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Christianity Needs Salvation—Urgently!
Mere numbers of adherents never make right.
But numbers tell much about what common sense, science, and civilization demand.
Consider these, from the highly respected, non-partisan, non-profit, PEW RESEARCH CENTER:
In just seven years—2007 to 2014—Americans:
- Claiming some religion have declined eight percent (-8%).
- Atheist gained ninety-four percent (94%).
- Agnostics gained sixty-seven percent (67%).
- Those claiming “nothing” gained thirty-one percent (31%).
- Altogether, those in 2014 claiming “no religion” have gained 42%.
THE URGENCY? CHRISTIANITY’S NEAR FUTURE IS MELTING AWAY!
In just three years the number of those born after 1980 claiming to believe in all four Christian claims made in the Holy Bible, has declined by 25 percent! Even belief in the virgin birth of Mary has dropped 18%.
Those changes happened in just three years. What has happened in Europe since way back in 2010?
The reasons for these dramatic declines are what matter. Surely they include:
- The understanding that nature does not lie. Its ways, once discovered, stand as the way things are unless refuted by better and tested evidence. Science’s governing principle is that effects always have causes—so find them! That is the way we all lead our lives.
- They know the church fought it all the way when science revealed the sun does not revolve around the earth; the earth is not flat and does spin; lightning rods were not an interference in God’s plan; and many other truths which would simply not yield to the priests.
- The evidence for evolution—fought for years by the church—has piled so high that Pope John Paul was forced in 1996 to say: “Today…some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory…has had progressively greater influence…following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies—which was neither planned nor sought—constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory.”
- Even Hell is too widely seen as a barbaric carryover from the cave. Again, it was the sainted Pope John Paul who, on July 28, 1999, upended centuries of Church terror-teaching by saying: “The images of hell that Sacred Scripture presents to us must be correctly interpreted. Rather than a place, hell indicates the state of those who freely and definitively separate themselves from God, the source of all life and joy.”
- AND, MOST RADICAL EVER! THE REIGNING POPE, FRANCIS II, SENT THE VATICAN REELING INTO SPIN-MODE WHEN HE DECLARED IN MAY, 2013: “THE LORD HAS REDEEMED ALL OF US—NOT JUST CATHOLICS. EVERYONE!” ADDING, IN CASE THERE WAS ANY CONFUSION: “EVEN THE ATHEISTS. EVERYONE!”
Don’t you suppose Francis said what he intended to say; and surely what he wished? He is the supreme Pontiff. He knows his words are weighed carefully. Has any Pope, since the Papacy began, ever said anything remotely close to this? Francis, in his humaneness, sees the danger in the Church’s Doctrine of Damnation Forever and seems to be doing his best to kill it. It is no wonder people flock to him —he seems to want to live The Sermon on the Mount!
The popes can try to water-down the promise of Jesus to send the “many” to a lake of fire to suffer forever, but they cannot escape the dogma that the Virgin Mary “having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory”. This doctrine was dogmatically defined by Pope Pius XII on 1 November 1950, exercising papal infallibility and they are stuck with it.
This is surely a bridge too far for the youth of today. They know there is no “up” in the universe; they would want to know, as any child would: where was she going? is she in orbit now? what happened to her body and her clothes? could we have filmed her rising? If it sounds silly, consider the claim.
If the young don’t even believe she was a virgin how can they accept this absolute demand from their Church that they put aside their doubts and believe it anyway? Even more than that, the impossible demand to truly believe it?
No doubt there are many other reasons for the broad movement away from blind belief—which they call “faith”—making a virtue of believing what there is insufficient evidence to believe!
It is all so sad and so unnecessary —
A TRULY GREAT BELIEVER IN JESUS OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT, TRIED TO SAVE CHRISTIANITY FROM ITS EVIL DOCTRINES:
Hosea Ballou (1771-1852) the “father of American Universalism,” divested Universalism of every trace of Calvinism and opposed legalism and Trinitarian views.
Had his words been heeded, it may have been the SALVATION OF CHRISTIANITY, or at least, extended its life for many generations:
“It is well known, and will be acknowledged by every candid person, that the human heart is capable of becoming soft, or hard; kind, or unkind; merciful or unmerciful, by education and habit.
On this principle we contend, that the infernal torments, which false religion has placed in the future world, and which ministers have, with an overflowing zeal, so constantly held up to the people, and urged with all their learning and eloquence, have tended so to harden the hearts of the professors of this religion, that they have exercised, toward their fellow creatures, a spirit of enmity, which but too well corresponds with the relentless cruelty of their doctrine, and the wrath which they have imagined to exist in our heavenly Father.
By having such an example constantly before their eyes, they have become so transformed into its image, that, whenever they have had the power, they have actually executed a vengeance on men and women, which evinced…
THE CRUELTY OF THEIR DOCTRINE
HAD OVERCOME THE NATIVE KINDNESS AND COMPASSION
OF THE HUMAN HEART.