I am so very saddened over the condition of the church in America. Our nation is about ready to lose its Christian freedoms, and most Christians do not have a clue. Most pastors (watchmen) have failed to sound the alarm in order to prepare and equip the saints to be salt in their nation.
At the beginning of America's history, pastors were the most educated members of society. They were heavily involved in the community, including politics. The clergy in the colonies understood that it was their God-given duty, as communicated by the Great Commission, to make disciples of the nation. They had already fled one country where they were controlled by a tyrannical government and religious system; now they were determined not to let it happen again. This is why America prospered!
The Bible is so very clear that if Christians are not salt, they are good for nothing but the dunghill, which means they will be ruled by the pagan. During the American Revolution, many pastors took active roles in exhorting the church to rise up and defend their families, their homes and their communities.
Somewhere along the way, as it happens in countries ruled by communists or dictators, the church has been deceived into staying out of the affairs of society, but this is their biblical and moral responsibility! The duty of pastors to hold civil government accountable has fallen by the wayside and has been replaced with a gospel of entertainment and gluttonous prosperity. The pastors live their selfish lives while the congregations are coddled, praised and motivated while living a shameful lifestyle of fornication, adultery, and homosexuality.
These spiritually barren churches follow a pattern for church growth, while the saints are actually acting like sinners. The true gifts of the Holy Spirit cannot operate because these shameful pastors are afraid to deliver the true Word of God with the anointing of the Holy Spirit which would convict men of sin and cause people to fall under the power of God with genuine travail.
What is missing in the church is a passion to be intimate with Jesus Christ. Most pastors and Christians today do not know how to have intimacy with Jesus Christ. Their lives are wrapped up in the cares and love of this world. Sports, television, movies, video games, sex, Christian rock music, family, hunting, and fishing have flooded their souls. Though they would insist Jesus is first in their lives, it is mere mental assent. Jesus is supposed to be first, but the reality shows in their choices and in how they spend their hours every day.
Pastors today are trying to build their churches by methodology instead of through a passionate intimacy with Jesus Christ which would produce anointing and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. They are attempting to evangelize society by identifying with the sinners. They talk like them, dress like them, curse like them, and use rock music that in Africa is used to call up demons. I have even heard of prostitutes who give the excuse that they are pimping for Jesus! Jesus did not talk like, smoke like, curse like, pimp like, drink like or dress like sinners to reach out to the sinner. Jesus was holy! His purity, genuine love, and care converted them because He was filled with the Holy Spirit through which innately flowed the power and miracles of God; not some polluted person giving the excuse of evangelizing the lost.
What is needed in America NOW is a second Great Awakening. Please help me call America and the apostate, fallen away church to wake up and repent!
Dr. Jonathan Hansen
© 2010 World Ministries International