Alfie:
The reason that so many Evangelical churches are breaking apart is because of intense spititual attacks against them by Satan.
And one could argue just as easily that the reason for corruption and lukewarmness in Catholicism is that Satan is attacking it. This explanation can account for difficulties with any form of Christianity you’ve already decided to embrace. Which is to say that it is pretty much useless.
I think Satan attacks both Catholicism and evangelicalism–and mainline Protestantism too, for that matter. Satan doesn’t like Jesus to be proclaimed, period. But Satan uses the particular weakness of different Christian groups in his attacks. Against Catholics he exploits their hierarchical structure and their focus on externals (a focus, I should add, which I think is generally appropriate given that we worship an Incarnate God). Against Protestants he exploits their tendency toward individualism and their focus on internal aspects of the faith (which often leads to a subjective piety consisting in ideas and feelings, as if God had never taken on flesh).
Both Catholics and Protestants need to question the ways in which we are all giving Satan ground that he doesn’t need to have. Catholics need to question why it is that they have so many laypeople who rest content with a largely nominal faith, and why it is that their leaders so often seem to lack accountability.
But Protestants need to ask just as seriously why it is that we seem incapable of maintaining unity. Your explanation is a dishonest copout that ignores the clear mandate for unity in Scripture. You are providing an excuse for self-righteousness and arrogance under the cover of piety. You are treading on very dangerous ground spiritually. It is precisely when we think we are superior to others that we are most vulnerable to the attacks of Satan.
In any mainstream protestant church only about five percent of its members would be born-again Christians.
Are you claiming a special gift of prophecy? If you are not, or if you are claiming it erroneously and presumptuously, you are commiting very serious sin. God knows the heart. You don’t. You are not God, and you need to get that into your head quite quickly for the sake of your own soul. For all you know, many of these “mainliners” you look down on may enter heaven, while your arrogance may shut you up in prison with the angels who thought like you do. (Or it may not. You may be saying this in purity of heart because you have been taught to think in this way and have never realized how evil such an attitude is. Well, now I’m calling it to your attention. Examine yourself. How can you follow Jesus Christ and judge your fellow-Christians so harshly and presumptuously?)
That is in spite of not hearing it in church. The odds are they got saved listening to a TV program or the radio.
Tomorrow morning I am going to go to my “mainline” Episcopal Church and have ashes put on my forehead. I am going to be reminded that I am mortal and will one day return to dust, and that in the meantime I need to repent of my sins and return to the God who loves to show mercy to sinners. Then in the evening I am going to go to my other “mainline” church (United Methodist) and hear the same message.
Mainline protestant churches in affect are dead bones.
But God loves to make dead bones alive. And He has an awkward habit of striking with blindness those who say “I see.”
However, the breaking apart of protestant churches is not always a bad thing.
The breaking apart of any Christian church is always a bad thing. God may bring good out of it, as He can out of any evil. But in itself it is horribly evil. If you think otherwise, don’t argue with me, argue with St. Paul. Argue with Jesus, who prayed that we would all be one.
Edwin
