LIVING IN THE POST-CHRISTIAN WORLD

By Rev. Daniel Fleischer - Posted at Christian News:

“Post-Christianity is the loss of the primacy of the Christian worldview in public affairs, especially in the Western world where Christianity had previously flourished, in favor of alternative worldviews such as secularism, nationalism, environmentalism and militant atheism amongst many other ideologies.” The above online definition of post-Christianity is more succinctly described by Merriam-Webster as the “decline of Christianity as a majority religion.”

Decline of Christianity does not mean that the Word of God is no longer among us or effective. It is among us despite the competing and growing anti-Christian forces in the world. The Word they still shall let remain, Luther wrote. Jesus said in His Olivet address, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My Words will by no means pass away” (Matthew 24:35). It does not mean that Christians will disappear from the earth. Jesus said again, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” (John 10:27). It does not mean that the Word has lost its influence on hearts, nor lost its power. The Spirit recorded, “For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through [worldly] wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through [what the world perceived as] the foolishness of the message [the Gospel] preached to save those who believe” (1 Corinthians 1:21). The Word remains what Paul called it, “the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek” (Romans 1:16).

The Lord does not convert hearts by force of arms or through threat or deception. He works through His divinely inspired and inerrant Word which can be rejected because of sinful man’s perverseness. Jesus said to the Pharisees and scribes, “You… make the Word of God of no effect through your tradition which you have handed down” (Mark 7:13). Doom would fall on Judah and Jerusalem, “Because I have spoken to them, but they have not heard, and I have called to them but they have not answered” (Jeremiah 35:17). The decline of Christianity today is not the fault of the Word. The Word of God does not influence a rock.

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