The Darkness Before the Dawn

By David Hobbs



I write these blog posts to stir discussion and thinking, especially out-of-the-box thinking, rather than to advance some pet doctrine. Therefore, my last post on the need of “think-tank Christian planners and strategists” was not necessarily advocating for that, but bemoaning the church’s passivity, complacency, and continual playing defense against the devil.

Way too many churches are sitting around waiting for the Rapture or for God to judge/destroy the world like in Noah’s day, instead of imitating Jesus, who came to “destroy the works of the devil.” Believe me, the church will fare much better going through the destruction of the works of the devil than going through the destruction of the world!

If we believe the Bible when it says “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world,” then why don’t we live like it? Why don’t we demonstrate to the watching angels, demons and holy ones that it is true while giving glory to Jesus at the same time? But what glory is it to Him watching us being systematically driven out of the culture (while living lives indistinguishable from the world)?

How bad is it? Has it ever been this bad before? Sadly enough it has. Consider this passage from church revival scholar J. Edwin Orr, as quoted in the Renewal Journal:

Not many people realize that in the wake of the American Revolution there was a moral slump. Drunkenness became epidemic. Out of a population of five million, 300,000 were confirmed drunkards: they were burying fifteen thousand of them each year. Profanity was of the most shocking kind. For the first time in the history of the American settlement, women were afraid to go out at night for fear of assault. Bank robberies were a daily occurrence.

What about the churches? The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennox, Massachusetts in sixteen years had not taken one young person into fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, Bishop Samuel Provost, quit functioning: he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.” Voltaire averred, and [atheist] Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.”

Take the liberal arts colleges at that time. A poll taken at Harvard had discovered not one believer in the whole of the student body. They took a poll at Princeton, a much more evangelical place: they discovered only two believers in the student body, and only five that did not belong to the filthy speech movement of that day. Students rioted. They held a mock communion at Williams College; and they put on anti-Christian plays at Dartmouth. They burned down the Nassau Hall at Princeton. They forced the resignation of the president of Harvard. They took a Bible out of a local Presbyterian church in New Jersey, and burned it in a public bonfire. Christians were so few on campus in the 1790s that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.

In case this is thought to be the hysteria of the moment, Kenneth Scott Latourette, the great church historian, wrote: “It seemed as if Christianity were about to be ushered out of the affairs of men.” The churches had their backs to the wall, seeming as if they were about to be wiped out.

 And yet out of that dark and dismal time rose the Second Great Awakening—a series of great revivals that swept across the country up until the time of the Civil War. What caused the turn-around? The church finally woke up to its desperate situation, got serious with God, and began praying in earnest. They quit playing church, got down on their faces before God and implored Him for help. (“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways [their torpid complacency], then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”)

Brothers and sisters, the ball is not in God’s court. The ball is in our court! What will it take for enough people in the church to get so desperate at what’s going on that they will finally pray fervent, even frantic prayers that will bring down God’s saving response? What will it take? When they come for our Bibles? When they come for our children? When we have to hide in the catacombs and keep the records of our meetings in code? When they show up at our door with an executioner’s ax in one hand and a tattoo needle in the other to put the “Mark of the Beast” on us? Will we cry out to God then? When will we get serious?

In the days of the Judges, the people of God were in a similarly indifferent, apathetic, backslidden state; so much so that the husband whose concubine was slain by gang-raping homosexuals had to cut her body into 12 pieces and send a piece to each of the 12 tribes of Israel to get them outraged enough to take action. (Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself in Judges 19-20.)