HERE’S A HARD SAYING

The vast majority of American society consists of people who, generally speaking, are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God,” “despisers of them that are good,” and who continue to “wax worse and worse” (2 Tim. 3:1, 3, 4, 13). Preemptively, much of America’s professed Christian population has become “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God” and “despisers of them that are good;” and continues to “wax worse and worse.” I know the response of some to this will be, “This is a hard saying; who can bear it " (John 6:60); nevertheless, there is plenty of evidence that this is true.

Thousands of professed Christians demonstrate weekly in different ways, that they are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” And many of these are “despisers of those that are good” in that they are annoyed and aggravated by, and antagonistic towards, believers who refuse to be “conformed to this world,” and who still “earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints” (Rom. 12:1, 2; Jude 3).

And, the state of Christianity in America has continued to “wax worse and worse;” to the point that otherwise good Christian men and women, including many pastors, do not recognize how really conformed to the world and caught up by the spirit of this age they have become. As the world has descended from bad to worse to even worse, Christianity has maintained a static distance from the lost world and has descended from bad to worse to even worse.

Vance Havner once predicted that the time would come when many Christians would have to backslide in order to be in fellowship with the average church. We are thankful for the exceptions to this today, but the exceptions don’t appear to be the rule.

Jesus described what Christian normalcy is when He said to his followers, “Ye are the salt of the earth,” and “Ye are the light of the world” (Matt. 5:13, 14). With the exception of a remnant, the “salt” has lost its savor and the “light” has lost its luster in America. How sad where the lost world is concerned, and how shameful where so much of Christianity is concerned.

“For the time is come that judgment must begin at the houses of God.”

—1 Pet. 4:17