“Cotton Candy” Religion

By Norman H. Wells

Religion has gotten popular! It’s sweeping the country!! Juke boxes grind out the latest popular hymns! Movie magazines carry news of religious activities of the movie stars! More money is coming into religious treasures than ever before. Great new church buildings are being built. A greater percentage of folks belong to churches than ever before in history! Tremendous evangelistic campaigns are regularly held and thousands are in attendance and great numbers of decisions are recorded.

Quite regularly the current bestseller is a book on religion. The newspapers and magazines carry regular columns by religious writers. The radio and television carry religious programs! Religious Universities, Colleges, High Schools and Elementary Schools are growing by leaps and bounds!

Religion is booming! The cry of “Revival” is heard over and over!! Religion is back by popular demand! The tragedy is that it has been diluted, streamlined, whopped up, condensed, smoothed out, made palatable enough to meet what the public demands in a religion. Instead of meeting the demands of God, religion has been changed to meet the demands of the public!!

In the haste to get everybody aboard the “bandwagon”, a “carnival” spirit has developed. The bands are playing, the flags are flying and everyone is invited to a hayride of happiness—a religious romp! Popcorn, peanuts and paper hats! It reminds me of the first time I took my youngest boy, David, to the Cincinnati Zoo. He was about four years old at the time. It was on this trip that he got his first glimpse of “cotton candy”. We stopped and he watched with great delight as the man behind the counter very skillfully spun the large, beautifully colored sticks full of this wonderful stuff. After watching with envy the others who were receiving this delicious looking delight, he turned, pleading eyes to me, and the purchase was made. I never will forget the look of delight that came on his face as he held the huge, colored concoction and took his first bite. As the cotton candy dissolved into nothing in his mouth, a look of amazement and disappointment took the place of delight.

Appearances had been deceiving. Thus it is with our modern “cotton candy” boom in religion! It’s big and beautiful unto you really try to get your teeth into it, and it dissolves into nothing.

It could also be compared to “bubble gum”—it makes a fine showing unto it breaks and leaves behind a sticky mess!!

The popularity that religion enjoys has been purchased at a terrific price. The desire to please man has supplanted the desire to please God. Today’s religion is designed to satisfy the carnal appetites of carnal Christians and the unregenerate. “What do I get out of it” is the approach made to this religion. When the services are entertaining and make the participants “feel good”, they are stamped as successful. The world’s methods and manners are as in the business world. Finances and figures have been made the test. A lot of people and a lot of money are interpreted as the sure blessing of God. It is considered sacrilege to question the doctrine or the ethics of anyone who has been successful in gathering a large crowd and abundant cash!

In view of the seeming boom in religion, it would be well to consider what has happened to the gospel!! What little gospel is preached is of such a shallow, frothy nature that it would bring a snort of disgust from such an one as the Apostle Paul. The strong message of the gospel has been so diluted as hardly to be recognizable. Sickeningly cheap, sentimental appeals are made for sickeningly cheap, sentimental decisions! What has happened to the sledge hammer messages concerning the hideous corruption of sin?

Has the day of identifying the sinner past? Today it is advertised so that no one will be offended at the preaching of the gospel!! What a change! What a come down!! The gospel has always offended! It offends Satan! It offends the guilty sinner and either brings him to repentance or hardens his heart! It offends the carnal Christian!! It offends the false teachers and their followers! It offends the promoters of sin and sinful pleasure! In today’s gospel, the question of sin is dealt with in such generalities that it is almost impossible to determine who is guilty!

Repentance has become a forgotten doctrine confined to the yellowing pages of neglected articles of faith. What used to mean “Godly Sorrow”, doesn’t even involve mild embarrassment today! The crowds have never responded very well to true repentance, so modern religion by popular demand has discarded it. Faith has been reduced to a mere head consent, a hand shake, and a card signed.

Today’s gospel has been watered down so thin it has lost the miracle working power of regeneration and is producing a shallow, casual, unregenerate religion.

Contrary to the popular idea that we are in the midst of revival, stand some undeniable facts that show we are in the midst of a time of apostasy!!! There is a great “falling away”!

First of all, consider the moral condition of our country. The figures have been published so many times they do not need to be reprinted here. Crime is at an all-time high!! Juvenile delinquency increases every year!! Divorce rates climb every year. Jail houses, penitentiaries and detention homes are packed to overflowing!!

Drunkenness and dope addicts mount with each passing day! Illegitimate births and abortions increase every year. Murder, rape, suicide, robbery, scream the headlines of our papers!! Sex-mad and whiskey-soaked, the nation reels down the path of the pursuit of Pleasure!! Check the material in the popular books, songs, radio and television shows, movies, etc. and get a glimpse of what appeals to America. True revival will check the flood tides of sin!! This has not happened in today’s so-called revival!!

It is not producing hatred for sin and love of righteousness! It does not demand that Christians live a separate dedicated life to God.

Second, consider the rapid rise and growth of a multitude of cults and false religions. This is not revival!!

Real revival brings men and women a love for the truth. The entire revealed truth of God is not declared in the Gospel of today, so the “converts” wander off after whatever religion suits their particular fancy. The keynote today is compromise. Everybody is to forget their “petty doctrinal differences” and join hands in a “great compromise”. In the midst of this kind of atmosphere, false cults and religions are booming! Modernism marches on!!!

Third, consider the shallow carnal Christian today’s so called “revival” produces, indeed, if it produces any Christians. May God help us to return to a gospel that glorifies God, antagonizes Satan, squelches sin, convicts sinners, produces repentance, routs false teachers, abolishes false religions, promotes sound doctrine, and brings about the miracle of regeneration that makes a hell bound sinner into a new creature in Christ Jesus.

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Resolving Conflict

“Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother, But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church: but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” Matthew 18:15-17

It is not an easy thing when someone has, or is, offending you. The innocent party, who has been wronged, naturally feels like it is the offender’s duty to do whatever is necessary in apologizing, etc., to make things right. But guess what…that is not the way it works in most cases.

We must consider what it took for us, the offender, the transgressor, the sinner, the guilty party, to become reconciled with God. If it had been left up to us, it never would have happened. We would have just continued on as a sinner, offending God. It took God, whom we have all offended by our sin, to send His righteous, only begotten Son to suffer and die for our sins, so as to make possible our reconciliation with Him.

Thus when it comes to those who have offended us, God calls upon us, the innocent party, to take the steps necessary to resolve the matter with the guilty party: “…if thy brother shall trespass against thee, (you) go and tell him his fault…”

Yes, the offense is the offender’s guilt and fault, but just fixing the guilt doesn’t and won’t resolve the problem, anymore than the proof that we are sinners before God will result in reconciliation with God.

If we expect to get out from under the stress that the offense against us has caused, we must necessarily follow the Lord’s example as well as obey His commandment to go to the offender ourselves, following the course that Christ said to follow in Matthew 18:15-17.

Christ did not say to just wait for the other person to quit offending, or move away; or just wait for it all to go away; or wait for the church, or someone else to solve this problem for you. He said you go and undertake to solve the problem according to God’s Word, doing so by faith in God’s will and way. Should we not obey Christ, we have no one to blame but ourselves for the problem not being solved. FAITH IS THE VICTORY!

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Out With The Old, In With The New

“…forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before.” Philippians 3:13

The symbol for a new year is a new baby, not a refurbished old person. Time and circumstance wear on us for the worse, as well as other things. A new born enters life fresh, without the baggage of past prejudice, completely free to advance into the present.

To say that Christians are not affected in some negative way by passing circumstances, is to ignore the reality of human imperfection altogether. Denying that we pick up any baggage along life’s road is neither the right answer nor the correct solution. To deny the presence of our imperfection is like saying, “we have no sin”. Just as we must confess our sins to God to be forgiven and cleansed, we must also identify and cast off the baggage that we have accumulated along the way due to our imperfection.

We need to enter the new year as a “new baby”, not as an old person carrying the ill effects of the past.

To not seek deliverance and freedom from the imperfect feelings, opinions, prejudices, etc., of the past, will just require that we become more deceitful and pretentious in presenting ourselves as being well, when deep down the malignancy of imperfection continues to fester and grow into more serious stages.

May our prayer for the new year be for sufficient self-denial and submission unto the Lord, for:
“Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10
“Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and he shall lift you up.” James 4:10
“But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.” Jude 20-21

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Our Life’s Recipe

I recently read an article entitled, “Rescuing The Church From The Snare of Good Performance.” It was dealing with the subject along the lines of: “The church at Ephesus had good performance, but left their first love (Revelation 2:1-7). Good performance is no replacement for love for Christ and others.”

How true this is in light of 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, which points out that regardless of our talents, our abilities, our knowledge, and, yes, our performance, without charity we are nothing. A love for God and others, the two great commandments on which hang all the law and prophets, is the true spirit of Christianity.

This leads us to the reality that our lives as Christians are a mixture of both the flesh and the Spirit, which are contrary the one to the other – Galatians 5:17. We are not only what we learn in church, but we also have the influences of our culture upon us. What we know to be true, and what we do, may not always be the same. It may be the Spirit of God moving us, or it might be our fleshly passions driving us. Indeed, we are a mixture of sorts!

The Bible teaches us, not to just be content with whatever our personal mixture may be, but rather we are to seek out the formula of God’s will and way for the make-up of our person and our way of life. This involves repentance and faith unto self-denial and the taking up of our cross to follow Christ.

Just as Christ emptied Himself of all His rights and privileges, to take upon Himself the form of a servant, and humbled Himself to die on the cross for our sins, it is our reasonable service to present our body a living sacrifice unto Him, to prove what is that good, acceptable and perfect will of God – Romans 12:1-2.

Sometimes, we need to be rescued from the arrangement of our lives, because the arrangement we have that pleases us, may very well not be pleasing to God, but rather falling short of having eternity’s values in view.

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The Mystery Of Iniquity Doth Work

The Pilgrims and colonists, who came to this country, were fleeing religious oppression. They came, as the Mayflower Compact said, “for the Glory of God and the establishment of the Christian faith.” The New England Confederation said, “Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to insure the liberties of the Gospel, in purities with peace.”

Our founding fathers all declared, as well as wrote in their memorials, that this was a Christian nation.

In 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court said: “Our law and our institutions must be necessarily based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of Mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise, and in this sense and that our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian…this is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…we find everywhere a clear recognition of the same truth…THIS IS A CHRISTIAN NATION.”

But now, there have arisen “principalities and powers” that are at war with everything that lends itself to Christianity in our nation. We saw it with the removal of God, the Bible and prayer, from our public schools. There are many social organizations with tremendous financial backing, which gives them great political clout, along with liberal judges, etc., who use the powers of their office to wage war against Christianity.

Some examples: In North Carolina, the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United For Separation of Church and State, obtained a U.S. Circuit Court decision that states even “a solitary reference to Jesus Christ” in invocations before the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners’ meetings could do “violence to the pluralistic and inclusive values…of American public life.” In Texas, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs continues to censor citizens. At the Houston National Cemetery, the word “God” is banned at funerals for veterans. Families are required to submit prayers or religious messages for government approval. The Bible and cross, once placed in the cemetery chapel, are hidden. Funerals are monitored by government officials…AND THE BEAT GOES ON!

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