Biblical Audio Commentary – Another Generation

Biblical Audio Commentary – Another Generation

Transcript:

Much ink has been spilled about the shenanigans that many churches engage in to promote their version of Christianity in these last days.  In recent years we’ve been inundated with social justice, LGBT, black liberation theology, New Age doctrines, and Israel hatred.  The latest church that has come to our attention in this regard is the seeker-sensitive Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.  It came to light that several years ago the church, in their annual Super Bowl of Preaching-themed-services, simulated a football game kickoff when their female teaching pastor kicked a Bible off the stage.  Last year they did some Miley Cyrus antics with a variety of secular songs.  This year in their Laodicean efforts to remain relevant so as to keep bringing in entertainment-starved people, among other devilries, they simulated a TV commercial that featured a man – excuse the phrase – pooping his pants.  In their aberrant thinking, they believe that the Gospel can be made more accessible to people by connecting to their secular ways.  Presumably becoming all things to all people, as it were.  I guess in one sense they’ve been successful in that this church overall has 40,000 members among 14 campuses.  That’s a lot of people seeking to be amused each week.

I asked the question in a prior Commentary what might happen to the majority of these people under a scenario whereby persecution rose up in our nation.  That’s not an idle possibility, by the way.  Many Catholics have been targeted by the Biden Regimes’ Department of (in)Justice for their stance against abortion.  We know full well that many churches heeded the fear-mongering of government and obeyed its commands during the early part of the COVID scare to actually shut down.  Some local city governments sued churches that made the Christ-based decision to remain open during those months.  In Canada, pastors actually went to jail.

These actions are literally the tip of the iceberg of what’s coming as we careen nearer and nearer to the 7-year Tribulation.  People who attend church are, after all, domestic violent extremists (DVE) of the worst variety, many of whom actually wear MAGA hats, a sure tip-off of who should be imprisoned for their Christian beliefs.

But the question for the day is: Why do we have this state of affairs whereby churches have decided that preaching the Gospel of Christ is insufficient?

To answer this, we only have to review the book of Judges.  In the first chapter the Israelites, after the death of Joshua, had some initial success in driving out the inhabitants of the land of Canaan that God had given them.  To begin with they – gasp! – actually inquired of the Lord for direction.  But then, things went haywire.  They thought they could thrive without God.  The various tribes of Israel encountered resistance, and the result was that they did not drive out their enemies.  This particular phrase – did not drive out – is repeated seven times as Benjamin, Manasseh, Ephraim, Zebulon, Asher, and Naphtali, and Israel overall were indicted this way.  Additionally, the Amorites pressed Dan to the extent that they couldn’t come down to the plains allocated to them.  In other words, the tribes of Israel failed spectacularly in claiming the land God had given them.

Now that might seem rather strange at first glance.  If God gave them the land, why wasn’t He out there fighting for them?  This is the sad and tragic story of Judges.  Here is what was going on according to Judges 2:1-3:

Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”

The Israelites had turned from the Lord.  He warned them that if they failed to follow His commands, bad things would happen.  And so they did.  But why did they do this after starting off well?  Judges 2:10-15 gives us our answer:

And all that [first] generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he gave them over to plunderers, who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies, so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned, and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress.

This is the summary of the entire book of Judges.  It’s why God had to continually – in His mercy – save the Israelites.  They strayed.  Their stupidity put them into the hands of their enemies.  Then they realized they needed help from beyond themselves.  They called out to God.  He delivered them through one of His judges who led the people to victory over their enemies.  Then they repeated the cycle as another generation arose after a period of peace.

What’s my point?  How does this relate to the foolish people at Cornerstone Church?  If you peruse their website, you’ll see it appears that they are going after God.  In practice, however, they are kowtowing to people’s baser desires by being no different than the world.  All the other things – the entertainment and the relevancy – are of greater importance than the simple Gospel.  You know, preaching only the Word of God week after week is just so boring.  How could that church draw in and maintain its big budget that comes with 40,000 people if they simply preached from the Bible and did none of these other eye-candy delights?

The church of Jesus Christ has had its ups and downs over the millennia.  The last up was in the 1970s and 1980s.  It’s definitely been a downhill affair since then.  Yes, there have been the occasional revivals that got people excited that God is doing a new thing, and watch out – the church is going to take over the world!  But that’s not what the Bible says would happen, and sure enough, God’s Word has once more been accurate that apostasy would be rampant in these end times.  And here we are.

That generation of believers in 70s and 80s failed to pass on the faith to their children.  What happened is as sure as night follows day.

Again, Judges 2:10:

And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.

If we want to understand the present, by being Bereans and studying Scripture, we can see in the Old Testament the cycles and patterns of Biblical history play out time and again.  We’re in one of those Groundhog Day periods, only this is the final one.

It won’t be long before 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 comes to pass just as foretold:

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

What a glorious day that will be!