“The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world, is a miserable patriot, and a poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.”
—J. C. Ryle, Holiness.
In the course of affairs, and especially during periods of great decline, it is of special use to pause and peel open our sleepy eyelids in order to discern the landscape of reality. Those souls who are burdened with spiritual-mindedness know this. They know that it is a moral duty. They read their Bibles and they see that, in that mystical land, a failure to reckon with the state of things, including especially the state of the church, is a disposition that seals certain doom.
Within the 12th chapter of the Gospel of Luke, we find the Lord Jesus himself raising this very point.
54 And he said also to the people, When ye see a cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so it is. 55 And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say, There will be heat; and it cometh to pass. 56 Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time?
Here it should be noted that Christ speaks to the Jews, and that the Jews, at this time with the Old Covenant still operative, constitute the Church in a national body-politic. In other words, Christ upbraids the Church of his day for not discerning the state of the Church and God’s relation to it. For the Jews, they failed to rightly discern Christ and the Scriptures concerning Christ; they failed to rightly discern that the Messiah was come and that they were rejecting him.
As Matthew Henry comments on the passage,
It is the folly and misery of man that he knows not his time, Ecclesiastes 9:12. This was the ruin of the men of that generation, that they knew not the day of their visitation, Luke 19:44; Luke 19:44. But a wise man's heart discerns time and judgment; such was the wisdom of the men of Issachar, who had understanding of the times, 1 Chronicles 12:32.
Folly and misery, doom and destruction, may await those who fail to discern the Church. But to bolster the usefulness and validity of addressing the state of the Church, I offer a few brief arguments.
I: Some Brief Arguments for Addressing the State of the Church
1. If Christians, then we are a part of the wider church.
When we confess in the Apostle’s Creed, “holy catholic church,” we are recognizing that Christ’s church, his mystical body, is wider than our particular congregation. And we are a part of that body, the catholic church. We ought then to know something of her state.
2. Discerning the times includes discerning the state of the Church.
We are to have a discerning eye to our own day and time; what the prevailing spirit is; what vices need cut off, what virtues need guarded; and many other things, including, the state of the Church, and our relation to it.
3. It is a mark of godliness to care about the Church and her state.
Moses is provoked at the oppression of his brethren, and so he slays the Egyptian. Asaph in Psalm 74 mourns the poor state of the Church. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11 that “the care of all the churches” comes upon him daily. And of course, our Savior Christ shed his blood for the church, as one who deeply and perfectly cares about her state.
4. Any efforts at reformation & renewal of the Church require, first, an understanding of her needs, and thus her state.
Consider the book of Nehemiah: the walls of Jerusalem were laid waste; and before work could commence in rebuilding, a right estimation of the state of the walls and of the city had to be first undertaken.
II: What I Am & Am Not Addressing Concerning the State of the Church
1. I am not attempting to address every possible point concerning the state of the Church. This is impossible, save for God alone. Instead, I am attempting to address some of the main points concerning the state of the Church, as far as can be reckoned in sincerity and modesty, given what I know.
2. I am not attempting to address the state of every particular church or congregation, whether throughout the world or in this country. Instead, I am attempting to address the state of the wider Western, Protestant, Evangelical, & Reformed Church of which I am most close to.
The intention is to be brief and specific; hence, bullet points.
III: The Bad
1. Concerning elders and their households
elders with wives working unnecessarily outside of the home
elders with children in public school
elders who do not maintain regular family worship
elders who do not duly discipline their children
elders with suicidal children (yes there was a PCA elder and church planter at a presbytery meeting I attended years ago who faced this, and none of his fellow presbyters raised it as a point demonstrating his lack of fitness)
thus, they do not rule their household well
therefore they are disqualified; yet they remain
3. Concerning elders and the church
weak, dead, safe, applicationless preaching
pastors studiously avoiding clear applications of the text, often with pleas that they are being “gospel-centered” or “christological”
pastors studiously avoiding certain taboo or controversial issues (6 day creation, female immodesty, and such)
preaching that is always vague, never specific
preaching that never discriminates (e.g. between believers and non-believers, between weak believers and strong believers, between man and woman, parent and child, magistrate and citizen, etc.)
elders who refuse to administer necessary church discipline
elders who neither know nor smell like their sheep
elders who beat, bully, and gaslight their sheep
no pastoral visitation or catechism
elders failing to ensure that families maintain family worship and discipline for failure to do so
3. Concerning the academy, seminary, and the church
Few truly sound, historical Christian seminaries propagating the fulness of historic, Christian thought
Seminary professors, such as Owen Strachan, who are very poorly trained, ignorant, and in error on the Trinity, functionally Anabaptist and Marcionite
Seminary is not the ministry; and it is my opinion that adjustment needs seriously made; because seminary, in most instances, is not producing the men we need. Appeal is often made to Christ training the disciples. I grant that Christ trained the disciples for 3.5 years. But modern seminary training is not a nomadic apprenticeship with regular hands-on practice and interaction with the greatest teacher of theology that ever lived, such as the Apostles had. Modern seminary is mostly reading and writing a lot in a singular environment, with some personal interaction.
Seminary often reinforces errors of the day: e.g. egalitarianism, or wokery; or being a smile-bully and persecuting young men with zeal; or the managerial, bureaucratic mindset.
Our formerly great Christian schools have been lost to pagans: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and so on… now overrun by leftists, Jews, Papists, and pagans.
4. Concerning modern doctrinal deviations and heresies in the church
Radical 2-Kingdoms (R2K) / Modern 2-Kingdoms (M2K): abuses natural law to justify the Liberal establishment and heretical political theology
Bible is everywhere abused to say Christians are not to be political, nor to see, hold, and wield political power; but rather, we are to give it up to our enemies.
Theonomy, Christian Reconstruction, Presuppositionalism: reject natural law and often natural theology, or, at best, fail to duly uphold these same things; so we throw out a Protestant and Reformed heirloom and what some regard as the very foundation of all reality (natural law).
Biblicism: men suppose that only the Bible is to be used or consulted, that we derive everything we do from the Bible.
Religious pluralism; Christians saying the man who tore down the Satan statue was wrong; they say it is not loving to establish your religion over others, or to use power on behalf of religion; that the magistrate is not to countenance the church or punish crimes of the first table of the law.
Dispensationalism: a doctrine never before known to the church prior to the last 2 centuries or so; a doctrine that originates in Rome with Robert Bellarmine and another Papist named Lacunza; a doctrine that was furthered by the mad ravings of a woman in Scotland; a doctrine that often hamstrings the church in her present mission, cripples hope for the future, and spreads the filthy lie that the church and Israel are two distinct entities.
Antinomianism is rampant; grace is the great gray cloud that allows everyone to do everything they want, and removes all clear moral imperatives.
The idea that good works are not necessary at all in any sense to salvation; yes they are, and our Reformed heritage has many things to say here.
On the flip side, Arminianism continues to be embraced by many professing Christians, which denies God his due sovereignty and exalts man.
5. Concerning families, households, and the church
unlawful divorces not only take place but are not meaningfully addressed; unequal yokings (Christians with non-Christians, or Papists).
DINK life & intentionally barren marriages, with pastors counseling engaged couples to make use of contraception once married (yes this is real).
Christian children not getting a Christian education.
undue delay of marriage, or lack of supporting the newlyweds.
women leading the family, whether in work or religion
thus men not leading their families, whether in work or religion; they may be physically present but relationally absent.
men do not know basic Bible, do not teach their wives & children.
family worship is sparse or totally neglected.
children are disobedient, worldly, without due manners.
family often has more time for leisure and temporal things than for God.
soft, weak men; butch, forward women—whether in manners, dress, conduct, speech, or attitude.
6. Concerning women and the church
women pastors & elders, deacons & “shepherdesses”.
male pastors excusing these things with appeals to civility, suggesting it is just a disagreement of interpretation, and such things.
women leading worship in the church, reading Scripture in worship.
women subtly manipulating elders and churches.
women loud, brash, forward, not meek and quiet.
Beth Moores, Aimee Byrds, Jen Wilkins, Rosaria Butterfield, Allie Beth Stuckey; our women are running wild and no man has the courage to restrain them.
female immodesty in the church; in most places totally neglected, yet is a great and common evil that causes many men to stumble in the house of worship: heinous.
women’s sins excused or sugared over, treated very generally, or there is a culture created where women are thought to hardly sin at all.
women who argue theology with men in public
women who definitively speak on matters of church, state, and theology (outside domestic piety), or who follow women who do (Allie Beth Stuckey, Candace Owens, etc.).
women who backbite, gossip, and slander; who may be fittingly labeled Karens, lurking and watching for any dirt that they can use against others.
7. Concerning men and the church
it is difficult to find mature men of faith; in part, it seems this is due to the feminist spirit that dominates the modern church and the Faith; men who are men sense that the church is for women, not men, that it’s a feminine space for expressing emotions and maintaining relationships, not going on mission and exerting one’s strength.
thus the men who do lead in the church are often just half-women: weak, wimpy, manipulative, catty; who manage decline with a smile and social skills.
there is much gluttony, pornography, and laziness among men in the church.
men are not leading, they are not modeling, they are not seeking to become great and excellent, or, if they do, it often seems used to abuse those under their care and charge.
older men are not becoming fathers to younger men, but often their chief accusers and discouragers.
younger men have much zeal, but often lack diligence, industry, and sacrifice, and are in danger of becoming useless dreamers.
younger men see many problems, whether in the wider church or their own church, but are in danger of merely noticing rather than meaningfully acting; so they spend all their strength on diagnosing and categorizing what is wrong, and complaining, rather than doing something about it.
older men may see problems, yet refuse to deal with them because it will create social disturbances or perhaps offend someone; or, they refuse to see the problems, having swallowed a view of piety that has more in common with Liberalism than the Bible.
8. Concerning the worship of the church
the wider Western church may be separated into two main categories concerning worship: (1) wild yet expressive or (2) superstitious yet orderly.
we have santa worship, superbowl worship, at the movies worship, ziplines in worship, rap battles, dance parties, & other such disorders and chaos.
I kid you not, I saw a service at a megachurch where the staff were dressed up as football players and announcers, and kicked a bible like a football kickoff to start worship; this is nonsense, profanity, wickedness; in such worship it is all levity and entertainment, lacking substance.
the RCC and the EO still maintain their false worship; worshiping images, and Mary, and the Saints, or the blasphemy of the Mass; in such contexts, there is at least a semblance of order, of transcendence and other-worldliness, but it is largely false, vain, and superstitious.
evangelicalism in general is driven by emotional high worship.
wine is very rarely used in the Lord’s Supper; and often the Supper is given indiscriminately, without due warnings or proper understanding.
psalms are very rarely sung
songs of God’s justice and judgment are rarely sung
Scripture, if it is read, is usually very little, maybe a phrase, a sentence, or at best, a few sentences.
the Sabbath is in many ways disregarded, trampled upon, and profaned; many think it has been abolished; businesses remain open on the Lord’s Day, and Christians are some of the most common and regular patrons of businesses on the Lord’s Day.
others who do have some regard for the Lord’s Day, though they may attend church worship, may yet have a mind for the world throughout the day, and fail to commune with God and have more spiritually focused conversation.
children are put into children’s church; teenagers in teenager church; and college-aged in college-aged church; so we cut up and sunder the body of the Lord Jesus Christ on the one day it is called to gather together, and then wonder why we are divided, and why our children leave the Faith.
9. Concerning the commitments, attitude, & self-conception of the Church
we are not duly provoked by sin: sin in the world, in the church, and in ourselves; we are not provoked by Christ being blasphemed, by his rights in church and state being trampled upon; by the Goliaths who taunt us and mock God.
there is lack of concern for private piety and public piety; so much of the Faith is painted as take it or leave it, as optional; in other words, religion has become a buffet; take what you want, leave what you want, so long as you say “I am a Christian,” that’s fine; and so duty lays dead, whether in the closet, in the sanctuary, or in the street; we have no categories for duty, only choices and delights.
Christians will spend much time thinking and planning, or devoting themselves to, or engaging in: vacations and outings—cars and homes—social get-togethers and leisure activities—times in front of the TV and the computer watching largely profitless things, and hours of podcasts; yet where are they in prayer? in fasting? in basic spiritual disciplines of Bible reading and family worship? in plotting how to bless the Church? in how to extend Christ’s Kingdom in the world? in gaining power to wield it for good? in acts of mercy? in hospitality to neighbor? in intelligent and laborious work through great Christian books?
Our southern border is being invaded by the millions, which is surely a just judgment of God upon this nation for its wickedness. Where are the sermons on this? Where are the prayers and fasts for God to remove his judgments?
It seems a man can be in grievous error or a heretic on any number of historic doctrines of the Christian Faith, but if he transgresses the Liberal Mythos, he is guilty of a capital crime and the highest heresy. Racism, kinism, taking an alternative view of WW2, criticizing the Jews, wanting to destroy the lie of Liberalism, believing the civil rights revolution was a mistake, wanting your nation to be Christian, loving your heritage, loving and honoring your people and place—all these and like things are now treated as fundamental articles of the Faith.
A man can be a heretic on the trinity; he can be a Marcionite on Scripture; he can be a political atheist; he can be a rank antinomian, abusing Christ’s person and work to spare men from Christ’s demands and commands—and no one says a word; no one lifts a finger. But if a man defies the Liberal Spirit, then he must be crucified.
So concerning the self-conception of the Church: what is it for? What does it think it is for? How does the Church conceive of itself? It seems that for many, the entire point of the Church is to act as a vehicle which the Liberal Spirit may drive as it pleases. It is a castle without walls which the world can invade and command at the very invitation of the Church herself. It is a weapon in the hand of wicked forces in high places, in which money and propaganda is dispersed, to further Satan’s schemes. Even among the orthodox, the Church is often the platform used to winsomely manage the decline of the West, and to make some plausible case for her apostasy.
10. Final miscellaneous notes on the church
young men who care are often angry and alone; I speak with some of them; they are usually persecuted by the women of both sexes in the church.
our elites in church and state fail us; they are bought and bribed, whether from money or influence; they sell us into the hands of our enemies just like Judah bound Samson and delivered him to the Philistines.
parents may have their children taken from them for refusing to say their pronouns, and professing Christians, in the name of love, may be the ones who report the parents.
our elites can write and speak for the Woke stupidity; they can champion Liberal social dogma; but they can say nothing in defense or on behalf of White Christians.
they can write articles comparing Taylor Swift concerts to the beatific vision, but they cannot write articles against Taylor Swift as a whore, as a witch, and whose music and example is a moral and intellectual poison upon this nation.
our elites and leaders shutdown church for COVID, but march with Black Lives Matter; some pressured the sheep to get vaccinated, and it is very likely that some of those sheep are now dead.
where is repentance from elders for their sins on COVID?
there is a flood of levity upon us all; it has swallowed the land; nothing is sacred; everything is a joke.
we joke about marriage, about man and woman, about children, about church, about worship; we laugh at morality and then wonder why wickedness reigns; we make memes about Scripture and wonder why it has no power and no weight; we joke about things heinously unnatural; we joke about God and about Christ, about our heritage; and we wonder why we are being dispossessed by sodomites and lesbians and pagans and Jews and the haters of our heritage.
it seems impossible at times to have a rational, serious discussion without artificially imposing humor upon it; we are afraid of being serious; we have been catechized by The Office-type humor: everything is reducible to some humorous reference.
this is not godliness; this is ungodliness; it is an evidence of our minds being overtaken with hopelessness and despair; we are weak-willed and meager in our virtue; this is why we do this, at least in part.
in part, this is also foisted upon us as propaganda: we see it all the time in media, TV, movies, and shows; it is there that the church, pumping sewage straight into its own mouth, is being trained to be weightless, worthless, and weak—as light as a dry leaf in the fall, blown around and dead.
we lack understanding of how to subordinate nature to grace; in fact, we have been taught, by way of emphasis and propaganda, that grace subverts nature, not that grace restores and duly orders nature
thus we attack natural goods with pleas to piety; we attack basic physical fitness, we attack the family, we attack so-called “traditional values” or the trad life; we attack these things as if they are idolatry.
There is an underlying attitude that we have adopted, where we must cancerously criticize good, wholesome, natural things, using appeals to piety as deflective bases for doing so.
in other words, in many ways, we express ourselves religiously by neutering, negating, or attacking nature; we see this even in our dress. There is no difference between the beach and the sanctuary, between our couch clothes and our church clothes.
we even lack basic manners and decency; things which our fathers, like Henry Bullinger, comprehended under the natural piety that parents are to teach and instill in their children.
we deride excellence and greatness; indeed, we forbid excellence and greatness, because we are committed to egalitarianism, because, if someone is great, it means I am not, or it calls me to more; we use the fact that there is such a thing as an average person as an excuse to remain average.
we are cultureless, rootless, and virtueless; and we associate this with true piety (this earth is not my home); and if anyone attempts to tie culture, roots, heritage, nature, or ordered virtues to the Christian Faith, they are immediately suspected of idolatry, or of pride, or of some other such sin.
all of this is supremely suggestive of this idea: that we are under God’s judgment; we have no positive conception of ourselves as Christians in the world; we are as so many members of the body cut off one from another, and to dare suggest we ought to unite in organic unity and dynamic life all ordered to God’s glory, is seen as an assault against God himself.
even our idea of suffering or contending for the Faith is reduced to one expression: the apostle Paul in a jail cell or on the run for proclaiming the gospel; but suffering has many other expressions: such as suffering in pushing against ugliness and upholding beauty for the LORD, in establishing high aesthetic standards against the conceits of modernity, in being disciplined in all you do rather than negligent and lazy, in seeking to gain greater power and influence to wield it for righteous and good purposes rather than resign yourself to irrelevance, in waiting with patience and enduring much affliction in order to ascend to power (like David and Joseph) in order to manifest righteousness; and many other like things
the chief ambition of much of the church seems to be to have no ambition at all, but rather to roll over and die, or to carry on without due care for how things are, indifferently managing our decline.
we basically say, “Yes I’m a Christian, in my heart and for an hour on Sundays, but I don’t want to be one meaningfully or embodiedly at any point in what I do, in what I think, in how I orient myself in the world, in my attitude and commitments, and least of all in public and during the other 6 days of the week. And I certainly am not arrogant enough to think I alone have the truth, or that my God is the one true God, or that there are standards of truth, of morality, and of beauty.”