Press release from Zondervan – Zondervan, a world leader in Christian communications, has signed an agreement with attorney Craig Parshall and Tim LaHaye, creator and co-author of the world renowned Left Behind series. Three years after the success of the Left Behind final installment, LaHaye returns to publish Edge of Apocalypse, an apocalyptic epic infused with political intrigue ripped from today’s headlines, the first book in a new series called The End. “I’m thrilled to partner with Zondervan to produce a series hopefully even more innovative than Left Behind,” said LaHaye. “While my past works have piqued interest in biblical prophecy on a global level, The End series includes many prophecies that were not covered in Left Behind.”

This is the very embarrassing part of evangelicalism that we cannot seem to shake off. I just can’t get my head around how otherwise reasonable and sincere Christians can be fascinated by these end-time speculative fantasies. And unfortunately such books fit in with the rise of jihadism and calls for Armageddon-like face-offs with evil.

Zondervan will gain a windfall of profits on this one. But I wonder how they justify to themselves publishing this shameful pulp fiction posing as real interpretation of biblical prophecies. The people at Zondervan surely know the damage being done and the black eye this will give the church.

Below is an article that explains a lot about the pain of Christians who grow discouraged enough to quit.

Generation to Generation
by Rod Rosenbladt

In this article I want to address a particular problem: What we might do as Christians with those who see themselves as “alumni” of the Christian faith. By that I mean those who once professed that Christ shed His blood, freely justified them before God, forgave their sin, gave them eternal life — but now they don’t believe it.

Given my limited space, I can only deal with today’s “sad ones,” the “having-given-up-on-it-all” ones. (In the full address of which this article is a condensed version, I also talk a little about the gospel of Christ for today’s “mad ones,” the angry ones.)

For some reasons that I think are fairly specifiable, more people than we would like to think leave “Bible-believing” Christianity. Some are sad about it. Some are mad about it. In our day, there are so many of these people that it is hard not to come into contact with them. Many of these people were broken by the church. I know that sounds harsh. As Christians, it’s upsetting to hear words like that. But for many people, this is how they really see what has taken place in their lives.

By the “sad alumni” of the Christian faith, I mean the hundreds whose acquaintance with the Christian church was often one in which they were helped to move from unbelief (or from rank moralism) into professing faith in Jesus Christ. They heard the preaching of God’s law and then heard the announcement of Christ’s work on their behalf on the cross — Jesus as the God-man who met the Law’s demands for them and died for their sin, died to save them, died to give them eternal life. And they came to believe that the cross of Christ was their salvation.

But something happened after that, something that broke them. And, in many cases, I think what happened is nameable. It has to do with what our first president at Christ College Irvine called “law-gospel-law.” It’s that third point that, if executed badly, results in a lot of the “sad alumni” of Christianity. If Reformation folk execute this badly, the sensitive Christian believer can be driven to a slavery as bad as any slavery done by any totalitarian dictator. If the Ten Commandments were not impossible enough, the preaching of Christian behavior, of Christian ethics, of Christian living, can drive a professing Christian into despairing unbelief. Not happy unbelief — tragic, despairing, sad unbelief.

In the beginning, it seemed that now that we had been justified by the death of Christ, we were equipped to obey verses like “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Or in 1 John 3:9: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” Or Paul in Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.” And then, the unexpected. Sin continued to be a part of our lives; it stubbornly would not allow us to eliminate it the way we expected. Continuing sin on our part seems to be evidence that we aren’t really believers at all. We start to imagine that we need to be “born again again.”

When the major stress in pulpit and curriculum shifts from “Christ outside of me, dying for me” to “Christ inside of me, improving me,” the upshot is always the same: many broken, sad ex-Christians who despair of being able to live the Christian life as the Bible describes it. So they do what is really a sane thing to do — they leave. The way it looks to them is that “the message of Christianity has broken them on the rack.” To put it bluntly, it feels better to have some earthly happiness as a pagan and then be damned than it feels to be trying every day as a Christian to do something that is one continuous failure — and then be damned anyway.

The key question here is a very basic one: Can the cross and blood of Christ save a Christian (failing as he is in living the Christian life) or not? Most of us would say, I hope, that the shed blood of Christ is sufficient to save a sinner all by itself. So far, so good.

But is the blood of Christ enough — all by itself — to save a still-sinful-Christian? Or isn’t it? Is what Luther said about the Christian being simul justus et peccator biblical or not? Can Christ’s righteousness imputed save a still-sinful Christian? And can it save him all by itself? Or not? I think the way we answer this question determines whether we have anything at all to say to the “sad alumni” of Christianity.

Has the Law done its killing work on these “sad ones?” Boy, has it ever. They need more of the Law like they need a hole in the head. For them, the gospel often got lost in a whole bunch of “Christian-life preaching.” And it “did them in.” So they left. And down deep there is a sadness in such people that defies description.

C.F.W. Walther said that as soon as the Law has done its crushing work, the gospel is to be instantly preached or said to such a man or woman. What the “sad alumni” need to hear (perhaps for the first time) is that Christian failures are going to walk into heaven, be welcomed into heaven, leap into heaven like a calf leaping out of its stall, laughing and laughing as if it’s all too good to be true. It isn’t just that we failures will get in. It’s that we will get in like that. “You mean it was just Jesus’ death for me, that’s why I’m here?” But, of course. That’s the point isn’t it? As a believer in Jesus you won’t be condemned! No believer in Jesus will be. Not a single one!

*****

Dr. Rod Rosenbladt is a professor of theology at Concordia University at Irvine and is also co-host of The White Horse Inn and author of Christ Alone.

“People are always complaining that the modern novelist has no hope and that the picture he paints of the world is unbearable. The only answer to this is that people without hope do not write novels. Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system. If the novelist is not sustained by a hope of money, then he must be sustained by a hope of salvation, or he simply won’t survive the ordeal.”

—Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

“Except a duck in pattens, no creature looks more stupid than a Dissenting preacher in a gown which is of no manner of use to him. I could laugh till I held my sides when I see our doctors in gowns and bands, puffed out with their silks, and touched up with their little bibs, for they put me so much in mind of our old turkey-cock when his temper is up, and he swells to his biggest. They must be weak folks indeed who want a man to dress like a woman before they can enjoy his sermon, and he who cannot preach without such milliner’s trumpery may be a man among geese, but he is a goose among men.”

—C.H. Spurgeon

Introverts in the Church KBRT will be re-airing an interview Adam McHugh did with them at 7AM (Pacific) on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend. It was with Rich Buhler, host of Talk from the Heart. Listen online. http://www.kbrt740.com/

I love Grove’s music. Click here for the CT piece

“God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world.”

Martin Luther, Letter to Melanchthon, 1521

A fascinating excerpt from Agassi’s new book, “Open.” A lot of stuff is going on behind the doors of those who “have it all.” It’s a reminder that all have need of inner healing and fullness.