Another important article from Bill Muehlenberg:
Biblical Christians know that in the end Jesus Christ triumphs, his church comes through victorious, and all God’s enemies are finally put in their place. But in the meantime a mighty battle is taking place for the souls, minds and hearts of men – and of cultures.
While final victory is assured, at the moment the church in the West at least is not doing so well. Certainly when it comes to the culture wars, the church has for the most part been experiencing one defeat after another, one failure after another, and one collapse after another.
Of course there are some wins here and there, and there are some individual churches and denominations which are standing strong, but by and large, the church has been doing quite badly. Of course much of this can be put down to the aggressive and militant nature of those who have declared war against the church, its beliefs, and its values.
That I have documented hundreds of times here. But what is perhaps even more concerning is how the church itself is allowing compromise, carnality, unbelief and worldliness to creep in and contaminate things. We are often our own worst enemy here, and things seem only to be getting worse.
We are not able to withstand all the rot the world is throwing our way for the simple reason that we are in fact embracing it and accepting it. Instead of resisting the world and being salt and light to the world, we are becoming like the world and accommodating ourselves to its agenda.
As Francis Schaeffer said in A Christian Manifesto back in 1981, “Our culture, society, government, and law are in the condition they are in, not because of a conspiracy, but because the church has forsaken its duty to be the salt of the culture.”
