The Battle for The Church

And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock, I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it (Mathew 16:18 NKJV)

In his famous song released in 1971, John Lennon who has gone on record as having a very cynical view Christianity, asked his listeners to “imagine a universe where there was no heaven, no hell below us, above us in the sky, imagine all the people living for today, imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do, nothing to kill or die for, and no religion to, I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one.” Encapsulated within the words of this song, Lennon was implying, and endorsing the ever more prevailing idea that religion, especially Christianity and Judaism is the real problem behind society’s ills.

The words to this song may seem innocuous to many, however when taking a critical look at the lyrics of this song and comparing these words to the modern state of the culture, we can see sentiments that have become increasingly actualized and dominant in today’s society. In fact, there is a phenomenon that is taking “mainstream Christianity” by storm that it is by no means Christian. In reality, churchgoers and pastors alike admit that traditional religion is on the skids, while at the same time, secularism has risen to become the dominate cultural influence that is impacting society. In addition, in an age of insecurity and few moral guidelines, the churches’ failure to provide spiritual leadership has been a crushing blow to American society and Western civilization.

In this five-part series of articles, I have been attempting to bring attention to the “satanic big picture” of what is actually occurring behind the scenes in America and in the world from a spiritual warfare perspective. I started by pointing out the “Three Battle Zones of the Enemy,” the first two of which are The Battle for The Mind and The Battle for The Family. I proceeded to briefly examine each of these and attempted to expose some of the key components of these battle zones and why it is so imperative that believers begin to discern the “whiles of the devil” so that we can be better prepared to have a Kingdom impact and influence on society.

Arguably however, out of all of the three satanic strategic fronts in which Satan has been launching his assaults (the mind, the family and the church), the front that has had the greatest impact in modern society and politics is the assault on the church and the move to minimize, undermine, emasculate and otherwise marginalize Christianity and God’s word. Add to this the broader secularizing trend in American culture, the growing antagonism toward faith claims, and the negative influences of our modern dysfunctional and polarized political climate, are causing this age to be very uncertain times for the U.S. church.

In other words, it is the assault on the church, or traditional biblical/christian values in society, Christianity and the Word of God that has been the attacks that the enemy has been the most focused and the most concentrated and has caused the greatest amount of residual damage. Satan’s concerted efforts to undermine, minimize and marginalize the impact and influence of biblical Christianity in society is largely due to the fact that Satan realizes that Christ’s church as a fully functioning collective unit, is the only institution that has the power to hamper or even stop his all-out assault on society.

To put it more explicitly, from a prophetic standpoint, the Church is the only entity or institution on earth that is standing in the way of Satan wreaking a level of havoc or “tribulation” on earth that humanity has never seen before. And because of this fact, beginning with the initial establishment of the church on the Day of Pentecost, Satan has been unleashing an all-out assault designed to stop, hinder, discredit, marginalize or minimize the growth, spread, impact and influence of Christ’s church and the gospel on the world.

In fact, ever since the church’s inception, Christianity has been constantly exposed to a world system energized by Satan and his demons and their effort to discredit the church and to destroy its credulity and integrity. But that withstanding, what should be particularly alarming to believers everywhere, is the shameless and unrelenting hostility that has been aim at Christianity that is so prevalent in today’s society. A hostile antagonism that is being waged from every institution of influence in the culture, including the public school system, academia, the media, the Courts, the entertainment industry and even from the highest levels of government.

In essence, for the last hundred years or so in particular, biblical values and principles has been beset with relentless attacks, and it is imperative that we as believers in Christ, first recognize and discern what is happening and then begin to push back against it. To be more specific, the modern cultural decay we see around us has not been haphazard. It was instigated, purposely orchestrated and planned by Satan. And unless believers understand this, we will not be able to fulfill the great commission and reach out into the society with effectiveness.

In today’s culture for example, those who publicly advocate for biblical values, can look to be branded with a variety of labels including terms such as: hate, bigot, racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, and xenophobic. These and other idioms have become common terms that are associated with believers who advocate for biblical principles on such topics as marriage, abortion, First Amendment protections and so on. In other words, biblical principles that helped to transform the Roman Empire and that caused a group of Pilgrims to risk everything to board an old rickety ship to come to a strange land to build a colony where they could live out their faith unencumbered by the state, is now being identified by the culture as the cause of all of society’s ills.

In current American culture for example, you are free to be a Christian as long as you don’t actually live out your faith, vote your faith, take a public stand in relation to your faith, or believe others should embrace your faith. In other words, it can be privately engaging, but must remain socially irrelevant. Or to put it more precisely, there is an escalating conflict between “man’s laws and God’s laws” or as in the case of Eve and the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, there is an intensifying conflict that is being waged in the culture between “What God said, versus what the serpent said.” And the result or consequence of this struggle, as been a society that has become increasingly more polarized.

Church Versus Culture

Now as we witness this total destabilization of society that is coinciding with the increasing level of attacks on Christianity, it should lead us to conclude therefore, that there must a connection, or a symbiotic relationship between Christianity and the culture in which we as believers are called to impact and influence. Regrettably however, we are living in a time in which America’s secularized culture is having a greater influence and impact on the church than the church is having on the secularized culture. In other words, in spite of the overwhelming influence of Christianity on world history, today Christianity’s impact on the culture is in steady decline.

In fact, the Church’s overall influence and impact on American culture in particular is beginning to fade, while at the same time, the impact and influence of secularism is on the rise. And that deterioration of the Church’s influence is having a deleterious effect on the culture, on our politics and in society as a whole. But what has been the most concerning, is that this relationship or correlation between the declining influence of Christianity, which is the result of the assault that is waging against the Word of God and on biblical morality, and the declining influence that the Church of Jesus Christ is having on society and on the culture at large, is a connection that seems to be going completely under the radar by the media and even more alarmingly, by many Christian leaders (See: http://drbrucelogan.com/the-three-battle-zones-of-the-enemy-part-4-the-elephant-in-the-room-by-dr-bruce-logan/).

And what is even more concerning, is the fact that while many Christian leaders are hyper-preoccupied with high profile publicity surrounding Washington and the Presidency, there seems to be a declining recognition and an increasing lack of discernment by Christian leaders of how the challenge to biblical principles is contributing to the country’s overall political polarization, and on the deteriorating impact on the current generation of families and young people, which has in turn has resulted in the modern societal schisms of the culture, not to mention, the declining emphasis on the value of traditional families which in turn is contributing to an increase in crime, illiteracy, illegitimacy, unemployment and just the overall dysfunction that we are seeing in society and in our modern politics.

It’s time for some hard questions

While it is true that ultimately as our Lord proclaimed, that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church,” that proclamation has not prevented Satan from doing everything in his power in order to disrupt, distract, befuddle and discredit God’s church. In fact, the evidence is weighty and undeniable that the impact and influence of Western Christian religion is crumbling, its authority and influence is fading, and its adherents are disengaging. The erosion started slowly but has rapidly picked up steam in recent years. In short, Christianity as we know it is becoming increasingly irrelevant in many circles while being replaced with secularism in others.

So how did we get to where we are today?

This brings us back to the question of, “how did the Church of Jesus Christ in America, get to the point that it is today in which the Church has lost its voice while the rise and impact of secularism has become the dominant influence in the culture?” In other words, as I pointed out earlier, while the majority of Christian leadership has become preoccupied with one side or the other of the political divide, secularism has been steadily and “progressively” replacing Christianity as the dominant worldview that has taken over every major institution of influence in America including: The government, the media, the Courts, academia, the public-school system, the entertainment industry, pro-sports, and even many religious institutions.

Now in my forthcoming book on the “Three Battle Zones of The Enemy,” I will be examining this issue in much greater detail. However, for the purpose of this article, In order to unpack this very delicate subject, I think that we have to come to grips with one very key and basic biblical component, which is the fact that the Church is here in order to impact the culture and not be impacted by the culture. This means that before we can begin to effectively impact the culture, we must take a serious look within. Peter for example, made the following very poignant statement that applies to us today when he said, “For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?” (1 Peter 4:17).

In other words, we can talk about what is going on in the culture and in the world, and while it is inevitable that the world will be Judged, the uncomfortable reality is that God holds a different level of responsibility on the Church, which is why judgment begins there first. The church can’t expect the world to change, if it won’t change. In fact, it can’t change. Peter is exhorting the church, the house of God, which at the time was facing unimaginable persecution, to persevere. However, at the same time, those early believers were also struggling to separate themselves from the former worldly sins and worldviews that had once enslaved them (verses 1–4).

Peter reminds them that the wicked will face God’s judgment (verse 5) but that believers in Christ must hold themselves to a higher standard than they once did. The “fiery trials” that they were facing were to help refine them like gold (verse 12). Likewise, today’s church is struggling with various ungodly influences from both without and from within. Nevertheless, we have been given a tremendous responsibility that sadly, in various Christian circles, many have begun to abrogate that responsibility which in turn has had seismic reverberations throughout the culture.

The Power of Salt and Light

13 “You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. 14 “You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Mathew 5:13-16 NIV).

In days of plummeting moral standards marked by increasing racial tensions, crime, promiscuity, illegitimacy, fatherlessness, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion on demand, rampant divorce, senseless violence and the forfeiture of character in all strata of society, this is nauseating news indeed. These trends tend to lead to the question, “has the salt of the earth lost its savor”?

Regrettably, as I have been exploring throughout this series of lessons (and will be unpacking in much greater detail in my book), what is not commonly recognized is the symbiotic relationship between polarization and dysfunction in the culture and the declining influence of the church. In other words, the spiritual, moral, and social failings of the culture, is directly related to the failings in the American church. In fact, it could even be argued that the declining influence of the Church is rooted in a lack of true biblical discipleship, that has resulted from the Church losing its historic influence and impact on society.

Our Savior calls His disciples the “salt of the earth” and the “light of the world.” Two substances that either permeate the darkness, or transform the food in which it comes into contact. Like salt and light, the church is to have that preservative and illuminating effect on the surrounding society. Salt for example, had two purposes in the Middle East of the first century. Because of the lack of refrigeration, salt was used to preserve food, especially meat which would quickly spoil in the desert environment. Believers in Christ are preservatives to the world, preserving it from the evil inherent in the society of ungodly men whose unredeemed natures are corrupted by sin (Psalm 14:3; Romans 8:8).

Second, salt was used then, as now, as a flavor enhancer. In the same way that salt enhances the flavor of the food it seasons, the followers of Christ stand out as those who “enhance” the flavor of life in this world. Christians, living under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and in obedience to Christ, will inevitably influence the world for good, as salt has a positive influence on the flavor of the food it seasons. Where there is strife, we are to be peacemakers; where there is sorrow, we are to be the ministers of Christ binding up wounds, and where there is hatred, we are to exemplify the love of God in Christ, returning good for evil (Luke 6:35).

In the analogy of light to the world, the good works of Christ’s followers are to shine for all to see. The idea here of “light”, is simple but yet profound. The presence of light in darkness is something which is unmistakable. The presence of Christians in the world must be like a light in the darkness, not only in the sense that the truth of God’s Word brings light to the darkened hearts of sinful man (John 1:1-10), but also in the sense that our good deeds must be evident for all to see. And indeed, our deeds will be evident if they are performed in accordance with the other principles which Jesus mentions in this passage, such as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-11.

Notice especially that the concern is not that Christians would stand out for their own sake, but that those who looked on might “glorify your Father who is in heaven” (v. 16, KJV). In view of these verses, what sorts of things can hinder or prevent the Christian from fulfilling his or her role as salt and light in the world? The passage clearly states that the difference between the Christian and the world must be preserved; therefore, any choice on our part which blurs the distinction between true believers and the rest of the world, is a step in the wrong direction. This can happen either through a choice to accept the ways of the world for the sake of comfort and convenience, or to disregard the law of obedience to Christ.

The loss of saltiness occurs in the failure of the Christian to daily take up the cross and follow Christ wholeheartedly. It seems then, that the role of the Christian as salt and light in the world may be hindered or prevented through any choice to compromise or settle for that which is more convenient or comfortable, rather than that which is truly best and pleasing to the Lord. Moreover, the status of salt and light is something which follows naturally from the Christian’s humble obedience to the commandments of Christ. It is when we depart from the Spirit-led lifestyle of genuine discipleship that the distinctions between ourselves and the rest of the world become blurred, and our testimony is hindered. Only by remaining focused on Christ and being obedient to Him can we expect to remain salt and light in the world.

Furthermore, the influence of the gospel is the only power which God has to save men from their sins (Rom. 1:16). There is no power for salvation from sin in atheism, the world religions (Buddhism, Islam, etc.), and denominationalism. Only the blood of Jesus can save men from sin. We as a church, have been charged with the responsibility of taking the saving gospel to the lost world. But what happens to society if “the salt has lost its savor”? Or if the church loses its influence? “Wherewith shall it be salted?”

To put it more succinctly, Christians are to be like salt and have a positive impact on the culture far beyond what is expected from the powerless. In other words, if we who are Christians do not take the gospel to the world, saving souls from sin and calling men to righteous living, then who will? We cannot expect the pornographers to spread the gospel. We cannot expect the television producers to spread the gospel. We cannot expect the humanists to spread the gospel, or the public school system or the entertainment industry, or even your favorite politician or preferred political party. If the Church of Jesus Christ does not do it, “wherewith shall it be salted?” Salt will do its work when applied properly, and so, will light, when it is shining bright. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid” (Matt. 5:14). We need to have confidence in the power of the gospel and its influence on the lives of men to accomplish its task of saving the world.

Finally, it is interesting to note, that Paul says that we must be transformed by the “renewing of our minds.” The mind is the key to the Christian life. The reason why non-Christians do not respond to Christian truth is that they cannot discern spiritual truth (1 Corinthians 2:14). Furthermore, the gospel is a call for the unbeliever to repent of his sin and embrace Christ by faith. The Greek word translated “repentance” carries the notion of a change of mind. Our thinking must be changed (transformed) from old, ungodly ways of thinking into new, Godly ways of thinking. What we know in our minds to be true forms a conviction, should convict our hearts of that truth, and that conviction in our hearts should translate into action. Therefore, we must first renew our minds.

In other words, there are no shortcuts. There is no magical formula for maturing as a believer. Especially in this increasingly secularized social, cultural and political environment, it imperative that we develop a hunger to fill our minds with God’s Word. As Jesus prayed to the Father, “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). The only way to replace the error of the world’s way of thinking and thereby reclaiming the Churches role as salt and light in the culture, is to combat worldly thinking with God’s truth. In addition, the only infallible source of God’s truth is His revealed Word, the Bible.

This transformation through renewed minds, only comes as believers expose themselves to God’s Word through the faithful exposition of it each week in church, personal Bible study, and group Bible study. A solid church that believes in unwavering preaching and teaching of the Word, in conjunction with consistent and dependable and “rightly divided” study of the Word, is invaluable in helping us renew our minds and thereby having the influence and impact on the culture that our Lord commanded us to have.