I have been accused of using this editorial page to “preach” to the readers of The Christian Index. As Adrian Rogers used to say, “If that offends you, then you can come and apologize and I will forgive you.” There are some things I am very passionate about and like Jeremiah I can say, “But his word was in mine heart as a burning fire, shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay” (Jer. 20:9b).

I long to see a genuine, heaven-sent, Holy Ghost, devil-defying, soul-stirring, Christ-honoring, Bible-believing, rafter-rattling revival in my lifetime. In fact, nothing else will rescue us from the accelerating moral and spiritual decline that characterizes our land today.

Don Eberly, in his book Restoring the Good Society, writes, “During early America, Protestantism’s power in shaping public life was strong. No institution played a more dominant role in shaping the culture than the church. Christianity had little difficulty shaping politics in Colonial America because it exercised power at the fundamental level of culture: the realm of ideas.”

Pilgrims, who were seeking freedom from religious persecution, and Puritans, who were seeking a place where they could practice their faith, settled this nation. For decades this land was marked by piety and religious fervor, but by the beginning of the 18th Century the moral and spiritual decline in the nation was apparent to the most casual observer.

There was a decline in piety among the second generation of Puritans. This moral laxity and spiritual erosion stemmed from a season of economic instability, political uncertainty, and the first signs of rationalism in colonial America.

Jonathan Edwards, one of the greatest and most profound theologians and revivalists in the 18th Century, believed that the land was ripe for revival. He stated, “Time after time, when religion seemed to be almost gone, and it was come to the last extremity, then God granted a revival, and sent some angel or prophet, or raised up some eminent person, to be an instrument of their reformation.”

It just so happened that Edwards was to be the instrument of that reformation in the 1730s and 1740s. George Whitefield was another one of God’s chosen vessels to bring about revival in the 18th century.

In referring to the 18th century revival in Colonial America, Eberly reports, “When America’s spiritual vision had lost much of its distinctly and Biblical content and was increasingly being fused with other, more secular visions the first great awakening occurred and brought us back to our spiritual moorings.”

The same thing began to happen in the 19th century. Once again America began to drift morally and spiritually and God blessed America with the Second Great Awakening (1800-1830), which brought us back to the spiritual vision of our founding fathers.

At a time when America was languishing spiritually Charles G. Finney, one of the primary catalysts of the 19th century revival, was calling people to repentance and faith in Christ. The Second Great Awakening rescued the nation from spiritual apathy and inspired a wave of social activism, which brought about reforms in temperance, women’s rights, and abolitionism.

But in the spring of 1888 a German by the name of Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a book entitled The Will to Power, in which he described what he believed would be the history of Western Civilization. In the book he sketched the advent of “nihilism,” which suggests that life is pointless and articulates the belief that there is no objective basis for truth. In essence he saw the advent of an unavoidable catastrophe of disorder in society resulting from what he called “the death of God.”

At about the same time Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was beginning to get some traction in Eastern Europe. Marx believed that capitalism would be replaced by socialism, which would in turn bring about atheistic communism.

Subsequent to Marx voicing his ideology, John Dewey began to shape 20th century thought with his humanism, naturalism, empiricism, contextualism, and process philosophy.

Concurrent to Dewey foisting his ideology upon society along came the neo-orthodox theologians of the early 20th century – Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, Bornkamm, Tillich, and the Niebuhr brothers – with their demythologizing of the scriptures and their existentialism.

What is the result of all this philosophical and theological twaddle? The result is liberalism, secularism, relativism, pragmatism (whatever works), cultural diversity, and religious pluralism.

In the 1940s evolution was initially taught in the public schools. In the ‘60s prayer was taken out of the schools. In the ‘70s we saw the legalization of abortion. In the ‘80s crèches were removed from the public square. In the ‘90s prayer was banned from high school football games and graduation exercises. In the first decade of the 21st century we have removed the Ten Commandments from public buildings and, if the homosexual community has its way, the U. S. Senate will follow the lead of the U. S. House of Representatives and pass a Hate Crimes Bill in September.

D. James Kennedy has warned that expanded hate crimes laws have the potential to “shut down churches and send pastors to prison for simply reading a part of the Bible.”

Thankfully, the president has promised to veto such a bill should it be passed, but what will happen if the next president does not have the same convictions?

It is not difficult to see what is happening in America. We now tolerate killing our unborn babies and call it “freedom of choice.”

We tolerate homosexuality and call it “diversity.”

We tolerate paganism and call it “multiculturalism” or “religious pluralism.”

We tolerate killing of the sick or elderly and call it “compassion.”

We tolerate legalized gambling and call it a “source of revenue for education.”

We tolerate profanity and blasphemy on the airwaves and call it “free speech.”

How can we extricate ourselves from this toboggan sled that is gaining speed and destined for moral and spiritual calamity? Our only hope is through a revival of Christianity – a Third Great Awakening – in America. We must pray as never before and renew our commitment to the God of regeneration, revival, and resurrections.