Is the Church Teaching the Lie of Satan?

We often talk about Europe as a "post-Christian culture." Then the conversation often moves to America, which is already "post-modern," and moving in the same direction as Europe. The so-called "nones," those who say they have no religion, are increasing as a proportion of the American population. The church has less and less influence in social issues.

Why is that?

In Europe, we see portions that have never known the biblical Gospel, because they were controlled by the Catholic Church. As that organization, not truly a church, lost political power, people were freed from its power, but had no spiritual reality to take its place. In the areas that had known the Gospel because of the Reformation, its influence had been undermined by the influence of higher criticism, and the failure of the

churches to exercise discipline in the face of  bald unbelief. As state churches, they were expected to include the entire population in their membership, and depended on state subsidies for their finances. They simply surrendered to the spirit of unbelief.

Here in America, evangelicalism has always been stronger than in Europe. The separation from the state and a voluntary membership has enabled the churches to exercise discipline - when they chose. While some church organizations have given in to the same higher criticism that conquered Europe, others have maintained their faithfulness to the Gospel and our God and Savior Jesus Christ.

However, now that evangelical remnant is decaying from the inside out. Prominent place has been given to mysticism, mainly through the Pentecostal movement, so that faith has become subjective rather than a faith in objective historical truths and events. A pietistic mentality has taken over, in which one's private spiritual experience takes precedence over the objective facts of the historic Christian faith. And a growing Prosperity movement has come to equate faith with personal success.

In other words, we witness with our eyes the professing evangelical movement's giving itself over to the very promise with which Satan brought down Adam and Eve: "God knows that when you eat of it [i. e., the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5). The deception of Satan was his promise to Adam and Even that betraying the God who made them would make them autonomous, with the authority to decide good and evil for themselves, rather than receiving their definitions from God.

And this is what has deprived the American evangelical movement of influence and effect. If personal prosperity and sovereignty are valid, then the truth of God is just an optional alternative. There can be no grounds for calling to account either individuals or officials who stand for wickedness. Wickedness and righteousness become equally valid. The salt has lost its savor: "You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet" (Matthew 5:13).

My message of warning is less to the apostates in American society than it is to the remnants of the church: "I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent" (Revelation 3:15-19).