‘why the bible is important’.

Today bible literacy is at an all time low whilst immorality is at an all time high. Normal thinking people may see there is some co-relationship with such a situation.

I fear for the future of the Church in this country, we really do face a fearful future. Within the Church we find incredibly, men and women in ministry, some in high Office, who openly discredit and cause others to defy Scripture, deliberately challenging Scripture which they once vowed to uphold, and now seemingly have no feelings of betrayal and deceit.

I repeat here for anyone who missed the news in a previous recent post one such case.

Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow, who is homosexual and listed 35 in a line of LGBT activists, in a ‘gay’ blog made the sinister and tasteless suggestion that England should pray for the four years old Prince George, who will one day become King, to grow up and find love with a fine young gentleman. He believes this would make the Church accept same sex marriage, and comes after all the publicity of Prince Harry marrying a woman.

The Archbishop of Canterbury prevaricated when speaking this week
(not unusual) when he wrote, ‘churches must learn to live in a in which families are no longer led only by married couples. He threw his support that different forms of family can provide a stable home. He obviously has never accepted the reports of numerous surveys by independent sources that only marriages between man and woman provide stable homes, and only recently a research found children of married couples do better in schools, better health and avoid drugs and crime.

Andrea Williams, a member of Synod stated, ‘there is an opportunity for the Church to stand up for marriage and not surrender to popular culture. Given the struggles and unhappiness faced by millions of children who are the main victims of the sexual revolution in Britain it is a great shame that the Archbishop chose to over-state acceptance of same-sex marriage to such a startling degree instead.

I am sure Andrea will appreciate the Archbishop seems unable to have any positive opinion on moral issues. He recently could not define sin; he could have done wiser by appointing Andrea Williams to be his spokeswoman and in consequence would have seen the Church grow in influence..

With such fragile ministries we face a generation with little if any interest in Church, God, Bible, traditional morality. This was brought home to me forcibly during a conversation with a young woman who I had great respect for her general intelligence and sense of mind, yet she expressed opinions on morality and the Bible that one would usually find coming from a person of limited intelligence and bigotry.

She considered the Bible to be a valueless book of foolishness from 2000 years ago. This is actually wrong, it is less than 2000 years and much of the New Testament has been corroborated by eminent writers of those times.

If this is typical I thought, of modern man and woman truly we may say ‘God help us’. It is more concerning coming from a woman as women are the more spiritual and religious.

Looking equally realistically millions of people through the age have found comfort and truth in the Scriptures, and many brilliant minds of both men and women have left home and country to take the Bible to sparse regions. Quite recently Russian Christians travelled to the barren lands of Mongolia, miles from other places just to help people become Christian. Many of us have foregone careers where we could have earned far more financially, in order to serve Jesus Christ, and been happier and enjoyed life doing so.

Let us also acknowledge the Bible was a basis for nations to create a legal framework; societies which prevented countries from chaos and instead were able to become stable.

We live in an evil world where there does not seem to be any limit to which people are prepared to go to cheat, lie, and be corrupt, even to the highest level of public service. Added to this is the widespread breakdown of family life, crime (despite the massaging of figures) and crudeness of life, lack of honour and integrity, moral and social problems, a time when there are no absolutes all is relative.

Some people will not want to hear that we are called to live our lives worthily according to the Bible’s teaching; they take the attitude that ideas have now been changed by society, and all the old morals and social ethics can be laid aside as long as you just accept the theory; this is not God’s idea however. The Bible was not just written for yesteryear.

What hope then is there for the future of Christianity? This depends on how the Church at large, ordained and lay responds; our services in many cases need to be upgraded. Like much of our national life, we our constricted by political correctness and are frightened that if we are too faithful to the Bible we will upset some minority faction, so we modify our words.

Commissions in trying to attract new members, introduce novelty services. We have tried different ways using clowns, animals, Messy Church, café Church, and other diversions, which whilst useful, they only survive as a one off, and more relevantly, fail to achieve regular attendances. Time now both logically and spiritually to try teaching
sound biblical doctrine; getting back to the Bible.

We have to accept that if you state you believe in the full authority of the Bible you will find many will oppose you, and even those close to you will challenge you, perhaps within your own family. You will be called narrow minded, bigoted or of having some kind of phobia.

The time may come when those of us who stand firmly on the Bible will be frozen out, and attempts will be made to silence us.

All Christians at this perilous time need to think of what we can offer to God. To paraphrase a famous saying, ‘think not what God can do for me, but what can I do for God’.