Is God indeed our shelter in the stormy blast? The churches on Wall Street are full. More and more young people are putting themselves forward for ordination to the Church of England. Politicians are calling for a return to spiritual values and bankers are demonised for their pursuit of Mammon. Has the economic downturn driven the West back to religion? Or are we merely seeing a plaintive echo of Matthew Arnold’s “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”?
Counting the numbers who go to church is a poor measure of faith: in Britain, at least, religion has become a contentious political issue, with argument raging more on television, in the press and on the internet than from the country pulpits of the Church of England.
And it is from the internet that a striking statistic has just emerged: some 71 per cent of those surveyed by Faithbook, a new multifaith page on Facebook, believe that a spiritual recession is more worrying than a material recession. And 80 per cent do not see the financial situation as a crisis but an economic watershed with moral and social opportunities.
Let us hope and pray that the shepherds and pastors that these desperate, needy, hungry people come operate in the holy fear of God and themselves have been born again, know and teach The Truth…The True Jesus, The True Gospel. (John 3:3)
Woe unto those shepherds who teach lies, agenda-polluted messages…do not believe and operate in the redeeming power and love of God.
Proverbs 25:26.
Woe to those, seekers and shepherds who look for another messiah, leader, source than the Person and the Way that God has ordained – a material means, a new president, a new spiritual message rather than the Gospel. (Psalm 118:8-9)
To look for a way around Jesus Christ, Who is the only true Savior and Messiah, to refuse to follow Christ in the suffering of the Cross are not going to experience the death of sin or the resurrection power over sin…the benefits won by the blood of Jesus Christ. Those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its sinful desires…(Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14)