18 I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. Matthew 16:18 (NASB)
My father-in-law went on to be with the Lord several years ago, but during World War II he was a U.S. Navy Pharmist’s Mate. In today’s Navy, they are called Corpsmen. These are the medics who hit the beach or land in the choppers with the Marines or Navy Seals when they go into real combat. My father-in-law hit the beach with the U.S. Marines in the Pacific on the Islands of Peleliu and Okinawa….
He was about 20 years old at the time. He hit the beach as a boy and left that island at the end of those two battles with a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. He rarely talked about it. I asked him to describe the battle in which he won the Bronze Star. He had volunteered to go in under fire to treat several wounded Marines then wait for a tank to come in as the means to take them out. That was where he earned that Bronze Star and the first of his Purple Hearts. He had already been wounded before he volunteered. He described the combat as men falling all around him.
There are times as we observe the carnage in the visible church and it feels very much as if we are in a fight to the death battle with men falling all around us. I know this because I see it myself and I get your emails. The evil forces of apostasy seem to be winning on every side. If we claim to hold to God’s Word as absolute truth then we are very close to coming to that point of being laughed to scorn as Josiah’s men were who attempted to get the survivor’s of the Northern Kingdom’s capture to come to Jerusalem in repentance for Passover. Truth, it seems, has become relative to most people, that is, to those who think within what has come to be known as post-modernism. This disease seems to claim a major Christian leader nearly every week or so. Church after church is found to be consumed with pragmatism or perhaps the leadership has decided to move the focus of the church to become WOKE.