I came across a great article this past few days. It was written by Dr. Albert Mohler, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from a speech given at the Western Conservative Summit given in 2019. The article (which I hope you will take time to read all of it at albertmohler.com) was entitled, ” The Eclipse of God, the Subversion of Truth, and the Assault upon Religious Liberty.” An excerpt reads, ” I believe that conservatives in the United States have vastly underestimated the reality and comprehensiveness of the challenge we face. All of us see parts, but it takes concentrated attention, a devotion to history, and a serious reckoning with ideas to see the whole—the vastness of our crisis. We see religious liberty denied when a cake baker in Colorado experiences sustained efforts to put him out of business, or worse, accompanied nationwide by florists and photographers and a host of others. We see the Fire Chief of Atlanta, Georgia removed because he dared to teach a biblical pattern of human sexuality, and then dared to put his convictions into print—primarily for his own church. We see Christian schools and ministries confront unprecedented challenges across several fronts and we see a continual effort to coerce Christians to surrender to the new regime of sexual rules, gender identity, intersectionality, and identity politics. The enemies of religious liberty are playing hardball, and we were warned.”
Dr. Mohler goes on to point out that, ” Chai Feldblum, formerly of Georgetown University Law Center and later appointed by President Barack Obama to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, over a decade ago admitted in a public statement that religious liberty would have to give way to the new sexual or erotic liberty. This new sexual liberty was invented by moral revolutionaries, enshrined by the U.S. Supreme Court, and now used as a weapon of cultural and legal warfare. Then, looking to the day when same-sex marriage would be legalized and religious liberty would be inevitably denied or redefined, Feldblum said: “I’m having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should win… Sexual liberty should win in most cases. There can be a conflict between religious liberty and sexual liberty, but in almost all cases sexual liberty should win because that’s the only way that the dignity of gay people can be affirmed in any realistic manner.”
We are seeing in these last days before the return of Christ a cosmic collision between truth as clearly set forth in the Word of God and culture which has embraced godless living. The pattern has been going on for some time in Great Britain. Recently Phil Zuckerman wrote in Psychology Today, “ I knew Christianity that had been on the ropes in Britain for some time. But I didn’t know that it was so close to being knocked out.
That’s right—that land that gave the world Westminster Abbey, Friar Tuck, Saint George, Methodism, the Quakers, John Knox, the Salvation Army, Presbyterianism, the Book of Common Prayer, Anglicanism, and Aslan, is now one of the least Christian societies within all of Christendom. And if these demographic trends continue as they are, it looks like Britain will soon be the Seat of Seculardom.
What is going on in the United States is just a step behind Great Britain. We are seeing the “great falling away” spoken of in 2 Thessalonians happen before our very eyes. The American church is trying to prop itself up by having hyped up worship of lights, smoke, modern music and short sermonettes focused on relevant themes for the millennial generation. However, conversion rates are down, churches by in large are struggling, holiness is not in vogue and commitment to Christ seems to have almost vanished.
Yet, even in these last days, the gospel message is still the dynamite of God, and men’s hearts are still in need of truth, people’s lives are in need of the liberating freedom of conversion. The Church of the Lord Jesus Christ must march forward with the truth, preaching the whole truth of the Word of God and compassionately reaching out as ambassadors of Christ. Let’s not be weary in well doing! Let us keep on carrying the message!
Leave a Reply