Rome Burns

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus declares, When the Son of Man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth? I believe we draw nearer and nearer to Christ's return for his bride. The signs of the end time are all around us. The sick moral decay in society, and chaos in the land, and the sad spiritual declension and apostasy in the church, or just a dark velvet background, for the pearl of great prize to appear more glorious when he suddenly appears.

Often, the great God of the Bible will allow circumstances to become so bleak, so dark and overwhelming, so seemingly hopeless, before he shows up on the scene. Such was the case in England, in the time of Wesley and Whitefield, where London was an open sewer of immorality, and it was said that every sixth house in London was a gin house, and drunkenness and vice was so rampant, that even most members of Parliament showed up drunk for work. This was the dark scene that a sovereign God chose to intervene and send a mighty revival and spiritual awakening in the land that shook two continents for his glory.

The times in which we live, friends, are desperate days. Violence grips the land, and blood spills out on our streets from senseless violence. There is enough booze consumed in the average city tonight that could drown the entire population.

Our young kids today are ruined by drugs and sexual sins, and live their day in a stone stupor, while their careless parents spend their time in the accumulation of wealth and self-amusement. The church is full of unconverted ministers who dull the danger to eternity by amusing and entertaining their congregations with their own opinions and utter nonsense. Their main objective is to build a large church for their own egos, while they traffic in the souls of men.

Never in my life have I come in contact with so many unconverted pastors who are full of themselves and who are sensual men. Jude, the half-brother of Jesus, describes these false shepherds in glowing terms in his epistle. For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation.

Ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. Then Jude goes on to vividly describe them in these terms. They are spots in your feasts of charity, when they feast with you, feeding themselves without fear, clouds they are, without water, carried about of winds, trees whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, raging waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame, wandering stars, to whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.

And what is the result of sitting under such a false ministry? Most of the churches are filled largely with unconverted members, who know nothing of Holy Spirit conviction or a work of grace upon the heart. Your average church member sits upon the rotten wood of a false profession. They have never heard the gospel of the Son of God, nor have they ever closed with Christ to get under his blood and receive pardon for sin.

For the most part, they are spiritually careless people, who live self-indulgent lives, while they hide beneath the cloak of an empty religious profession. They are covetous individuals, who grab all they can, while they can, to stick it in a can and declare it their own, while missionaries on the mission field live in suffering and want, while God-glorifying ministries close down for lack of support, while 2,000 language groups have yet to get the gospel in their native tongue. Jude sets forth the miseries of the damned by a holy God who must punish sin.

And the angels, which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day, even as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. The backdrop of society is as dark as hell itself, and yet things grow darker every day. Yes, when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith upon the earth? This is the burning question of our hour, as the church, like Nero, plays its fiddles in the decay, while crumbling buildings fall all around us.

Heaven help us, let us pray.