America's Christian majority is on track to end

[Vanguard]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

It is like people standing up to applaud after a fantastic concert. Are they compelled to do so or is it because they were impressed by the performance. Will Christ’s appearance be so awe inspiring, will his power and glory be so overwhelmingly obvious that even those who have not aligned themselves with God kneel before him?  Why wouldn’t they?

Bingo. If Christ is everything we're told he is, it would make absolute sense that we all will respond accordingly upon meeting him. Am I compelled? Not in the sense we typically mean but rather my emotions will be so powerful that it will be as though I am compelled to bow.

[InCognitus]

9 hours ago, Teancum said:

The passages of every knee shall bow and every tongue confess smacks of being compelled and not of love.

I see it as a simple acknowledgement of fact.  At the judgement seat of Christ, everyone will know the truth of the matter and there will simply be no denying it.  That's not compulsion, it's the sheer truth of what will be made known.

[Hamba Tuhan]

22 minutes ago, InCognitus said:

At the judgement seat of Christ, everyone will know the truth of the matter and there will simply be no denying it.

Yep. And anyone who doesn't like the merciful invitation attached to that incontrovertible truth (i.e., repent of all sin and be saved) will still have the option to reject both Christ and His offer of redemption. Respect for agency has no limit.

[JLHPROF]

59 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

Yep. And anyone who doesn't like the merciful invitation attached to that incontrovertible truth (i.e., repent of all sin and be saved) will still have the option to reject both Christ and His offer of redemption. Respect for agency has no limit.

Respect for agency doesn't mean removing the consequence of the choice.  It's been my observation that the more wrong choices we make the less agency we retain.

Eventually those who use their agency to reject Christ will find their choices very limited.

[Hamba Tuhan]

5 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Eventually those who use their agency to reject Christ will find their choices very limited.

Eventually, those who reject Christ will find themselves in Outer Darkness for eternity, but they will have chosen precisely that, knowing in advance what it would be like (having been allowed to experience it temporarily in Spirit Prison).

[MustardSeed]

IMU the numbers of those in “outer darkness” will be so small that we need not concern ourselves with the topic.  And those who are given Telestial glory are given glory beyond what we can imagine.  The Lord is merciful IMO.  He loves us beyond our capacity to understand.  We need not worry about anyone but ourselves and all we are expected to do is teach others to give them opportunity (but imo really it’s a goal for us to establish our own testimony so deeply that we can’t help but share) - 

If Christianity is dying it’s on all of us. Maybe we make it look so unappealing due to our angst and our criticisms of others.  Christianity has potential to be beautiful, and if we were doing it right people would be running toward, not running away.  IMO. 

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, MustardSeed said:

If Christianity is dying it’s on all of us. Maybe we make it look so unappealing due to our angst and our criticisms of others.  Christianity has potential to be beautiful, and if we were doing it right people would be running toward, not running away.  IMO. 

I think this is largely true.   Christianity as it's portrayed in this nation anyway--especially its connection to politics--doesn't have a lot to recommend it.  I also think that some of it though is just that Christianity, at its core, is antithetical to the relativism that is currently so popular in our culture.

[MiserereNobis]

23 minutes ago, bluebell said:

Christianity as it's portrayed in this nation anyway--especially its connection to politics--doesn't have a lot to recommend it.

I totally agree.

[MustardSeed]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

 Christianity, at its core, is antithetical to the relativism that is currently so popular in our culture.

Do you think the youth’s relativism is due to the distaste for religion for other reasons (violence, seeming absence of God in trials, sexual abuse in churches) or is it unrelated to religion? Is the death of religion just a byproduct of a larger movement or did bad religion cause the movement? Not sure if I’m making sense 

[JAHS]

16 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Do you think the youth’s relativism is due to the distaste for religion for other reasons (violence, seeming absence of God in trials, sexual abuse in churches) or is it unrelated to religion? Is the death of religion just a byproduct of a larger movement or did bad religion cause the movement? Not sure if I’m making sense 

I heard it once said that the new morality is nothing more than the old immorality. Secularism is getting more popular and easier to live than adhering to religious principles.
The breakdown of the traditional family has a lot to do with it also. 

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, MustardSeed said:

Do you think the youth’s relativism is due to the distaste for religion for other reasons (violence, seeming absence of God in trials, sexual abuse in churches) or is it unrelated to religion? Is the death of religion just a byproduct of a larger movement or did bad religion cause the movement? Not sure if I’m making sense 

I really don't know. 

I think that the internet and social media is one reason that we're seeing so many embrace the "you do you and it's all good" mantra.  The more we are exposed to other people's beliefs and ways of life/seeing the world, the more we can empathize or relate to those people.  And I think that often leads to less of a desire to judge their beliefs as being wrong.  I also think that that kind of exposure doesn't just lead us to embrace the validity of other people's choices, but to also question the validity of any morally absolute beliefs that we hold at the same time.  So we become more accepting of beliefs that our religion disagrees with while becoming less accepting of beliefs that our religion espouses at the same time.*

And I think it's also an aspect of the pendulum thing, where the further to one side the pendulum swings (such as the more moral authority our society embraced in earlier years) the further it's going to swing to the other side now.  Eventually we could probably land somewhere in the middle, if society doesn't disintegrate before then.  The collapse of our society before that can happen is a real possibility though, if history--which shows that it takes about 250 years on average for a civilization to decline and then fall--is any indication.

*(I think this is probably true for everyone, regardless of age, but that younger people are on social media and the internet more in general so they are exposed more to different beliefs than older people are.)

[The Nehor]

9 hours ago, MustardSeed said:

If Christianity is dying it’s on all of us. Maybe we make it look so unappealing due to our angst and our criticisms of others.  Christianity has potential to be beautiful, and if we were doing it right people would be running toward, not running away.  IMO. 

I don’t buy this at all. While there are people making it particularly repugnant that doesn’t mean that Christianity taught well will convert the world. Jesus couldn’t find a way to structure teaching the gospel so that people would run to it and if Jesus couldn’t do it I am not sure anyone can.

[MustardSeed]

3 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I don’t buy this at all. While there are people making it particularly repugnant that doesn’t mean that Christianity taught well will convert the world. Jesus couldn’t find a way to structure teaching the gospel so that people would run to it and if Jesus couldn’t do it I am not sure anyone can.

I never said anything about converting the world. And *I do think* he was a pied piper, though obviously many hated him. 
 

 

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, MustardSeed said:

I never said anything about converting the world. And *I do think* he was a pied piper, though obviously many hated him. 
 

 

Not really. Jesus got followers but then He would say something harsh or difficult and people would leave or he stopped giving out free lunches and they stopped following Him.

[MustardSeed]

9 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Not really. Jesus got followers but then He would say something harsh or difficult and people would leave or he stopped giving out free lunches and they stopped following Him.

Ok