Truth is ancient; it's grey hairs may make it venerable;
it comes from Him who is the ancient of days. --Thomas Watson

 

3 July, 2007   comments: (0) Postmodernism   Christianity is Fleeing The West Here's a sobering thought to ponder as American churches gather to celebrate God's blessing upon our country. Could it be that God's favor is on it's way out of our country? Not just our land, but also that of the West in general. David Wells, who authored the excellent book No Place For Truth makes the case that it is already happening. Rome didn't fall overnight, and it is likewise not necessarily the case that God's light will stop shining here in an abrupt or cataclysmic way. Let's talk about that inside of an even greater framework, relating to how and whether God chooses to give Gospel-favor to some nations over others. In an article on the Reformed Baptist Thinker's blog, David Well was quoted as saying: The fact is that Christianity is fleeing the West; it is only the reason for this of which we may be unsure. That it is so is indisputable, as Philip Jenkins has shown in his book, 'The Coming Christendom'. Not only is Christian faith burgeoning outside the developed West, but inside the West it is declining - catastrophically in Europe, less so in America. Christian faith of a biblical kind has found it remarkably difficult to sustain itself in the midst of modernized, postmodern cultures, all of which have, in varying degrees, eviscerated it. ... The gates of hell will not prevail against the Church. That is a given. But that does not mean that God the Holy Spirit will not seriously move outside the West to build Christ's church. Indeed, he is doing so! Unless American evangelicals change their ways and repent of their worldliness, that is exactly what I expect will happen more and more in the future, and we will find that numerically speaking, the evangelical churches will become a shadow of what they once were. So if David Wells is right, it's possible for Christianity to "move around"; to be strong in one place for a while and then to move in strength elsewhere. In his classic book, Loraine Boettner points out the obvious conclusion that we must come to upon studying the bible and church history, and that is that God has chosen to bypass some areas of the world altogether. True, He gives them what theologians call "common grace" which includes rain, sun, crops, animals, homes, though even those things He does not distribute evenly. But what has been withheld is the Gospel, as Boettner wrote 75 years ago: God undoubtedly does choose some nations to receive much greater spiritual and temporal blessings than others. This [is] well illustrated in the Jewish nation, in certain European nations and communities, and in America. The contrast is very striking when we compare these with other nations such as China, Japan, India, etc... When Paul was forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the Gospel in the province of Asia, and was given the vision of a man in Europe calling across the waters, "Come over into Macedonia, and help us," one section of the world was sovereignly excluded from, and another section was sovereignly given, the privileges of the Gospel. Had the divinely directed call been rather from the shores of India, Europe and America might today have been less civilized than the natives of Tibet. It was the sovereign choice of God which brought the Gospel to the people of Europe and later to America, while the people of the east, and north, and south were left in darkness. We can assign no reason, for instance, why it should have been Abraham's seed, and not the Egyptians or the Assyrians, who were chosen; or why Great Britain and America, which at the time of Christ's appearance on earth were in a state of such complete ignorance, should today possess so largely for themselves, and be disseminating so widely to others, these most important spiritual privileges. The diversities in regard to religious privileges in the different nations is to be ascribed to nothing else than the good pleasure of God. My brother is currently staying with me from out of state; he gave me an interesting statistic - that all of the world's Muslim countries added together have less than half of the Gross National Product of just the state of California (his state). So yes, we are a nation that has experienced tremendous monetary blessing, and with so many churches present, we are also blessed with the Gospel. But if David Wells is right, we may be watching the widespread departure of the Gospel, right out from under our noses, just as we watch the megachurches fill with capacity crowds. Posted by: Jim B.   Link: http://www.oldtruth.com/blog.cfm/id.2.pid.392   Be the first to post a comment about this article        Home  |   About  |  Videos   |  Calvinism