DOOMS DAY PREDICTIONS Godlessness in the Last Days

DOOMS DAY PREDICTIONS

Godlessness in the Last Days

But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come. 

2Ti 3:2 : For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 2Ti 3:3 : Unloving, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, without love of good, 

2Ti 3:4 : Traitorous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, 

2Ti 3:5 : Having a form of godliness but denying its power. Turn away from such as these! 

Signs of the End of the Age

Mat 24:3 : While Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?” 

Mat 24:4 : Jesus answered, “See to it that no one deceives you. 

Mat 24:5 : For many will come in My name, claiming, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. 

Mat 24:6 : You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. These things must happen, but the end is still to come. 

Mat 24::7  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.  

Mat 24:8 : All these are the beginning of birth pains. 

Mat 24:9 : Then they will deliver you over to be persecuted and killed, and you will be hated by all nations on account of My name. 

Mat 24:10 : At that time many will fall away and will betray and hate one another, 

Mat 24:11 : and many false prophets will arise and mislead many.  

Mat 24:12 : Because of the multiplication of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold. 

The Abomination of Desolation

Mat 24:15:  So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination of desolation,’ described by the prophet Daniel (let the reader understand), 

Paul - Act 20:29:  I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock. 

Act 20:30 : Even from your own number, men will rise up and distort the truth to draw away disciples after them. 

Luke 17: 27-29: People were eating and drinking, marrying and being given in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all. 28. It was the same in the days of Lot: People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29. But on the day Lot left Sodom, fire and brimstone rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.…

Dramatic changes are taking place on planet earth fulfilling many of the prophecies mentioned above. We see this in every human sphere, be it politics, governance, education, health, agriculture including lifestyle, culture, morals and ideologies. So, it is not unexpected that religions also are undergoing implosion and Christianity is no exception.  

So, the question is what the church will look like in the next decade? What changes should we expect in the light of the present trends?

Traditional church declining: Let us look at the negatives first – Jesus preached the Kingdom and sent his disciples with power and authority to preach the Kingdom but what came out was a dysfunctional creature called the traditional church. This creature as we know it i.e. needs a dedicated religious building, Sunday service consisting of a few songs, a sermon and dropping a few coins in the collection box and then holiday for 6 days and gather again Sunday after Sunday and do the same thing  again and again, without ever winning a soul. This model is not very different from other religions. The original church was murdered by Emperor Constantine of Rome in the fourth century and what we inherited is the caricature called the church. Out of a total of 31,102 verses, there is not a single verse in the Bible that endorses this kind of structure. 

The word church does not exist in the Bible. 

The Greek word Ecclesia (ecc=out; kaleo=called) translated “church=kirk=cerce pronounced kerkhe” means a court of law complete with magistrates and the town clerk (Acts 19:35-39). This cannot be the “Body of Believers”. In the earlier Greek it was pronounced “ku-ri-a-kos” or “ku-ri-a-kon.” a word that doesn’t remotely resemble the Greek word “ecclesia” which it somehow replaced. The meaning of “ku-ri-a-kos” is understood by its root, “ku- ri-os,” which means “lord.” Thus, “kuriakos” (i.e., “church“) means “pertaining to the  a lord.” 

Jesus did not use either of the Greek words, he told his disciples in John 16:18 that he will build his “Qahal” in Hebrew which translates simply as “Assembly or Gathering.” 

Also, the First Day of the Week, begins not on Sunday morning but on Saturday sundown when the Sabbath ends (Acts 20:7). 

With only 4000 new churches starting and nearly 7000 churches closing and almost 30,000 pastors resigning or being terminated due to burn out, flawed character or moral issues every year in the USA alone, the future is bleak. In other countries, splitting for ideological differences or on Gay issues or fighting in courts for property grabbing, this non-biblical model of church seems to have run its course and, on its way out, fighting for existential survival. 

As the younger generation has opted out of this tradition-bound and ritualistic non-participatory model because the older generation went in pursuit of personal happiness and prosperity and failed to draw boundaries at home. With the breakdown of the family as God ordained nuclear unit, the breakdown of the church is no surprise. It can be safely said; many traditional churches will greatly dwindle or even sell out to people of other faiths. Leaders who fail to navigate the disruptive trends happening in our culture won't be left with much to lead. If you ever hope to reach the next generation, change is your friend. All this in fact, is already trending and gaining ground by the day.

Bible schools closing: As churches shut shop, there will be no need for reverend producing factories, as their irrelevant and out of date product will no longer be in demand. They are already facing crisis in getting local candidates to train as many young people see it as non-productive dead-end repetitious job. The problem with these institutions is that they teach them only theology, which is knowledge of God, using the least effective lecture method. 

They do not coach them missiology, which is skills-based training in disciple-making in the harvest field. Theology is taught by theologians and academicians in a classroom situation, while missiology and apologetics are coached by practioners in the harvest field. 

The former approach does not equip them to fruitfully engage with non-believers and hence the only place they can function is from the pulpit from where they keep sermonizing to the same old converted sheep, and milking the same old cows,  rather than equipping the saints in the their flock to go seek and save the lost sheep, that are outside their fold. (John 10:16; Eph. 4:12)

Foreign Funding: Missions are accused of being part of conversion industry, targeting poor people with inducements with foreign funding. This is now reaching a crescendo, even though we know that conversion is not by compulsion but by conviction. The dominant communities fail to admit that illiteracy and poverty are the result of centuries of discriminatory caste system and prohibition of education of women and lower castes as their foundational ideology. With the nationalist government clamping down on foreign funding for evangelism and other related ministries, those totally dependent on foreign funding will have the choice, either close or find local resources. This will produce healthy churches and missions, as it is well known that he who pays, calls the shots. Some call it the spirit of control. 

While accountability is a must, control results in dependency and reproducing donor’s agenda of stagnant model of institutionalized churches, rather than the vibrantly multiplying, culturally appropriate indigenous biblical model. We cannot paint everyone with the same brush, but where this spirit of control operates, it leads to dependency and therefore fudging the reports by the recipients to keep the funds flowing. 

All resources belong to God (Deut. 8:17,18), therefore any fund, foreign or local should be used for advancing the Kingdom rather than sustaining non-performing individuals and institutions. The metrics of a living church are whether they are fulfilling the Great Commission: making disciples, baptizing and equipping them to go and replicate the process. (Matt. 28:18-20) It is not how many that come to your church, rather it is how many that are sent out as Great Commissioners. (John 20:21) Good biblical example is the Lake Galilee that receives living waters from the Jordon and gives out the other end, what it receives, and therefore teaming with life. On the other hand, the Dead sea receives the same water but does not give out any, hence lifeless. What most churches give is mere tokenism. As mentioned earlier, with the Government clamping down, closure of dependency model is already trending.