I have been burdened by the modern church in the US for years. We are so caught up in putting on a "show" to bring in young people that we have left our first love.... that of teaching all of God's word without being "politically correct". We have lost the holy respect that we should give God when we enter His sanctuary. We are good at celebrating our salvation but have forgotten how to worship a Holy and Righteous God. It is through worship that God moves to heal, convict, fill our hearts with peace and joy, and prepare us to minister to others. We need to quit worrying about the quantity of people we bring in and start working on the quality. I fear that too many people attending modern churches do not have a serious relationship with God. All it would take would be a little tribulation and they would fall away because they are not grounded in true faith.
Well now, you've got three issues going on in the churches today.
The first, is like you said. They've gotten more into entertainment. Church is no longer about Jesus Christ, in fact, some churches sing hymns all morning and not one of the hymns speak of Jesus, His sacrifice for our sins, His being our redeemer, His being our healer. They might actually speak of healing, or something else, but Jesus in nowhere to be found in the hymn itself and you most definitely won't find His blood!
The majority of the new music I have heard in churches in the past two decades, focus on repetition, adrenalin, feel-good hype; however, generally, not on our Lord. In fact, I've been to services where the majority of the songs were 'military' type songs, but never mentioned any of the above.
I had to actually track down an old hymn book just to get some good music. It isn't the denomination I grew up in or practice today, but it's still the same hymns.
Hymns that have served the Church since almost forever it seems, and within one generation they changed it all.
The Second issue, with Churches not teaching the Truth like they should, is that the apostasy creeps in and even if the apostasy doesn't get a foothold, those same people just aren't being fed like they should.
Luke 18:1-8 AMP
1 ALSO [Jesus] told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not to turn coward (faint, lose heart, and give up).
2 He said, In a certain city there was a judge who neither reverenced and feared God nor respected or considered man.
3 And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, Protect and defend and give me justice against my adversary.
4 And for a time he would not; but later he said to himself, Though I have neither reverence or fear for God nor respect or consideration for man,
5 Yet because this widow continues to bother me, I will defend and protect and avenge her, lest she give me intolerable annoyance and wear me out by her continual coming or at the last she come and rail on me or assault me or strangle me.
6 Then the Lord said, Listen to what the unjust judge says!
7 And will not [our just] God defend and protect and avenge His elect (His chosen ones), who cry to Him day and night? Will He defer them and delay help on their behalf?
8 I tell you, He will defend and protect and avenge them speedily.
However, when the Son of Man comes, will He find [persistence in] faith on the earth?
Between the feel good entertainment and programs, the lack of sound Biblical teaching, and a lack of focus on Jesus Christ I believe that these poor sheep are going to feel, if they haven't already, that they have been lied to.
The Lord lead me to a passage back in 1992. It was when I was first started seeing the signs of the apostasy spoken of in II Thessalonians 2. It was when I first started seeing the "signs of the times" on a local level.
Do you remember the year of the Tornado? 1,297 tornadoes in 1992. And then the Midwest flooded so badly, we were told that we lost all of that farmland forever. All I kept seeing was destruction after destruction. People being rescued, people losing their homes, losing their lives, whole towns destroyed. Then hurricane Andrew hit.
When I kept asking, "Lord, what is going on?" God gave me Joel chapter 1. And He gave me some insight that really disturbed me.
Joel 1:1-20 AMP
1 THE WORD of the Lord that came to Joel the son of Pethuel.
2 Hear this, you aged men, and give ear, all you inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing as this occurred in your days or even in the days of your fathers?
3 Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children another generation.
4 What the crawling locust left, the swarming locust has eaten; and what the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten; and what the hopping locust left, the stripping locust has eaten.
5 Awake, you drunkards, and weep; wail, all you drinkers of wine, because of the [fresh] sweet juice [of the grape], for it is cut off and removed from your mouth.
6 For a [heathen and hostile] nation [of locusts, illustrative of a human foe] has invaded My land, mighty and without number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the
jaw teeth of a lioness. [Rev. 9:7, 8.]
7 It has laid waste My vine [symbol of God's people] and barked and broken My fig tree; it has made them completely bare and thrown them down; their branches are made white. [Isa. 5:5, 6.]
8 Lament like a virgin [bride] girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth [who has died].
9 The meal or cereal offering and the drink offering are cut off from the house of the Lord; the priests, the Lord's ministers, mourn.
10 The field is laid waste, the ground mourns; for the grain is destroyed, the new juice [of the grape] is dried up, the oil fails.
11 Be ashamed, O you tillers of the soil; wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
12 The vine is dried up and the fig tree fails; the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple or quince tree, even all the trees of the field are withered, so that joy has withered and fled away from the sons of men.
13 Gird yourselves and lament, you priests; wail, you ministers of the altar; come, lie all night in sackcloth, you ministers of my [Joel's] God, for the cereal or meal offering and the drink offering are withheld from the house of your God.
14 Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land in the house of the Lord, your God, and cry to the Lord [in penitent pleadings].
15 Alas for the day! For the day of [the judgment of] the Lord is at hand, and as a destructive tempest from the Almighty will it come. [Zeph. 1:14-18.]
16 Is not the food cut off before our eyes, joy and gladness from the house of our God?
17 The seed [grain] rots and shrivels under the clods, the garners are desolate and empty, the barns are in ruins because the grain has failed.
18 How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed and huddle together because they have no pasture; even the flocks of sheep suffer punishment (are forsaken and made wretched).
19 O Lord, to You will I cry, for the fire has devoured the pastures and folds of the plain and the wilderness, and flame has burned all the trees of the field.
20 Even the wild beasts of the field pant and cry to You, for the water brooks are dried up and fire has consumed the pastures and folds of the wilderness and the plain.
This the apostasy: 6 For a [heathen and hostile] nation [of locusts, illustrative of a human foe] has invaded My land, mighty and without number; its teeth are the teeth of a lion, and it has the
jaw teeth of a lioness.
The jaw teeth means to inculcate. Which means to teach. So we have a heathen and hostile nation, that teaches by repetition. That basically gives a good definition of a cult if there ever was one.
But I'm not going to go through this entire chapter, I'll leave that to those that are interested. Go look up the Hebrew on this. And while you are researching this, remember that the spiritual precedes the physical in God's Word. IE, in prophecy, the spiritual occurs, then the physical outcome.
So you've got the enemy that teaches false, they are devouring everything. And everything dries up or dies.
God tells the tillers of the soil and and the vinedressers to be ashamed. Now, if it were just ordinary bad weather, why should they be ashamed?
Joe 1:11 Be ashamed, O you tillers of the soil; wail, O you vinedressers, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field has perished.
Because this is figurative of the Pastors, the Ministers. The harvest has perished.
The result of that failure is seen in the following verses.
I've seen this verse illustrated before so when I read it I knew exactly what it was talking about.
You get flood, where the soil is saturated followed by drought.
Joel 1:17 AMP
17 The seed [grain] rots and shrivels under the clods, the garners are desolate and empty, the barns are in ruins because the grain has failed.
The result is, that the surface of the soil dries out and the ground underneath stays too wet and then the seed rots. This happens in clay soils.
Then look at the cattle and sheep! The cattle represent lay ministers, not pastors, but those within the church that directly minister to the congregation.
Then those poor sheep!
And over the past two decades, I'm still seeing this chapter played out. Unfortunately, I think we are fixing to move on past that passage, but it will probably be played out until the Lord returns.
