In the first two installments of this series, we have detailed much of the apostasy that is affecting the Church – Evangelical and Catholic, the clergy and the nation as a whole. The dictionary tells us that Apostasy, is “the abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief.” And we have all seen the culture – and yes, the Church fall away from what it believed to be true just forty or fifty years ago. That apostasy comes with a cost.
In the Old Testament, we saw God repeatedly subject Israel to judgement when it fell away from worshiping the One True God. Do we see America in any of this? Just look at the first chapter in Isaiah. Isaiah 1:7: “Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire, Strangers devour your land in your presence.” – [We saw that in the riots that plagued our cities in the summer of 2020.] – But it comes with a thread of hope….for those that remain faithful. Verse 9: “Unless the Lord of Hosts had left to us a very small remnant, We would have become like Sodom.” – [Recall that in Sodom, God could not find ten righteous.] In verse 10 he compares them to the “rulers of Sodom,” that morally-flawed cesspool of a city. [Are we even much better, celebrating our sin with parades and laws that make it a hate crime to follow one’s conscience in adhering to God’s laws?]
Then God turns to the practice of religion with its pharisaical hypocrisy. Verse 11: “I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams And the fat of fed cattle. I do not delight in the blood of bulls, Or of lambs or goats.” Verse 13: “Bring no more futile sacrifices: Incense is an abomination to me.” [God is saying, He doesn’t want a phony show of religion.] In verses 16 through 19, He tells them He wants their heartfelt obedience. “Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; Put away the evil of your doings from before My eyes.
Cease to do evil, Learn to do good; Seek justice, Rebuke the oppressor; Defend the fatherless, Plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land.”
In his Second Letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul rattles off a list of sins that will characterize the condition of mankind in the Last Days. “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.” (2Timothy 3:2-4) And then he comes to this most-damning of conclusions, when he describes them as “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” (2Timothy 3:5)
Let me give a recent example of this. There is something called the World Parliament of Religions, which has been kicking around since 1893, periodically holding meetings. They had another such gathering in Toronto in November of 2018. The theme was love and inclusion….but that did not apply for believers in traditional Christianity. Subjects included: “Care for Our Earth, Responsibility for Our Future” & “The Spiritual Evolution of Humanity & Healing Our Mother Earth.” This was in essence a New Age event.
Jim Wallis, attacked all things conservative. The Dali Lama weighed in with some remarks made remotely. The World Federalist Movement was there as was Diana Butler Bass, who dismisses the “blood of the Lamb” and the power of the Cross, as she leads her followers toward a more “contemplative” Christianity. Brian McLaren was there as the representative of the “new” form of Christianity. But most disturbing however, was a “A progressive Baptist minister, [who] – utilizing the Buddhist sand mandala technique, created an art piece of Kali – goddess of death and destruction – to express her hatred of the – at that time – newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Cavanaugh, and those who confirmed him. Then, at the end of the week – with a group of religious progressives – they celebrated his hoped-for downfall with a dance-invocation to Kali.”[i] [There’s nothing that says ‘Love & Inclusion’ like a severed head in the hands of the Hindu goddess of destruction!]
Just a few years ago now, Transhumanists gathered at the Trans Vision 21 Conference in Madrid, Spain. Throughout the meetings, one could hear a religious tone in many of the speakers’ presentations. Joe Allen covered the meeting for The Federalist – and he noted well that religious theme.
“If Big Tech is the established church, transhumanists are Desert Fathers in the wilderness…. Allowing for variation, transhumanists confess there is no God but the future Computer God. They believe neuroprosthetics will allow communion with this artificial deity. They believe robot companions should be normalized. They believe longevity tech will confer approximate immortality. They believe virtual reality provides a life worth living. Above all, they believe the Singularity is near. According to the Cult of the Singularity and its prophet, Ray Kurzweil, we’ll see artificial general intelligence by 2029. Unlike narrow algorithms performing specific tasks, AGI will be robust cognition enacted by neural networks, far faster than any human brain. By 2045 (or 2049), we will hit the Singularity — when artificial superintelligence surpasses human intellect to the point we cannot comprehend its output. Purely organic humans will be left in the smart dust. Our only chance for long-term survival is to fuse our minds and bodies with the All-Powerful Machine — to become a new posthuman species.”[ii]
Having studied this phenomenon in depth, Joe Allen comes to this ineluctable conclusion. “The futurists who gathered in Madrid last weekend — along with those preaching technocracy at the World Economic Forum — are laying the intellectual groundwork for a fully digitized social order. Today, it’s the Fourth Industrial Revolution — a global paradigm of total transformation…. Tomorrow, the faithful proclaim, it will be artificial superintelligence, brain implants, and unstoppable killer drones.”
This is the mindset that is preparing the way for the eventual rise of Antichrist. It brings to mind the Scripture found in 2Thessalonians 2:9-12. “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.”
The squishy theology represented by the Parliament of World Religions is fast spilling over into the Christian sphere. A Pew Research poll from just a few years ago in 2018 found that at least 60% of those claiming to be Christians hold to at least one New Age belief that clearly contradicts Scripture. Pew questioned Americans about their beliefs concerning four New Age beliefs: That “spiritual energy can be located in physical things,” a “Belief in psychics,” Reincarnation and Astrology. They found that among Evangelical Believers – 47% said they held at least one of these beliefs.[iii] And then there are these gems:
- 77% of all Americans believe that personal salvation is a result of good works.
- 70% of all young people who grow up in church leave the church by their 20’s.
- 65% of all “Christians” believe there are multiple paths to Heaven. U.S.
- One third of all Americans believe after they die, God will give them a 2nd chance.
- 70% of those attending church one or more times a month never share their faith with a stranger.
- Almost 50% of all Evangelicals, 18-29 years of age, favor same sex marriage.
- Two thirds of those who are 18-34 years of age, do not believe pre-marital sex is ever wrong.[iv]
And look at the churches that are failing, and you see a clergy that has fallen away. Surveys have long-revealed that in many mainline denominations, a majority of the clergy no-longer believed in the fundamental truths of the faith. They rejected the deity of Christ, the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, the blood atonement and the return of Jesus. So now when you see that over 50% of “pastors had viewed internet pornography within the last year and 30% of those had visited within the last 30 days,” it should come as no surprise.
All of this is opening the door to occultic practices which are fast replacing the Judeo-Christian ethic in American culture. A few years back, it took a lawsuit and a court order to get the California Department of Education to pull Aztec prayers out of California classrooms.[v] [vi] Just so you understand, here is a little bit of what the Aztec religion was all about, as offered by History.com. “Aztec priests, using razor-sharp obsidian blades, sliced open the chests of sacrificial victims and offered their still-beating hearts to the gods. They then tossed the victims’ lifeless bodies down the steps of the towering Templo Mayor…. Spanish historian Fray Diego de Durán reported that 80,400 men, women and children were sacrificed for the inauguration of the Templo”[vii] And the children of California were being taught to invoke these same Aztec deities.
America is replacing its’ religion. The Faith that created Western Civilization is dying. During the days of the Vax, Governor, Kathy Hochul of New York, preached a New Creed to the faithful of this newly minted religion.
“I wear my vaccinated necklace all the time to say I’m vaccinated. ….Yes, I know you’re vaccinated. You’re the smart ones. But, you know, there’s people out there who aren’t listening to God, what God wants. You know this. You know who they are. I need you to be my apostles. I need you to go out and talk about it and say we owe this to each other. We love each other. Jesus taught us to love one another. And how do you show that love but to care about each other enough to say, please get vaccinated because I love you. I want you to live.” [At the time, my urge to vomit was only overcome by the fact that I hate to waste food.]
So, the challenge to the TRUTH comes from many fronts. There is Transhumanism, the Occult, Paganism, the Climate Cult and the Church of the Compulsory Vaccine. Researcher Tom Horn added one more. “A third of Americans believe we’re being visited by ET. Only 10 percent believe in God as He’s described in the Bible.”[viii] Christianity is certainly under assault and in a battle for its’ survival.
As I look at the landscape of our culture and our country and the Church at large, I am greatly saddened. This was driven home at an event my wife and I attended at a small-town church about 30 miles from our home. It was a Veterans Day celebration – a choral concert put on by the Christian school there, to honor those who served. At the start of the program, the principal came out to make a few remarks. He talked about how he was also a teacher who taught history and the Constitution and the Bible. He said he taught them together – because they belonged together. The Bible is the foundation of our governing principles and they in turn serve as the framework of our history. And I thought to myself, this was a dying thing I’m seeing. I thought of the Antifa thugs and BLM communists that terrorized our country, the open borders that brought in millions of unvetted illegals and the corruption in the election process. At this Veterans Day event, were witnessing a culture that is vanishing. The America I had grown up in was fading….and what will replace it we cannot yet know. Yes, we see stirrings now. We see push back. But will there be a turning back to God – a repentance that will lead to revival? For there is one thing I do know. God’s word is true! “Unless the Lord builds the house, They labor in vain who build it; Unless the Lord guards the city, The watchman stays awake in vain.” (Psalm 127:1) We can do nothing without the Lord!
So, we must ask ourselves: Which world we are living in? Are we living in the world of Noah and Lot? Theirs was a world of violence and moral depravity and sexual and especially homosexual excess. It was also a world that totally rejected God’s ways. Our world is fast heading that way …. On the road to Sodom….On the road to Gomorrah. We have been given an opportunity to right the ship. To change our course! To seek the face of God. That alone will save our nation! Here is the bottom line on it. Christianity is NOT just a profession of faith! Christianity is NOT just a prayer said and filed away in the distant past! Christianity IS a living and growing relationship! Christianity IS a walk with God! Christianity IS an ever-transforming life! “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) (KJV) Christianity IS LIFE! We cannot separate ourselves from its’ demands. And its demands are more pressing as we see the day approaching. We are living through a time that looks very much like the run-up to the days of Noah and Lot. And it is the responsibility of the Church….each one of us in the Body of Christ to turn things around. Beginning next time, we’ll start to break down the characteristics of The Time of Our Visitation.
[i] “Anger, Vitriol and Venom” From the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Lighthouse Trails, November 10, 2018
[ii] Joe Allen, Transhumanists Gather in Spain…., The Federalist, October, 15, 2021
[iii] Pew Research, December 2017
[iv] https://www.rotw.com/this-weeks-shocking-stat, viewed November 13, 2018
[v] California Schools Pull Ancient Aztec Chant After First Amendment Battle With Parents, NEWSWEEK, January 19, 2022
[vi] Tom Ciesielka, California Instituting a New Religion in Public Schools, and It Sure Isn’t Christianity, Charisma Magazine,
September 30, 2021
[vii] Dave Roos, Human Sacrifice: Why the Aztecs Practiced This Gory Ritual, History.com, October 11, 2018
[viii] Tom Horn, THE COMING GREAT DELUSION—PART 2: The Religion of UFO Phenomena, Skywatch TV, October 26, 2021, Pg 46
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