At six am, Adam and Eve were created. Before seven they sinned and fell short of the glory of God. By eight God called Abram and changed his name to Abraham. By nine, God gave the Law to Israel through Moses. By ten, Israel got tired of having God as their King and wanted a man to be king over them in the place of God. Their excuse was that they were giving heed to a popular demand. At five after ten, the greatest King of all time reigned in Israel in the person of David. So perfect in the sight of God was he that God made him a promise. At eleven Israel sinned and were taken into captivity. At twelve Christ was born to bring man the whole way back to God. He it was that established the Church. From that time on was all about the Bible, the persecutions, and thanksgiving. At two pm, was the reformation championed by the likes of Martin Luther. At three pm, the King James Version was successfully translated into English and was appointed to be read in the churches by King James, the English King. At four pm, J.S. Bach’s Cathedral was built as modern day music theory was given birth to in the church. At five, the puritans ran off to America.
Time is gone and now is the doleful sundown. The day is far spent and the eyes of the church is now heavy, yet the Lord has never ever stopped saying “watch!” How can one watch when he has become drowsy. The church is in a sorry state of backsliding and compromise.
My mentor, Pastor A.W. Tozer, made me to understand that entertainment in the church is as evil as bid counting practiced by the Catholics. But that is the order of the day now. A church service is not blessed unless you have been entertained by some entertaining oratory sermon, good beat from the music band, and it hurts me to include, being entertained by the silly jokes of comedians. All these have become a part of the church. I once sat in a congregation where young people were talking about what would be good for the young people’s church. They said many things like dancing, choreography, movies, drama, etc, but none mentioned the preaching of the word, or studying of the Bible. All is entertainment now. A father would chide his son for not being spiritual and would be satisfied when his son starts enjoying Christian rock, or Hip-praise (which I think should be called gangster-praise). Not that to praise God with music (good music) is carnal but in this doleful time of sundown when the eyes of the church is now heavy, entertainment and enjoyment is spirituality.
Hymns which the Bible expressly commands us to sing is now boring (Ephesians 5:19) . When a man raises up his hand to sing a hymn, people just say “you are boring.” But this is due to the entertainment malady. There is no rhythm to nod their head to. There is no drugster shouting to thrill them. Neither is their any drummer to beat his drum for them to shake their buttocks and sweat. For the absence of these it is not worth while listening to it. It doesn’t matter anymore whether the hymn says “Praise to the Lord the Almighty the King of creation,” no, it doesn’t. Because that praise does not entertain them they don’t get thrilled and if they don’t get thrilled then what is the point. This is because we have more hypocrites than there are spiritual people. They already despise the church and her ways and they are on the verge of puking. To restrain themselves and to avoid being seen as carnally minded people, they do spiritual things in a worldly way. They have no reason to be amidst us. Hypocrites!
One ‘Christian’, when he heard me listening to a hymn he said “put off that thing and put on music.” I shouldn’t have had any problem with that but this one too claims to be a Christian. And this Christian would listen to a music as meaningless if not as diabolical as “Lost in Paradise” and sing along with all the might. The church is fast forgetting the sweetness of hymns and heavenly melodies and are turning aside to meaningless crash and bang music. To you who love to listen to Christian reggae, Christian jazz, Christian rock, gangster praise, and traditional hand clapping songs so as to forget your hymnbooks, my question is this, did Jesus sing? If yes what did he sing? Read Matthew 26:30 and Mark 14:26.
The world has always been fund of doing things with a defeated purpose. And now the church is imitating them. Sometimes you find them worshiping a god that can’t save them, or practicing morals that can’t justify them. James said in his epistle “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” (James 1:27). But what spot of the world can we not find in the church today? The church is now worldly and are doing things with defeated purposes too. The defeated pattern of dressing has crept into the church. Christians will wear trousers, only to sag their boxers out. Christian ladies will wear skirt, but only wear those so short they dare not sit opposite you else you find yourself in hell. Christians would put on clothes and still look naked. Defeated, I must say, completely defeated.
The madness of the present times is evident in the fact that people do things based on excuses rather than reason. In his poem called “The Vision of William,” William Langland described conscience to say “Unless Reason advise me, rather will I die.” Today however people hoping to live lives devoid of reason hope to sustain their conscience with excuses supposing that excuses were a good substitute to reason. Despite the craftiness of excuses, the conscience still dies all the same. Yes excuses has an effect, surely it does, but it has none other effect than to lay the conscience quietly and peacefully in the grave so that you don’t know it’s dead. I have sat down quite a number of times at a church meeting listening to or participating in a conversation during which the issue of dressing would come up and somebody will argue that dressing were not an issue and that what we put on doesn’t matter. Such a person will say there is no problem for women to put on trousers bringing up some really ridiculous explanation of cultures he knows nothing about to defend his stance. The same person would put an idolatrous earring in the ears of his girl child and say “I can’t do without putting an earring in my girl child’s ear lest people mistake her for a boy.” Hearing this alone you’ll think that such a person really cares about having a distinct difference in the appearance of the different genders, but it is the same person who said that it were okay for women to put on trousers. If reason were really responsible for his utterances, he’ll throw the earrings away and would rather not allow his girl child put on trousers “lest people mistake her for a boy.” All these are excuses and not reasons. Excuses rule the mind of the people of this generation and so there is a large crowd of religious people amidst true Christians who are going about with a dead conscience.
Many practices of the modern day church are just out of sheer disobedience to the Bible. Women worshiping with uncovered hair, women being allowed to speak in the gathering of saints, Christians swearing to oath as if it were not their Lord who spoke condemning it. And many other things the Bible has not commanded us that is practiced freely amidst us. So backsliden is the church that as the world is suffering from a severe moral crisis in which homosexuality, abortion, etc is being legalised in some parts of the world, the church is nothing to appeal to. It were more hopeful to appeal to traditions and cultures of men than to hope on the church. The reason for this were explained in my article titled “THE VERY FUNNY ALLEGORY ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.” It can be found on my blog @ ayo32ola3.wordpress.com. These are really sad truths to admit but it were good to point them out so that we can weep and groan for the level of backsliding we have found ourselves in and maybe God will revive us again.
In this doleful sundown, we see from the world that they call this the age of enlightenment. Really? Well, welcome to the age where human right is the insanity of same sex marriage, Christianity is prosperity, service to God is bloodshed and oppression, education is void of morals, and money is god. Under the gross darkness of this sombre skies, ask the average man what he thinks and though his eyes were open and his specs on, he’ll still say “this is the age of enlightenment.” But asking Jesus what he thinks, this is what he says “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:23). Therefore this is the age of great darkness.
This is the doleful sundown. The time is far spent and the eyes of the church is heavy but the command of our Lord remains the same “watch!” This is the time to pray, this is the time to watch, this is the time to turn our laughter to mourning, this is the time to humble our selves before the Lord, this is the time to wake, shake ourselves and return to the right practices and marry our beloved Bibles.
May God help us to make the right decisions and so shall our walk be close to God. Calm and serene shall be our path and the blessed light of our Lord shall flood the way that leads us to God. Amen.
Excerpts from the book: The Light And The Shinning Light
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