Modern-day Christianity seems to be approaching a point of no return. There appears to be a concerted effort, long since underway but now rapidly speeding up, which has the very specific aim of delegitimizing biblical Christianity. Much of these efforts are coming from within the church. Men and women we once perceived as being Christian brothers and sisters, now seem to view themselves as traditional Christianity’s greatest enemy. Evangelical Christianity, as we have known it, would seem to be on the brink of schism.

If you are an Evangelical Christian who holds a literal view of the interpretation of scripture, and especially if you hold to a futurist, pre-tribulation view of eschatology, then you find yourself dead center in the crosshairs of a movement that is becoming increasingly vitriolic. You are also very much in the minority. The acrimony, the bitter and caustic attacks, are not even hidden or shrouded anymore; they are out in the open for all to see.

These are, I know, harsh words. Yet I have stood back and watched patiently over the last two years; and what I have seen has with equal measure surprised and shocked me. I waited and waited before writing this article, as I wanted to be absolutely sure that what I was witnessing was not just a momentary spasm of anger or frustration. I wanted to be sure that what was emerging was a new fixed pattern of behavior.

It all seemed to begin, or at least enter a new and more hostile phase, immediately following the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States. It was immediately after Trump’s election that the overt fracture lines that already existed within evangelical Christianity were quickly opening up into yawning chasms.

I believe that the election of Trump to the Presidency of the United States acted as the catalyst for these fractures to become what we may one day recognize as the beginning point of a full schism in the Body of Christ.

After the election, it seemed that all the tethers of decency and brotherly communion were pulled down; and open warfare, at least from one side, has ensued ever since.

Think that I am over-reacting or misjudging this situation? After the election I spent quite a lot of time looking at, in detail, the public responses to Trump’s election victory by Christian leaders in America. The results shocked me.

No momentary spasm of anger or frustration, the reaction that manifested itself post-election has sustained itself. It has now become an entrenched pattern of behavior and seems to have morphed into open season on evangelical, futurist, biblical Christianity.

What makes this shocking is that the most vociferous attacks are not coming from the rank and file of Christianity, but from those esteemed as “leaders,” men and women who hold sway over, in some cases, millions of people.

First amongst them, and what initially grabbed my attention, was an article I came across in the immediate wake of Trump’s victory. The article was written by a very prominent church leader, who has a following on Twitter of close to one hundred thousand people, which was entitled, “…did US evangelical leaders exult Donald Trump over Jesus?”

In the article, the author went on to explain how he wished to speak out against Christian leaders in the United States whom he claims have, in electing Donald Trump, effectively chosen to exalt a man over Jesus Christ. He is effectively arguing that, in voting for Trump, evangelical Christians have sinned – that they have, in effect, committed idolatry.

Harsh words, but the author wasn’t finished. He continued by denouncing modern Christian evangelicalism itself, arguing that in his opinion the election of Donald Trump means that “many Christians in the United States are now spiritually homeless.”

Continuing, he therefore called upon Christians in the United States to abandon the term “evangelicalism” and instead reclaim their true identity as “a follower of Jesus,” stating that many Christians now need a new spiritual home as a consequence of Donald Trump’s election.

Evangelicalism, it would seem, just doesn’t cut it anymore; it is flawed, compromised and broken. He bemoaned the fact that in his view so many white Christians in America voted for a president that he believes rejects “many of the core values of evangelicalism.”

He then concluded by explaining how the term “evangelical” has now become “toxic,” concluding that “many are now done with the word ‘evangelicalism’, which has come to represent white self-interest.”

Wow. Harsh words. But it didn’t end there. It seemed like, across the board, from one prominent Christian leader to another, there was a tidal wave of incendiary reaction. It soon became equally clear that these views were not held in isolation, but were widely echoed within the more mainstream Christian community itself, by many of the rank and file.

At the time of the election, one of the best platforms for viewing this attitude shift within the American church was Twitter. It was and is an ideal way of catching a real glimpse into people’s minds. In one statement, often written instinctively and as a reaction to an event or a rapid-fire judgement, volumes can be revealed about the true intent of the heart.

The election of Trump provoked an avalanche of responses from very prominent church leaders all across America. Whilst I have redacted the names of the individuals below, each is a prominent church leader in America. Collectively, they influence the thought processes of millions of followers, in their pews, through television outreach and through their social media platforms.

On 09/11/16, one very influential pastor tweeted, “In #Election2016 Evangelicals lost credibility voting for Trump…”

Another highly prominent and influential church leader, and founder of various Christian magazine publications, spent considerable time and effort tweeting links to articles with titles such as, “10 commitments to resistance in the Trump era” and, “what progressive Christians need to do to take their faith back.”

This same man then tweeted the following: “Time for healing. And resistance,” before concluding with the following piece of advice: “the religious right leaders showed once and for all that they should never be taken as ‘religious’ again.”

Let me repeat what this church leader wrote, so that it sinks in: “the religious right leaders showed once and for all that they should never be taken as ‘religious’ again.”

Remember, the men that write these words are esteemed as the leaders of Christianity today, and some have followings of literally hundreds of thousands, even millions worldwide. These aren’t the random tweets from lone individuals with a handful of followers; these individuals have huge influence over vast numbers of people.

Another prominent religious leader, at the same time, tweeted, “We have never witnessed such religious hypocrisy as we saw in this election.” He then added, “Most white evangelicals sold their souls to a man who embodies the worship of money… and power.”

Most white evangelicals sold their souls to a man who embodies the worship of money… and power. These are not the words of a man trying to find any kind of common ground. These are the words of war.

This leader then concluded that, “I just want you to know that I AM IN for whatever this will require of us.”

Yet another man esteemed as a pillar of the modern church worldwide, around the time of Trump’s election victory, retweeted an article which detailed “…what progressive Christians need to do to take back their faith.”

Take back their faith? Clearly the insinuation is that “the faith” has been hijacked and now needs to be forcefully retaken. Is the silent, unstated implication of this that those from whom it needs to be “taken back” are not brothers and sisters in the faith, but enemies and usurpers? Otherwise, why would it need to be “taken back” from them?

He then continued by linking an article from a former evangelical titled, “I was an evangelical magazine editor. But now I can’t defend my evangelicalism.” He concluded, “… at some point you have to get up and leave the table.”

This man, this hugely influential church leader with a worldwide following, then wrote that “Every single principled conservative should be speaking out against this decision (the election of President Trump). Every single one. There is no middle ground here.”

“There is no middle ground here.” We are being told openly by one of the most prominent Church leaders in America today that you are effectively for us, or you are against us. You are either a Bible- believing evangelical, who by implication has “sold their souls” to this man Trump, or you are a real Christian, now in need of a new home away from the “toxic” legacy of traditional evangelicalism.

Now, almost two years later, and after the dust should have settled, the attacks remain but have morphed somewhat. They have become subtler, but no less dangerous for it. The attacks we see today are not merely aimed at evangelicalism generally, but are at specific evangelical doctrine.

The attacks have morphed from opposition to Trump and those who voted for him, to opposition of evangelical belief and doctrine itself. These attacks now also include highly personal attacks on prominent evangelical leaders such as, for example, Franklin Graham, who was recently described as “unhinged” by a hugely popular emergent church leader for his promotion of traditional biblical values.

Equally, men like Robert Jeffress, who is a bold proponent of both Israel and solid biblical truths and realities, has been castigated far and wide within the Christian community recently as being a “bigot.” All for quoting and relying upon the bible as the basis for the moral judgements he makes. Is that not what all of us “Christians” are supposed to do? Rely upon the Bible? Or have I missed something?

This attempt to discredit evangelical beliefs is obviously ongoing, but now the pillars that hold it up, both people as well as biblical doctrine, are under attack.

To illustrate this point, consider this tweet that I stumbled across last Sunday from another very prominent American Church leader, a man also with a vast social media presence. He was responding to a question, and I quote the tweet exactly:

“…I am a recovering lifelong Futurist (grew up in the Bible Belt), so I am still learning about this stuff. So do you still affirm a future (to us) coming of Jesus? Or do you think that was fulfilled in 70AD?”

This young, well-known Christian leader who, remember, boasts a huge following, replied,

“Def a future return of Jesus to judge, purge, renew and resurrect (1 Cor 15; Rom 8:18-28, Rev 21-22) …But no 7-year tribulation, rapture or destruction of the planet. This world will be restored for a restored humanity!”

I was speechless. On so many levels, this is plain wrong; it is false teaching—not least of which, apart from the poor theology, is the sheer audacity of it. Notwithstanding his completely selective use of scripture, ignoring totally the plethora of places in the Bible that clearly signpost a future rapture of believers, a tribulation and a judgment, he chooses instead to focus exclusively upon those scriptural verses that only agree with his sensibilities – ignoring or marginalizing all the others that don’t, and leading people astray in the act.

The aim at this point is to redraw the boundary lines of Christianity itself piece by piece, doctrine by doctrine. Thus we reach a point where Christian leaders are openly discussing how they can “redefine Christianity” for today’s widely biblically illiterate, church-going generation. Evidently the way it has been “defined” for the last two thousand years of church history just doesn’t quite cut the mustard anymore.

Treating the Bible like a great theological buffet, taking the parts they like and ignoring everything else, these men and women are attempting to redraw the boundaries that have held the faith together since Jesus Christ walked the shores of Galilee two thousand years ago.

The pertinent issues now are not salvation issues, or issues related to sin or repentance, and certainly not anything to do with eschatology or the imminent end times, but LGBTQ+ issues, immigration issues and family border-separation issues. It is about the “evils” of white-dominated evangelical Protestantism; it is about helping the poor. It is about social justice, the feel-good gospel of salvation through works, not faith. These are the issues that count – not sin, repentance, the love of God for a desperately lost world, or the quite obviously approaching time of His wrath.

Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency of the United States has acted as the catalyst for real and rapid change. Political affiliation is now being intrinsically linked to one’s religious persuasion, and an attack on one has become a de-facto attack on the other.

There is a highly polarized political environment currently in America which has permeated deep into the Church. Indeed, it threatens to tear it apart. Partisan political affiliations now rule and have become the launching pad for quite brutal attacks upon the faith system many still hold so dear. And upon basic biblical doctrine.

The battle lines seem to have been drawn, and we are increasingly witness to brothers and sisters using the election of Trump to continue the effort to castigate others within the fold of the church, and to characterize their faith as being racist, xenophobic, uncompassionate and un-American. Worse, they are even now considered as being un-Christian.

It would seem increasingly the case that whom you voted for has come to determine the type, and quality, of Christian you are. And these attacks will only become more vitriolic with the passage of time.

It is my belief that the Christian Church faces a growing and menacing threat both from without and from within. The period of unity that we have known for so long would seem, to me at least, to be fast approaching its end. Whether the election of Trump created the chasm or merely revealed it is irrelevant. What matters is that this divide, this schism, is there and it seems to be growing wider and more pronounced daily.

The apostasy and “falling away” prophesied by Paul as a distinct characteristic of the last days is in full flow right now, and it has penetrated deeply into the church. If Jesus tarries much longer, and He may well, persecution cannot be far around the corner.

In the early chapters of Revelation, Jesus gives a very specific warning to the churches of Asia: that unless they focus upon God and what He is and requires of them, then He would remove His Spirit from the church.

With the exception of His remnant and one or two outstanding examples of churches and pastors that do teach faithfully the whole council of God, including Bible prophecy and the evident signs of the times, it seems to me that what is described in the first few chapters of Revelation is exactly what is happening to the modern church today.

wardmatt1977@gmail.com

 

Life After Death 
In 2014, a 14-year-old girl identified only by her initials “JS,” died of a very rare form of cancer. She left behind two understandably bereft parents. But before she died, JS who was too young at the time to make a will, went to the High Court in London with a very unusual request. Her desire, which was ultimately granted, was that immediately after she died her body would be cryogenically frozen so that at some point in the distant future she might be brought back to life again.

The court ruled in her favour, stating that the girl’s mother, who separated from her father, should become solely responsible for making the decision over the disposal of the young girl’s body after death. In a letter to the court, JS stated that,

“I have been asked to explain why I want this unusual thing done. I’m only 14 years old and I don’t want to die, but I know I am going to. I think being cryo‐preserved gives me a chance to be cured and woken up, even in hundreds of years’ time. I don’t want to be buried underground. I want to live and live longer; and I think that in the future they might find a cure for my cancer and wake me up. I want to have this chance. This is my wish.” (1)

Presiding Judge, Mr. Justice Peter Jackson said, “She died peacefully in the knowledge her body would be preserved in the way she wished.”

The father of the teenage girl, separated and divorced from her mother, initially opposed this move. His concern was for a future where this type of technology might actually work, and what would then become of his daughter if she were ever brought back to life,

“Even if the treatment is successful and she is brought back to life in, let’s say, 200 years, she may not find any relative and she might not remember things. She may be left in a desperate situation – given that she is still only 14 years old – and will be in the United States of America.”

In the end, though, he acquiesced to his daughter’s final wishes. Therefore, at the point of her death, a process of cryogenic freezing began that would theoretically preserve the girl’s body almost in perpetuity. When she died, professionals were directly on hand to begin the process of preparing her body for the cryogenic freezing process that lay ahead.

Immediately after death, JS was placed into an ice bath to cool her body before it was pumped full of “organ preservation solution.” Her body was then flown to the United States of America whilst packed in ice.

Once at the cryogenics facility, her body was then further cooled down to a temperature of -110C over a period of hours using nitrogen gas. After this, and over the next few weeks, her body was slowly and methodically cooled further to a temperature of -196C, before finally coming to rest in storage vats of liquid nitrogen in “patient” storage bays. All this was in preparation for the day when they hope science and technology develop to the point where both her cancer can be cured, and her body be revived.

JS died on October 17, 2014. Her body arrived at the storage facility in Michigan eight days later. At the time, this 14-year-old girl then became the 147^th “patient” at this site.

Life after death is increasingly becoming big business. Or perhaps the science of cheating death has become big business. Over the last 150 years, life expectancy in the western world has doubled from roughly 40 to 80 years of age, and science has high aspirations over where we go next.

Vast amounts of money are currently being spent in the quest to better understand what might lay behind that great veil separating life from physical death. Death is now and always has been the obsession of mankind. It would seem that we are reaching a point when science believes it can realistically think about mitigating against death itself, perhaps even try to reverse death.

This subject, life after death, that was once greeted with widespread skepticism, distain and derision within the scientific community, is now gaining swift acceptance in the mainstream. At the University of Southampton, scientists have just concluded a four-year study examining more than 2,000 people who suffered cardiac arrests at 15 hospitals in the UK, US and Austria. They found that up to 40% of patients, from a wide variety of backgrounds and faith systems, reported that they had “awareness” during the time of their clinical death states, before their hearts were restarted.

Whereas before these type of remembrances would be ascribed and written off by scientists and skeptics as the last actions of a dying brain, now science has come to understand, as Dr. Sam Parnia explains, “that the brain can’t function when the heart has stopped beating” (2). If true, this therefore creates a problem. If the brain cannot function for more than mere seconds after the heart stops beating, where then do these detailed remembrances, sometimes lasting for minutes, come from, if not from the brain?

Dr. Parnia continued, “Conscious awareness appears to have continued for up to three minutes into the period when the heart wasn’t beating, even though the brain typically shuts down within 20-30 seconds after the heart has stopped.”

Of 2,060 cardiac arrest patients studied, 330 survived; and of 140 surveyed, 39 per cent said they had experienced some kind of awareness whilst being resuscitated. Some recalled seeing a bright light, or something like the sun shining in all its brilliance, and some remembered a sense of real peace.

Others, however, recalled a much more ominous experience. Others recounted a sense of overwhelming dread and impending doom, feelings of drowning or of being dragged through deep water, or of being pulled relentlessly downwards at ever-increasing speeds. (3)

Dr. Parnia believes that these types of near-death or post-death experiences are much more common than many believe. He concludes that the heavy sedation commonly used to alleviate pain and suffering as patients approach the end of their lives is stopping people communicating what they are experiencing and seeing just prior to their deaths.

Dr. Parnia has come to believe these experiences to be scientifically legitimate: “The four-year observational study used a three-stage interview process by which the researchers tested the accuracy of claims of visual and auditory awareness/memories during cardiac arrest and then objectively verified these claims.” (4)

He concludes by stating that, “…estimates have suggested that millions of people have had vivid experiences in relation to death but the scientific evidence has been ambiguous at best… And a higher proportion of people may have vivid death experiences, but do not recall them due to the effects of brain injury or sedative drugs on memory circuits.”

Research Psychologist Dr. David Wilde, from the University of Nottingham Trent, agrees. He has spent the last few years compiling lists of data on individuals who have had “out of body” experiences with a view to establishing commonalities between them. He has collected a “really large…sample size” which he believes gives this work a new kind of scientific “validity.”

Dr. Wilde’s conclusions, like those of Dr. Parnia, may be disturbing to those who cling to entrenched non-supernatural worldviews: “There is some very good evidence here that these experiences are actually happening after people have medically died.”

Dr. Mary Neal concurs, commenting that these experiences are not simple, normal recollections, but are “…qualitatively different type of memories.”

Dr. Peter Fenwick, eminent neuropsychiatrist, also believes that these out-of-body, post-death experiences are indeed very common, and have been so throughout human history. Like Dr. Parnia, Fenwick states that, “During cardiac arrest, the brain is not functioning; however, many people have come out of their body to perceive what is going on around them.” This leads Fenwick to conclude that, “this suggests that the mind and the brain can separate.” (5)

“…this suggests that the mind and the brain can separate.”  This is exactly what the Bible has always taught. Man is a tripartite being, with a completely separate body, spirit and soul; and the Bible makes a distinction between all three. Man has a spiritual nature that is totally separate and distinct from the body in which it, for a time, dwells.

You are a triune being. “May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:23).

The Bible also talks of the breaking of a “silver cord,” and that once this cord breaks, that is it (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7).

We have now reached a time in history, as happened eons ago during the reign of Nimrod, when mankind has all but abandoned God. This will only continue to get worse from this point on. Many are beginning to cling to the vain and completely false belief that through science we are perhaps reaching a point in time where we can mitigate against even death itself.

With the small exception of those who follow Jesus, the world today is rudderless and desperately lost. This ever-present fear of death, that has so dominated every culture and each individual since the dawn of creation, will increasingly come to dominate the minds of men and women as we move ever on towards the chaos of the tribulation period. From this point on, the world isn’t going to get more stable, but more chaotic.

And then, one day very soon, a man will appear who will seemingly have overcome and defeated death itself. But this will not be through science, but through his own supernatural power. And the whole world will be utterly amazed by him. Here is a man who will seem to have an answer to the age-old question of death itself. Here, seemingly, is a man who has overcome death.

But it will be a deception, and almost the whole world will be ensnared by it. Multitudes will willingly follow him. He will cruelly exploit this eternal need in all men and women, their individual longing after eternity, in his supposed rise from death. To the people of the world, including scientists, his rising from the dead will be an empirically observable and demonstrable scientific fact. Yet these people, to their tragic doom, will have been deceived.

There is not now, nor ever will be, any other way under heaven by which men or women can be saved other than through Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is found exclusively in the name of Jesus.

“Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

At some point, either in the near future or at the beginnings of eternity, every human being that has ever lived is going to realize that their entire lives were really only about one thing: what did they do with Jesus Christ whilst they lived? Did they accept him, or did they reject him? Did they live for him, or did they work against him?

God has put eternity into the hearts of all men and women, including yours and mine (Ecclesiastes 3:11). Each of us has a shared destiny, whether through rapture or death. “And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27).

The hour is obviously late. We are all short of time now. Yet God is patient, abundantly so, and wants no man or woman to leave this life without really, truly knowing Him. God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). That is why He tarries at this late hour, out of His patience and love for the lost.

He is desperate for reconciliation with you, for reconciliation with your loved ones, before that fateful day when the silver cord, when your silver cord, is finally and irrevocably severed. So remember God now, and turn to Him for healing. No matter who you are, or how wretched you have become, no matter how far you have backslidden and irrelevant of the depth of your sins, there is still a place to be found for you in His house. He is waiting for you even now.

“Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, and the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, and the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it” (Ecclesiastes 12:6-7).

There is simply no escaping the fact, though many will still strenuously try to deny it, that you and I were created to be immortal. This is what the scientific experiments mentioned above are finally beginning to discover. Long after the sun and all the stars in the sky have withered and died, and millions of years henceforth, you will still be. The question is where exactly, and more importantly, who will you be with? Will you be with Jesus in His eternal kingdom, or will you not be found there?

When the silver cord is broken, that is the end of the matter. There are no more decisions to be made after that point. The die is cast for eternity, despite the desperate efforts of modern science to avert death, and the deceptions of what is soon to come.

God is the God of the living, not the dead (Mark 12:27). This very day He is saying, “In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” I tell you, now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).

So, “…choose you this day whom ye will serve…” (Joshua 24:15).

For people like the young girl identified earlier only as “JS,” despite her hopes and that of her family, it is too late. But not yet too late for you or your loved ones. Time is pressing as the end of this Gentile age fast approaches. Make that decision to stand with the Lord right now. Before the chaos comes.

“He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36).

wardmatt1977@gmail.com

Sources:

1. 14-year-old girl who died of cancer wins right to be cryogenically frozen
2. First hint of ‘life after death’ in biggest ever scientific study
3. Results of world’s largest Near Death Experiences study published
4. From Parnia S, Spearpoint K, de Vos G, et al. AWARE—AWAreness during Resuscitation – A Prospective Study. Resuscitations, 2014
5. Scientific Study: There Is Life after Death