OUTSIDE THE WALLS is a ministry that concerns itself with the life and condition of the Church. As part of its’ mission it collects statistics and poll results. Just take a look at some of what it gathered.
- “30% of Evangelicals agree that Jesus was a great teacher, but he wasn’t God! [Pray tell, why then are they ‘Evangelicals?’….Colossians 2:9-10 reads: “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.” (ESV)]
- 28% of Evangelical church attenders are not born again!
- Only half of America’s pastors (51%) have a biblical worldview…..[Then get another job! McDonald’s is paying up to $20 an hour in our area!]
- In Harvard University’s 2019 freshman class, 39% of students identified as atheists and agnostics, more than the number of Catholics and Protestants (34%) added together.
- For the first time ever, less than half of Americans (47%) say they belong to or are members of a local church.
- Only 12% of young people ages 18-24 identify as evangelical Christians, less than half the national average.
- Less than 10% of sermons preached in Evangelical churches even mentioned Hell, Sin, Salvation, or Heaven.
- Americans trust in faith leaders and pastors fell to a record low of 37%, ranking below multiple medical professions, teachers, and police and just above journalists
- 24 of 25 Millennials don’t have a Biblical worldview.
- Nearly half of young Evangelicals (ages 18-29) favor same-sex marriage. [What Bible are they reading? God’s standard does NOT change.]
- 70% of all young people who grow up in church leave the church by their 20’s.
- More than 50% of all Evangelicals believe there is more than one way to Heaven.”[i] [“Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” (John 14:6)]
We are watching the Church fall away from its’ former beliefs. It has been a steady decline. 1Timothy 4:1-3 talks of a Great & Gradual Apostasy that will afflict the Church. “Now the Spirit expressly says that in latter times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and doctrines of demons, speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their own conscience seared with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” This passage describes the gradual falling away that has afflicted the Church almost from the beginning. Then about the middle of the 18th century, the pace of this falling away began to quicken with the onset in European circles of something called ‘Higher Criticism.’ As this methodology of Bible interpretation gained steam, it called into question the long accepted and historically sound, foundational doctrines of Christianity. This is especially prevalent among ministers of some of the mainline Protestant denominations. Surveys have shown that a minority of Christian ministers in these bodies believes in the very foundational truths of Christianity as presented by the Scriptures. Segments of the Church are ignoring and sidestepping clear Biblical teaching on the divinity of Jesus, the virgin birth, the reality of the Resurrection, the existence of a hell, and the nature of sin. The Catholic Church has imposed its own man generated doctrines on its adherents, – even where they clearly contradict the dictates of Scripture. So, doctrinal integrity has been at issue from the beginning.
While we are witnessing a quickening of this phenomena – it is also preparing the way for the coming of a Great & Sudden Apostasy. While the Church has been slip-sliding away from the truth of the Gospel, 2 Thessalonians 2 suggests something else altogether: An event-generated, sudden rebellion or apostasy by those who had previously held to at least nominal Christianity. Here’s the passage. “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed.” (2Thessalonians 2:3)
Hal Lindsey, – the prophecy scholar that really began to popularize the study of End Times events with his book and movie, The Late Great Planet Earth, – addressed this passage in his 1983 book, The Rapture. Scripture does teach that there will indeed be a progressive apostasy in the last days, yet the language of these verses demands a “climactic event when the professing church will completely revolt”. Chuck Missler chimes in pointing out that the Greek suggests a “sudden forsaking” of Biblical Truth. What could possibly cause this?
Let’s look at the context. The passage above tells us that the Day of the Lord can’t come until (1) This great and sudden falling away comes, & (2) The Antichrist is revealed. Some light is shed on this just a little farther down in the chapter. “He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed.” (2Thessalonians 2:7-8) To many Bible scholars, the “He who now restrains,” is the Holy Spirit as expressed in the Church. All believers have, by definition, The Holy Spirit living inside them. So, taking Him “out of the way” would seem to be referring to the rapture of the believing Church. It is then that the “lawless one” will be able to assume power. But how does he come to power? Verses 9&10 give the answer. “The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.”
What we’re watching then is the playing out of the process. Which brings me to a memory of watching a Ray Comfort video a few years back. Ray was interviewing people, near a campus perhaps – and a good number of them claimed to be Christian. And in the course of questioning, they freely – and unrepentantly and unashamedly – admitted to a list of behaviors that the Bible labels as sin. It was like there was no understanding of what it means to be a follower of Christ. They confessed to blasphemy, stealing, lying, watching R-rated movies, having sex outside of marriage, stealing….and on and on. And they did so without a hint of remorse or godly sorrow. It served as a sobering reminder of the depth to which our social fabric has fallen. It was a picture of the fallenness of the Church, the failure to pass on even the very basics of the faith. We can confirm that in the numbers of the surveys listed above. The interviews presented a snapshot of failure. In the first chapter of Isaiah, the prophet communicates God’s indictment of the nation of Israel, a people once-dedicated to the purposes of God. As you read these words, apply them to our own country, to America. We too were once dedicated to God in our founding; at Jamestown and Plymouth and in New York at Washington’s first inauguration.
“Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth! For the Lord has spoken: – [This is a solemn decree from the Lord of the Universe to all of creation.] –‘I have nourished and brought up children, And they have rebelled against Me; – [This decree is pronounced against God’s own children. Once dedicated to God but now in open rebellion.] – The ox knows its owner And the donkey its master’s crib; But Israel does not know, My people do not consider.’ – [They no longer contemplate on or appreciate the blessings and ways of God.] – Alas, sinful nation, A people laden with iniquity, A brood of evildoers, Children who are corrupters! They have forsaken the Lord, They have provoked to anger The Holy One of Israel, They have turned away backward.” (Isaiah 1:2-4)
Does this apply to the United States? Though not in the same sense as Israel, we too were once God’s own. We were a land built upon a Judeo-Christian foundation. God blessed us with abundance and peace. But we’ve wandered far from those founding principles. We’ve forgotten the God of our youth. Some of our leaders have taken pride in our 60 million legal abortions since Roe-v-Wade. Now we’ve set aside God’s law for marriage between a man and a woman. We flaunt his statutes and then stupidly wonder at the chaos that follow. Setting aside His laws we have become like those the Apostle Paul wrote about in Romans 1:22. “Professing to be wise, they became fools.” So as a culture we’ve denied God’s existence – or declared Him irrelevant. And when “they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind.” (Romans 1:28) We’ve become like Russia during the years of the Soviet Union. When asked how that nation had come to that sorry state under Communist control, the great author Alexander Solzhenitsyn answered with the words he had heard as a child. “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”[ii] America was once there….but now we “have turned away backward.”
That apostasy comes with a cost. Do we see America in any of this? Isaiah 1:7: “Your country is desolate, Your cities are burned with fire, Strangers devour your land in your presence.” – [Strangers devouring the land!] – 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.” This is reiterated in Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy. He begins chapter three by rattling 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) [Recall that the hypocritical Pharisees, even while knowingly handing-over an innocent Man, Jesus, to Pilate for judgement, insisted on not compromising their ceremonial cleanliness by entering Pilate’s Court. (See John 18:28) Talk about “having a form of godliness but denying its power.”] Now add just this one verse, 2Timothy 3:7. It says that these people are: “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.”
Let me give a recent example of this. There is something called the World Parliament of Religions, which has been kicking around since 1893, but had a 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 a newly appointed Supreme Court judge, 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.”[iii] [There’s nothing that says ‘Love & Inclusion’ like a severed head in the hands of the Hindu goddess of destruction!]
Then just this year, 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.”[iv]
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 – in contravention of the 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.[v] And then there are these gems:
- 77% of all Americans believe that personal salvation is a result of good works.
- More than 30% churchgoers say they have never felt God’s Presence during a service.
- 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.[vi]
You want to know why the Church is failing. Many of the shepherds have fallen victim to the lie. A survey from the 90’s 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. Just look what is happening in California. Here’s a headline from Charisma. “California Instituting a New Religion in Public Schools, and It Sure Isn’t Christianity.” The story goes on. “Attorneys with the Thomas More Society are asking a California Superior Court to grant an injunction against the California Department of Education and other government defendants—requiring them to immediately stop Aztec prayers in classrooms.”[vii] Here’s 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 Mayor under a previous Aztec emperor—evidence is mounting that the gruesome scenes illustrated in Spanish texts, and preserved in temple murals and stone carvings, are true.”[viii] [So, we can all see why it is necessary that the children of California need to be praying to these same Aztec gods!] The curriculum being questioned “features the Aztec prayers in a section titled, “Affirmation, Chants, and Energizers.” Among these is the ‘In Lak Ech Affirmation,’ which invokes five Aztec deities, acknowledges their power, asks for their help, and praises them. Additionally, the curriculum includes the Ashe Prayer from the Yoruba religion. Yoruba is an ancient philosophical concept that is the root of many pagan religions, including Santeria and Haitian vodou or voodoo.”[ix]
Political commentator Tucker Carlson recognizes the phenomena. He argues that America has not lost its’ religion. Instead it has “replaced its religion. What’s dying is the faith that created Western civilization – Christianity. In its place is a new creed, and like all religions, it has its own sacraments, its own sacred texts. It’s the cult of coronavirus.” To drive his point home, Carlson quoted the new Governor of New York, Kathy Hochul, calling her, “one of the high priestesses of this new faith.” Here is High Priestess Hochul preaching the New Creed to the faithful of this newly minted religion.
“And I wear my vaccinated necklace all the time to say I’m vaccinated. All of you. 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.”
[My urge to vomit is only overcome by the fact that I hate to waste food.]Look at just what was presented and we can see that the challenges and attacks are coming at the TRUTH from many fronts. There is Transhumanism, the Occult, Paganism, now the human-sacrificing beliefs of the Aztecs and the newly-minted pseudo religion of – shall we call them – the Branch Covidians? 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.”[x] 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 out Church 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 made the point that 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 Antifa thugs terrorizing citizens and the assault on our borders and the incivility being practiced and encouraged by one wing of the political class and the complete corruption of the election process. We were witnessing a culture that is vanishing. The America I had grown up in is gone….and what will replace it we cannot yet know. But 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! I am convinced of that. Just look at what happens when we try. Verse 2 drives that point home. “It is vain for you to rise up early, To sit up late, To eat the bread of sorrows; For so He gives His beloved sleep.”
How can we sure we are following His will and not ours? By living to God’s standards. Here they are in a nutshell, taken from John 14:15-17. ‘If you love Me, keep My commandments…..[Do that and we get this]….. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, ……. [But listen to this]……whom the world cannot receive.” The Helper, the Holy Spirit is NOT promised to the world. It is a gift set aside for His children; a gift to His own.
So, we must ask ourselves: Which world we are living in? Are we living in the world of Noah and Lot? There’s was a world of violence and moral depravity and sexual and especially homosexual excess. There’s was a world of the total rejection of the ways of God. Our world is fast heading that way …. On the road to Sodom….On the road to Gomorah. 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 it’s demands. And its demands are more pressing as we see the day approaching. I do not deny the Romans 7 dilemma here. As Paul lays out, We don’t do the good stuff we want to do and instead do the bad stuff we don’t want to do. At the end of that chapter he cries out: “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24) And in the next verse he gives us the answer. “I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Then in the next two verses, Romans 8:1-2 he celebrates the conclusion. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.”
So we are living through a time that looks very much like the run-up to the days of Noah and Lot. Beginning next time, we’ll start to break down the characteristics of The Time of Our Visitation.
[i] OUTSIDE THE WALLS, https://www.rotw.com/, Viewed October 25, 2021
[ii] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, remarks made at the Templeton Address, London, England, 1983. Mollie Panter-Downes, Solzhenitsyn,
The New Yorker Magazine, May 30, 1983
[iii] “Anger, Vitriol and Venom” From the Parliament of the World’s Religions, Lighthouse Trails, November 10, 2018
[iv] Joe Allen, Transhumanists Gather in Spain…., The Federalist, October, 15, 2021
[v] Pew Research, December 2017
[vi] https://www.rotw.com/this-weeks-shocking-stat, viewed November 13, 2018
[vii] Tom Ciesielka, California Instituting a New Religion in Public Schools, and It Sure Isn’t Christianity, Charisma Magazine,
September 30, 2021
[viii] Dave Roos, Human Sacrifice: Why the Aztecs Practiced This Gory Ritual, History.com, October 11, 2018
[ix] Tom Ciesielka, California Instituting a New Religion in Public Schools, and It Sure Isn’t Christianity, Charisma Magazine,
September 30, 2021
[x] Tom Horn, THE COMING GREAT DELUSION—PART 2: The Religion of UFO Phenomena, Skywatch TV, October 26, 2021
Laura Vest says
Excellent, thank you for your faithfulness!