We do need to understand that when we gather in the body in Christ, this is the Lord’s opportunity to do spiritual business with his people. This, the church, should be a scary yet amazingly exciting place to be. We need to discover perhaps a much higher faith-filled expectation for the gathered body of Christ than perhaps we have at present.

The cultists, including the Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others, go out and are incredibly bold while deceiving and being deceived into the lies that will ultimately lead people to an eternity in hell. We have the truth, and that should give us a biblical sense of urgency to reach out to people that Jesus loves.

People leave, encouraged, entertained, unchanged, and unwarned about hell and eternity. We send attendees out to spread the good news about our church, not Jesus. This is happening in tens of thousands of churches across America, and collectively, we call it success.

The reality is that suicide, depression, and mental illness are subjects the church should address. If we truly have a heart for the least of these, then we must be sensitive to every opportunity around us to share the hope and peace that can be found in Jesus.

This writer believes there is a direct correlation between the diminishing popularity of the repentance message today and the ultimate widespread rejection of repentance by most during the Great Tribulation.

This is not the time to sit back and relax or be an apathetic Christian. So the encouragement I want to give you is to understand the time we live in and to persevere under God’s providential hand in our time, even in these times of trouble.