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I would say that the same apathy quite a few churches show towards politics is creating the apathy their members have towards the church and ultimately walking away.

You have pastor/priests/reverends scared to stand up and say "Abortion is wrong and you can not vote pro-choice and be in line with Christ's teaching" because they get scared of losing at the donation box. It's worried about inclusiveness rather than Truth. YES you absolutely accept all sinners but you do not accept their sin with them when they come into the church.

The Judeos and the Christians had a fairly serious schism here while back. Maybe you heard about it.

You can't stack their beliefs in the same basket.

Communisto-Republic.

See?,...that term doesn't make any sense either.

Jesus' Spirit is alive and well at the non-denominational church we attend in mid-MO. Our church is located in a college town and our attendance is a great mix of all ages with those under 35 probably representing a disproportionately large percentage of our regular attendees. Three services each Sunday with probably 1000-1200 total attending each week.

We have a contemporary, respectful, reverent and worshipful praise and worship service, followed by an expositional sermon by one of three solid, Bible believing pastors. We hear the word "sin" quite regularly - no ear scratching here. Our mission as a church is to intentionally introduce others to Christ. We have had over 20 baptisms this year alone. God is at work, in our church and in our state. It is gratifying to attend such a growing, vibrant church.

May God bless you all,

bludog

In Western culture, at least, kids learn to read by the third grade. Said kid can pick up any encyclopedea ( in our day), or keyboard and google up the physical laws of the Universe, and Natural History of the Earth.

People today do not need to believe the sun is Apollo racing through the sky on his chariot, or that Zeus expresses his anger through thunder.

Good observation. The shared "principles" of the founding are one thing. Politics is something else, and since being a a kid there has been increased use of that "Judeo-Christian" term for social and political expediency.

Yeah, and all those physical laws, just happened by some freak great lucky chance! Tell me which takes the greater faith!

ED, was writing as you posted your first one, so did not see yours until later. Some similarities. Thx.

Maybe not. But if they look around at what's going on in the country they *should* be able to believe in the presence of evil,...and if they have the ability to think just a bit past that, they're eventually going to figure out its origin.

That's when Romans 1, starting at verse 18 comes in handy. It explains in great detail what happens when a society turns its back on God and God gives them over to a reprobate mind.

Two millennia ago the Apostle Paul accurately described today's America.

It's a closely held secret that Christianity in strict Muslim countries is booming. In many of these countries, being a Christian is a death sentence if caught. Missionaries are risking death to get the word to them, especially the women, who are the most eager for the truth. The daughter of some people in our church spent several years inside one of these countries. She's been home for quite a few years now but still can't tell where she was. If word gets out of where she was, people are going to die. She said that people are hungry for the word and it's spreading like in the days of Rome.

I was a confirmed catholic & was told that I had to attend mass & the Sunday school lesson that followed as long as I was living at home. Never got anything out of it except boredom. Quit going as soon as I graduated HS & got my own place. Only go there for a funeral mass now. Oh, the priest raped my younger brother and my cousin when they were alter boys too, if that helps in my decision to quit going. His name is father Flanagan.

Most people regard sexual sin as just another sin, the same as the rest. I disagree. Check out this passage:

1 Cor 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

That word BUT is big. It separates sexual sin from all the rest. It specifies that it's sin against the Holy Spirit. The only unforgivable sin (this isn't it) is against him. You don't mess with the Holy Spirit.

I understand what you are saying. I think I heard something about it.

The truth of the matter is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew. More specifically, a Rabbi, a Jewish Theologian. He never stopped being a Jew. He came to show us the true nature of God.
It was man and his failures which led the Jews down the wrong path.

The beliefs in God's love, mercy and grace are the same. The Jews, since Moses, have lived under The Law.
Christ came to fulfill that Law and remove all of us from under the curse of it. You can't forget the underlying principals of Judaism (not talking about the law!) nor how it was the basis for that thing we call "Christianity". That's why I refer to it as "Judeo-Christian".

Ed

I doesn't matter what men think about God's church. The church is alive an well. What we see and what God sees are two different things. We only see right now. He sees the whole story

Jesus said in Mathew 16:18 "And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it."

Evil lurks in the heart of every man. Education is the key to man overcoming that evil. Religion is ONE form of education which can do so.

What about those who first followed the Messiah that God sent?. Were they Jews? Did they stop considering themselves Jews when they chose to follow the Messiah?

So,...if, as Christians are following the Messiah that God sent to show Jews the proper path to follow,...what can Christianity be other than the proper path of Judaism?

Paul, I'll believe was used by Jesus to take the Gospel to the Gentiles.

A human can't educate himself enough to not be human. Religion can educate a man on what his human failings are and it can encourage him to minimize them to the extent possible.

But no form education can fix the human condition.

It's a heady subject that takes a bit of pondering. It makes sense to an extent once one realizes that his human brain isn't producing his consciousness.

Very many people have inadvertently discovered that their consciousness exists independently of their brain.

They never think about things the same afterwards.

From Psalms and the early prophets, it was written that the coming messiah would be the rejected stone who would become the cornerstone of God's church. Jesus came exactly for that purpose and he appointed 12 apostles to spread his word among the Jews. He fulfilled the law by becoming the sacrifice to end all sacrifices. All of those 100's of pages of laws and rituals were fulfilled at the cross, never to be needed again.
However, as prophesied, the Jews rejected it. Jesus then picked a 13th apostle, Paul, and sent him to the gentiles. Paul was an apostle but different from the others. His entire mission was different. The gentiles had never been under the law before Paul and he made it clear that they still weren't. He worked hard to prevent the gentiles from being dragged back under the Jewish laws that had failed so badly. For the most part, that's us. Paul wrote much of the NT to the gentiles, us, telling us how to live for the Lord, separate from the man made rules of the Jews. Also, with Peter's vision, we were freed from the dietary laws of the Jews.
The apostles and church elders met at Jerusalem to decide how to deal with the new gentile converts. It was decided, with the word from the Holy Spirit, that gentiles were to avoid food sacrificed to idols, blood, meat that had been strangled, and sexual immorality. Outside of those rules, the gentile converts were given a free rein. Today, we are far freer from rules than the Jews had ever been.