The Enemy in the Camp Part 11: The destruction of the base
If you are over forty, then you remember a time when churches were full or close to it. I was taken to church as a child, and I do not remember many empty seats at all - even in the large church where my maternal grandmother attended.
Today, even in most churches where there is true Bible preaching happening, there are few people attending on a regular basis. Why? Why are there so few regular attending members? To have a firm understanding, we must go back to the creation of man.
If you read the Word, then it is fairly clear that God wanted children and so He created them. Not robots, but free-thinking children that He loves absolutely, and He desires that we love Him.
God made Adam for himself and then He made Eve for Adam because there was not a suitable companion for him. This was the first husband and wife couple, and God told them to be fruitful and multiply. Soon Cain and Able were born, and the first family unit began.
Just a mention for levity, Cain and Able were the first humans with belly buttons. I’ve always thought it comical that artwork, be it painting or sculpture, depicted Adam and Eve with belly buttons. There would have been no reason for them to have them!
It is very clear that the family unit is the building block of a Godly existence. Yes, the flesh was corrupted as the tree of knowledge of good and evil and wickedness entered the life of mankind, and we were no longer immortal beings.
That’s all known, but what we tend to overlook is that when the family unit begins to break down, destruction follows. We have the record of the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, the fall of Rome, and even Pompeii. If you research Roman society and the Pompeiian society, it becomes very obvious that morals were corrupted, the family unit broke down, and the societies fell.
The image of the family unit continued mostly intact; at least man returned to the family building block of life, and it remained that way for hundreds of years. Then in the 1960s things began to break down again, prayer was taken out of schools, and some people stopped going to church. Did you know that in the early 60s that approximately eighty percent of Americans attended church on Sunday? That percentage has dropped to thirty percent today.
In 1960 the divorce rate was 2.2 in 1000; today that number is 40 to 50%. Currently, the conservative estimate is that 1 in 4 children are raised in single parent homes, and the majority of those are raised by their mothers. There is a great importance in having both a father and mother’s influence in the raising of children.
Statistics show that when a father becomes saved 83% of the time the rest of the family will be led to the Lord in salvation, however when any other member in a lost home becomes saved, that number drops to below 30 percent. Our society has not only fallen from God’s intended design but has fled from it with deep intention and defiance.
Christ Jesus is the foundation of the Church, the true Church, and the family as God designed it is the cornerstone, the building blocks. They are directly related and when the family unit breaks down, the church suffers, not only in numbers but in true followers of Christ.
There is one thing I can promise: when a preacher or teacher begins to speak on the responsibilities of husbands and wives or on being Godly parents, some will inevitably lash out in anger and turn away from the truth of the Scripture. Common statements people say when giving reasons for their divorce are from men: “she just wasn’t fulfilling my needs”, and from women: “I just wasn’t happy.” Most of these could be prevented with some solid counseling and in-depth discussion of expectations and goals before the wedding.
When the building blocks fall apart, so then does the gathering. People just stop going to church and hearing about God, learning from the Word, and subsequently teaching it in the home. The results are a failing society. People have become busy with everything except God and Godly living, as if it would somehow rob them of something.
When society pushes to remove God from the lives of His children, the sense of authority fades away and with it the responsibility to live according to the authority of our Creator. Oh, the fake churches have members; the places that do not preach the wages of sin, the wrath of God, and what God considers sin.
Those churches seem to have many members, but the Scripture clearly teaches us to be careful of false prophets and to test the spirits. A man in a pulpit can espouse a “name it and claim it” message and the unsaved and gullible will gather in droves.
Please do not be fooled by thespians in pulpits—they are false teachers and in league with their father, the devil. John 8:31 So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
To those that were at the Temple who did not believe Jesus He said, 8:44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 But because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.
I fear that far too many today who profess to be Christians, in an act of selfishness, shun the Word of God rather than cling to it, and I’m really not sure if it is just not wanting to hear what they deem unpleasant or if there is a deep-seated concern and avoidance of conviction.
Either way, I believe I have shown that the fading of the family unit and its separation from God has been a key factor in the dwindling numbers in attendance in our churches.
“When we come to the end of self, we come to the beginning of Christ.”
-Charles Spurgeon