Does any of this sound familiar?

General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, once said this:

The chief danger of the twentieth century will be religion without the Holy Spirit. Christianity, the chief danger, but Christianity without Christ.

In 1787, Gibbon the noted historian completed his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Here’s the way he accounted for the fall of the Roman empire.

The rapid increase of divorce

The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home

The mad craze for pleasure and sports

Sports becoming every year more exciting and more brutal

The building of gigantic armaments when the real enemy was within…in the decadence of the people.

The decay of religion. Faith fading into mere form. Ritual instead of reality. Language instead of life. Losing touch with life…becoming impotent to warn or guide the people.

2 Timothy 3

1BUT UNDERSTAND this, that in the last days will come (set in) perilous times of great stress and trouble [hard to deal with and hard to bear].

2For people will be lovers of self and [utterly] self-centered, lovers of money and aroused by an inordinate [greedy] desire for wealth, proud and arrogant and contemptuous boasters. They will be abusive (blasphemous, scoffing), disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane.

3[They will be] without natural [human] affection (callous and inhuman), relentless (admitting of no truce or appeasement); [they will be] slanderers (false accusers, troublemakers), intemperate and loose in morals and conduct, uncontrolled and fierce, haters of good.

4[They will be] treacherous [betrayers], rash, [and] inflated with self-conceit. [They will be] lovers of sensual pleasures and vain amusements more than and rather than lovers of God.

5For [although] they hold a form of piety (true religion), they deny and reject and are strangers to the power of it [their conduct belies the genuineness of their profession]. Avoid [all] such people [turn away from them].

In other words, these folks may be in church on Sunday enjoying an empty religion with all the pious language intended to make it valid, but empty of substance. A hollow mockery of the real thing. Noise, lots of it, but little knowledge of God.

The Saving Life of Christ

"Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it." The One who calls you to a life of righteousness is the One who by your consent lives that life of righteousness through you! The One who calls you to minister to the needs of humanity is the One who by your consent ministers to the needs of humanity through you! The One who calls you to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature, is the One who by your consent, goes into all the world and preaches the Gospel to every creature through you!

This is the divine genius that saves a man from the futility of self-effort. It relieves the Christian of the burden of trying to pull himself up by his own bootstraps! If it were not for this divine provision, the call to Christ would be a source of utter frustration, presenting the sorry spectacle of a sincere idealist, constantly thwarted by his own inadequacy. If you will but trust Christ, not only for the death He died in order to redeeem you, but also for the life that He lives and waits to live through you, the very next step you take will be a step taken in the very energy and power of God Himself!

Major Ian Thomas
The Saving Life of Christ

It Meant So Much To Us