Friday, August 18, 2023
Everyone believes something. Everyone has a worldview whether they know it or not. There are secular, scientific, religious and non-religious worldviews. But what informs your belief? What’s your worldview? Is relativity or the culture your source of truth? Do you believe there’s absolute truth? If so, what is it? For true Christians, there is absolute truth which is God in Christ and His “it is written” Words of truth that form the entire Holy Bible. That truth informs our worldview.
True Christians view the world through the lens of God’s Word, thereby giving true believers an accurate and God-honoring biblical worldview, but this mandates that knowledge of God’s Word is indispensable to having a biblical worldview. Herein, however, exists a nearly insurmountable problem of biblical ignorance in Western evangelical churches today. As a result, many people in evangelical churches do not have a sound biblical worldview, and what’s worse, they don’t care.
So, who dropped the ball regarding ignorance in the knowledge of God’s “it is written” Word? It began with parents in the home. As the information and technological age overtook this world, it spawned increasingly less interest and time by parents in teaching, discussing, and praying with their children regarding the things of God’s Word. And as a result of parents allegedly having no time, (and I mean allegedly, because we all make time for whatever we deem important) parents too often shirked their responsibility and assumed the church would teach the children what was required according to God’s Word. But that’s proven to be a near-total colossal spiritual failure.
God commands parents to teach their children according to God’s Word. “You shall teach them diligently [God’s teachings] to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up” (Deut. 6:7). And there’s a reason this is so vital for, when God blesses you and gives you abundance “then beware, lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, [equal to our deliverance through faith in Christ, out of our bondage to sin] from the house of bondage…You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you” (Deut. 6:12, 14). The false gods of the people of this world’s corruption have overtaken not only many believers, but many in organized church leadership itself as church leaders have for many years increasingly sought to befriend the world.
But God said, “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Thus, by compromise and befriending the world, many professing Christians have an ungodly worldview because their source of truth is this world and its culture, and not God’s Word. Thus, many have no biblical vision of prophetic things to come, and “Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint” (Prov. 29:18). This is why some of us who observe the church’s falling away from God’s truth write and warn believers of this prophetic end-time reality. Pastor and author Michael Youssef said, “Biblical illiteracy is rampant. And people are going to fall for deception, for false teachings, for anything, because they’re not grounded in the Word of God”. (faithwire.com) In that article, George Barna, director of the Cultural Research Center said, “We’ve really got to sit back and think, intelligently and strategically, about what are we doing in reference to worldview. As we look at that, what we find is parents are doing next to nothing, intentionally; churches are doing next to nothing, intentionally.” And in that vacuum of knowledge resides yet another cause of the soon-coming and sudden falling away.
It would be a fair assessment, therefore, that christianpost.com reports the headline from Lifeway Research that, “Nearly 70% of churchgoers have ‘a growing sense of fear’”. Given the truth that many are utterly without a sound biblical worldview with “a growing sense of fear” is absolutely understandable. Here’s why: churchgoers instinctively know that something desperately wicked is brewing, but they have no idea what to do about it, because they haven’t been taught what “it” is that’s coming. Yet, in their spirit they know that “it” whatever “it” is, will overtake the whole world in the near future which will soon be the most terrifying time this world has ever known.
Fear of the unknown can lead to many health, mental and psychological problems, in which sudden death and suicide has reached a new high. Sudden death syndrome (SIDS) has typically been associated with infants dying in their cribs while they sleep. Today, sudden adult deaths occur in many young and otherwise healthy adults, many of which are due to heart failure from COVID-19 vaccines, though big Pharma and the corporate media will never confess to that truth. The outbreak of suicide has reached an all-time high in the U.S. According to a CDC report “An estimated 49,449 people died by suicide in the United States last year, up 2.6 percent from the estimated 48,183 in 2021.” Imagine, that’s an average of over 135 adult suicides daily! And much of that death is attributable to fear of the unknown, fear of the global elite, fear of the world’s end, fear of death, fear of the afterlife, fear of being lied to by authorities, etc.
Jesus said “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32). But in the organized church multitudes have been lied to by preachers for the times of the end in their lies of a pre-trib rapture, the imminent rapture the church has been rabidly teaching since Israel became a nation in May 1948. Yet now, 75 years later the world has gone mad with lawlessness, LGBTQ+ days of Lot, hatred, division and perplexity, leaving many in fear for the obvious lies promised by false teachers. No wonder millennials now abandon the organized church in droves. No wonder fear and skepticism of church leaders has many looking elsewhere for truth. But the Holy Spirit said “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment. But he who fears has not been made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18).
In reconciling then, the report that “Nearly 70% of churchgoers have ‘a growing sense of fear’”, with the Spirit’s revealed truth that, “perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment”, it becomes clear that nearly 70% of churchgoers have not been made perfect in love, that is, the love found in the Lord Jesus Christ. And that reported “growing sense of fear” is a direct result of the absence of “truth”, because otherwise “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”. Christ’s “truth” makes one free from fear, but ignorance breeds fear. We see then that organized churches have utterly failed to teach the whole truth of the Gospel, which intrinsically includes Jesus’ teachings of Antichrist’s seven-year tribulation and enduring faithfully to its end.
A God-honoring biblical worldview will prepare one to fearlessly endure until the end as Christ taught at Matt. 24:13. But the false pre-trib rapture, or silence of the end-times will not prepare anyone to endure to the end, but will result in many being like the five foolish virgins of Matt. 25:1–13. My prayer for us is that, in love for Christ and His testimony, we will embrace His whole Gospel, which includes the end-times, as we are now irrefutably in the end-times, and prepare accordingly in the testimony of Jesus which is “the spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10).
Marlin J. Yoder
