One Nation Under Two Gods- Who Gets to be the True Supreme Law of the Land?

September 15, 2008

As was predicted by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams several months ago, the British legal system has recently made steps to include sharia law as a legitimate legal standard for practicing Muslims in Britain.  What this means is that, if a British Muslim has a dispute come up which ranges from divorce and domestic issues to wills to possibly even real estate transactions, they now have the option of having their case tried under the letter of the Islamic law and the Qu’ran in place of the letter of the British law and constitution.  You can read about this here.

So, big deal, right?  Well, possibly, if you are in favor of the continued oppression of women and minorities and the ever-growing cultural assimilation of England into an Islamic state.  What has been making its way through Europe silently over the past decade or so, advancing in the name of multiculturalism and tolerance, has now become a looming cloud on the horizon of Western civilization where all of our both Judeo-Christian and secular democratic principles are being threatened by a strong willed, highly populated movement of devout Muslim immigrants.

Now, lest I sound too polemical and religiously fanatic, let me break down why I believe this to be a bad thing.  First, in the view of just the law, it seems absurd to allow a population to be split between which courts they should go to.  Of course, at this point there are jurisdiction limits and some argue that what is being done is no more than what British Jews have in place already.  But, when you look at other countries such as Iran or Saudi Arabia, you see countries whose entire legal system is based on sharia law, and so it only seems reasonable that the sharia courts in Britain will strive towards this same goal.  This is unconscionable.  A country the size of Great Britain cannot afford to have its people governed under different legal standards, it just won’t work.

Beyond this, the legal standards of sharia law run opposite to the accepted laws of any democratic nation in so many ways.  Sharia law is characterized (not stereotyped, actually so) by a favoring of men over women and a dehumanization of “criminals.”  If we look at sharia law against the Bill of Rights we would find that it violates at minimum the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments, as well as the Fourteenth Amendment.  Sharia law actually allows for domestic abuse in certain cases.  It also calls for the execution of homosexuals.  This is not just an archaic rule that stands without ever being enforced, but is a very well-enforced law in places like Iran (just search the internet, you can find the videos).  All of the tolerance and equality which makes democratic nations so great is thrown to the side when sharia law kicks in.

Moving to a more religious tone, I feel that the inception of sharia law in Western courts is a bad thing because it provides legitimacy and furtherance of a satanic religion.  I say that with as little fundamentalism as possible and with as much biblical support as I can muster.  Islam denies the deity of Christ, his atoning work on the cross, the sufficiency of his sacrifice for our forgiveness, and the power of grace to eventually save us.  There can be no compatibility between Christianity and Islam because to the core we worship two radically different gods.  Therefore, by propping up Islam in the courts we are inevitably propping up Islam in the culture and increasing the aversion to the message of the Gospel and Christ in the general population.

This is a difficult issue to approach because so many people will blindly fall into the trappings of extreme tolerance and open-mindedness and view any opposition as religious fundamentalism and bigotry, but I just want to leave you with one question: if a Muslim murders a Christian because they attempt to share the Gospel with them (as may be prescribed by Qu’ran 22.40), which court would get to try this?

3 Comments | Observations | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

Salvation or Whiskey?- An “Electric” Quote by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

May 12, 2008

I’ve recently been doing a lot of reading and listening to a preacher from mid-20th century London named Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Dr. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the minister of Westminster Chapel in London, England from 1939 until 1968. His original career was as a medical doctor, but six years into his profession Dr. Lloyd-Jones left it behind to go into the full-time preaching ministry. This appears to have been the right decision, a choice which affected many a future preacher on its own:

When J. I. Packer was a 22-year-old student he heard Lloyd-Jones preach each Sunday evening during the school year of 1948-1949. He said that he had “never heard such preaching.” It came to him “with the force of electric shock, bringing to at least one of his listeners more of a sense of God than any other man” he had known.

Therefore, in hopes that an interest in Dr. Lloyd-Jones may inspire more people, even 27 years after his death, I thought I would include a quote from him that I feel accurately conveys the character of this amazing preacher:

“So the first effect of Christianity is to make people stop and think. They are not simply overawed by some great occasion. They say, ‘No, I must face this. I must think.’…the greatest trouble is that men and women go through life without thinking. Or they think for a moment but find it painful, so they stop and turn to a bottle of whiskey or television or something else—anything to forget.” (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Authentic Christianity)

No Comments » | Quotes | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- The Death of Christian Britain

May 9, 2008

I was searching through some blogs today when I came upon this post at AlbertMohler.com. I thought I would post it because it speaks to what we’ve been discussing in The Laodicean Project as it pertains specifically to the spiritual state of Christianity in Britain.

The post, entitled “It Feels as if the Soul of Britain is Dying”, discusses how declining church attendance in Great Britain has led to such drastic lows in Sunday morning communicants that “the number of regular churchgoers will be fewer than those attending mosques within a generation.” Drawing off of a recent article in The Times of London, Mohler uses his blog to awaken a new awareness of the problems which are being faced in a location that most people would not flinch about calling a “Christian nation.” I expect that his radio show this evening will also deal with this topic and I will be sure to add a link to that when and if it does.

I can’t lie. The spiritual anemia being faced by Christianity in Britain weighs heavy on my heart. The Lord has really burdened me for those people and planted in me a desire to see revival brought to a nation which once figured so prominently in the growth of the Church. Beyond this, I think that the issues we see coming up in England bear witness to what we can expect over the next 20-40 years in America.

The lukewarm nature of Christianity in places that used to be bastions of Christian influence is a tragedy that I think we are being too slow to awaken to. It is vitally important, for the sake of the souls of the millions of people which inhabit these countries, to open the eyes of their citizens and call them to repentance and a renewing of their minds and hearts before it is to late and Christ spits us out of his mouth and removes our candle.

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project, Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- God is Dead

May 6, 2008

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” -Revelation 22:13

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” -Hebrews 13:8

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

When analyzing Christian societies, attempting to see why they have gotten off track, I believe that one important aspect to look at is how they view God. If we are to understand what the problem is then it only seems appropriate to start at the top, and there is certainly nothing higher than God. In looking at this, interacting with the culture of America and reading about the cultures of other nations we are considering, I feel that there are two views of God which have become prevalent, and as a result have led to the lukewarm nature of Christianity in these places. In our Christian societies we are increasingly viewing God in two detrimental ways: either God is subjective and open to our human interpretation as to what his character is or he is dead. In this post I shall look at the God is dead side and in the next post we will deal with the subjective God.

Friedrich Nietzsche declared for the first time in his work The Gay Science that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.” His meaning of this was that the human reason had become so well-developed that it was no longer possible for a rational man to have belief in God. He then went on to argue that because of this we could also no longer accept the Christian moralities as being objective, absolute truths for human behavior. Eighty years later, Nietzsche’s brash statement entered into the pop culture of the 1960’s, culminating in it making the cover of the April 8, 1966 issue of Time magazine. Of course, this was highly controversial and has since become a piece of pop culture lore, but the question still remains, “Is God dead?” I believe in America the answer is “No,” but to the people of a once thriving Christian Europe the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

In the wake of the two world wars, conflicts which ravaged much of the European continent, Christianity began to increase among the peoples who had made it through. However, in the early 1960’s a cultural revolution took place. To people who had seen the atrocities of war, the senseless bombing of cities night after night in England, the unthinkable purging of whole people groups attempted by Nazi Germany, and now the rise of terror and oppression under the reign of communism, the staid comforts of religious traditions were no longer enough to comfort them. Though they claimed faith and celebrated the rites of the Christian church, the depth of many peoples belief was betrayed as all of a sudden the culture underwent radical change. Sexual liberation, recreational drug use, and destruction of traditional family values provided them with the worldly happiness which they expected God should bring, and as a result God was killed. Belief was no longer important because armed with the new found joys of drugs, sex and rock’n'roll, men and women were able to provide for themselves all the satisfaction they sought.

This thought continues today. I think this is why, as we explored earlier, there is such a large percentage of the population in these countries which claim Atheism as their religion. The people of Europe struggled for the better part of 50 years with war and death throughout their continent, asking all the while “Where is God?”, and when in the end they had relief they decided that they were no longer going to rely on God to take care of them.

Now, after 40 years of liberalization in Europe, a new threat is arising. Muslim immigrants, fully devoted in faith to Allah, are moving in and taking over a lot of these countries in which God has been pronounced dead, and the people, made apathetic through their lack of faith, are unsure how to react. It is clear that the “absence of God” is now threatening any possibility of God ever being resurrected among these people. Not to mention the fact that those who are either actively or passively declaring God to be dead are dying themselves, and being dying in unbelief are being condemned to Hell.

God is not dead! This is the message that we must proclaim in Europe and in those parts of all the Christian societies where people have decided that they are too intelligent or too self-sufficient to believe that Jesus is alive and seated at the right-hand of the Father in Heaven forever. We must proclaim an eternal God, a God who is there even in the troubles, and that though there is a way that seems right to man, it only results in pain and suffering in Hell (Proverbs 14:12). Jesus is alive, for it is not possible for death to hold him (Acts 2:24), and as he declares in Revelation, he is the beginning AND the end. We must go and preach this to the people (Romans 10:14-15) so that though they once thought he was dead they may be made to believe that Jesus has been raised from the grave (Romans 10:9) and that one day he will return to take away all our tears (Acts 1:11, Revelation 21:4).

1 Comment | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Do We Have More Faith than the Demons?

May 5, 2008

“And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are— the Holy One of God.”… Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.” -Luke 4:33-34,40-41

“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” -James 2:19

One of the great works we see in Jesus’ ministry is his authority to cast out demons. As the witnesses said in Luke 4:36, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” Yet, when we look carefully at the actual accounts of his dealing with the demons we see something very interesting. At various times when Jesus is casting out the demons he also has to silence them (”he…would not allow them to speak”, Luke 4:41). But why? Because they would reveal that he was the Christ! (Mark 3:12, Luke 4:41) We see that the demons know Christ. They believe that he is the Son of God, the Christ. But, this knowledge and belief does them no good. They are still demons because they do not have a saving faith in Christ.

I believe that this can speak volumes to where we stand today in many of the Christian societies. We call ourselves Christian, invoke Christ’s name in our everyday lives, and maybe even have the power to tell other people about him. Yet for some reason people aren’t attending church, they aren’t staying married or waiting until they’re married to begin living with their girlfriend. They aren’t drinking and driving or gossiping any less. Why is this? To me it seems the question comes down to this: People will say and believe that Jesus is the Christ and yet one may wonder, is their faith like the apostles or like the demons?

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- How Did it Get Like This?

May 2, 2008

“You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” -Galatians 5:7

In today’s post I want to call us to reflection on trying to figure out, now that we see there truly is a problem, where exactly this problem came from? As Paul was saying to the Galatians, “When I left you were doing everything correctly but now you’re not. What happened in between to lead you astray?” We must look long and hard to figure out, in the context of each individual society, what it was that took us away from the path we were supposed to run.

In a future post I will list some opinions that writers on the subject have offered as to the cause of this lukewarmness, but I believe that it is important for us to first evaluate the issue ourselves. We once were running so well, but now we’re not. What happened?

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Fighting Atheism

May 2, 2008

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” -Romans 1:18-23

“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.” -Richard Dawkins

“The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight — that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.” -Daniel Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, p.18

The second major issue which I think we have to address when looking at the cause of lukewarmness in our traditionally Christian societies is the rise in popular “belief” in Atheism. By definition, atheism is the rejection of belief in God or gods, or to state positively, is the belief in the nonexistence of God or gods. Today atheism is commonly associated with the study of science, particularly evolution, however this is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for holding this belief. As we have seen in the number recited in an earlier post, traditionally strong forces for Christianity in Europe such as Britain, France, and Germany, are turning more and more to atheistic beliefs as a world view. Though the numbers are not quite as high in America, I think this is something that we should consider an up-and-coming problem here as well.

One interesting point of atheism is the fact that, even though it seems like such a trite thing, people didn’t specifically begin formulating atheism as a belief system until 16th century France. And even then, the true explosion of atheism onto the scene as a recognizable belief wasn’t until the modern period of the 18th and 19th centuries. Truly, the formulation of atheism was the result, not of man being to blind to see a god in the universe, but instead it resulted from man exalting himself (and more precisely, his intellect) as god. Atheism reached a major watermark when it was advanced by Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto. Amazingly, all of this coincides well with the words of Paul in Romans 1: “Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” Here we see man, thinking himself wise, exchanging the glory of God for the exaltation of the modern man and his powers of reason and science. Wow!

Now, in the 21st century, atheism is taken in a lot of places as the rule and not the exception. In America we are being confronted with an increasingly atheistic society, with the removal of God being pursued in all areas of public life. In the bookstores, books by prominent atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, and Sam Harris are sitting upfront and perennially rank among the top nonfiction titles. Atheism has truly moved out of the darkness and scandal of the French salons and has become an acceptable way of thinking throughout Western society.

As Christians seeking to awaken the faith in these Christian countries we must acknowledge the threat posed by atheism. In the consumer driven lifestyle of most Westerners, once an item is able to make its way into the pop-culture then it is able to win over disciples and stake its claim as a legitimate option to buy into. This is what atheism has done. It has pushed in through popular literature and with the sweeping current of educational reform and has established itself as the only intelligent choice. Above we see Dennett saying that atheism is the only thing a “sane” individual could accept, and Dawkins accuses those who claim faith in something as being intellectually dishonest, using a “cop-out” from actually thinking critically. The message is clear: only the mentally inadequate have faith in a god; the truly enlightened know that science has all of the answers and man can access them on his own. As such, Christianity becomes a mentally inferior way of life.

In order to effectively revive faith in our traditionally Christian societies, in order to carry out the Laodicean Project, we must be able to confront atheism, defend Christianity, and demonstrate the existence and character of God. A good resource for this is a series of lectures which R. Albert Mohler recently gave at Dallas Theological Seminary. I have placed the link below and encourage anyone interested in or currently dealing with the challenge of atheism to give it a listen and see just exactly what it is we’re up against.

God exists, and deep down inside, every man has been gifted with the knowledge of this by Him. Because of this we are all “without excuse” when faced with God’s wrath, no matter how much we deny it is true!

R. Albert Mohler- “The New Atheism”

2 Comments | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Fighting Nominal Christianity

April 29, 2008

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’” -Matthew 7:21-23

“They shall be mine, says the LORD of hosts, in the day when I make up my treasured possession, and I will spare them as a man spares his son who serves him. Then once more you shall see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between one who serves God and one who does not serve him.” -Malachi 3:17-18

Probably my biggest pet peeve in all of Christianity is the prevalence of those today who claim Christ in word and yet not in action. It sends chills down my spine every time I see a rapper or actor accept an award for producing a piece which glorifies all the finer points of depravity and the first thing they do is thank the God who gave them their ability or Jesus Christ their personal savior. Not to say that these people aren’t Christians, but by evaluating these people based upon their fruits (which, if they are believers is perfectly acceptable, see 1 Corinthians 5:9-13) I would not be too quick to call them brothers.

This is the root essence of nominal Christianity. The person who checks the Christian box every time and yet they can’t remember the last time they went to church when it wasn’t Easter or Christmas. The person who observes Lent or refuses to drink an alcoholic beverage, and yet they have no boundaries when it comes to sexual relationships or language. We all know these people, and present company included, we may have been or currently are these people. When, as I commented in the previous post, there are 95 million American young adults, 60 million of which would describe themselves as Christian, and yet only 3 million of them actually believe such things as “Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth” or “God [is] the all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect deity who created the universe and still rules it today,” it seems clear that a large percentage of Americans aren’t really all that concerned with what being a Christian means as long as it is something they can just say that they are.

So, is this such a big deal? Certainly. For one, it is a big deal for the people who would be termed “nominal Christians.” If they are just going through the motions then what a terrible thing it would be for them to stand before the Lord on the day of judgment saying “Lord, Lord” just to be turned away. Maybe they never really heard the Gospel. Maybe we took for granted that just because it was being preached in buildings throughout the country, on TV and on radio, that at some point this person had heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course, not to be crass, but we all know what happens when we assume… This is why it is important to reach out and perform true Gospel preaching ministry in the midst of our “Christian” societies. For someone to live their life with a false hope of inheriting the faith of their parents or community is unacceptable with the various outlets available for Christian outreach, but unfortunately I feel it is a reality that is all too real in Western culture these days. This needs to change.

The second reason this is a big deal is because it dilutes the ability which the church has to be effective in the culture. When the world outside judges the church based on the overwhelming numbers of nominal Christians they encounter it does a great disservice to the true heart of Christian ministry. When the world is able to construct polling data which shows “Christians” as being no different than “non-Christians” on moral issues such as divorce, homosexuality or abortion, it turns into an indictment on the inadequacy of Christianity instead of being shown for what it truly is, that being an indictment on the terrifying number of nominal Christians around us. The Barna Group even admits in their research that when the same moral issues are analyzed against the smaller percentage of respondents who espouse a biblical worldview, then the gulf between the world and Christianity becomes very apparent. Therefore, if we could either ignite or alienate those nominal Christians in our congregations and throughout the “Christian” societies, moving them either into broken or hardened hearts, then we should have no problem illustrating the radical difference that a biblical conversion has on the heart of those who believe and confess Jesus as Lord.

Then the last question remains: just how do we fight the insurgence of nominal Christianity? The most effective way I believe is to simply preach the Gospel, focusing on “Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2)” and not just assume that everybody already understands what happened and why it had to be that way. Also, to live our lives as an example of not only Gospel preaching but Gospel love, a sacrificial love which reaches out to others in kindness and not judgment, will make a difference in manifesting the true character of God and the revolutionary effect he has had on us. We need to remember that we are called to be “the salt of the earth” and “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13,14) and as such our lives of ministry should be nothing like those of the world, but instead should be found “to be conformed to the image of [Jesus]” (Romans 8:29) so that the world “may see [our] good deeds and glorify God (1 Peter 2:12).”

Nominal Christianity is a major problem in America, England, and other traditionally Christian societies around the globe. It’s dark shadow has hampered the effectiveness of the Gospel light both to ourselves and our neighbors. Therefore, in order to change the lukewarm nature of these cultures and save them from becoming a biblical loogie we must act in a way as to polarize those just checking the box and remove the pervasiveness of nominal Christianity from our religious atmosphere.

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Is This Even Necessary?

April 28, 2008

“So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” -Revelation 3:16

“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” -Hebrews 10:24-25

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.” -Romans 1:21-23

“In spite of the fact that many of them are currently disconnected from a church, most Americans, including two-thirds of all adult Mosaics and Busters [ages 18-41], tell us that they have made a commitment to Jesus Christ at some point in their life…. Of course, this raises the question of the depth of their faith…. [O]ut of 95 million Americans who are ages 18 to 41, about 60 million say they have already made a commitment to Jesus that is still important; however, only about 3 million of them have a biblical worldview.” -Dave Kinnaman, unChristian, p.74-75

“Recently gathered data on church membership and church attendance show that unless trends are reversed, major British denominations will cease to exist by 2030.” -Steve Bruce, Christianity in Britain, R. I. P.

The most important question to ask ourselves before spending our time trying to deal with lukewarm faith in Christian societies is to first figure out if there is even really a problem. Just because we see a highly secularized media or a pop culture which views religion for its commercial appeal and cool factor instead of its personal importance, does not mean that there is actual an issue with the common everyday Joe on the street. Thus, instead of depending on our own senses and intuition, let’s look at what the statistics have to say:

  • America
    • Among all Americans 78.4% claim Christianity of some sort, 51.3% being Protestant, and 26.3% Evangelical. Among 18-to-41 year olds, 66% claim Christianity of some sort, yet when given a survey of worldviews only 3% expressed a consistent biblical (Evangelical) worldview
  • United Kingdom
    • According to recent surveys only 45% of Britons claim to be Christians of some sort, with 8% actually attending church regularly (compared to 41% in America). Moreover, popular opinion is that major denominations, such as Methodism, will be extinct in Britain by 2030
  • Western Europe
    • In France and Sweden, 60% and 46%, respectively, of population never attend church. Moreover, between a quarter and a third of the populations of France, Sweden, Germany, Estonia, and the Netherlands believe there is no god or any other type of spiritual essence

So, according to the numbers it also appears that there is a problem. The biggest issues I think we see are on two, almost completely opposite fronts. The first front is the problem which seems most pronounced in America and England, that being the high percentage of what is now being termed in the research as “Nominal Christians”; people who claim Christianity but do not exhibit either a biblical worldview or attend church regularly. The other problem is the growth of atheism as a religious worldview, this being seen heavily throughout Western Europe but not yet as much in America. Both of these are substantial problems for the church as it tries to address lukewarmness in these traditionally Christian societies, and as such we will try and deal with each one specifically over the course of the next two posts.

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

The Laodicean Project- Observing Christ’s Letter to the Church at Laodicea Today

April 25, 2008

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God’s creation.

‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’ “ -Revelation 3:14-22

I would like to make a proposal. If you feel the same way after reading this then feel free to join me. I propose that starting today we begin an initiative which I would like to call “The Laodicean Project.” This project will be directed towards reaching the people, not of the remote villages where Christ has never been preached, and not of the impoverished nations where faith in Christ may be all a person owns as they prepare for a slow, undignified death, but towards those people who, in light of Revelation 3:16, are in danger of becoming cosmic backwash!

It is the people of our so-called Christian societies. America, England, France, Australia. Places where Christ appears on any number of TV shows and books and songs and t-shirts. Places where the “Christian” box is checked a majority of the times during surveys. And, oddly enough, places where sin and filth and defilement and evil are as rampant, if not more so, than anywhere else on Earth.

We have discussed this problem before and it continues to be a burden on my heart. I don’t think this is for everyone. I believe that the majority of people are still called to go out “to the end of the earth” and to “make disciples of all the nations” (Acts 1:8, Matthew 28:19). However, for those like myself, who feel burdened so deeply as they watch the name of Christ dragged through the mud around them, who see people dying with false assurance because others were too busy being PC to ever call them out on their lostness , who watch as “Christianity” assimilates into the culture to a point where all distinctions seem nominal, I want to challenge you to make a difference. As Christ declared to the original Laodiceans, we too must make known the blind, naked poverty of our society today.

Christ warned the Laodiceans. Their breed of half-hearted, self-agrandizing, tepidity made Jesus sick to his stomach, to the point where he wanted to vomit. I can only imagine were he to pen the letter again today about the churches in our Christian societies that his sentiments would be the same. In the following series of posts I want to look further at how we might approach the problem of our modern-day Laodiceas, the obstacles which stand in our way and the principles in God’s Word which can help us overcome. If you feel this same burden, please pray, continue reading the next posts, and feel free to contact me with any further ideas you may have.

But, more than anything, remember to act so that “in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 4:11)

No Comments » | The Laodicean Project | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Todd Burus

« Previous Entries