Findings of the biennial State of Theology survey from Ligonier Ministers conducted with Lifeway found more than half of American adults, including 30% of evangelicals, I believe that Jesus isn’t God but rather a great teacher.  52% of American adults believe that Jesus was a great teacher and nothing more, while  65% of evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God,”  not both God and man.  An earlier Barna study showed that only 51% of Americans believed God to be “all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect and just creator of the universe who still rules the world today.”  In 1991, 73% of Americans believed that to be true.

Stephen Nichols of Ligonier Ministers noted, “As the culture around us increasingly abandons it moral compass, professing evangelicals are sadly drifting away from God’s absolute standard in Scripture.”  “The spiritual noise in our culture over the last few decades has confused and misled hundreds of millions of people,” according to Barna.” [We] can no longer assume that people have a solid grasp of even the most basic biblical principles.”  

These findings  come with a “trumpet alert” to men reading this blog.  Our culture will descend into chaos without a moral compass. “I appointed watchmen over you and said, ‘Listen to the sound of the trumpet!'” (Jeremiah 6:17). This blog from time to time will sound the trumpet, warning of danger ahead.  Pay attention. “Shout it aloud, do not hold back.  Raise your voice like a trumpet” (Is. 58:1).  I raise my voice as a warning to all men who read this blog. Men, the enemy wants to take you out, intending to have you drift without direction in the coming chaos.   

Joel was told to blow the trumpet because the day of the Lord is coming. “Blow the trumpet in Zion; sound the alarm on my holy hill.  Let all who live in the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming” ( Joel 2:1).  God is warning his people.  A flood is coming.  But like Noah’s day, “people didn’t realize what was going to happen until the flood came and swept them all away.”  The enemy would like for you to be spiritual asleep and completely unaware of the coming flood, allowing you to be swept along by the coming confusion.

Men, don’t let yourself be caught napping in the coming tide.  You may be in danger of being swept away without a moral compass.  Remembering these anchor points will help.   First,  Scripture is your sure moral compass.  Jesus said, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away away” (Luke 21:33).  The Psalmist declared, “Your word, O Lord, is eternal; it stands firm in the heaven” (Ps 119:89).

This second suggestion may surprise you.  I encourage you to have a passionate, loving relationship with Jesus.  The Psalmists panted after God.  Let your deepest passions be for God.  Allow yourself to be a lover of God.   

Thirdly, in your daily affairs, know that you are part of the kingdom of God.  It is now, not by and by.  Jesus’ resurrection power and life are available to you.  “The kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).  

Fourth, I plead with you to find a group of men who are building an ark.  That is, they know what is coming and they are preparing to weather the storm, not just for their sake, but their families.  “By faith, Noah built a ship in the middle of dry land.  He was warned about something he couldn’t see, and acted on what he was told. The result? His family was saved” (Heb. 11:7 Message).  

InterVarsity Press (IVP) has reissued Os Guinness’s book, “The Dust of Death,” published in 1973 .  I read the book several times as a young pastor back in the early 70’s.  Guinness gave me a  confident voice in articulating the gospel.  As a feeling-intuitive student of culture, I desperately needed a biblically-based analysis of the culture in which I was beginning my ministry.  

I spent all of the 60’s receiving my education (Bible school, college and seminary).   As a young pastor in the 70’s, “The Dust of Death” came as a breath of fresh air.  Guinness gave me spiritual eyes to see how the culture was changing. “Although it wasn’t evident at the time,” notes Guinness, “the 60’s sowed the poison seeds  that are producing today’s bitter harvest.  The roots of those ideas predate the 60’s, but it was in the 60’s where these ideas became dangerous.”  Guinness helped me to avoid those poison seeds.

In his preface to the signature edition, now 50 years later, Guinness said this about the 60’s: “It was the period that shaped the lives, faith, hopes and experiences and horizons of a generation – a generation that in the sixties and early seventies were students, but are now the leaders and gatekeepers of the nations. In one way or another we’re all children of the sixties today, and we need to assess the best and worst of the legacy given us by that decisive decade.” In other words, we need to be aware of the seeds that have been planted in our lives. 

Guinness would make only slight changes in his analysis of the 60’s.  He acknowledges that he would would use the term “Christian faith” rather than “Christianity.”  “The reason,” writes Guinness, “is that the progression from “Christ” to “Christian” to “Christianity” is a movement toward impersonality and abstraction, both ideologically and institutionally.”  We are to make the gospel personal. 

I praise God that I journeyed through the 60’s and 70’s, being able “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3). By the mercy of God, I have always tried to put the Lord Jesus first, both in word and in deed.  I pray that I will continue to weed out any of the  poisonous seeds still remaining.  At the end of Revelation, Jesus declares, “Behold, I am coming soon.  My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.  I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End” (Rev. 22:12).  Jesus is the whole story and the real revolution.  

One area of hindsight has proved critical, “so much so,” observes Guinness, “that understanding it would make this new preface worth the price of the whole book.”  The “long march through the institutions” is seen as “the forward progress of ‘revolutionary faith’ and its dream of world brotherhood, equality, and a politics to end all politics.”

Men, we are in the midst of a cultural revolution.  It has been slow and methodical.  Back in 1967 German activist Rudi Dutschke wrote, “Revolution is not a short act when something happens once and then everything is different. Revolution is a long and complicated process.”  Fifty years later, the long march through the institutions has accomplished a great deal.  Guinness believes “America has been bewitched. The great American Republic is in the process of switching revolutions from the American to the French.”  

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls” (Jer. 6:16).   Choose which revolution you will participate in.