Because according to this world-view the Christians will be not only a majority in heaven, but essentially the only ones there…

A better example is the *context* of Jeremiah 29. The exiles’ situation in Babylon is our situation in the West, and especially in the UK (which is where I am writing from). But don’t scorn us: you guys are next.

One start will be for us all to understand the difference between religion, culture, and the body of Christ.

REMEMBER TIME IS ON THE SIDE OF TRUTH.

It doesnt matter how many man made constructs people try - the only one which will have dominion is the authorized authority - CHRIST.

Way too good of a quote. I absolutely agree. It blows my mind how historically-ignorant Christians are when it comes to thinking about our increasingly pagan, and post-Christian context. We’ve been here before!! It’s difficult in some ways, but the Gospel is bigger and stronger than the culture! The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. That’s something to bank on. And when less people “know what the Bible says” because they grew up with it, you can actually teach what it says and it’ll sound like good news!

Thanks for the post, Dr. Moore.

“Frankly, we should be more concerned about the loss of a Christian majority in the Protestant churches than about the loss of a Protestant majority in the United States.”

Yes, and Amen!

Furthermore we need to give up the idea the Bible is God’s inerrant Holy Word, and start reading it largely as an allegory wrapped in an enigma. There is much wisdom and great spiritual truths in the Bible, many of which have been obfuscated by those who insist on taking the entire collection literally.

Christendom is suffering from mans commandments being more important than Gods are. Consequently we are entering an era where there is more spiritual growth taking place outside organized religions than there is within. No religious affiliation is now being claimed by 20% of the population in the US, but 68% of the 20% consider themselves to be very spiritual. So why are so many who are truly seeking turning away from organized religion? People are seeking and religion is rejecting them, literally pushing them away, if they won’t conform to the prevailing man-made dogma.

I also have recently been thinking about the fact that my oldest child will be a senior in high school in ten short years. I also believe she will need a skill I have only read about — the skill of finding joy in being persecuted for her Christ.

It is beginning to consume me that my children (and the youth I work with at church) need this biblical skill. I am of course encouraged by Hebrews 12:3-4, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” If I can point them to thinking about Christ, they will find all they will need, and will “count it all joy” (James 1:2). And if I read James correctly, their faith will be even stronger than mine by the time their persecution is finished! Thank you, God.

“Christendom itself as an ideology is flawed and failing fast too. The rapid marginalization of the Judeo-Christian cultural heritage and also the failure of Christians to preserve their privileged position are patently obvious to the Western world. We are being compelled to return to a much more biblical and radical position — that of being a minority in the world but not of it. Few Christians are aware that the 1,700 years of a politicized Christianity as the ideology of the ruling elite are rapidly drawing to a close. Whether we like it or not, the concept of the imperial Church dominated the thinking of Roman Emperors from Constantine onwards through the papacy, the Reformation and the nineteenth century mission movement. Its marks are also visible in the largely Protestant Moral Majority or Religious Right in the USA and the efforts of Russian Orthodoxy to eliminate every alternative religious opinion today. The era of Constantinian Christendom is ending. A Church deprived of political power is freed from the burden of trying to use human power to dominate and influence the world. The time for a more effective mission to the needy world is dawning. We need to recognize this, adapt and seize the opportunities offered. Our reference point is not territorial or church growth aggrandisement, but building a kingdom that is not of this world, yet which will fill the earth as a contrasting alternative society. We need to return to the concept of a pilgrim Church, a Church that will be hated, rejected, despised, persecuted, yet be an incisive, decisive, victorious minority which, one day soon, will be ready for its Heavenly Bridegroom as the perfected Bride. The twenty-first century may be the time when the alternative Church becomes recognized as the real Church.

Christendom is doomed, but the future of biblical Christianity is bright. It is taking us a long time to perceive this. We need to stop mourning the decline of Christianity in Europe and many parts of the West, and realize that the coming of Christianity did not convert Europe, but ‘baptized’ the paganism that still has to be adequately confronted with the claims of Christ. The Europe of today has reverted to attitudes that prevailed in time of the early Church. Europe’s secularism, unashamed sinfulness, infatuation with neo-Hinduist New Age thinking and occultism needs to be confronted once more, as in the first centuries of the Church, by a Christianity unafraid to love and win those who persecute it.”

My first inclination is the fear for the future my children will see. Then I remember the sovereign Lord in Heaven sustains each breath we take.

My boys will face a more-hostile future, but one rife with gospel-opportunity. Let’s train up our children!