Letters to Laodicea: A Call to Repentance for Evangelical America

By John E. Hartman

Evangelical Christians have a long and influential history in the United States. In recent decades modern culture has penetrated the evangelical community causing it to stray far from its roots.

Letters to Laodicea: A Call to Repentance for Evangelical America grew out of an Internet dialogue between author John E. Hartman and his son concerning the deep decline in evangelical churches in America and the collapse of Western culture generally. Hartmans work opens the eyes of many who do not realize what is happening to the evangelical community. Learn some of the reasons we are losing our message and the spiritual vitality central to spiritual maturity. Discover how evangelicals are committing spiritual adultery in their deepening love affair with the world. Many have exchanged the gospel for therapy and a compromised message with little authority, life, and power.

However, there is a way out of the ongoing collapse in a lifestyle of repentance and a return to basic spiritual and life disciplines. The possibility of presenting the gospel witness to a culture dying from within and facing enormous problems it cannot resolve hangs in part on what happens to the American evangelical community. Letters to Laodicea: A Call to Repentance for Evangelical America opens the door to a new level of Christian spirituality and ministry opportunity for those willing to meet the challenge to look deeper and make radical spiritual change in a time of turmoil, mixed with the potential for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Feb 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781449710798

John E. Hartman

John E. Hartman earned a bachelor’s degree from George Washington University and a master’s in biblical studies from Capital Bible Seminary. After retiring from a career in government, he spent several years as a member of the Capital Bible Seminary staff. He has taught adult Bible classes for thirty-six years.

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Copyright © 2011, 2015 John Edward Hartman

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-1080-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-1081-1 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-1079-8 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010943039

WestBow Press rev. date: 3/16/2015

Contents

Preface

Introduction

Part I – The Challenge We Face

Chapter 1 Impact of the World on the Church

Chapter 2 The Influence of the World on the Way We Live

Chapter 3 The Centrality of Man and the Loss of God

Chapter 4 The Silencing of the Gospel

Part II – The Response to the Challenges

Chapter 5 The Restoration of Spirituality

Chapter 6 Restoring the Disciplines

Part III – The Big Picture

Chapter 7 Christ’s Perspective on His Church

Concluding Thoughts

Endnotes

Those I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Rev 3:19–20

Preface

B ooks sometimes come about in unusual ways. This one began as an email dialogue between my oldest son and me. As the dialogue expanded to other readers, we began to receive requests to document our thoughts more fully in a book. After some consideration, I accepted the challenge and began the work. My son is of a philosophical turn and I am a Bible teacher. I wrote this book, but I thank my son for his many fresh insights and perspectives and the encouragement to get on with the project.

My purpose is to join others in the task of opening the eyes of American evangelicals to the reality of their situation. The air is going out of the balloon in the evangelical community. That community is composed of those who claim allegiance to a high view of Scripture, as well as a commitment to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ to all people as the only way to eternal life. I add my voice in the work of warning my brothers and sisters with the hope that a non-technical presentation in essay format will communicate the message in a clear and understandable way. Evangelicals need to awaken to the reality that they are under the powerful influence of an aggressive and sophisticated secular culture, resulting in major losses in spiritual vitality and effectiveness on both an individual and corporate level. My hope is to encourage a spiritual and intellectual awakening in the evangelical community and a reformation in favor of biblical orthodoxy and practice. The objective is not to return to the past, but rather to press forward with renewed spiritual capacity and the desire to conform to Scripture in thought and practice—even if it requires setting aside the traditional ways of living and doing ministry that have become accepted norms.

I have no more desire to hurt my readers and community than a good doctor or surgeon wants to hurt his patients when he inserts a needle or applies a knife. Sometimes the sting is necessary as part of the healing process, but it is not the purpose of the healer to cause harm. I recognize that the Lord always uses defective people and ministries; no other variety is available in a fallen world. Churches can be wide of the mark and still be spiritually useful in some measure by the sovereign grace of God. It takes time to change old patterns, and a church or individual may not be able to see the need to change, even if the reality of it is right in front of them. It is part of our fallen condition to have blind spots and poor spiritual eyesight. We are called to maintain unity with our brothers and sisters in ministry, and to make gracious allowance for where they are in understanding (or misunderstanding) the issues presented in this book. I can and do co-labor with those who may not concur with where I am coming from. In that vein, my hope is that those who are resonant with the perspective of this book will not use it as a tool to attack those who differ from them. My purpose is to challenge, inform, and build up, not to cause or encourage division, though it is sometimes necessary in a fallen world. As a general rule, more is accomplished by patience over time than in attempting rapid change through conflict.

The assertions in the book concerning the American evangelical community are gathered from a combination of experience and observation, discussion with others, and reading in the form of books and articles. To document them all is beyond our scope and intent; others have done it well. The evangelical community is large in the United States. Clearly, our characterizations of it are subject to many individual exceptions and variations. Nevertheless, I view the perspective of the book on present conditions as generally reflective of the trends impacting the evangelical community, especially the part that lives in suburbia and finds its expression in the megachurch. I commend those faithful churches and leaders who have gone against the tide that has brought the spirit of the world into the church. I am encouraged to hear of those who are willing to lay aside human habits and traditions for a fresh encounter with the Scriptures in the area of church life, and who are creating communities of disciples rather than nominal adherents. The Lord will have His faithful ones no matter how compromised many may become.

Anything of value accomplished spiritually is done by the Lord, and nothing anyone puts on paper will have any salutary effect without His provision. The privilege of that provision is my desire. Otherwise my effort will be ineffective in exhorting the believing community toward repentance and renewal. May He be glorified in all things.

Introduction

C hrist’s last words to His people in the book of Revelation begin with seven letters to churches located in ancient Asia Minor, what is now modern Turkey. These letters are not easy reading. Only two churches escape the harsh indictment and impending judgment threatening the end of their existence. I have wondered for a good while what He would think of us in contemporary America, the last residence of Christianity in the increasingly post-Christian West. We have wandered far from our roots, especially in the last few decades. Rarely in history has cultural change come so fast and had such an enormous impact. Most evangelical Christians have been caught napping, unaware of the extent of change and the degree of accommodation the faithful have made to the modes of modernity and beyond.

This book is not an attempt at restoring the past. It is an effort to open the eyes of sleeping Christians to the reality that the secular mind has so thoroughly changed the way people view life that Christianity in its orthodox form is an oddity, an anachronism often incomprehensible to contemporary man. The narrative of the faith has become meaningless, like someone speaking in a foreign language without an interpreter or music in the ears of the deaf. The effort to present the gospel often fails because words like sin and sacrifice, guilt and judgment have no meaning beyond the abstract and fail to stir the mind, much less penetrate the heart. The work of the enemy has been masterful. He has reduced much of the former heartland of Christianity to a spiritual desert in which the inhabitants have seemingly forgotten how to thirst.

The book will examine the impact of modernity on several basic elements of the Christian way. We need to go beyond hand wringing to a glimpse of what brought us here, what is happening now. We need to consider both present and future implications. The objective is to show how great an influence modernity and post-modernity have had on what we do, and how deep are the causes of spiritual failure and collapse we see around us every day. The goal is to open eyes, to make some understand that more than re-arranging the deck chairs of programs and plans must take place in order to avoid the loss of the things that remain in the evangelical community. This is far from abstract theory and mere intellectual exercise. If evangelical Christians do not radically change the way they look at the world and themselves, the desert of spiritual decline will continue to spread, burying the church in America foot by foot like the creeping sands of the Sahara.

The book addresses its subject by describing the cultural impact on American evangelicals from a biblical perspective in concert with appropriate historical and philosophical antecedents. This convergence will help position the spiritual issues in the context of contemporary life and worldviews. Most evangelical Christians have a limited understanding of the relationship of history and philosophy to their lives. They miss the importance of the past and the intellectual community in shaping street-level reality. Philosophers and thinkers are not confined in their influence to the back corners of academic libraries. Their visibility as persons may be limited to those outside of the intellectual class, but their impact is enormous. What they propose in the quiet has flowed out of their libraries and studies into classrooms, to drive the worldviews of multiplied millions of people as the media and educational systems mediate their thoughts into the popular consciousness. Christians—in ignorance or indifference—have become part of that consciousness and are under its influence more than they know. Their spiritual and intellectual slumber has been a significant contributor to this capitulation of awareness.

The first four chapters of the book look at the impact of the world on the church and the way we live, as well as the lost centrality of God and the silencing of the gospel. The last three chapters provide insights on restoration and repentance to point the way back to spiritual health. This division of emphasis fulfills the two-fold purpose of first defining our problems and then offering some paths toward resolving them, not primarily by new processes or methods, but by a new way of living.

It is clearly beyond the reach of a short book to include the full range of spiritual struggle zones impacting the church today. The purpose of the book is to stimulate thought and encourage the spiritual process leading to changed minds, hearts, and ways of being and doing. The text has been written in a spirit of love for our brothers and sisters in the evangelical community. Any harshness in tone reflects the seriousness of the warnings concerning the evangelical situation in America at this moment in history. May my fellow believers benefit by having their vision opened to some of what is happening to them unawares. May the Lord bring His people closer to Himself and may they return to their first love.

Part I – The Challenge We Face

Chapter 1

Impact of the World on the Church

T he Sermon on the Mount cuts deeply through our self-protective layers to the reality of the human condition and our pitiful state before God. The moral demands of the Sermon are overwhelming in their impact, and its epigrammatic pronouncements encompass much in few words. The fourth beatitude proclaims blessings on those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. The imagery of this statement is powerful. Hunger is the universal experience of every person. It is compelling, an inner demand that will not let us rest until it is satisfied, and that only for a time until it rises yet again from within in a never-ending repetition. Thirst is still more demanding, driven by the reality that the body will usually die following four days without water. If we had no hunger and no thirst we would not survive. We would be starving, yet like the man who has just finished a huge meal and looks at another serving as repulsive. We would be dehydrated, yet like one satiated with water to the point where it is completely tasteless. We would die and never know the joy of eating and drinking, of a great meal, or of a cold drink on a hot summer day.

What then does it mean to hunger and thirst for righteousness that reflects the character of our Lord? Drawing from the physical comparison, it means to so desire righteousness that it compels and consumes us in a search to obtain it. Righteousness becomes so vital to us that we cannot live without it. This has become something strangely difficult for Christians to grasp, influenced by the contemporary world of secular America where righteousness is far from the top of the list in our personal and national priorities. The culture of the West is a culture consumed with hunger and thirst for the satisfaction of the self, including the desires of the physical flesh and the spiritual flesh of the soul with its mind, will, and emotions. The supreme yet unspoken purpose is to live life in security, happiness, and satisfaction without interference from God, at least the God revealed to us in the Scriptures. If He is recognized at all, God is seen as our servant, a genie on call at the drop of a prayer to provide for our needs and wants. The church has been infected with this perspective.

The world is constantly trying to shape our thinking as we swim in a sea of voices coming from every direction and in multimedia form, advocating for a world without God. Day after day they speak, some softly, some stridently, some in words, many in music and penetrating images. Like streams of water flowing over the rocks, their message has worn us down and reshaped us unawares. In spiritual slumber we have joined those thirsty for the satisfaction of the self while losing the taste for righteous living and fellowship with God.

The result for American evangelicals is a church that is not really a church. It goes about its operations as usual, but with limited effect. We have a form or shadow of godliness but deny its power¹ by living a life centered on ourselves rather than God, in the street-level world of daily circumstance. Our weakness is evident to those on the outside. We have lost their respect because we live much as they do, absent the more extreme excesses and acts of disobedience characteristic of our day. How can we speak to immorality when our people are morally compromised? How can we challenge the thinking of modernity and post-modernity when we know little of the Scripture and its teaching? How can we counter what we have unknowingly absorbed?

For those who doubt these words and see the church as stronger than this description, they need to look at the next generation, a generation brought up in our homes and churches. This is a generation entertained by youth groups and the contemporary church experience while being fed little of substance beyond a fragile moralism insufficient to stand against an aggressively hostile world. What has happened to them? Many have caved to the immorality of the hook-up and drug world of public high schools. They may curb their involvement a bit and keep a lower profile, but they have bought into the thinking in their hearts. When they go to college they quickly integrate into the system and are often not seen again in the community of believers. Those having greater resistance and a little strength may survive high school and the universities with the help of spiritual brothers and sisters along the way, but they emerge into adulthood often compromised in their thinking and behavior because we did not give them the heritage of a living and in-depth relationship with the Lord.

Those who thirst for Christ and His righteousness need much encouragement and provision. Such righteousness is not a matter of rules, but of a pure heart filled with the Spirit and possessing His fruit.² No one other than the Lord has ever had this kind of righteousness in perfection, but that does not remove the compelling need to seek it so that we may live as His presence in a hostile world. Otherwise, the falling away of the church will continue and our opportunity to retrieve some from the burning will pass us by.³ The church has always faced challenges, but their form and intensity has varied through the centuries. The present moment is one of great pressure for believers. In the West, it is the pressure of an aggressively defiant secular culture which is seeking to compartmentalize and marginalize Christians while diminishing the message of the gospel. In the global south,⁴ it is the powerful pressure of persecution as the rapidly growing number of new believers becomes