By Mike Westfall

02-15-2007 

   Scripture is God inspired truth. It is not semi-historical literature. There are absolutes, and it doesn’t take a PHD in theology to recognize that America has profound problems with each and every one of God’s 10 Commandments.

   America’s churches have been our nation’s lighthouses where our people could find spiritual meaning in life. Today the pews in many churches are far from being fully populated, and many preachers are financially stretched and under stress.  The question is, why are so many people not feeling it important to attend services and worship God? What is becoming of the lost souls, the families, America’s values and our culture? Do we care?

   Since post WWII we have seen our country growing increasingly oblivious to important core morality issues. I suggest that America’s churches have the highest responsibility for not only defending the doctrines of their beliefs, but for defending American values as well. I also suggest that some churches are failing in this regard. Just look around you. Without a strong vocal activist Church, everything becomes acceptable. Without absolutes, confused people do only what they deem is right in their own eyes. God has little bearing on their behavior.

   Without a strong Church, liberal anti-biblical pressure groups increase their demands on legislators to replace moral laws that have served man from the beginning of recorded history. They desire the full integrity of the United States of America to back ungodly issues, lifestyles, living arrangements and beliefs.

   If Americans respected God today, as they should, they wouldn’t distance themselves from God’s word. They wouldn’t be using their tax dollars to pay teachers to indoctrinate their children into Darwin’s atheistic evolution rather then God as Creator.  Many Christians fail to understand or recognize the new disrespect towards their religious beliefs by vocal atheistic groups. The Church must counter the accelerating growth of atheism.

   Church leaders need to begin to understand that under their watch our nation is beginning to fight Christianity in meaningful ways that deny us the right to display our faith in God in public. Just consider the battle over nativity scenes at Christmas or the fight by powerful groups, like the ACLU, to curtail the public viewing of the 10 Commandments.

   Today Americans don’t value life. If they did, there would be no dreadful abortion issue staining this nation’s very soul. The people behind these dark issues had no power but have came in like a lion, in part because of the “silence” of our church. They have usurped the power that belongs to the church, and this power needs to be reclaimed by the church.

   Many desensitized Americans no longer place a negative value on the immorality their families see each day. You can clearly see this by the crude and profane entertainment that they expose their families to. It is in the movies, it is on the televisions and you hear it in today’s music. Instead of rejecting this vulgar trash, Americans open up their wallets to it, which encourages its purveyors to produce even more of this graphic character destroying rubbish.

   How many Americans or even professing Christians view pornography from their televisions or computers? As a Christian you can’t ignore or disconnect from the Word of God on the issues that you know are wrong. If you do, you are only fooling yourself.

   When church bodies refuse to get involved and take powerful stands against pornography, gambling and other moral and anti-scriptural social issues they are denying their responsibilities, and there is something wrong with the church.

   If marriage between a man and a woman, which has been the bedrock standard since the beginning of humanity when God created and joined Adam and Eve together, doesn’t matter, then who cares about family or the cultural acceptance of men marrying men and women marrying women for those who freely choose to practice homosexuality?

   If our values don’t matter, then who cares about the morality and disgrace of the pornography that hammers our families and nation daily, if not hourly? If our children don’t matter, then who cares about the gruesome, painful, life shattering practice of abortion which is the unconscienable murder of America’s unborn? If God doesn’t matter, then who cares about the athiestic plague which is spreading across our nation like a wildfire and attacking our Creator and His Church? If Christianity, histories most important faith, has arrived to this dangerous delema,  then what does this say for our country? What does the future hold for your children and their children?

   While there are still some churches and Christian based organizations that are stepping up to the plate and doing their part, it has not been enough. This is because there are many other churches that have remained comatosely quiet on these godless issues. They let the others do it for them, and they refuse to perform their God given responsibilities. So what is happening in churches today, and are they white-hot or luke-warm for the Gospel? Do people believe in God or are they just Sunday morning Christians?

   Let us start with worship. Has the Sunday morning worship in some churches become an exclusively predictable feel-good entertainment experience? Do many services begin with good music and a brief feel-good scripture passage followed with a honey-coated three point feel-good fluff sermon, catered by the preacher, that is totally devoid of the anti-God issues that we face in our lives, community and nation as a body of Bible believing Christians? If so, then this is very distressing for that church. Where is the hard-hitting worship? Where is the Holy Word relative to these critically important issues? Where is the activist church, and how is it taking on the issues of darkness in the communities in which it operates?

   In such churches how many underpaid struggling preachers would dare spend too much time dwelling on the personal terms of sin, hell and judgment for fear of being criticized by some in their congregations? How many pastors must put up with controlling church leaders, and do some pastors feel compelled to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they do or don’t preach seriously on so as to be politically correct? Do they feel compelled to go lightly on moral issues because some in their congregation might be morally liberal and, therefore, certain scripture hits to close to home, and they wouldn’t like it?

   Is this what the church is intended to be? Does this smack of some individual churches having become worldly themselves by being silent and capitulating to the ways of the world?

   Has this method of preaching created a situation in some churches where today’s moral issues are seldom, if ever, discussed and not preached on at all? Do some pastors believe in traditional marriage anymore? How many pastors or church leaders today would publicly take a strong position against anti-biblical same-sex marriage? God’s Word calls the practice of homosexuality an abomination, and when a church refuses to take a stand against same-sex marriage or allows active homosexuals to become clergy, there is something wrong with that church.

   Casual sex, infidelity and living together today without the benefit of matrimony have all become commonplace in adulterous America. Adultery is one of the 10 Commandments. Some people just live together, have children together and then move on to other people. It is a continuing cycle where the resulting confused children have no stability, no sense of what is right and wrong and torn loyalties between multiple parents. If a church doesn’t clearly preach against adultery and the promiscuity that darkens humanity, then there is something wrong with that church.

   Do you hear these issues covered in your church? If not, why not? If the Church won’t speak out on these issues, then who will?

   How many preachers today refuse to use their pulpits to publicly speak out loudly against abortion? When churches turn a deaf ear to the silent screams of America’s unborn aborted children, there is something wrong with the church. If the church had stepped in when abortion was proposed, it would never have happened. The church was silent. It is heartrending that some in the church could be painted with a broad brush and stand accused of remaining silent on issues of faith and morality. But they are.

   Today one unbelievable example of how some confused American church leaders have lost their direction is that over 10,500 Christian clergy have now signed a letter of support for Evolution Sunday, which supposedly promotes the harmony of science and religion.

http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_resources.htm  

   Now obviously, science and the discoveries from its various forms are a gift from God, but the people behind Evolution Sunday have a devious plan. Their plan is to promote evolution.

   Evolution Sunday is being used to allow declared atheists, so called scientists and self appointed elitists the access to America’s pulpits to sermonize their false, bogus and idolatrous religion of evolution. These lost, misled and gullible church leaders are opening their church doors to these menacing evolutionists who have worked to kick God and creationism out of our schools in order to promote the teaching of their evolution to our children.  These evolutionists are very good at deception, confusion and manipulation. By their own claims Evolution Sunday had 600 actual congregations from almost every denomination, in all 50 states and five different nations participating in their February 11, 2007 Evolution Sunday. This was held in churches on the birthday of Charles Darwin who was born on that day 198 years ago. Darwin developed the theory of evolution.

   Darwin totally denied that mankind was designed and created in the image of God. He dedicated his life to promoting his baseless theories that all of humanity descended from a common ancestor and that differences between living beings were only due to unguided natural processes with out a template.

   You might ask, and I would agree, why would any of God’s Churches celebrate the birth of Charles Darwin?

   God’s Holy Word states in Genesis 1:27  “ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him: male and female he created them”

    Darwin’s theory of evolution, on the other hand, says that man was not designed or planned. Darwin stated that he couldn’t see any more design in the variability of organic beings then in the course with which the wind blows.

   In reality the evolutionists behind Evolution Sunday recognize that they can’t get better spokesmen for their theories then credentialed clergymen. They have thrown out their bait, and these clergymen use their name, credentials and resources to support and push a theory and group whose soul purpose and goal is to contradict a central tenet to their own Christianity.

   This is one area that church boards and congregations should step in, reevaluate these pastors, and help them find another position in another employment arena. Then rededicate their churches to the worship and celebration of the true God that created them rather then the celebration of the birth of a dead evolutionist.

   Another glaring example of recent church doctrine abandonment is reflected in the heresy charges brought against Chicago United Methodist Bishop C. Joseph Sprague. He stated in 2002 that Jesus Christ is not the only way to salvation, Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross was not necessarily the substitution or atonement for mankind’s sins, that the virgin birth was just a myth and not historical fact and that he couldn’t affirm that there was a physical resuscitation of Christ’s body.

http://ucmpage.org/news/sprague_heresy11.html  

   Sprague found support from other United Methodist Bishops who declared that he should not resign. Others called for his resignation, if he didn’t renounce his views. The United Methodist Church conveniently cleared Sprague of heresy charges after Sprague supporters said that there must be more room made for interpretation of scriptures. Sprague said that he only wanted to stimulate informed debate. The underlining question, is why did they clear these heresy charges?

   These issues all clearly demonstrate that the responsibility for critical church issues should be far from being only on the backs of the preachers or the church board members alone, because, you see, it is all of us who profess to be Christians and warm the pews that must share the responsibility.  All Christians have an accountability to see what is happening in our culture. The Church is not one denomination. It is all those that call themselves Christians regardless of what church or denomination they belong to.

   Shouldn’t responsible pastors be given the respect and authority to present the Word of God the way it should be presented? Isn’t that what responsible pastors were called by God to do?

   Everyone needs to step up to the plate and empower their church leaders and pastors to take stands. There is nothing wrong with Christian fellowship, but it is about time that all churches begin to mean a little more than ice cream socials, fish dinners and other social functions. Church bodies need to immediately start to hold themselves more accountable so as to become the moral lighthouses that they were intended to be in the communities in which they are located?

   In conclusion, just look around you. Observe the pressure of our nations changing values on your home and your family. There is a price to pay for standing up for your beliefs, just as there has been a greater price for remaining silent. This is the defining moment for us as Christians. We can’t wait until there is only one single church or one lone Christian organization left speaking out on the moral issues.

  In REVELATION 3:15-3:16 Jesus spoke to the church in Laodicea and said…

 “ I know your deeds, that you are neither cold or hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm- neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

   In our nation our Church is under attack. We are being rapidly poisoned with the overwhelmingly powerful cancer of a vast cultural immorality that is marching on in lockstep. If not confronted and overpowered, then this malevolence has targeted for destruction the cultural acceptance of our beliefs and our faith.

What will remain will be but a remnant of the church we once were and along with that a Christian persecution the likes of which hasn’t been seen for nearly 2000 years. It has already begun.

    Silently hiding in the church closets like whimpering cowards, being blindly tolerant, exhibiting foolish political correctness or feeble complacency to this wickedness is not an option. We need a spiritual rebellion to take back our culture and take back our values. A rebellion that can only come from God’s Church working together that includes all professing denominations.

   As we stare directly into the sinister eyes of the face of evil, which fully intends to totally destroy our faith, our Godly values and the Godly traditional soul of our nation, we do not owe this darkness any civility. Satan is quickening, expanding and politicizing his agenda in order to melt down his manifest godless ideology into his new godless culture for his new godless nation.

   If church leaders all across our great nation don’t come to their senses and begin working together to stop this evil in its tracks, then America will no longer be a nation under God. It will be a pagan nation under hedonism. It will be a profound religion abyss where ridiculed and persecuted Christians are devoid of their meaning, their power, their influence and their…. Church.

…Further information relative to paper

http://www.butler.edu/clergyproject/rel_evol_sun2007.htm   

 . Credentials and content of the material of some who are promoting The Clergy Project.  See…

http://www.scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2007/01/evolution_sunday_1.php   

You will find this site and any link that it supports anything but Christian conservative.

. At this link you will review a paper that I did on the above site 1-1-2007  https://michaelwestfall.tripod.com/id94.html