APOSTASY AND CHURCH GROWTH

APOSTASY AND CHURCH GROWTH

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1   Background of the Study

The church of Christ in this era has been founded primarily on prosperity gospel sermons, which has resulted in her apostate status. Unfortunately, today’s Christians have failed to recognize that the current apostasy in the church amounts to a house that has literally renounced her loyalty to the Lord. Jehovah, the God of Covenant, faithfully keeps His promises to the point where mankind can literally live off every word that comes from His mouth. In her haste to maintain her earthly livelihood, the church of Christ made the greatest blunder of all time: she forgot that the most important foundation upon which her provision was well promised is righteousness. Then came the deception, as if in response to her prayer. the guise of the prosperity gospel from heaven, which she eagerly accepted without hesitation. As a result, the church has virtually engaged in sermons of a false form of christianity that fronts the spiritually reckless living in compromise with sin for the majority of her life. All the excesses of earthly wealth and pleasures are strewn throughout the church’s distorted vision of prosperity, to the point where holiness has been marginalized. This has essentially rendered the church spiritually too faint and feeble to even embark on the blood-splattered path that Jesus mapped out for her on the Cross at Calvary. Though the church has long recognized the bloodstained highway of holiness, her behavior suggests otherwise. not provoked into a bitter debate with the wider highways of this sinful world. The Lord Jesus unmistakably aggravated the church into an eternal controversy with this evil dark world following His passionate suffering on the Cross. It is His unflinching stature on the Cross and the agony of such a state of affairs that has raised a red flag in the church’s dealing with sin, so that she does not give the enemy an advantage over her life. Nothing good has come from the church’s worship by yielding to the disguised demands of this sinful world, nor has God been glorified by her praise. The evidence of a Christian walk is now worthless in the absence of holiness in breaking the stronghold. of church rebellion and summon God’s might, because human capacity, strength, and power have predictably weakened in the face of such a massive mountain of earthly darkness to overcome. Unfortunately for today’s apostate pastors, while this scenario plays out perfectly, faith, the pillar of the Christian walk in the church, now rests in God. This kind of faith deterioration is what has allowed deception and rampart falsehood into today’s house of the LORD. Only a righteously obedient walk along the highway of holiness can reveal to the church the true defining intent of holiness when the LORD said, “Above all, I desire that you prosper” (Isaiah 35:8-9).

1.2   Statement of the Problem

Since losing his heavenly inheritance, the adversary has resolved to exact vengeance by causing the church to share in his disgraceful fall. The enemy, well aware that it is impossible for us to deny the clamour of our fallen nature in our own strength, has perpetually taken advantage of hereditary weakness and thus fully engaged his false insinuations to ensnare all whose trust in God is not. He has devised new schemes and channels of attack, particularly against the church. At our LORD Jesus’ nativity in a cuddled Bethlehem manger, the enemy already knew that One had arrived with a divine commission to challenge his dominion over mankind and, finally, set the church free. This resulted in The angel’s message confirming the authority of the newly born King caused the adversary to tremble greatly. Despite the difficulty of comprehending the mystery of this great love sacrifice, the glory, peace, majesty, and joy of heavenly communion were abundantly manifest. To say the least, the fact that the Son of God would come to earth as a man filled the adversary with fearful amazement and extreme apprehension.

1.3   Objectives of the Study

The promised end-of-the-world revival has arrived. An undeniable Holy Spirit revival is today beginning to restore righteousness and holiness to the ends of the earth. It is the youthful modesty and grace of this endtime Holy Ghost revival that will eventually disarm the prejudices of the prosperity priesthood in its entirety, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to their hearts unconsciously. While that blessed revival has yet to completely consume the earth, today’s spiritual decay does deviate significantly from the expected norm. This is because any church that walks the highway of holiness should have explicitly trusted the LORD’s counsel. on matters of repentance. Furthermore, even in the most extreme milieu of money-preaching and prosperity advocacy, concerns about the unexpected return of the Messiah are beginning to surface. The church, in her best spiritual performance and sensibility, knows all too well that the original intention for which Jesus was sent to the Cross to pay such a horrific heart-wrenching price of redemption was never an earthly confined living. Because of its obvious spiritual shortfalls, the prosperity gospel has completely failed to rebuke the sin that has now infiltrated the church, preferring instead to accommodate worldliness and spiritual decay within the Christian fraternity. As joyful as they appear today, this type of apostate church cannot afford the luxury of forgetting the grief. and the fear that their unpreparedness will cause when the Messiah returns.

1.6   Significance of the Study

The faulting of God’s word in this dispensation has greatly magnified apostasy today, as well as the open practice of open lawlessness and shameless heedlessness in the church of Christ. Despite God’s open declaration of his intention to prosper mankind here on earth, it was God’s intention that such prosperity focus the heart of the church entirely into the perishable decay realm. However, God’s ultimate blueprint for man’s creation implied that any blessing of prosperity could cause him to be caught up with the Messiah in the glorious gathering at rapture. However, it is becoming increasingly clear, and to a greater extent, that the concept of This novel plan of God is still largely misunderstood by the modern church. As a result, the grave spiritual misinterpretation that today presents the false gospel of prosperity has largely wiped out the church’s authority and honor, reducing it to near-irrelevance. Worship observance has now been seriously reduced to mere formalism with the majority of today’s believers in this degenerate state.

1.7   Scope/Limitations of the Study

This research focuses on apostasy and church growth.

Limitations of study

Financial constraint- Inadequate funding tends to impede the researcher’s efficiency in locating relevant materials, literature, or information, as well as in the data collection process (internet, questionnaire and interview).
Time constraint- The researcher will conduct this study alongside other academic work. As a result, the amount of time spent on research will be reduced.

1.8   Definition of Terms

Apostasy: The rejection or abandonment of a religious or political belief or principle.

Church Growth is a movement within evangelical Christianity that seeks to develop methods for church growth based on business marketing strategies.

REFERENCES

“Circumstantial Confirmation of the First Vision Through Reminiscences,” Richard Lloyd Anderson. Brigham Young University Studies, 373-404, Spring 1969.

“Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Has Been Reassessed.” Spring 1970, Brigham Young University Studies, pp. 283-314.

Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History—New England, edited by Donald Q. Cannon. Brigham Young University’s Department of Church History and Doctrine, Provo, Utah, 1988.

Regional Studies in Latter-day Saint Church History—New York, edited by Larry C. Porter, Milton V. Backman, Jr., and Susan Easton Black. Brigham Young University’s Department of Church History and Doctrine, Provo, Utah, 1992.