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Last Updated: Dec 12, 2008 - 4:54:39 PM |
Author Mark Twain once quipped, “The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated.” This also holds true for Christianity. Since the 1960s one theologian after another has predicted the ‘death’ of Biblical Christianity. Some have predicted it with glee, declaring, ‘Good, we’re finally getting rid of Sunday School Christianity!” Others have predicted it with sadness, often offering human-made solutions as to how Christianity can ‘stave off’ its coming demise. However, in the last fifty years, the only death that has occurred has been among people, including many who predicted Christianity’s death! On the other hand, Christianity is still alive and making people spiritually alive.
Christianity may not be growing in Western society (which is often due to its giving up on the Biblical Faith), yet it is making impressive headway in such places as Africa and Asia. Apparently the people on these continents haven’t read the reports of Christianity’s demise.
What is dying in the world today is a new form of religion masking itself as one type of Christianity. It’s a child of the Seventeenth Century Enlightenment thinking. Sadly, it has infected many theologians, even though it has little to do with the past two thousand years of Christianity. This new religion denies many historic Christian teachings. It replaces these teachings with what it considers to be a ‘reasonable Christianity,’ where a person does not need to accept the miraculous, such as God becoming human in Jesus, or the suffering and death of Jesus for the sins of the world, or his bodily resurrection from the dead. It has no sense of mission to bring Christ to the nations since it no longer believes in the Biblical Christ who died and rose for the people of the nations. No wonder it finds itself on the decline. It has little to offer a world that must daily deal with its own sin and death.
The Biblical message of God’s forgiveness in Jesus has weathered many storms of the past and will weather the many storms of the future. Jesus promised that he himself would build his Church (people, not a building) and nothing would be able to destroy it. This Church proclaims the ‘message of reconciliation’ proclaimed by Paul and the other apostles. This message tells us that God has made us his friends by dealing with our sins on Jesus rather than on us. It calls on us to trust what God has done for us in Christ. The Apostle Paul writes, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation; namely that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. . . God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, in order that we might become the righteousness of God in him.” Here is a Christianity guaranteed to live on until the end of time.
The news of Christianity’s death has been ‘greatly exaggerated.’ As a matter of fact, Biblical Christianity is alive wherever the Biblical good news of forgiveness in Christ is proclaimed - not only through Christians in Africa and Asia, but also through Christians in such western nations as our own. It may not always be the most popular message, but it is the saving message that changes lives forever. It is alive and has the power to bring forgiveness and eternal life to any and all who cling to this message of reconciliation. Thus, rather than being dead, it has the power to make the spiritually dead alive.
Pastor Douglas Morton is pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Marengo. His email is pastor@forgiveninchrist.com.
Bible verses in this article are from Matthew 16:18 and 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 & 21.
© Copyright 2008 by The East Iowa Herald
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