There have been certain generations in history where godliness and hunger for spirituality permeated the atmosphere of a society. This was evident when great awakenings were in their prime and revivals swept across communities. Such an atmosphere made it easier to live right, preach right, and stand for the right. Some years ago a friend showed me original newspapers from Wales printed during the Welsh revivals at the turn of the twentieth century. On the second page each day a large map of the country of Wales was published with shadings to show the spread of the revival throughout that country. By the time the move of God had made its impact in that country, all of its pubs were closed down. Yes, it would have been easy then to know a spiritual walk with God and to speak publicly and freely of His Word.
In contrast, there have been other generations where immediately in the aftermath of a call of God to awakening or revival, the people volitionally entered into paralyzing spiritual apathy.
Some generations find society in an immoral climate where ungodliness is rampant. To live right in these circumstances is often very hard for the Christian; greater timidity marks the heart, and prophets tend to go into hiding. Down in a mine amidst the excess of carbonic acid or carbon dioxide, oil lamps burn dimly. Similarly, when the moral and spiritual atmosphere of a nation is consumed with ungodliness and spiritual compromise, it is more difficult to maintain the brightness of godly living and a public testimony of the Savior. Here it is harder to live for God; here it is harder to stand for the truth. Nothing outwardly is encouraging to stand for God.
The Climate Has Changed
From the perspective of today’s climate, the world is not as tolerant to the true Christian as it was a few decades ago. At one time there was some moral sympathy to right living, moral character, having a Bible, believing in God, and hearing the Gospel preached with clarity concerning a changed life. Now, the world’s climate has changed, even in Western civilization. The secular world no longer identifies with God; this has produced true “secularism” which denounces any concept of God or His Word. Truth is not only disregarded but also hated and despised. That which is proved to be true is opposed simply out of hatred for the Truth. The climate of the world’s hatred for the right, the moral, and the true is being fed especially by prominent rock stars. They flaunt their full decadence and anti-God view boldly in the face of moral decency and the biblical concept of God. This has been magnified by the anti-Judaeo-Christian stand our present Administration in Washington has taken. Not only is sodomy being accepted legally, but it also is being shoved in the face of Christianity. The Bible’s public identification in America is gone; the Ten Commandments have been pulled down from our judicial court walls. In its place, Madonna’s vulgar stage acts have become the popular art of society; Harry Potter has drawn the next generation into the occult world as an alternative to God; and sodomy continues to aggressively attack the precious and sacred estate of matrimony. Yes, the climate for the acceptance of God has drastically changed in just a few short years.
In the light of these drastic changes, other areas of common living have changed as well. Western civilization has come to hate the work ethic, moral character, right living, a good and enduring marriage, obedient children, and modesty of dress. It has come to abhor sound and reasonable thinking, not only to despise right living but also to destroy its very existence.
Because the apostasy has now conquered all the compartments of natural life, it has become a difficult age in which to live right, to keep a marriage, to raise children, to work an honest job, and to want to love God. Everything in society is becoming aggressively against these precious and once coveted privileges. From the natural perspective, there is no way out of man’s immoral quagmire. Its filth and stench are only becoming progressively worse; because of this—from the world’s view—it no longer pays to be moral.
The World Hates the True Christian
From the world we expect hatred. “And ye shall be hated of all men, for my name’s sake; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved” (Matthew 10:22). John 16:33 declares, “These things I have spoken unto you that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Immediately after this verse, John 17 shows us Christ praying to the Father not to take His disciples out of the world but to keep them from the evil that is in the world and its system.
Dear Christian, it is going to become harder to live in this world, harder to pray in this world, harder to stand for God in this world. Do not expect this world to make it easy for you to live the Christian life. Backslidings are increasing; apathy and non-aggressive Christian living have truly become the norm in the churches. This is not the time to become a coward, to run, to quit, to wax cold, to forsake God’s people, or to love this present world. This is the time to pray for a renewing of your allegiance to Christ and the Scriptures. This is the time to stand for Christ in an evil world whose hatred is intensifying every day against us.
We must get over the contemporary view of a non-offensive Christianity. Don’t think of Christians as simply “little lambs” being carried on Christ’s shoulder in the tranquility of life. In Romans 8:36 we read, “As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” Christ warned His disciples in sending them forth, “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). The times have only become worse since Christ first gave this warning. The world is at a point of birthing the “man of sin”; it will be the worst of days. Nevertheless, these are the days when we must renew our allegiance to Christ and the Scriptures!
The Powers of Apostate Christianity
Not only has it become intensifyingly difficult to live for Christ and His Word in the world, but also there is a falling away globally in Christianity. Although the Christian has always expected opposition from the world, should the institutional church be making it equally hard for a Christian to live for God?
There is a striking parallel view of the book of Malachi and the Laodicean Church age (Revelation 3:14-22) in which we live. Malachi’s message, the last of the Old Testament books, was overwhelmingly condemnatory. Malachi is found in the aftermath of the return of the remnant to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel and later the returns of Ezra and Nehemiah. It is evident that the revival movings of God and the sensitivity to the preaching of Haggai, Zechariah, Ezra, and Nehemiah were now past. One of the great and obvious realities about God’s people at the time of Malachi was that they too were found at the “end time” of the Old Testament. Not only were they caught in the powers of insensitivity toward Jehovah, they were also insensitive to their own iniquity in the face of Jehovah. This lack of sensitivity had reached such an apex that when the prophet laid forth their sins against God before their consciences, they saw no harm in those sins. The seven “where in’s” become the proof of this insensitivity (Mal. 1:2, 6-7; 2:17; 3:7-8, 13). There was no longer the sensitivity to the things of God, to sin, and to the understanding of their failings and sins. It was gone! Malachi was the last prophetic voice on the eve of the First Coming of Christ.
Dear Christian, this is our day and time in the last Church age mentioned in Revelation—Laodicea. What is the word and message of the prophetic voice on the eve of the Second Coming of Christ? It is the same as on the eve of the First Coming. When Malachi told them their wrong, they cried with insensitivity, “Wherein have we done this?” The lukewarmness of the end time before the coming of Christ is found in Revelation 3:17: “Because thou [continually] sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing [no lack, no necessity]; and knowest not [no perception] that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind and naked.”
This tragedy is greater than the tragedy of the world; the world has never known God, but the Church has. There are two kinds of preachers today: there are the “ecclesiastical preachers” and there are “God’s preachers.” God’s preachers are crying out Christ’s words to this generation,
I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see (Revelation 3:18).
This trilogy of need must ever be the cry in a time when the Church does not know how deplorable it has become in the sight of God.
Our Church age came on the heels of the greatest move of God in the 1700s and the 1800s. Sensitivity to God was the constant heartbeat of the preaching that encouraged others to be sensitive to God. The present Church age in which we live has no concept of Truth anymore; it views its Christianity from the physical, and has no knowledge of the spiritual. Where there is no sensitivity to God, there will be no reverence for God. Although we expect insensitivity and irreverence from the world, it is becoming the norm of God’s professing people.
This abundant insensitivity of professing Christianity is what will make it harder in our generation to live the Christian life, to preach the truth, to live the truth, and to stand for the truth. As in the days of Amos, God has continued to raise up young people through heavenly callings given to them. Now we are witnessing the powerful influence of ecclesiastical leaders quelling both the heart and message of those once called.
And I raised up of your sons for prophets, and of your young men for Nazarites. Is it not even thus, O ye children of Israel? saith the LORD. But ye gave the Nazarites wine to drink; and commanded the prophets, saying, Prophesy not (Amos 2:11-12).
I have met a number of men who in their earlier days were strong in their preaching as well as in their “Nazarite vow” of biblical separation from the world, from the apostasy, and clearly unto Christ and His Word. Nevertheless, over these few years pressures have been so enormous that simply to survive in acceptance, they have given in to “religious correctness.”
Yes, these are the intense days of commanding the prophets to “prophesy not” and forcing the Nazarites to drink the wine of compromise. Sad it is to hear of leaders praying for God to call young men into the ministry, and then turn and rebuke the called men for preaching “Thus saith the Lord.” How different the times have become even in Fundamentalism.
Similar changes can be noted in the beautiful Song of Solomon. In 3:3 the watchmen were in touch with God and were able to show the Shulamite where to find her Beloved:
The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go.
Then in 5:7 we read,
The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me.
This is the reaction of the church today to the one who is hungering and thirsting for a spiritual and sanctified life with God. It is rare to find a church or a pastor now who is sensitive to God, to the things of God, to a personal, intimate walk with God, and to a stand for God. The church, its leaders, its preachers, its teachers are making it harder to live for God, to preach the whole counsel of His Word, and to stand for that very Word.
This is the hour when we must renew our allegiance to Christ and His Scriptures. The prophet Malachi acknowledged that amidst an insensitive people there was a sensitive remnant. Malachi 3:16 notes the following amidst a wide-spread insensitivity to truth, to God, and to right living:
Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another; and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name.
This remnant may have rebuked the insensitivity of the impious talkers and warned others against them (this is certainly true of Enoch in Jude 14-15). Yet in Revelation 3:21-22 the overcomer hears what the Spirit is saying to the Churches. Most people within the church are not hearing what the true Head is saying. The communion of sensitivity in this Church age is only known by a very few (Revelation 3:20-21).
In Psalm 12 David spreads his complaint before the Lord concerning the treachery of his Age. The Talmud reveals that this psalm was penned in the days when Saul was persecuting David. It is a psalm of good thoughts in bad times. It is evident in reading the psalm that these were hard times: times when the faithful, the good men, became more and more scarce; times when wicked man abounded taking occasion against the few righteous to indulge in their vain talk against them and against God. The psalmist looks with concern and distress upon this dark and despairing climate. The trials mentioned in this psalm are not so much personal ones, but those felt by God’s people over the degeneracy of their Age.
In Psalm 12, David notes six characteristics found at this time in his society:
- The scarcity of good and faithful men–12:1
- Wicked men in power and position of authority–12:8
- Falsehood and faithlessness–12:2
- Pride–12:3
- Vain-glorious boasting and self-assertion–12:4
- Oppression of the righteous–12:5.
When wickedness and compromise abound in a nation, a church, or an honorable movement from God, it is time for faithful and good men to step forward. In such times Elijah and Jeremiah and others lived, wept, moaned, and prayed.
The way the world is headed has only intensified grief and vexation to the Christian. Nevertheless, the greater grief and vexation is what is happening to the church, yea, even to Fundamentalism. The world is evil and will get worse in its intimidation of the Christian; strangely, this intimidation will come more from church leaders and church people.
Conclusion
Often we feel the oppressive powers and forces of this age, as well as the lukewarmness of the Church Age, subtly causing a drifting to come into our lives whereby we fearfully and timidly live for God, stand for the Truth, and preach the Truth. This is truly the hour when the remnant needs to be stepping forward and renewing its allegiance to the Christ and His Scriptures.
One of the important means for this renewing is found in Romans 12:2: it is in the refusal to be conformed to this world-age and to know moment by moment a renewing of our mind. This means there needs to be a constant adjustment of the moral and spiritual vision that both the world and the institutional church are constantly impairing. Also, there must be the constant adjustment in our thinking toward the mind of God and His Word. In Titus 3:5 we also read of the need of the present tense renewing of the Holy Ghost—not so much a fresh bestowment of the Spirit, but a renewing of His power. These days truly bring stress upon the continued renewing work of the indwelling Spirit of God.
In these days when the church is filled with a mixed multitude of the natural man and the carnal man, a day when the church is falling into lusting, when they cry as Israel of old, “But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes” (Numbers 11:6), may God grant us a continuing intense love for the Christ manna. The cry now is “Who shall give us flesh to eat?” (11:4b). To such a cry there are myriads of worldly preachers and teachers who have arisen to give the “flesh,” the carnal, the worldly, to those who have turned their hearts away from the truth. Such preachers and teachers have given the church their fleshly contemporary music, their fleshly manifestations for the emotions, their fleshly, worldly lifestyles now to be accepted as permissible for the Christian, and a broader and all-encompassing definition of what is a Christian.
The great Reformer Martin Luther declared in the intensity of the Reformation the following:
If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the Devil are at that moment attacking, I am not professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.
May God in such days of the falling away enable us to step forward and renew our allegiance to His Son and His Scriptures. May there be a faithfulness, a loyalty, a fidelity, a constancy, a duty, and an obligation—to Christ and His Scriptures. Anything else is treason, rebellion, and resistance that will truly result in the concluding words of Matthew 7:21-23, “And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”