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Matthew 16:18
18And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Today there is much talk in the secular media and church academia that sends a chill through my spine. The declarations stated as fact is that we are now living in a post modern Christian era.

Consider the following:

The Barna Research Group states some of the following:
September 24, 2007
(Ventura, CA) - As the nation's culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.

Un-churched Population Nears 100 Million in the U.S.
March 19, 2007
An estimated 73 million adults are presently unchurched. When teens and children are added, the total swells to roughly 100 million Americans.

To put that figure in context, if the unchurched population of the United States were a nation of its own, that group would be the twelfth most populated nation on earth (trailing only China, India, the churched portion of the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Russia, Japan and Mexico).

The Christian now has to live in a society which is very different from the society of Bible times, but human nature is, as ever, fallen and lost.

Post Christian

Western nations are said to be in a Post Christian era, but what does this mean?
These nations were never "Christian nations " since Christian faith is a matter for the individual. Perhaps the term "Post Christian" says most about the attitude of those who use it. But perhaps it is a fair description of the state of the church in our nations.

David Pawson provided a brief view of the state of Christianity in the United Kingdom which is rather sobering. In the introduction to his teaching on "Islam's challenge to Christianity", he looked at some "isms" which have influenced the times we live in.

Post Christian From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Post Christian, post-Christian or postChristian is a term used to describe a personal world view, ideology, religious movement or society that is no longer rooted in the language and assumptions of Christianity, though it had previously been in an environment of widespread Christianity (i.e., Christendom). Thus defined, a post-Christian world is one where Christianity is no longer the dominant civil religion, but one that has, gradually over extended periods of time, assumed values, culture, and worldviews that are not necessarily Christian (and further may not necessarily reflect any world religion's standpoint). This situation applies to much of Europe, in particular in Central and Northern Europe, where no more than half of the residents in those lands profess belief in a mono-theistically-conceived deity. (the doctrine or belief that there is but one God)

Before you get to overwhelmed with information let me move to the heart of what I want to say.

How Long Do We Have ?

About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh , had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years earlier:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government."

"A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury."

"From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years"

"During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
1. from bondage to spiritual faith;
2. from spiritual faith to great courage;
3. from courage to liberty;
4. from liberty to abundance;
5. from abundance to complacency;
6. from complacency to apathy;
7. from apathy to dependence;
8. From dependence back into bondage"

Professor Joseph Olson of Hemline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some forty percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase. If Congress grants amnesty and citizenship to twenty million criminal invaders called illegal's and they vote, then we can say goodbye to the USA in fewer than five years.

With all of this being said it brings me to the point of the what the Lord told the angel of the church of Laodicea:

Revelation 3:14-18
[14] And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God;
[15] I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot.
[16] So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.
[17] Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:
[18] I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

When Jesus told Peter that he was going to build THE CHURCH on the revelation of who He was and he told Peter that the:

GATES OF HELL WAS NOT GOING TO PREVAIL AGAINST IT, I am inclined to believe that the church will prevail in these last days until the end!