-
What Is Happening to Religion?Awake!—1973 | September 22
-
-
“Sure, we’re Biblical illiterates,” admitted one woman, as reported in The Arizona Republic. “The ministers aren’t preaching or teaching the gospel anymore.”
-
-
The Work of True ReligionAwake!—1973 | September 22
-
-
A tract sponsored by the Foreign Mission Board of the Brazilian Baptist Convention, which could well apply to all world religion, admits:
“When Jesus left his disciples . . . he gave them only one job. That was to evangelize the world. . . . The truth is that we are doing everything else except the one thing that He ordered us to do . . . We have not taken the Gospel to the whole world. We have not carried out His orders.”
This failure of the churches to preach the “Gospel” in all the world is apparent to many. When social historian Will Herberg was asked recently whether the churches were fulfilling the needs of the people, he said: “I don’t think most churches ever did, in the sense of their one legitimate religious function: preaching the Gospel.”—U.S. News and World Report, June 4, 1973.
Why have the churches failed to do the work that God’s Son assigned to his followers? Is it simply a matter of unintended oversight of responsibility? No, for as two ministers pointed out regarding the largest federation of religions in the United States:
“The National Council of Churches does not have as its primary objective the preaching of the gospel . . . It has become an ecclesiastical power bloc, aiming for a powerful super-church.”
Yes, the churches have deliberately failed to carry out God’s will to preach the “good news” of his Kingdom rule. Instead, they have deeply involved themselves in the political affairs of the nations. And they have directed their peoples to put their hopes in the governments of men for lasting peace.
-