As I see it, there is a dangerous secularization within the churches that is trying to secularize Christianity to make it fit the world’s standards, doing the opposite of what they should be trying to do.
 
And just to be clear, I’m not saying that every single individual church does this, or that every single individual Christian does this, but there are trends in many churches that are simply worrying to me at the very least.
 
Now, allow me to explain just what it is that I am talking about regarding the secularization of the church (as the bride of Christ) and of Christianity itself.
 
Recently, I read two articles from The Daily Wire. One was titled: “Pastor Loses Job After Church Sign Stating ‘Homosexuality Is Still A Sin’ Causes Uproar” and the other was an op-ed from Mike S. Adams titled: “Why I Have To Debate ‘Christian’ Serial Killers,” referencing pro-abortion people in the church who not simply ignore abortion, but straight up claim it is somehow morally right.
 
Adams writes that the silence from most Christians regarding abortion is “stunning”, reminding him of stories he had heard of German churches ignoring Jewish trains full of women and children crying out for help by singing hymns more loudly. Of course, these are simply stories that may or may not be true, but we are seeing the Left literally calling for people to “shout” their abortion. And it seems, at least when it comes to plenty of supposed “Christians” that abortion is not only an issue that is not discussed, but sometimes even advocated for. Plenty of times, either churches ignore the issue of abortion to instead focus on the sinfulness of Man (and just barely mentioning how we are already saved if we have received Christ into our hearts) or outright joining the Leftist thought-train of secularization and advocating for women’s “right” to have an abortion.
 
Similarly, it seems as though we have been less intent on pointing out and rebuking the sinfulness of homosexuality because it’s “cool” or “acceptable” now to be gay.
 
Which brings me to the other article, where Pastor Justin Hoke of Trinity Bible Presbyterian Church in Weed, California lost his job after his church sign read the following: “Bruce Jenner is still a man. Homosexuality is still a sin. The culture may change. The Bible does not.”
 
That seems like a perfectly reasonable and accurate church sign. But the sign still caused an uproar within the community.
 
Now, that in and of itself was not actually the reason for the pastor to lose his job. The community can say whatever it wants, but it ultimately can’t get rid of a pastor. However, the church can.
 
Pastor Hoke said that he was not exactly fired, but it was brought to his attention that just about everyone in the church with the exception of one couple said that they would leave the church if he continued preaching there.
 
And THAT is where we find a huge problem. 99% of the church members and all of the elders did not want Hoke, whose gravest sin was to preach against sin (which is HIS JOB), and threatened to leave the church if he continued doing exactly what he’s supposed to do.
 
Now, I get that this is California, particularly in a city called WEED. However, I looked into the church and what denomination it fell under. The Bible Presbyterian Church is a very conservative church. Unlike many other churches where it seems they teach literally the opposite of Christianity, the Bible Presbyterian Church follows the Westminster Standards of reformed doctrine. In other words, they’re as conservative as you can get.
 
And yet, despite its conservatism, the overwhelming majority of the body of the church was against what the pastor did, even though he was 100% right.
 
Bruce, or “Caitlyn” Jenner is still a man. It doesn’t matter what he looks like, or what parts he surgically added or removed, he is still a he because God made him that way.
 
Homosexuality is still 100% a sin. It doesn’t matter if the Left calls us homophobes for saying it, the Word of God makes this abundantly clear.
 
And that’s not to say any of us hate gay people, either. Quite the opposite in fact. If we hated gay people, we wouldn’t care to point out their sin and we wouldn’t try to save them. But we care for people’s souls – all people’s. So, we try to help them be saved.
 
And yet, even though the Bible is perfectly clear about homosexuality, almost every member of the church wanted the pastor gone because he was spreading the Truth.
 
When I look at where the church is headed, I worry. The Catholic Church has had multiple instances of highly immoral sexual misconduct with children. And yes, while that is also the case in many other places, particularly Leftist Hollywood, the Church is held to a higher standard than Hellywood (and yes, I’m thinking of calling it that from now on).
 
The fact that the people of a conservative church would threaten to leave a church if it retained a pastor who was SPREADING THE TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL is a massive red flag, even if it is in California.
 
Homosexuality is still a sin, regardless of what society might argue. Transgenderism is a mental issue, regardless of the Left’s attempts to normalize and encourage it. Abortion is death, regardless of what any man or woman might say.
 
These are all things that we should be tackling head on, not retreating on. We should tackle these things and rebuke these things because these things are immoral. And in challenging these things, we should not cower and apologize, and we should not be getting rid of pastors for challenging these things. We are Christians. We serve God, not Man. And as Christians, we should not worry about persecution; we should fully expect it. As Christians, we are hated for telling the Truth; the Truth of Christ, of God, of the Gospels, of the Bible.
 
Christianity cannot become secularized, lest we fall to sin forever. We cannot allow for it to fall to Man. We must pray to God that He may guide our steps so that we may continue to spread His Word, regardless of the physical consequences.
 
Why? Because it’s not just the most important thing – it’s the only important thing.
 
There is a reason people in China risk going to underground churches. They risk imprisonment because they’d rather be physically imprisoned than spiritually imprisoned.
 
There is a reason people in the Middle East so often come to Christ. Even though they risk not just imprisonment but outright death, they’d rather die the first death than the second.
 
And yet, I see so many self-professed “Christians” either ignoring the sins of Man or outright advocating for them, arguing that they are actually moral when the Bible proves otherwise.
 
I’ve often said that we need a Christian revival. When I say that, I don’t just mean more people coming to Christ who never said or thought they were Christians, but I also mean those who think they are Christians and argue they are doing God’s work but are not.
 
We need a Christian revival not just in America but around the world. We need to fully understand what it means to be a Christian. It means to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, through trial and tribulation on this Earth, following His teachings as best as we can, regardless of what society might say or argue. It means not fearing persecution but outright expecting it, knowing that whatever Man can do cannot compare to what God can do.
 
For it is better to die the most horrendous death imaginable at the hands of Man than it would be to be on the receiving end of God’s Righteous and Just Wrath.
 
Shame on those “Christians” who threatened to leave a church whose pastor follows and teaches the Word of God. But beyond that, I sincerely hope they come to their senses, understanding the error of their ways, and return to Christ.
 
Similarly, I hope those “Christians” who advocate for abortion, or at least “choice”, eventually repent of their sins for they are doing the work not of God but of the Devil.
 
I hope and pray we can fight back against the secularization of the churches and of Christianity. It’s definitely not the first time the collective church has had such challenges, but here’s hoping we can overcome and defeat such challenges once again.
 
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 
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Author: Freddie Marinelli.

If you were to watch nothing but the fake news media, prime-time television and Hollywood movies, you would think today’s America is largely and mostly liberal, and more specifically, secular in its beliefs. You would believe that Christianity is on the decline in this country and slowly being left in our nation’s past. And while this would be a dream for the Left, the reality is the complete opposite.
 
According to new Harvard research, Christianity in the U.S. is growing, not shrinking. The research brought into question the “secularization thesis”. This thesis holds that the U.S. is following in the steps of other advanced industrial nations in shedding their once vibrant culture of faith and moving towards a secular society. The research found no support of this secularization taking place. Not only that, the researchers also found that religion in America currently enjoys “persistent and exceptional intensity.”
 
A writer for The Federalist (Glenn T. Stanton) tackles this research as well, asking all the right questions such as why church numbers seem to be on the downswing if Christianity is growing, what kind of churches manage to maintain and even grow their numbers while others see dwindling numbers, what is contributing to this growth in faith, and what do we conclude from data about Millennial church-goers and former Christians.
 
Stanton concludes that, in regards to dwindling church attendance, these numbers do not equate dwindling belief in Christianity.
 
According to Stanton: “The percentage of Americans who attend church more than once a week, pray daily, and accept the Bible as wholly reliable and deeply instructive to their lives has remained absolutely, steel-bar constant for the last 50 years or more, right up to today. These authors describe this continuity as ‘patently persistent.’”
 
In other words, statistically speaking, the percentage of people who attend church once a week, pray on a daily basis and accept the Bible as the Word of God is the same today as it was half-century or so ago. And it’s been constant in that entire time-span.
 
Stanton continues: “The percentage of such people is also not small. One in three Americans prays multiple times a day, while one in 15 do so in other countries on average. Attending services more than once a week continues to be twice as high among Americans compared to the next highest-attending industrial country, and three times higher than the average comparable nation.”
 
“One-third of Americans hold that the Bible is the actual word of God. Fewer than 10 percent believe so in similar countries. The United States ‘clearly stands out as exceptional,’ and this exceptionalism has not been decreasing over time. In fact, these scholars determine that the percentages of Americans who are the most vibrant and serious in their faith is actually increasing a bit, ‘which is making the United States even more exceptional over time.’”
 
So it’s not like a small part of the nation falls under this category. Christianity and its fundamental beliefs are widely believed throughout the nation and no other comparable country can even come close (which is actually sad, when you think about it, but it does explain a lot of things *ahem* Europe is screwed *ahem*).
 
Stanton also shares some more info: “In 1989, 39 percent of those who belonged to a religion held strong beliefs and practices. Today, these are 47 percent of all the religiously affiliated.”
 
So not only is Christianity growing in numbers, it is also growing in strength. More and more people are coming to faith, and those who are religiously affiliated say they hold strong beliefs and practices.
 
Pew research reports that “evangelical Protestantism and the historically black Protestant tradition have been more stable” over the years in comparison to mainline churches, which are dwindling in attendance. Stanton notes that there’s even “a slight uptick in the last decade because many congregants leaving the mainline churches are migrating to evangelical churches that hold fast to the fundamentals of the Christian faith.”
 
So while there have been diminishing numbers of church-goers, there has been a rise in evangelical churches due largely (or perhaps solely) to the fact that they hold true to the fundamental beliefs of Christianity. In other words, people want the real deal and are, understandably, turned off by fake Christianity.
 
Stanton writes: “When so-called ‘progressive’ churches question the historicity of Jesus, deny the reality of sin, support abortion, ordain clergy in same-sex relationships and perform their marriages, people desiring real Christianity head elsewhere. Fact: evangelical churches gain five new congregants exiled from the liberal churches for every one they lose for any reason. They also do a better job of retaining believers from childhood to adulthood than do mainline churches.”
 
I can think of a couple of churches that tend to be rather liberal in their teachings, rather than sticking with the actual word of God. Mainly the Roman Catholic Church and the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America (PCUSA). If you belong to either one of these churches, forgive me, but it’s the truth. The amount of times I’ve seen so-called Roman Catholic clergymen and women upholding the liberal and anti-Christian belief that same-sex marriage should be allowed and that abortion is okay, at least in certain occasions, honestly has me worried.
 
And having actually attended a PCUSA church in the past and having held conversations with the pastor also gave me the opportunity to see just what they believe: the opposite of what Christianity does. I even had conversations with the church’s youth and they all agreed, back before the 2016 election, that they would rather have Obama for a third term than either Clinton or Trump. OBAMA AKA THE MOST ANTI-CHRISTIAN PRESIDENT TO EVER SERVE OFFICE!
 
So, understandably, my mother and I chose to head elsewhere. We chose to go to a REAL Christian church that taught REAL Christianity. This is the case for many people in America. Those who wish to be taught real Christianity and experience real Christianity leave the churches that don’t offer that, as well they should. What’s the point of calling yourself a Christian if you don’t actually believe in the tenets of the Christian faith? What’s the point of attending a church that isn’t teaching you valuable things about God, Christ, this world that He has created and the Word that He has spoken written down by His followers?
 
Regardless, let’s move on. The final item we will be looking at, since I don’t want to make this article too long, is Millennials. According to Stanton: “Pew reports that of young adults who left their faith, only 11 percent said they had a strong faith in childhood while 89 percent said they came from a home that had a very weak faith in belief and practice.”
 
This is not surprising in any way. If you grew up in a family that had very weak faith, there is little reason to stay in that faith. You either are curious enough to search further in the Bible, go to better churches, and become a stronger Christian than your family or, more often than not, you abandon that little faith altogether and simply attribute it to “growing up”.
 
I know of a lot of people who have been raised in a supposedly “Christian” household who abandoned their faith and believe their secularism is simply due to growing up and maturing. The reality is that weak faith almost always dies eventually. Not all the time, necessarily, but almost always. Particularly if you grow up in a household of weak faith.
 
Personally, I didn’t grow up in a Christian household. Quite the opposite really. My father was a devout atheist, if you will, who would honestly mock those of faith and consider science to be the ultimate truth, despite the fact that it can’t answer everything and hardly even manages to fully explain what it already tries to explain. Not to say science is a joke, it isn’t. But it’s not the end-all be-all of the truth of our world. Not to mention it doesn’t get much into the Creator of the world.
 
As I was saying, I didn’t grow up in a Christian household. I used to believe in the theory of evolution until I started to question its logic. How can a species evolve into an entirely different species, even if given millions upon millions of years to do so? It just doesn’t make sense. A species evolving and adapting to better survive its environment? That makes sense. A species evolving into an entirely different species altogether that acts entirely different from its previous type? Nope, that’s illogical.
 
But I used to believe these things. I didn’t have faith in Christ, but now I do simply because it’s the most logical thing to do. It’s not that we had weak faith. We didn’t HAVE faith. My father, most likely, still doesn’t. But as for my mother and I, we have faith and it’s a STRONG one.
 
What I’m trying to say is that those of weak faith could most likely lose that faith altogether. But sometimes, that weak faith, or even lack of faith, can turn into strong faith. Relatively similar to my situation, I also know of some scientists who sought to disprove the Bible who wound up converting.
 
As for Millennials (and just about everyone else), all it takes is a family of strong faith. Millennials are just another generation not too dissimilar to the previous ones. Strong faith is difficult to kill.
 
Overall, the research from Harvard is fantastic news that really challenges the Left’s belief that Christianity is on the down-slide and conservatives are panicking over it. Reality, as always, is entirely different from what they claim it is.
 
Not only is Christianity not on the down-swing, but it’s also growing in numbers AND in strength of belief, at least in the United States. I don’t quite know about the rest of the world but, considering what is currently happening in Europe and Latin America, it’s reasonable to believe things aren’t quite going so well, particularly because of the seeming rise of socialism just about everywhere in those areas.
 
Although the interesting thing about socialism is that, despite all its efforts, it can lead many to Christ. If socialism and communism managed to do exactly what they wanted, there wouldn’t be people of faith in North Korea trying to escape. There wouldn’t be underground churches in China.
 
An oppressive government tends to drive people to God, even if those people practice in secret rather than openly. So no matter which way you slice it, the Lord winds up being the winner anyway.
 
In America, this is exceptionally true.
 
Matthew 11:28-30
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
 
Author: Freddie Marinelli.

As it was mentioned in my previous article on California’s foundation on greed, there was a religious revival in the 70’s called the “Jesus Movement” that originated from said state.
 
In his book titled: “Is This The End?” Dr. David Jeremiah talks about the need for a Christian revival in the country. He lists the documented Christian revivals through this land’s history.
 
First, comes the first revival called The Great Awakening (1720s through 1740s). Just prior to this revival, the land was not too different from what it is today, with less and less people being converted and proclaiming their fellowship to Christ. This revival began with a simple gospel message of the need to be born again, which resonated with younger audiences and gave them hope. Johnathan Edwards, during this time, warned unconverted men and women of the danger that lies ahead of them should they fail to come to Christ. And John Wesley used his powerful voice, in the literal sense, to evangelize sinners for a mile without the use of amplification systems.

This revival is immensely important, as it's what led our founding fathers to fight for our freedoms.
 
The Second Great Awakening started sometime in the early 1800s. During this time, as people were preoccupied with the task of building a new nation, their spiritual well-beings began to deteriorate. During the time of the Great Awakening, 40 to 50 percent of the population attended church. By the 1790s, however, that number dropped down to 5 to 10 percent.

                              Christianity in America was under threat of extinction.

But in a college in Virginia, some students locked themselves in a room in fear of fellow classmates and began praying for revival. The college president investigated the situation and when the students were invited to his office, they prayed alongside the college president. In short time, half of the student body had come to the Lord.
 
The Third Great Awakening came during the 1850s and 1860s. After sometime, the passion and fire of the Second had died down. But thanks to one Jeremiah Lanphier, the Third Great Awakening began. He had announced a prayer meeting for September 23, 1857. In that first meeting, almost no one showed up. But as months went by, more and more people would show up. More than 50,000 people a day would show up to pray in New York, and this revival spread to other major cities around the area.
 
Then came a larger scale revival: The Global Revival (Dated sometime early 1900s) This one actually started in Wales, where a young man by the name of Evan Roberts began to preach a simple message: confess your sins to God, do your best to not continue sinning, obey the Holy Spirit promptly, and confess your faith in Christ openly. This simple message stirred incredible amounts of emotion from people in Wales, then England, then the rest of Europe, America and much of the known world.
 
Lastly was the aforementioned revival: The Jesus Movement (1970s). During this time, an entire generation of people became known as the “hippie” generation. This generation was known as the most screwed up generation in American history, with drug usage rising, and Indian transcendental meditation becoming the most popular form of spirituality there was. However in 1968, a Christian couple opened an evangelistic coffeehouse in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury (Hashbury, as nicknamed by the hippies) district. This one coffeehouse spawned a myriad of other Christian coffeehouses in the West Coast. And that led to ministries starting and people’s souls to be saved. This even caused thousands of hippies to become baptized.
 
We can see that there’s a pattern in our nation’s history, much like in our world’s history. The number of people who believe in Christ shifts over time. Sometimes that number goes up, and sometimes that number goes down. As I look at the state of the world today, I see that the trend is a massive down. What with the legalization of marijuana, gay marriage and unapologetic promotion of abortion, we see that the passion for the last revival is very clearly in the past.
 
But you have to ask yourself: are we due for another Christian revival? The answer to that can be a yes or a no. What do I mean by that? I mean that God is the one who decides who He saves. If He wants another religious revival to occur in the U.S. and the world, He will cause it to happen. He’s the Master of the Universe and gets to decide whom will enter His kingdom. That’s not to say that I don’t want another revival. I most certainly do. But if the Jesus Movement was ordained to be the last one, who are we to argue? Those of us who are saved will not suffer death… that is spiritual death. I’d be more than happy with another revival, but I have no right to complain if it doesn’t come. And those who are saved needn’t worry about the future, as it is all in the hands of the Lord.
 
This is why we are encouraged to evangelize people. We want to help bring as many people to Christ as we possibly can, regardless of the trend in faith in the country or the world.
 
John 6:37
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.”
 
Author: Freddie M.