Behold, the days come, saith the Lord GOD, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD:
And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall run to and fro to seek the word of the LORD, and shall not find it. Amos 8:11-12 KJV
The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple. Psalm 19:7 KJV
The foundation of every reformation of the Holy Spirit is the Word of God made plain to the people. ~ Frank Cooke
We have a spiritual famine in the land today. It's clearly not a famine of Bibles, as we have a plethora of translations and versions to choose from. No, what we have is a famine of the knowledge of what is in the Bible and what it says.
We have Christians who know more about the stats of their favorite athletes and teams for their fantasy leagues, but who would be lucky to name 5 of the 10 commandments and 4 of the 12 apostles. This is a famine that should not be.
It's sad but true that so many Christians are ignorant of what God has said to us in the pages of the Bible.
Psalm 119:105 tells us:
Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
Yet far too many of us walking in willful darkness.
Do we heed the prophecy of Amos for our generation today? Does it shake us to our very core, or do we really not care? I find myself wondering what the people who lived during the time of Malachi, into the 400 years of silence would say to us about that time when they went from having a prophet to having silence from God. Would they speak more highly of having a prophet and God speaking to them, or of God being silent? Would they encourage us to study the Bible, to learn it, memorize it, and live it in our daily life? We can only wonder.
We sit and watch as our Churches cannot keep their converts. We watch as people leave and either go back to their old way of life, get sucked into a cult, or fall into a church with bad theology. I fear that we do not care, nor that we fully realize and understand the reason this is happening. It is way to easy to point out that very few Churches/denominations will evangelize like the cults. Bad theology churches are tickling the ears of those who have not been grounded in the Bible. We will continue to lose our own people and our converts if our Pastors, our Teachers, our Parents continue to remain ignorant of the Bible and teach those following them to be ignorant as well of what lies from Genesis 1:1 to and through Revelation 22:21.
Christians, it is beyond time to stop playing Church and just going through the motions and get real and get serious. As the apostle Paul said, so say I unto the Church today:
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.
And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. - Romans 12:1-2
We need to separate from worldliness and obey what is in the Bible, or we are going to lose more than just the next generation.
Lives and souls are at stake. Hell is hot and it is eternal and all those who have not obeyed the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ are going there, and if we do not get serious and warn them, then it is their blood that will be on our hands (Ezekiel 33:6). Are we going to just sit by on our blessed assurance and not care that people around us are headed for hell? People that we can reach, people that are waiting for us to come and share the Gospel will not hear it because we refuse to go. This is a sign of how serious this spiritual famine is. We care more about our comfort, then the lives and souls that Jesus Christ died for on the cross. God forbid that this true any longer of any of us.
I leave you with the following as a challenge for you from my friend Greg Stier, the President and Founder of dare 2 Share Ministries:
I saw the sign
When I was in junior high, my youth pastor sent me to the local shopping mall for a weird visualization exercise. He told me to go by myself on a busy Saturday afternoon and plant myself in a bustling part of the mall. He challenged me to find a bench and just sit there for a half an hour or so. He told me to look intensely at everyone who walked by and mentally imagine a little sign on each of their foreheads with three stark words printed on it: Bound for hell. I told you it was weird. But my youth pastor’s goal was to break my heart for the lost.
He accomplished his goal.
I know this exercise probably sounds morbid to you, but the truth is that it transformed my perspective. For 1,800 seconds this twitchy kid sat and watched people, imagined the unimaginable, and began to cry. I wept as I pictured these people separated from the love of God forever.
Today one of the reasons I train teenagers to evangelize is because of this little exercise my youth pastor had me do so many years ago. I saw the sign and it opened up my eyes. Have your teenagers seen the sign? As awkward as it might feel, it may be time for a trip to the mall.
GREG STIER
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