Losing It?
Losing It?
By Jack Kinsella
According to the figures maintained by the CIA World Factbook and based on 2007 estimates, about seventy-eight percent of Americans self-identify as Christian.
Those that claim no religious affiliation numbered around twelve percent. The number of Americans who self-identified as having no religious affiliation runs about four percent. But that was 2007. This is now.
Even the 2007 figures sound too low when I compare them to my own personal experiences. When I was a kid growing up in the 1960’s, I knew only of Christians and Jews.
(And as far as Jews were concerned, I never met one until I was thirteen and discovered that Mr. Wiener, my math teacher, was a Jew. I recall thinking to myself that he didn’t look at all odd — if he hadn’t announced it in class one day, I never would have guessed.)
If I had ever heard of Islam, it was in the context of history ie; the pirates of the Barbary Coast. I learned about Lt. Presley O’Banion’s heroism during the Barbary Wars when I was in the Marine Corps.
(Lt. O’Banion’s exploits are immortalized by the Marine Corps Hymn’s reference to “the shores of Tripoli.”)
But back then, I pretty much assumed that everybody in America was a Christian except for Mr. Wiener, some actors in Hollywood and the occasional atheist, whom I assumed had taken that position for the shock value, rather than actually believing that there is no God.
It always baffled me to listen to the Far Left argue that the America was not a “Christian” country and even more so when they argued that it never was.
Did they live in a bubble? Had they never read any of America’s founding documents? Had they never read any of the Founder’s published works or the quotes attributed to them?
“It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” – George Washington
“I … [rely] upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.” – Samuel Adams
“Congress passed this resolution: “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.” – United States Congress 1782
“We recognize no sovereign but God, and no King but Jesus.” – John Adams and John Hancock
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great Nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”- Patrick Henry
“The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man.” – Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Memorial
And finally, if the opinions of the Founders don’t count, then what about a Supreme Court majority decision?
“[America] is a Christian nation” – United States Supreme Court Decision in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, 1892
Assessment
I turned sixty over the weekend. (I still can’t believe it. I can’t possibly sixty. That’s what my Grandad was!) I was born near the end of the Truman administration.
It had been one hundred and seventy-six years since George Washington said it was “impossible to rightly govern without the Bible.”
And as far as the majority of Americans were concerned, America was still a Christian country. One of the more contentious public policy issues today is America’s official motto; “In God We Trust.”
What makes it contentious is that it is America’s official motto by Act of Congress. Not the Congress of the Founding Fathers.
It wasn’t the first, or fourth or tenth Congress, but the 84th Congress, convened in 1956 when I was four years old, that adopted the official motto, “In God We Trust” .
It was passed by a joint resolution of Congress and supported by both parties. Article Six of the United States Code made it a matter of settled law.
That was then. This is now.
This morning’s USAToday headlined a poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, noting that mainstream Protestantism has fallen from the majority in the US for the first time in American history.
The USA Today writer asks gleefully; “Where did they all go?” before offering the equally gleeful, “Nowhere.” According to USAToday’s interpretation of the data, they simply lost their faith.
“They didn’t switch to a new religious brand, they just let go of any faith affiliation or label. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life released an analytic study today titled, Nones on the Rise, now that one in five Americans (19.3%) claim no religious identity. This group, called “Nones,” is now the nation’s second-largest category only to Catholics, and outnumbers the top Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptists. The shift is a significant cultural, religious and even political change.”
I am already anticipating a flood of emails linking to this story to demonstrate that people are losing their salvation. The USAToday piece sought out “former Christians” like “former Southern Baptist” Chris Dees, who is now “a leader of the Secular Student Alliance chapter at Mississippi State and calls himself an atheist”.
How does this revelation stack up against the doctrine of eternal security? Are born-again Christians losing their salvation in droves? That’s what the newspaper article seems to be saying, but on closer examination, what we find is that the biggest change comes among the youngest surveyed.
“One in three (32%) are under age 30 and unlikely to age into claiming a religion, says Pew Forum senior researcher Greg Smith. The new study points out that today’s Millennials are more unaffiliated than any young generation ever has been when they were younger.”
Does that mean anything? Well, it means that in 2007, many of them were too young to be surveyed. That isn’t the same as counting them as former Christians that fell away. It does mean that the steady anti-Christian drumbeat in popular culture; movies, TV, music and books is having the intended effect.
The doctrine of eternal security says, in a nutshell, that a person is saved once by grace through faith and that having been spiritually transformed into a new creature, it is impossible to transform oneself back into the old (unsaved) creature we once were.
When a person is transformed into a new creature, part of the transformation process is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit as the sinful flesh is transformed into the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Since salvation is an act of grace and the transformation is irreversible, it then becomes axiomatic that our salvation is eternal from the moment that we first believed.
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in Me.” (John 14:1)
There is a vast difference between cultural Christianity and spiritual Christianity. What we have been discussing in the polls is cultural Christianity.
Cultural Christians are those that identify as Christian because their dad was a Catholic or because their mom took them to church and they identify with Christian holidays like Christmas and Easter. They eat fish on Friday, observe Lent, go to church at Easter because that is what everybody else does, or because it is a family tradition.
Spiritual Christianity is when one recognizes one’s sinful condition keeps him from fellowship with the Lord and accepts the gift of Pardon obtained for him at the Cross. That person who, broken by his sin, came to the Cross and finds forgiveness there is not the person that joined the “Nones.”
Perhaps a better explanation might be made using Matthew 25:32-34:
“And before Him shall be gathered all nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth His sheep from the goats: And He shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on His right hand, Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:”
Nations will be judged according to their cultural relationship with Christ. Nations can turn away from the Lord and come under judgment. Individuals will be judged according to their personal relationship with Christ.
But that doesn’t render this poll meaningless from the perspective of Bible prophecy.
What this poll demonstrates is a massive shift away from Christian culture, primarily by those under thirty, within what remains to this point in history, the country most closely identified with Biblical, Protestant Christianity, which by definition makes it the world’s most Christian country.
In his second letter to the Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul addressed a heresy that was being circulated among the Thessalonians that related to something Paul had revealed in his first letter.
“Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?” (2 Thessalonians 2:5)
Paul prefaces his remarks by explaining which doctrine he was about to correct:
“Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto Him.” (2 Thessalonians 2:1)
When did Paul tell them of these things before?
“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17)
In his first letter, Paul speaks of the Lord gathering the Church together; first the dead in Christ, then we who are alive and remain. In his second letter, Paul speaks of the “coming of the Lord” and “our gathering together unto Him.”
Given that Paul actually reminds them that he already taught them of the coming of Christ for His Church, it takes an act of willful effort to argue the two are unrelated. Let’s not waste the energy.
The Thessalonians had evidently come to believe that that the Lord had come and gone and they had been left behind.
“That ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be troubled, neither by spirit, nor by word, nor by letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at hand.” (2 Thessalonians 2:2)
That’s where a lot of the Church is today, isn’t it? Shaken by events? Troubled in their spirit? Believing that maybe we’re already in the Tribulation? Or that the Church will have to endure some or all of the Tribulation?
That is precisely the same sentiment Paul is addressing in Thessolonika. Paul tells the Thessalonians — and by extension, tells the generation that actually will witness the return of Christ, what precedes the revealing of the man of sin.
“Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.” (2 Thessalonians 2:3)
This “falling away”…apostasia in the original Greek…how would you quantify it? Since it is a sign there must also be a way to read it. How would anyone be able to judge the overall state of Christianity and recognize it as sliding into apostasy?
There would have to be a starting point…for example, the first country to be founded on Christian principles and subsequently blessed above all the countries of the world as it remained true to those principles.
That country would have to turn away from its Christian principles and allow those blessings to slip away to such a measurable degree that the whole country would be aware of it.
So if the world’s most Christian country suddenly (over a period of five years) discovered that the fastest growing segment of their culture was a rising tide of atheism, would that not fulfill Paul’s prophecy to the letter?
Once that falling away has occurred, what then prevents the antichrist from being revealed? This is where Paul brings to mind what he taught them previously about our gathering together unto Him.
“Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things?” (2 Thessalonaians 2:5)
Having reminded them of what he had taught them previously, he then offers a new revelation:
“And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time.”
Who is “him?” He is the one being withheld until the proper time, so “him” is the antichrist. And so, when is the proper time? Paul points out that the mystery of iniquity (lawlessness) is already well-entrenched, so it isn’t that there isn’t enough evil.
“For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only He who now letteth will let, until He be taken out of the way.”
What withholds him is the Holy Spirit, who indwells the Church and thereby holds back the revealing of the antichrist. He will continue to hold him back through His ministry in the Church until He is taken out of the way along with the Church.
“And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” (2 Thessalonians 2:6-8)
To recap, what this poll reveals is a great “falling away” of America’s Christian culture at just about the same time that much of the true Church, like the Thessalonians, have stopped looking for the return of Christ and instead are focused on the coming of antichrist.
When it comes to Bible prophecy, there are no such things as coincidences.
“And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh.” (Luke 21:28)
But for now, spread the Word! All the polls confirm it.
The Lord IS coming!