It was true in Spurgeon’s day (and now we see the death-rattle of European Christianity, especially in Spurgeon’s beloved England), and the slide is rapidly accelerating today.

 

As many great apologetics teachers have warned, when we stop believing that the Bible is the Word of God, we lose our way. The authority of Scripture is the rule for life.

 

I was talking with a friend the other day; she is a member of the United Methodist Church. My friend was lamenting that budget shortfalls and very low attendance numbers in her home church made her unsure of the church’s future.

 

The UMC long ago jettisoned believing in the authority of Scripture and now, amid budget shortfalls and a pastor shortage, that body is attempting to figure out how to stay alive. Prediction: that denomination, like most others, will either morph into some sort of coalition, or it will cease to exist outright. Why?

 

The UMC, like many other Christian organizations, does not teach that the Bible is true. At least, large parts of Scripture are said to be myth, metaphor, or the like. In 1968, the Evangelical United Brethren Church and the Methodist Church united to form the UMC. Since then, that toboggan has been shooting down the mountain, as, like many other denominations, the UMC is hemorrhaging members. Predictably, the denominational leaders look for solutions in the areas of “offering more contemporary services” and “bringing relevance.”

 

This mindset is the product of tragic teaching, such as that cited in that flagship of liberalism today, Christianity Today magazine. In a December 9, 1996 article, Ray Van Leeuwen, professor of Bible and Theology at Eastern College in Pennsylvania (also the home of anti-Israel and anti-prophecy apologist Tony Campolo), had this to say about us simpletons who believe Scripture:

 

“Nobody interprets the Genesis creation account literally, and if they think they do, they’re fooling themselves.”

 

Wow, on so many levels. Van Leeuwen telegraphs his bias by acknowledging—ironically—that his declaration is not true when he admits “and if they think they do…” Of course, millions of people believe in the veracity of all of Scripture, including the wonderfully clear early Earth history found in Genesis. Tens of thousands of credible scientists believe it, too.

 

But worldviews like those of Van Leeuwen have confused churchgoers for decades, and represent, I think, one of the chief reasons for the new Exodus, in which millions of young people are virtually running from churches and denominations.

 

Many, many examples could be cited, but the UMC secured its own future doom in myriad ways. In a booklet published in 1975, entitled About Being United Methodist, it is clear that the UMC never believed in the primacy of Scripture. On page 4 of the booklet, we read that “Sources for their faith” include: “The Bible; Articles of Religion; Confession of Faith; The United Methodist Book of Discipline; Theologians and Educators; and John Wesley’s Writings.”

 

On page 5, “United Methodists also share 4 main guidelines for belief”:

 

 

We are then told: “They are interdependent and allow for variety in theology.”

 

And there you have the crux of the problem.

 

In each of these pages cited, the UMC should have stopped at “The Bible” and “scripture.” By allowing for other sources of truth, the UMC failed to take into account that the others are products of a fallen world and can therefore be wrong. Of course, the denomination never believed in a literal Garden of Eden, or Fall. No doubt many thousands of individual members did and have, but officially, the UMC has not taught that the Bible is true.

 

A further clue about where the UMC has taken its members is found on page 10 of the booklet, under “The Political Community.” There we find “The role of government is to protect freedom, and guarantee the rights of people to adequate food, clothing, education, etc.”

 

That is false.

 

The country’s founders did not believe government’s role is to provide food, clothing, education, etc. This is the product of socialist thinking among UMC leaders.

 

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China, as we used to say? Just that denominations like the UMC have had a profound effect on our national leaders in recent decades. Pick up a guide to Congress, and under many names listed, you’ll find listed under religion affiliation often a reference to a mainline denomination of the Catholic Church.

 

This has reached into every sphere of our society. Although of course, not every source of wrong thinking can be traced to liberal Christianity (right now, even conservative bodies are moving away from the primacy of Scripture), in many cases they have.

 

Nowhere is this more evident in our new national policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict. Because our nation’s leaders by-and-large do not believe the Bible is true, they are making policy that is directly opposed to God.

 

Barack Obama has spent decades in the United Church of Christ, a church body so liberal it might be said to be socialist (remember the good Reverend Wright?). When we realize that many of our leaders in Washington come from these religious backgrounds, is it any wonder our policies are so shockingly wrong?

 

In the power centers of our country, this same worldview is shared among liberal Christians, agnostics, and New Agers. That’s why Time magazine can run a cover story entitled “Why Israel Can’t Win,” and The Atlantic can run a similar cover story entitled, “Is Israel Finished?”

 

If we believe the Bible, the answer to that question is a bulletproof “No.”

 

The story of Israel in the Bible begins and ends with the reality that Israel will finally emerge from history as a winner, and gentiles will ask Jews if they can go up to Jerusalem with them in order to worship the living God (Zechariah 8:23).

 

This is reality. This is the worldview that the Bible teaches, and it is sure.

 

Today, denominational leaders across America are holding conferences and dialoguing in order to solve the problem of the Exodus from our nation’s churches. It is doubtful that any of them address the real issue, which is worldview.

 

When we teach our young people (and our adults) that the Bible is part myth, or when our own bias seeps into Bible studies, we seal the doom of the organized church in the United States.

 

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