Christianity Continues To Grow

Quoting Troy Anderson:

The purported demise of Christianity is a fallacy – an illusion conjured up by sociologists, atheists and secular media with Newsweek cover stories like “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.”

In reality, Christianity is now the world’s largest religion and is growing exponentially in developing nations, offsetting declines in Europe, according to a new report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

The report found the number of Christians – both Protestants and Catholics – has tripled from 600 million in 1910 to 2.18 billion in 2010. The increase is largely driven by an explosion in the number of Pentecostals and Charismatics – movements that ignited over the last century and now encompass a quarter of all Christians with 584 million adherents.

“There has been enormous growth in Christianity,” says Rodney Stark, the author of “The Triumph of Christianity” and the Distinguished Professor of the Social Sciences and co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor University. “The sociologists have been telling the world for 100 years that Christianity is disappearing while it’s actually continuing to grow rapidly. It’s kind of a European illusion.”

Continue reading here. . . .

Do You Love The Word Of God?

Do you sit under a ministry that works upon your conscience? Are you grateful and humble when the Word of God strikes at the sin in your life? In the excerpt below, Thomas Watson continues this line of questioning:

Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts. (Jeremiah 15:16 ESV)

Do we love the Word preached? Do we prize it in our judgments? Do we receive it into our hearts? Do we fear the loss of the Word preached more than the loss of peace and trade? Is it the removal of the ark that troubles us?

Again, do we attend to the Word with reverential devotion? When the judge is giving his charge from the bench, all attend. When the Word is preached, the great God is giving us his charge. Do we listen to it as to a matter of life and death? This is a good sign that we love the Word.

Again, do we love the holiness of the Word (Psa. 119:140)? The Word is preached to beat down sin and advance holiness. Do we love it for its spirituality and purity? Many love the Word preached only for its eloquence and notion. They come to a sermon as to a performance (Ezek. 33:31,32) or as to a garden to pick flowers, but not to have their lusts subdued or their hearts bettered. These are like a foolish woman who paints her face but neglects her health.

Again, do we love the convictions of the Word? Do we love the Word when it comes home to our conscience and shoots its arrows of reproof at our sins? It is the minister’s duty sometimes to reprove. He who can speak smooth words in the pulpit, but does not know how to reprove, is like a sword with a fine hilt but without an edge. ‘Rebuke them sharply’ (Titus 2:15). Dip the nail in oil, reprove in love, but strike the nail home. Now Christian, when the Word touches on your sin and says, ‘You are the man’, do you love the reproof? Can you bless God that ‘the sword of the Spirit’ has divided between you and your lusts? This is indeed a sign of grace and shows that you are a lover of the Word. (“A Godly Man is a Lover of the Word!”)