Let Your Light Shine

It appears that today’s church seems to be trailing the world by a few paces. When I was a kid, there was a sharp demarcation between the free world and the communist world. The aim of communism of course was world domination. Today we are closer to entering a one world government than ever before in human history.

Never before has the world been set up to the point where the whole world could be under the control of one government. Today with the mass communications and surveillances in use, the tools are in place for one world governance.

Never before has such a large group of humanity raised their voices in favor of a world government. Never before has the government of America, the bulwark of freedom for generations, been so willing to lay it all down in favor of some ambiguous thing called “change”.

We who are still awake watch as one blood fought and won freedom after another, falls to a snowballing slide into an abyss. Helpless, we watch as a sleeping world does nothing to stop the seemly impending doom. Are you watching too?

I feel I am watching the church take that same slide. Rather than leading the world out of bondage into the light of the Gospel, the church is sadly keeping step with the world on its path to destruction.

The world is loosing its freedoms won by brave heroes of our freedom loving men and women. Sadly the free world has forgotten its history. The saying goes that if a people forgets its freedom, it will be doomed to repeat it.

Today’s church has largely also forgotten her history. Sales of Foxes Book Of Martyrs used to be second only to the Bible. Our Sunday schools used to teach the history of the Reformation. Any protestant school child could have told you who Martin Luther, John Wycliffe or John Huss were, not so now.
I have recently been privileged to read some stirring histories of protestant missionaries. This history also has been largely allowed to slide away.

Never before has the world offered up such a smorgasbord of false religions to choose from. Never before has authentic Christianity been bent and twisted to the point where it has almost lost all credibility. Satan must be delighted.

I wish to band with other like minded Christians who are standing firm for the Bible being our guidebook for pleasing God. People today, as they have in the past, are won to Jesus with the pure milk of the Word of God.

We Bible believers are not looking for seeker sensitive churches, there are more than enough of those to go around and we don’t want them. We are looking for courageous, honest pastors who will lead and teach us from the Word of God.

In centuries past, missionaries were trained and sent out to a dieing world with only their Bibles as their guide books. The Holy Spirit was their helper. There were no church growth or seeker sensitive programs then.
Through faith in God and godly patience those church planters converted whole countries and by doing so, changed the world.

Christians today seem to think that the church should change the world. I disagree. I believe it is the job of the church to change souls and changed souls will make the world a better place. There is a fine line here and many misunderstand it, I did myself for years.

Rather than the church trying to force the world to behave, I believe it is the job of the church to make followers of Jesus Christ. Authentic followers of Jesus Christ will change the world around them through their love, respect of others and deep love for freedom. I do not believe real freedom can long last in a vacuum without Christianity, it will be swallowed up by evil.

I wonder if the mistake we are making today, isn’t the same mistake the Jewish people made while our Lord was here among mankind. They came to Him expecting Him to lead a military revolt against the Romans. They wanted Him to make this place a better world to live in. His answer to them was that His kingdom was not of this world.

I am not abdicating good citizenship, our Lord told us to render onto Caesars, the things that were Caesar’s. He told us to be good stewards of the world. But our main focus should be to bring the lost into a saving relationship with Him. If the church were as focused on that as it has been in years past, the world would be the place many in the church are trying to force it to be. We are taught to be the light of the world, not the police force of the world. Let’s get back to being a light onto a dieing world and the world will have a true path to follow into righteousness.