Last Updated on January 2, 2024 by OCF Communications
My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge [of My law, where I reveal My will].
—Hosea 4:6, AMP
IN 1938, WINSTON CHURCHILL, the future Prime Minister of England, published “Arms and the Covenant,” which was published a few months later in the U.S. as “While England Slept: A Survey of World Affairs, 1932-1938.” The winds of war were swirling in the air then as German dictator Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich feverishly engaged in bringing about, as online encyclopedia “Britannica” states, “economic and military domination of Europe and eventually, perhaps, of the world.”
Churchill’s book was a compilation of his speeches given during a period in England marked by “resentment, apathy, and complacency,” arguing that the Brits should be doing more to prepare for war. Eschewing the necessity for military readiness, Britain had “embrace[d] appeasement instead of effective deterrence.” The cost? Famine, homelessness, and the end to Britain as a world empire.
The U.S. Department of Defense defines military readiness as “the ability of military forces to fight and meet the demands of assigned missions.” How that is done considers many factors, but ultimately, it can be broadly described in terms of “producing and sustaining ready military units over time.”
Likewise, Scripture makes it abundantly clear that the Christian life is a mission that takes place in a battle, and therefore, spiritual readiness is a necessity. And it’s not something that we can choose to ignore or try to opt out of because the consequences are deadly. We have an enemy in that battle, one that we must be aware of, whose tactics are designed to kill, steal, and destroy each one of us (John 10:10). But the heavenly Commander in Chief has supplied all the weapons we need from His heavenly armory to equip us for the fight (Ephesians 6:23-27).
However, in far too many ways, it can be incontestably contended that the Church, especially in Western Church circles, is sound asleep. That is, it’s not spiritually discerning of what’s terribly awry all around us, caught up in apathy and complacency, and spiritual readiness is not on its radar, let alone being in fighting shape to battle. This becomes evident when the infallible truths in the Word of God such as repentance, sin, the existence of Satan, sexual promiscuity, or the reality of hell are cherry-picked. It seems that too much of the Church endorses societal narrative rather than biblical truth, and it has embraced appeasement instead of effective deterrence.
According to the American Worldview Inventory report published in 2023 from Dr. George Barna of the Cultural Research Center (CRC) at Arizona Christian University, the “biblical worldview among U.S. adults dropped 33% since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic… to a mere 4%.” Instead, Americans are better described as a “World Citizen” category of people “who may embrace a few biblical principles but generally believe and behave in ways that are distinct from biblical teaching.”
But of the declines in biblical understanding and biblical worldview, the poll revealed that the “most striking shifts in biblical worldview levels…[are] recorded among born-again Christians [33% of the population].” And only “a shockingly small proportion (13%) hold a biblical worldview.”
As Dr. Barna noted, “When you put the data in perspective, the biblical worldview is shuffling toward the edge of the cliff. As things stand today, biblical theism is much closer to extinction in America than it is to influencing the soul of the nation.”
“Christianity is…not merely a view about personal faith and Christian living,” says Tim Barnett, of the Stand to Reason ministry. “It’s also a view of the world in general—a view about where the universe and human beings came from, a view about the meaning of life, a view about where evil came from, a view about where human value and rights come from, a view about what God is like, etc.”
As Del Tackett, the creator behind The Truth Project, and a speaker at both of OCF’s conference centers points out, “A biblical worldview is based on the infallible Word of God. When you believe the Bible is entirely true, then you allow it to be the foundation of everything you say and do.”
By adhering to and trusting God’s worldview with unwavering faith is where Tackett says, “we begin to make the right decisions and form the appropriate responses to questions on abortion, same-sex marriage, cloning, stem-cell research, and even media choices,” said Tackett.
“Whether it’s watching a movie, communicating with our spouses, raising our children, or working at the office — we can begin to develop a deep comprehensive faith that will stand against the unrelenting tide of our culture’s nonbiblical ideas,” said Tackett. “Because, in the end, it is our decisions and actions that reveal what we really believe.”
As we enter into 2024, what are the ways we can hold up the infallible Word of God as a mirror in our lives and examine where we each honestly stand when it comes to the almost-taboo biblical truths of things such as repentance, sin, Satan, hell, etc.? What are your praises? What are your prayers?
May I receive on a monthly basis, the monthly prairie request list? I have been receiving this for the last couple of years and I noticed here in January I do not have January 2024 prayer request.