famine of hearing the words of the LORD

Not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the LORD.

Amos 8:11b

Apostasy is increasing at an alarming rate in our land, as the great counterfeiter has been running hectic occupying the church with all sorts’ nonessentials. The teaching of the Word of God is becoming so rare… it’s to a point of famine! As spoken by the prophet Amos 8:11b “Not a famine of bread or water but of hearing the words of the LORD.”

Biblical illiteracy is at an all-time high studies showed that even though 79 percent of those who actually attend evangelical churches find their faith "very important", only 36 percent of them actually believe that faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to eternal life.

Not every child who starts out in church stays in church and in fact, many young people are falling away from the faith and walking away from the church as they grow older due to their biblical illiteracy. A recent survey conducted by the Barna Group, a leading research organization whose focus is on the relationship of faith and culture, found that less than 1 % of the young adult population in the United States has a biblical worldview. Even more startling, the data shows that less than one half of one percent of Christians between the ages of 18 and 23 has a biblical worldview.

Charles Spurgeon was way ahead of his time when he implored the church to start feeding the sheep rather than amusing the goats!

Many churches today have gone as far as opening their pulpits to pagans such as Snoop Dogg to help fill their pews. Pole dancers are now part of their worship services transforming what was once holy into a cesspool of perversion.

The golden calf incident in Exodus 32 just echoes throughout many churches today. While Moses was up Mount Sinai to receive God’s laws, the people were getting anxious down on the plain. Moses spent forty days (Exodus 24:18) up on the mountain with God, and by the end of that time, the people were beginning to think Moses had died or left them. The people urged Aaron, their temporary leader, to make gods for them to follow. Since they were accustomed to having visual representations of gods, this was the natural (but sinful) result of their thinking. Aaron took their gold earrings, which they had brought from Egypt, and melted them down to make a golden idol. The idol he crafted for them was a calf, but Aaron maintained the name of the Lord in connection with it (Exodus 32:5). He was merging the pagan practices they were familiar with and the worship of the God they were just beginning to be re-acquainted with. Aaron called the people together and told them that the golden calf was the god who delivered them from Egypt. The people offered sacrifices and then engaged in pagan rituals, including orgies (Exodus 32:25) to worship this new god.

Moses represented the Word of God and the absences of God’s word will create the hunger for worldly desires as in Aron’s case and as in our present church conditions.

A church in the Bible that made God sick to his stomach was the church in Laodicea. Revelation 3:16 This church is seen as being very money-oriented, leadership is assigned by how you give monetarily rather than how much you give in service to Christ. Salvation I how many people we can bring to Christ is replaced by how many people can bring in to fill these pews. They are no longer interested in doing God's work in helping one another whether it is in their personal lives or community. They have become self-satisfied and spiritually dead to the Spirit of God in reaching the lost and hurting people around them. They have even gone as far as considering them (the lost and hurting) as unclean lepers as the Pharisees did in the days of our Lord. For this reason Jesus’s rebuke here is the strongest in the Bible! When He says He will vomit them out of His mouth, it shows great distaste that His own people are not enthusiastic or zealous about doing good works!

If you find yourself in a church that is self-seeking rather than seeking God’s will in there fellowship. The Lord informs us what to do as He did with the church of Ephesus. Just as the church in Ephesus Jesus says to us today, I have this complaint against you. You don’t love me or each other as you did at first! Look how far you have fallen! Turn back to me and do the works you did at first. If you don’t repent, I will come and remove your lampstand (God’s Holy Spirit) from its place among the churches. Revelations 2:4

Peace,