“The church is supposed to be a gathering of the faithful to exalt the glory of God. “Sin and righteousness and judgment” are essential themes of the message Christians are supposed to convey to the world (John 16:8). But those topics are deliberately omitted from most of the sermons preached in evangelical churches nowadays.”
(John MacArthur) All the trouble and inconvenience that came with 2020’s string of calamities could actually have one surprising benefit: it might deal a death blow to America’s obsession with flippant, man-centered, self-serving, and fraudulent religion.
I’m thinking of trends like so-called “seeker-driven Christianity,” the irreverent brand of entertainment-as-religion that has dominated evangelical megachurches for three decades or longer. Some of the best-known seeker churches boast massive congregations, but they haven’t actually met in person for almost a full year. Their leaders say they have no plans to resume public meetings until fears about the coronavirus are gone from the talking points of secular society. That makes perfect sense — for them. They have followed and imitated the culture for so long, how could they credibly resist the current drift?
There is also a long list of famous charismatic televangelists and self-styled “prophets” who have obliterated whatever small shred of believability they might once have had. A year ago they were assuring their viewers that they had already declared and decreed the end of COVID-19. And then, even as the virus continued to dominate the news, they boldly announced that the Lord had told them Donald Trump would be re-elected. After the votes were counted and certified, most of the best-known charismatic soothsayers still insisted Trump would be inaugurated for a second term in January. Such a string of highly publicized embarrassments should make it hard from now on to find gullible people willing to buy their preposterous claims. And that’s a good thing.
Research
Watch Out! Apostasy Alert — Naming names
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