According to a recent Pew Poll, Christianity is in a state of decline. The article states multiple reasons of why it's happening, but may I suggest the real reason for the it could be our compromises of the faith. A compromised Christianity always leads to decline. In this article, I will speak about some of those issues.
1 Compromising in order to attract the youth
A lot of churches are compromising their faith in order to keep or attract young people. So in order to do this, we try to introduce a "fun atmosphere" to entertain them. People seem to forget that the main focus of worshiping God is not to entertain the youth but to point them towards God. So churches introduce or accept a lot of worldly things such as baptizing rap music, a genre of music that promotes violence and rebellion by calling it Christian rap. The logic is if we put the name of God in it, it becomes Holy. We then ignore the fact that God does not accept "strange fire".
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. So fire blazed forth from the LORD's presence and burned them up, and they died there before the LORD.Leviticus 16:1,2
The Catholic Church did the same thing in the middle ages by baptizing pagan customs into Christianity. The church became corrupt, its people steep in idolatry, superstitions and delusions. They took the idols of the pagans and gave them Christian names. "There is nothing new under the sun", we keep repeating the same mistakes and thinking that somehow we are different than our ancestors.
Then Moses said to Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.'" So Aaron, therefore, kept silent. Leveticus 10:3.
God said that people who come before him must know that he is Holy (separated from profane things), and that he will be honored. So when we come before God, the focus should not be on ourselves and how we feel but for honoring Him alone. When we come to that understanding we will stop focusing on entertaining the youth. When the church start making those compromises, instead of converting the world ,they become converted by them. So as we keep trying to win the youth; using strange fire tactics, the youth become more worldly and finally realize "If I'm already listening to rap, why not go into the real thing?" Christians must understand that we cannot use the ways of the world to convert them. The Word of God is all sufficient.
2 Tickling ears messages in order to make people feel comfortable
Like using baptized paganism to attract the youth , many churches use a similar system in order to bring more people in. Taking away the offences of the Cross. Many churches for fear of not offending sinners do not preach the whole counsel of God. The idea is that we should make the sinner feel comfortable in church so that he/she does not feel they are being attacked. The result is we have a message being preached around that is no more than psychology or self-help masquerading as Christianity.
They tell the seers, "Stop seeing visions!" They tell the prophets, "Don't tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies. Isaiah 30:10
Imagine going to a hospital being diagnosed with a terminal disease and the doctor is afraid to offend you by telling you the truth, so he goes around telling you feel good messages while you are dying. This is what many churches are doing to people. People come to church to hear a message of salvation from the Lord. Church is a hospital, filled with people sick with the terminal disease called sin. The goal of the preacher is to preach the whole counsel of God to people so that they may be led to repentance and have Eternal life.
3 Conclusion:Pleasing the Youth and tickling ears messages are leading people away
The Bible say that we should train up the child in the right way, not the child training the adult. Now I am not saying that people whether they are old or not cannot make suggestion to enhance the worship experience, but everything that is done should be done in accordance to God's will and not bringing strange fire before him.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.Proverbs 22:6
Christianity gets its power from the Lord and once we turn our back on the Lord, we lose that power. The way we lose that power is not only by rejecting God outright but by adopting worldly or pagan customs, bringing idolatry in the house of God and preaching delusions to people. And when God leaves, the church declines, thus the recent poll is a true reflection of the condition of the church.
Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect . Romans 12:2.
When people realize that the church is no different than the world they become worldly Christian or abandon the church altogether . When Christianity stood counter to the world in the days of the Roman empire, it grew rapidly because it was not diluted. Why go to church when I can go to a therapist or some other social club that will make me feel loved and comfortable in my condition. Let us not live according to this age of compromise and be lukewarm, stand for God , stand for the truth and expose the works of darkness in the House of God .God Bless.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16'So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:16
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
http://biblehub.com/leviticus/10-3.htm
1 Compromising in order to attract the youthA lot of churches are compromising their faith in order to keep or attract young people. So in order to do this, we try to introduce a "fun atmosphere" to entertain them. People seem to forget that the main focus of worshiping God is not to entertain the youth but to point them towards God. So churches introduce or accept a lot of worldly things such as baptizing rap music, a genre of music that promotes violence and rebellion by calling it Christian rap. The logic is if we put the name of God in it, it becomes Holy. We then ignore the fact that God does not accept "strange fire".
And Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took either of them his censer, and put fire therein, and put incense thereon, and offered strange fire before the LORD, which he commanded them not. So fire blazed forth from the LORD's presence and burned them up, and they died there before the LORD.Leviticus 16:1,2
The Catholic Church did the same thing in the middle ages by baptizing pagan customs into Christianity. The church became corrupt, its people steep in idolatry, superstitions and delusions. They took the idols of the pagans and gave them Christian names. "There is nothing new under the sun", we keep repeating the same mistakes and thinking that somehow we are different than our ancestors.
Then Moses said to Aaron, "It is what the LORD spoke, saying, 'By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, And before all the people I will be honored.'" So Aaron, therefore, kept silent. Leveticus 10:3.
God said that people who come before him must know that he is Holy (separated from profane things), and that he will be honored. So when we come before God, the focus should not be on ourselves and how we feel but for honoring Him alone. When we come to that understanding we will stop focusing on entertaining the youth. When the church start making those compromises, instead of converting the world ,they become converted by them. So as we keep trying to win the youth; using strange fire tactics, the youth become more worldly and finally realize "If I'm already listening to rap, why not go into the real thing?" Christians must understand that we cannot use the ways of the world to convert them. The Word of God is all sufficient.
2 Tickling ears messages in order to make people feel comfortable
Like using baptized paganism to attract the youth , many churches use a similar system in order to bring more people in. Taking away the offences of the Cross. Many churches for fear of not offending sinners do not preach the whole counsel of God. The idea is that we should make the sinner feel comfortable in church so that he/she does not feel they are being attacked. The result is we have a message being preached around that is no more than psychology or self-help masquerading as Christianity.
They tell the seers, "Stop seeing visions!" They tell the prophets, "Don't tell us what is right. Tell us nice things. Tell us lies. Isaiah 30:10
Imagine going to a hospital being diagnosed with a terminal disease and the doctor is afraid to offend you by telling you the truth, so he goes around telling you feel good messages while you are dying. This is what many churches are doing to people. People come to church to hear a message of salvation from the Lord. Church is a hospital, filled with people sick with the terminal disease called sin. The goal of the preacher is to preach the whole counsel of God to people so that they may be led to repentance and have Eternal life.
3 Conclusion:Pleasing the Youth and tickling ears messages are leading people away
The Bible say that we should train up the child in the right way, not the child training the adult. Now I am not saying that people whether they are old or not cannot make suggestion to enhance the worship experience, but everything that is done should be done in accordance to God's will and not bringing strange fire before him.
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.Proverbs 22:6
Christianity gets its power from the Lord and once we turn our back on the Lord, we lose that power. The way we lose that power is not only by rejecting God outright but by adopting worldly or pagan customs, bringing idolatry in the house of God and preaching delusions to people. And when God leaves, the church declines, thus the recent poll is a true reflection of the condition of the church.
Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect . Romans 12:2.
When people realize that the church is no different than the world they become worldly Christian or abandon the church altogether . When Christianity stood counter to the world in the days of the Roman empire, it grew rapidly because it was not diluted. Why go to church when I can go to a therapist or some other social club that will make me feel loved and comfortable in my condition. Let us not live according to this age of compromise and be lukewarm, stand for God , stand for the truth and expose the works of darkness in the House of God .God Bless.
I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. 16'So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. Revelation 3:16
http://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/americas-changing-religious-landscape/
http://biblehub.com/leviticus/10-3.htm
Comments
Secondly, the "tickling of the ears" has been going on since the beginning of time. It started in the garden and has since mutated into many different forms. It is incumbent upon the believer to seek the truth for themselves. Again Paul says, study to show thyself approved. If in the secular world one can not believe all that you hear, what would make one phantom that you can in the church? Not all preachers in the bible were right so I surely don't expect those today to be right.
Instead of attributing the decline towards compromise, maybe it should be towards the lack of love shown by the church. Jesus says to love thy neighbor as we love ourselves. The true test there is two fold. 1. Love yourself first and 2. Love your neighbor out of the abundance of love that you have for you. Instead of criticism towards a cerain genre of music, learn from those who that have mastered the art of ministering through it. And instead of focusing on preaching "itchy" sermons let's focus our attention towards teaching the literal truth of the gospel and being readily available and we'll studied to "rightly divide the word of truth".
If we, those called and justified, would use our time, resources and energy towards learning more, teaching better sound biblical doctrine, and living what we preach the maybe there'd be a revolution of pure believers instead of a decline of a religious faction. After all, isn't that what Jesus did?
Also, The itchy things are the things that we ought to speak about. The things that we need a clear understanding of are the things that we should focus on.