Among the epidemics of just this 21st century caused by things naturally unseen is the most deadly of all: unbelief in God! After nearly 2,000 years of being “to God the fragrance of Christ” as His faithful spreading the Gospel and witnessing Him throughout earth, the world is still wicked and growing worse; having rejected His faithful, our message and witness as an “aroma of death leading to death,” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16, NKJV).1 Indeed, this is happening despite more than a millennium of dominance by Christianity as manmade religion over most of the world starting from the Middle Ages when men at least outwardly professed a belief in God. Now, they are turning even from this!
The turn away from a general belief in God can be traced to the 14th century rise of humanism during the Renaissance that made man rather than God the center of existence.2 This philosophy elevated human reason as more authoritative than the Bible and religion and spurred such critical historical events as the 17th century European Enlightenment as well as the divorce of science from a biblical worldview of creation beginning earnestly with Charles Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” in the 19th century. Today, all of our nation’s secular and not a few professed Christian educational institutions operate with the mindset God’s existence is only a faith construct of the religious.
It is one thing for the unsaved world to be turning away from belief in God with a corresponding rejection of His Word including prophecy, but it is another over the top thing for anyone claiming they are Christians to do so! Nevertheless, I have pointed to recent research in other posts that shows the epidemic of unbelief in God fully infecting the unsaved population of our nation is growing too, among many that profess to be Christians who are de facto apostates.3 I am convinced of the Lord that this epidemic of unbelief with its beginnings in the Renaissance which was certainly in part a freeing reaction to corrupt, stifling, dead manmade Christianity the religion, is also a satanically cultivated outcome of it!4 Truly, He foreknew these days and wills that His faithful not be discouraged by them.
Speaking of Himself as the manifestation of God’s Kingdom, His glorious future return after enduring Israel’s rejection and warning that it will be “as it was in the days of Noah” and “Lot” (Luke 17:20-37, NKJV), the Lord Jesus Christ “spoke a parable” to His hearers encouraging “that men always ought to pray and not lose heart,” (Luke 18:1, NKJV). The Lord compares the response of an unjust judge to a persistent widow and that of God to “His own elect” waiting on Him and vengeance on the faithless wicked who have mistreated them a long time (Luke 18:2-8a, NKJV). God’s elect and faithful are to wait on Him in persevering faith which tragically, the Lord laments in a rhetorical question He will not find in predominance on earth at His return (Luke 18:8b).5
1 As I write in my book, The Strong Man Of God: Back To Basics and will not cease declaring, God’s faithful are always going to include every aspiring strong man and great woman of God in the image of Jesus Christ! The book is available with the companion Strong Man Of God Men’s Group Study and Great Woman Of God Women’s Group Study in the Strong Man Store, at your favorite internet bookseller or brick and mortar bookstore.
2 Use your favorite search engine for articles on the origin of humanism.
3 See the 2019 Pew Research Center article, In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace. Also, learn how lack of a biblical worldview is widespread in professing American Christianity and among its leaders in a recent study by the Cultural Research Center directed by Dr. George Barna at Arizona Christian University.
4 Read the two-part post beginning August 21, 2016, Christianity The Religion Of Men, under the category, Instruction. Religion constructed and controlled by men is a fully inferior substitute for relationship with the living God whose reality in “wrath” is near to being displayed because they purposely “suppress the truth in unrighteousness” a- bout what can be “clearly seen” of Him “in” and all around “them,” (Romans 1:18-21, NKJV).
5 The Lord’s lament affirms what He has repeatedly led me to write concerning the number of those “who are alive and remain until” His coming as being very small (1 Thes- salonians 4:15, NKJV). Indeed, He even speaks to this remnant in advance warning them to stay alert in their persevering faith near the time of His sudden appearing (Rev- elation 16:15).
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