days ago I began reading in Isaiah once again. Starting with the very first chapter I began to read words that seem particularly appropriate to what is going on in the Church these days.

In my post entitled "Hucksters" (19 February, 2017) in addition to talking about  some televangelists
(and probably some other churchmen), I mentioned what I called the "give-in-order-to-get" crowd, who are inappropriately focused on what they can get out of their religious practices.

These would be encompassed in the group that God addresses through Isaiah in chapter one. I should quote almost the entire chapter, as it is appropriate in its entirety to what I believe God is saying to many of His people today. I will not quote it this extensively. I do encourage you to read it in its entirety, but for now we will focus on this following passage:

"Hear the word of the Lord, . . . Give ear to the teaching of out God . . .

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?" says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls, or of lambs, or of goats.

When you come to appear before Me, who has required of you this trampling of My courts?

Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me.
New moon and Sabbath and the calling of convocations--  I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.

Your new moons and your solemn feasts My soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.

When you spread out your hands, I will hide My eyes from you;
even though you make many prayers, I will not listen;
your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil deeds from before my eyes;

Cease to do evil, learn to do good;
seek justice;

correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless;
plead the widow's cause."

(Isaiah 1:10-17 ESV)

Clearly He was speaking to a group of folks who thought they could please Him by their religious activities. This not only included the giving of their offerings, but also the observance of their commanded rituals, their "church attendance" and the offering of their prayers. The problem was that they did not allow this religious activity, and the message it carried to effect their everyday life. The Lord Yahweh was fed up with their rituals and practices (which, remember, He had ordained Himself that they observe). They were missing the point entirely! The point was that they needed to lead righteous lives; changed lives, if you will, and to be the people that He had directed them to be in the world.

One point He makes early on is that He will not heed their prayers because their "hands are full of blood". Are our hands full of blood? Here in Des Moines, it seems to me that we are experiencing a higher than usual number of murders and other bloodshed. I am proud to say that many local Christian leaders are standing against this trend and trying to reverse this trend in this community.

As I have traveled through several communities between here and Arizona recently, I did not find this to be the case. Not only did I see many instances where violence and bloodshed was overlooked in various communities, but have heard of instances where it was excused, if not outright condoned by religious leaders. "Brethren, these things ought not to be" (James 3:10). We need, as these leaders here are doing, to be standing against these things at all costs!

In order to prevent this thing from going on too long, I will not go line-by-line in this text, but I will point out that He goes on to say that we need to "cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice; [and]correct oppression" I don't think that these require exposition. I do think that they require application in our society today.

We, as Christians should be out in front, leading the charge in fighting violence, opposing oppression, seeking justice and doing good. Our Lord, Jesus told us that we are to be "salt and light" and that if we fail to be this, we are good for nothing (Matthew 5:13-16).

Let us rise to the challenge (and indeed it is a great challenge) and let Him lead us to be the Church that He intends us to be.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.

Caring for the Environment

It is easy to be put off by the secular humanists and their worship of nature and the environment to the point that we reject the idea of caring for nature and the responsibility of stewardship  that God has given us as caretakers of His creation, but we should not do this.

Having grown up in the Boy Scouts, and in a setting where I spent a lot of time hunting, fishing, camping and enjoying the outdoors with my family has made an "environmentalist" out of me (we used to call ourselves "conservationists" but I guess that wasn't dignified enough for today's crowd).

In my post of March 29, 2014 entitled "The Environmental Crisis", which I invite you to read in its entirety, I wrote the following:

"I believe that we have been, and continue to be, poor stewards of our planet’s environment . . . I believe that when God said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it.” (Genesis 1:28), it was a responsibility that was given us. It was our first job assignment from God. The first assigned duty of mankind was to care for the earth. It is unfortunate that the words often translated in describing our relationship to our environment in Genesis 1, such as “subdue” and “dominion” carry with them a negative connotation. I believe that God is simply telling us to take charge, and be the caretaker. No one likes an abusive person in charge of anything. We are to use and to manage, not to abuse it. The unfortunate truth going forward is that we have abdicated our responsibility to manage, and have degenerated into exploiters of our environment or at best, indifferent to what is going on around us.

In the New Testament we are told that the fall of mankind also resulted in the corruption of the remainder of creation. We are further assured that the redemption of mankind will also bring about the redemption of creation by the will of God:

"For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subject to [depravity], not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself would be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now."       Romans 8;19-22 (ESV)

I am writing this today for two reasons. First, it is becoming clear that the protection of the environment is diminishing in its prominence as a national issue. I am not sure that this is a bad thing. We have certainly had a one-size-fits-all approach to the environment in recent years that has come down from the top; from the federal level. I believe that the states, and the local governments are in a much better position to determine and act upon their local concerns than someone in Washington, DC, who has never operated in these local environments. We have often assumed as well that the local governments would be negligent in their care for the environment, and would let economic issues override environmental issues. I believe that this is a false presumption.

Second, I have both met, and heard people in recent weeks who have expressed a failure to understand the importance of this responsibility to care for the natural world in which we live. Indeed, we frequently hear the phrase "job-killing" applied to environmental protections.

It does not help this cause that many so-called "environmentalists" have shown a propensity to go overboard in ways that have polarized the situation. Al Gore and the "climate change" folks being a case in point.

As we said above, this is a responsibility that has been given us by our Father, God, and He has not lowered His expectations to match our immediate economic needs. I am a firm believer that if we forego economic advantage to do the right thing, He will provide for our needs.

In the process of preparing this post, I came across these two passages that tell of perhaps a similar problem in attitude toward the environment that ancient Israel had,  which may parallel some of our attitudes today:

"How long is the land to mourn and the vegetation of the countryside to wither for the wickedness of those who dwell in it? Animals and birds have been snatched away because men have said "He will not see our latter ending"         (Jeremiah 12:4 NASB)

"Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard; they have trampled down my portion ; they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness. . . The whole land is made desolate, but no man lays it to heart."          (Jeremiah 12:10-11 ESV)




Let us all resolve to be good stewards and to be true to God's first assignment and care for this world of which He has left us in charge. I believe He will hold us accountable for this, don't you?

Pray for the peace of Israel.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.

Why Hillary Lost the Election

OK, I said that I was going to leave the political thing alone, but I saw and heard something yesterday that I just can't let go by!

When I signed on my computer yesterday morning, my MSN start page had the headline stating that Hillary Clinton gave an interview to the New York Time in which she cited four factors beyond her control that caused her defeat in her presidential bid. Later, on the network news, they played an excerpt of that interview which I also watched.

While I usually don't pay much attention to Hillary anymore, I was curious to see if she had actually figured out why she had lost the election. She hadn't. I was basically the same old "sour grapes" thing that she had been doing since the morning after, with perhaps a more specific twist.

The article cited the four factors as:

• Russian meddling in the election
• The FBI investigation at the time of the election.
• WikiLeaks "theft" of her emails
• And last, but not least "misogyny" (and just in case there is anyone who is unfamiliar with that seldom used term, I invite you to look it up, but basically it means that she thinks she lost because she was a woman).

As I said, she doesn't have a clue!

I stated in my post-election post of November 2016 "The Election and the Direction Revisited . . ." that the real reason that Donald Trump was elected was the intervention of God, who has a specific purpose for this President and for our nation in this process. I stick with this opinion, and I invite you to read, or re-read this post for my thoughts about this matter.

On another level, however, I cannot help but reflect in a more pragmatic tone that certain reasons that were particularly meaningful to the American electorate were in play here. I thought of four in particular that applied to me. A subsequent conversation with my eldest daughter provided me with a fifth reason.

For all her talk about bringing everyone together, and uniting our country under hers and the democrat party's leadership, Hillary managed to disenfranchise several very large groups of voters.

The first of these large voting blocks was evangelical Christians. Hillary made it plain on several occasions that she thought that this group's agenda, and the misgivings of their consciences were unimportant, and would be overridden by her party's secular humanist agenda. She came out in favor of  forcing churches, against their belief systems, to have same-sex restrooms, just as one example.

In addition. Mrs. Clinton came out against the second amendment (right to keep and bear arms) and the right of law-abiding people to protection under this amendment. Her strict gun control agenda would have punished responsible, law-abiding gun owners for the deeds of criminals who chose to use firearms in the commission of their crimes.

Another very large voting block that she disenfranchised was policemen. In every presidential election year the national Fraternal Order of Police sends a questionnaire to the presidential candidates regarding their stands on various issues that are held to be important to their membership. Hillary "declined" to respond (Donald Trump did respond). And how many times did Clinton come out against the police in response to an incident in our nation, even before the facts were known?

And then there are the pro-life folks. While I'm not too outspoken about this issue, since abortion on demand is the law of the land already, and since I hold little hope that this is going to change, this is yet one more huge voting block that Hillary made it perfectly clear had no place in her world.

My daughter, LaVonn pointed out to me in a conversation shortly after the election that the American military also felt disenfranchised by Hillary and the dems. She would know. She is married to a retired Air Force officer, and almost all of their entire social group are either active duty or retired military.

And so there you have it, my thoughts as to the real reasons that Hillary lost. It wasn't the Russians, it wasn't the FBI, it wasn't even WikiLeaks, and it certainly wasn't because she is a woman!

I had, and continue to have reservations about President Trump, even though I think he is doing a much better job than I expected. In the election, I think that I would have preferred to vote for anyone other than he, if they had been favorable to the issues I have outlined above. I think many others felt the same way as did I.

So then, Hillary, Baraack, Chuck, Nancy and that "nasty woman" Elizabeth continue to be clueless as to why the American people rejected their agenda. With a little luck, perhaps they'll never figure it out!

Pray for the peace of Israel.

Thanks for sharing this moment with me today.