Behold, the days come, says the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. Amos 8:11
So wrote the prophet Amos concerning Israel during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah around 700 BC. By analogy – the Old Testament foreshadowing the New – we may observe the same prophecy applicable in our day at the close of our gentile dispensation. The time would come, so the prophet, wherein the words of God could no longer be heard – wherein the Christian Gospel would no longer be proclaimed. Effectively, that time is now.
It is not merely that traditional churches are closing throughout the Western world, but that the church itself, conceived as a single entity, has ceased to defend and champion the Christian Gospel – where by church is meant the visible institutional edifice of Christendom. Here, for instance, items from the program of the German Evangelical Summit, Berlin 2017 –
1. Gay, Lesbian, Trans ... The Multiplicity Of Sexual Orientation
2. Coming-Out Workshop For Lesbian Girls And Women
3. The Return Of Racial Thinking – Aryan Esotericism And The New Right
4. Focus Rainbow – For A Soft Revolution Of Language
5. Et Asks: Can You See Me? – On The Deliverance Of Martians
Within its 576 pages, according to a commentator, a reference to Jesus Christ could not be found. And these, note well, are the evangelicals. As for the Roman church in Germany, the ethos of its educational and moral agenda describes an historic full circle with a return to the cultural values of ancient Rome in its decadent phase.
The problem, however, is not merely the humanist subversion of Christendom, whereby it is spoken, concerning Europe, of a post-Christian society. There is an underlying reason why such wholesale subversion could at all take hold, effectively replacing the Christian gospel – and it is the spirit of organisation and religious denominationalism, whereby the faith becomes something static and ossified, dogmatically fixated and incapable of further growth.
Historically, the applicable dynamic is well understood. Spiritual revival, such as periodically transforms the Christian experience, typically lasts three and a half years. Within that time a new organisational structure arises to reflect the newfound understanding. With organisation, however, the movement goes to seed, in a manner of speaking, and stagnation supervenes. The organisational corpse may linger though the centuries, but it is spiritually dead – incapable of renewal, as of bringing souls to spiritual birth.
The human response upon revival is to become fixated and proprietary – we have it now, so let us form an organisation, with ourselves as the head, and we will rule the kingdom – something of that order. Human administration takes the place of the Holy Spirit, and the spiritual body, now incapable of receiving new information (further revival), ceases to grow, to mature and develop, and so – necessarily, inexorably – inclines unto death.
When Martin Luther, for instance, overthrew the hold of the medieval papacy with the truth of justification by faith, many in that age were justified by the faith of God. But when John Wesley taught the further truth of sanctification, many Lutherans could not receive it. Similarly, and it turn, when modern Pentecost arose with the restoration of the spiritual gifts, the Wesleyans could not receive it. Which brings us to our present age and – significantly – as the Word of God is being restored in fullness, institutional Pentecost is unable to receive it, leaving it – the denomination – the empty husk it is today. The tension within organised Christendom today is thus between a secular, liberal humanism on the one hand, and an archaic doctrinal formalism on the other – and neither holds a prospect of salvation for the enquiring soul.
However it is not merely the traditional mega-organisations, but also many of the so-called independents, which cling to their non-biblical doctrines with the tenacity of an octopus holding its prey. Like their organisational counterpart, they reserve their pulpit for teachers with a liberal-arts understanding of the Christian gospel – gentle Jesus meek and mild, born in a manger, and ah ... Mama, how does the rest of it go? – in other words, two years of Bible school and not a clue concerning the faith as once delivered to the saints.
Yet the depth of historic subversion within the Christian tradition seems a matter nigh inconceivable to the greater confessional body within the churches. The Christian experience – or rather, the lack thereof – is quietly taken for granted – along with the Nicene creed, the Westminster confession, or whatever the preferred theological figleaf. While mere doctrinal confession might have availed in the dim twilight of the reformed traditions, now that the apocalyptic seven seals have been opened, the insufficiency is everywhere apparent. Here, moreover, we see the fulfilment of Matthew 13, from him that has not shall be taken that which he has ... or what he thought he had. Popes, bishops and ministers of whatever persuasion, seeing that the emperor indeed is naked, are of themselves relinquishing the hybrid contrivance of reformation theology – typically to reinvent the faith in the context of post-modern relativism. Their congregations, the while, seeing that the larder indeed is bare, are staging a mass exodus, usually for the greener pastures within some form of spiritually heterodox universalism.
What is the reason for this universal failure to appropriate the genuine biblical faith? It is not the Word of God which has failed – God’s eternal provision, divinely destined to accomplish its purpose. It is rather that, almost from the beginning, the revealed Word has been ill esteemed by those who, in the words of Paul, received not the love for the truth – rulers and ecclesiasts who, historically, valued their own ideas, their creeds and traditions, above the revealed Word of God. Without revelation of the spiritual logos, however, spiritual understanding cannot arise, and thus also no authentic biblical faith. The universal erosion in our age of the ostensible or apparent faith – that species of make-belief which passes for faith – shows that it was but a pale simulation of the authentic biblical faith. As stated, a creedal or confessional faith was viable in the spiritual outer courts of bygone ages. Now that we are bidden, however – through restorative biblical revelation – to enter the Most Holy, the faith of the reformation fathers must inevitably fail.
Of course there are those – in scripture, the spiritual bride of Christ – who, by divine foreknowledge, are predestined to apprehend the revelation of this age, and thus the full redemptive efficacy of the Word of God. For these blessed souls the revealed Word of God – which the modern churches all but deny – will produce a resurrection and a rapture. May we, therefore, who earnestly contemplate these truths, be part of that small universal body.