Five, four, three, two, one … HAPPY NEW YEAR, NEW CENTURY, AND NEW MILLENIUM! This was the chorus heard round the world a few months ago as we entered the 21^st century (although I’m told that 2001 is actually the beginning of the new millennium). It was a time of tremendous excitement for the world, and a time of tremendous foreboding and stress for many Christians. Much of the stress was created by all the talk of the dreaded Y2K computer bug that would bring civilization to its end. Many well meaning Christians had gathered up their belongings, bought provisions, and moved to the mountains - literally! In fact, a couple in my congregation recently shared a story with me about just such a situation (involving people they personally knew). Other Christians had gathered in Jerusalem to await what they believed would be the Lord’s return to the Mount of Olives to begin His Millennial reign! I can only imagine how disappointed and disillusioned many of these Christians were when things didn’t transpire as they had been told. Surely it was a shock to many to find that the world continued on as it had been before the stroke of midnight. And there are now many additional Christians and non-Christians who have become more cynical than ever about anything and everything concerning the last days and the return of Christ. Certainly now, more so than ever before, the words of the Apostle Peter ring true: 2 Peter 3:3-5 - Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, "Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation." (NAS)

So, with this in mind, it appears that the new millennium has indeed brought many serious problems with it. No, the computers did not crash, but I fear many people’s faith has – and that is an exceedingly greater disaster, and a more dangerous madness, than one could imagine!

Are there dangers that the 21^st century poses to Christians? Absolutely! Jesus outlined the conditions of the last days for us in Matthew 24 with tremendous accuracy. It is there that He has told us of false Christs, false prophets, false signs and wonders, incredible natural disasters, wars, and the like. But I believe the greatest of all dangers, especially as it concerns Christians, is outlined in Matthew 24:12. It says that, "the love of many will grow cold." What love is it that Jesus refers to here? Certainly the "brotherly" love of humanity one for another could be in view here. Paul tells us in II Timothy 3 that the last days will be characterized by this lack of love for others, and in place of it will be an increasing love focused on self. But the meaning of Jesus’ words here in Matthew 24:12 goes deeper than that. The Greek word translated love is not philanthropia, which is defined as a "love of man" or "love towards fellow man." The word in this passage is agape, which is translated as God’s perfect love! Armed with this information, Adam Clarke states the following about Jesus’ declaration to His disciples:

This statement is tragically accurate! I have personally seen more individuals fall away from the Lord over the last couple of years than ever before. It is if as though the words of Jesus in His Olivet Discourse are literally coming to life before my very eyes. We have seen the rise of false prophets and false doctrines on the increase as never before. We are seeing an emphasis on "signs & wonders" like never before. We are certainly seeing both natural and human disasters as never before. We are witnessing all the beginnings of "birth pangs" that Christ said we would just before He came back. But beyond these things I also see a loss of love happening amongst God’s people as never before! And it is this problem that I would like to call your attention to.

In Revelation chapter two we see another reference to the loss of love for Jesus, as Christ speaks to the Church at Ephesus. He says, "But I have this against you, that you have left your first love." (NAS) Concerning this verse commentator Albert Barnes states the following:

I think it is important to note that although the church at Ephesus was doctrinally sound, Jesus still rebuked them. It is obvious that sound doctrine is not enough to make a Christian strong, not even if it is accompanied by hard work. Nor does a glorious past guarantee a bright future. Please understand this! A Christian’s usefulness to God springs from his or hers PASSION for Christ! If we lose this, we ultimately lose Him! And that is the issue. It is plain to see that the Bible does indeed speak about the reality of people falling OUT of love with Jesus! And as the new millennium rolls on, I have no doubts that we are going to see more and more of these desertions!

Unfortunately, there are many in the Christian world who maintain that an individual cannot lose their salvation. I dealt with this diabolical doctrine in the last issue of the Sentinel and will not repeat all I said. However, I think it is vital to us as Christians to explore this issue of maintaining our first love, lest we too fall away. And the best way to find the answers to any questions we have is to look to God’s Word.

In speaking of maintaining, or regaining, our first love we could certainly explore the basics. Personal prayer, Bible study, and being involved in a local church are all essentials! There are a number of books on prayer that have blessed me over the years. "The Kneeling Christian" written by an unknown Christian, "Answers to Prayer" by George Muller, and the series on prayer by E. M. Bounds are all very beneficial. I have found a good study Bible can help out tremendously, and I wholeheartedly recommend the "Full Life Study Bible." Certainly finding a good full gospel church is a must (though this is becoming an increasingly difficult task). But the central issue in maintaining both our love and usefulness for Christ can be summed up in one passage of scripture. John 15:1-5- "I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. "Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. "You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me. "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing. (NAS)

What an immense statement by Jesus to us! I think that most Christians do not realize the significance of this teaching by our Lord. This parable or allegory teaches us that Jesus is the "true vine" and those who have become his disciples are "the branches." He is telling us that we can only produce fruit by remaining attached to Him, because, and this is the important part, HE IS THE SOURCE OF LIFE! Contrary to popular theology, we do not possess eternal life in and of ourselves. It is not as simple as saying that when a person accepts Christ they immediately are imparted with eternal life that can never be lost! That is not what the Bible teaches.

John actually defines eternal life for us. In his first epistle he states that "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the Word of Life-- and the life was manifested, and we have seen and bear witness and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us." – I John 1:1,2 (NAS) The Living Bible does a good job of paraphrasing the second verse for us: "This one who is life from God has been shown to us, and we guarantee that we have seen him; I am speaking of Christ, who is eternal Life." This is important for us to understand. John the Apostle defines Eternal Life in terms of JESUS CHRIST HIMSELF. And this life can only be found and can only continue (in us) through faith in and CONTINUOUS fellowship with Jesus.

This same emphasis of continued abiding in Christ by faith is seen again in I John 2:24,25 – "See that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us-even eternal life." (NIV) Read carefully the following comments on this verse by Donald Stamps:

Unfortunately, just as Christ said, we are seeing unparalleled numbers of Christians leaving Jesus! Whether it be by deception, delusion, or simple disaffection, it is happening at an alarming rate! And when a person ceases to be in fellowship with the source of life, that person ceases to possess life! This is happening today so frequently that I cannot be silent any longer. I believe it is time for God’s ministers to sound a clarion call. The situation is grave, and although it is to be expected (due to it being prophesied), we must warn every believer that the peril is great, and the result is either eternal life or damnation! We must intercede for the souls of others, as well as our own souls, as never before!

The Apostle Paul illustrates this principle further in his 2^nd epistle to Timothy. He says that "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica." II Tim. 4:10 (RSV) It will not do to explain this ominous passage away by simply saying Demas was never a Christian. In both Colossians and Philemon Paul states that Demas was a fellow-laborer with him in the Kingdom of God. In fact, Demas has shared a prison cell with Paul in the past. But something has happened to him. And that something is happening to Christians at a horrifying pace today. What is that something? Simply stated, it is a believer’s love for Christ and the things of God being extinguished by a love of the world and all that it offers! Friends, that this is happening on such a wide scale breaks my heart. As I mentioned earlier, I have seen people fall out of love with Jesus and into love with the things of the world more over the last several years than in all my life combined up to that point. I have even seen ministers of the Gospel, called of God to proclaim the truth of Christ, leave the ministry, the church, and yes, God Himself! Truly, these are PERILOUS TIMES.

"But how can this happen to a child of God," someone might wonder? Well, it is very seldom an overnight occurrence. I have yet to find a person who woke up one day and just made a conscious decision to forsake Christ and His Church. The process is actually a very slow one. But it almost always begins by forsaking personal prayer and Bible study. In fact, over and over, I have found this to be the first thing that goes. The Word becomes stale and the heavens seem like brass. Then, over the course of time, these two essentials are neglected, and simultaneously the Christian finds more pleasure in the things this world has to offer. Let me illustrate this. One minister I talked to recently told me he had no time for prayer and Bible study, yet at the same time was devoting over 7 hours a week to watching "professional" wrestling! And despite my pointing this out to him, nothing changed. His love for Christ had diminished and been replaced by a "love" for the entertainment of this world. Yet, to ask him, all was fine between him and God. Now, before you are quick to judge this person, ask yourself how much time you spend in God’s Word versus watching that thing in the middle of your living room. I'm not advocating throwing out your TV set, but if you can't prioritize your life, perhaps… After all, honest self examination is the best defense against losing your love for Christ! II Cor 13:5-6 - Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you-unless, of course, you fail the test? (NIV) "No knowledge is as important to believers as the certainty that they have eternal life. All professing Christians should examine themselves to determine that their salvation is a present reality."⁴ Oh, that God’s people would perform this all important "check up" on themselves!

After the prayer and Bible study go out the proverbial window, the next logical thing to go is church attendance. I have seen the same scenario played out again and again. At first, someone just misses a service occasionally. And then, they begin to miss the Sunday Evening or Wednesday night service on a regular basis. They feel justified as long as they attend once a week. But before long, that too becomes a rarity. All of a sudden, the "sickness" that never keeps us from work on Monday consistently keeps us from church on Sunday. Please understand what I am saying. It isn’t usually that there is a conscious decision to begin forsaking the house of God, it’s just a slow process of having the flame and zeal of the love of Jesus put out. I have made this statement to my congregation on many occasions – "You cannot absent yourself from the church and NOT be adversely affected!" The church is God’s ordained means of the believer’s growth. The church is not man’s idea, but God’s sovereign plan for the edification of His body - us!

Missing church is nothing new. Even in the first century Christians attended "bedside assembly" rather than the local church. The author of Hebrews gives us the following exhortation: Heb 10:25 - Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another-and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (NIV) Donald Stamps again gives us good advice concerning this admonition:

And yet, even with this clear command in Scripture NOT to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, I see this "phenomena" of missing church becoming more and more common! I am frightened at the prospect of what the true church of Jesus Christ will look like if He should tarry much longer. With every day that passes I come to understand more clearly what Christ meant when He said, "when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith on the earth?" Br. Larry Thomas made the statement one time that the true church was getting smaller and smaller, and I have to agree. What a difficult time it is for the body of Christ.

All that I have mentioned so far – prayer, Bible reading, and church attendance – are only the symptoms of the one great problem we mentioned at the outset – the loss of love for Christ. The bottom line is that people are not bearing fruit because they have ceased abiding in Christ. Without His life, we are dead! He does not give us life through a one-time act of belief, and then withdraw from us. Listen again to the words of the Savior: John 4:14 - whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. (NAS) The important thing to realize here is that the word drink is written, in the Greek, in the present imperative. What this means is that this act of drinking of the water Christ gives is not a single act, but a continuous and progressive one. "Drinking the water of life requires regular communion with the source of the living water, Jesus Christ. No one can continue to drink the water of life if he or she becomes severed from its source. Such people will become, as Peter describes it, 'springs without water'"⁶.

Another example is found in John 5:24 - "Verily, verily, I say to you — He who is hearing my word, and is believing Him who sent me, hath life age-during…"(Young’s Literal Translation) Here again the emphasis is on a continuous action, not a one time act of faith. The concept of what "eternal life" means has been missed by much of the church world. Many have been taught that "eternal life" simply means that it is "everlasting" or "unending." They think that if a Christian possesses eternal life, he or she can never lose it, because of its duration (never ending). They completely miss the point.

We see then that our love for Christ, and consequently, our eternal destiny, does not rely merely on a momentary decision of faith made sometime in the past, but instead on a constant, present tense, living faith in Him right now! Yesterday’s faith is not enough. I must abide in the vine today. None of us can afford to allow anything to extinguish our love for Jesus or cut us off from Him!

Returning to Matthew 24:12, I would like to share one last quote that sums up what I am trying to communicate in this article:

Friends, I urge you to re-examine your life. Do you have a living relationship with Christ today? Are you in love with Him, or other things? If you say you are in love with Him, how does that love manifest itself in your daily life? Are you faithful in prayer, Bible study and church attendance? If you fail this test, even slightly, I urge you to fall on your knees today and, through confession and repentance, renew your first love! After all, the only thing that will see you and I through these perilous times in which we live is an all-consuming love for Jesus!

1 Adam Clarke's Commentary, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1996 by Biblesoft

2 Barnes' Notes, Electronic Database. Copyright (c) 1997 by Biblesoft

3 Full Life Study Bible, pg 1978.

4 Full Life Study Bible, pg 1802

6 Full Life Study Bible, pg 1591.

7 Full Life Bible Commentary to the New Testament, pg 1489.

8 Full Life Bible Commentary to the New Testament, pg 232