Hello Friends,

Today I was reading about an alarming trend.

Pew Research Center polls trends in America. Last year it published a massive study on religious trends in the USA. The findings indicate a seismic shift in thinking away from religion is now underway. This is especially obvious when we look at the numbers for the "nones."

Religiously Unaffiliated Rapidly Increasing

We are told:

 "Religious “nones” – a shorthand used [by Pew Research] to refer to people who self-identify as atheists or agnostics, as well as those who say their religion is “nothing in particular” – now make up roughly 23% of the U.S. adult population. This is a stark increase from 2007, the last time a similar Pew Research study was conducted, when 16% of Americans were “nones.” (During this same time period, Christians have fallen from 78% to 71%.)

Religiously Unaffiliated More Concentrated Among Millennials

Overall, religiously unaffiliated people are more concentrated among young adults than other age groups – 35% of Millennials (those born 1981-1996) are “nones.” In addition, the unaffiliated as a whole are getting even younger. The median age of unaffiliated adults is now 36, down from 38 in 2007 and significantly younger than the overall median age of U.S. adults in 2014 (46).

Trend Also Holds for Boomers

At the same time, even older generations have grown somewhat more unaffiliated in recent years. For example, 14% of Baby Boomers were unaffiliated in 2007, and 17% now identify as “nones.””

Massive Failure For The Christian Church

A closer look at the figures shows nearly one-in-five Americans (18%) say that they were raised as Christians but that they now have no religious affiliation. This represents a massive failure of the Christian Church System in America to retain its members!

Even worse, a growing number of those who are abandoning the Christian Church System have lost their faith in God. Both atheists and agnostics are growing as a share of all religiously unaffiliated people, and together they now make up 7% of all U.S. adults (up from 4% in 2007). The speed of this trend is especially alarming.

Why The Shift Away From Religion and God?

Individual reasons for this exodus away from God and religion vary. However, the predominate thinking of the "nones" is that belief in both religion and God is "unscientific."  As the numbers show, this mindset has dramatically grown with each successive generation. Why? My observation is that the Church has failed the reality test with many. The Church is failing many in its primary reason for being, which is, to bring people closer to God. If churchgoers were experiencing a real relationship with God they would not become agnostics and atheists - its as simple as that. 

At the same time that the Church is failing, America has been the test tube for a giant social experiment that has been ongoing at least since the 50s, ratcheted up in intensity many times over, each time capturing more minds and hearts. This has been a major attack on morals, values and beliefs that has had the net effect of creating a much more decadent and materialistic society. The propaganda machine never stops, and people believe the establishment narrative because of the constant repetition and social pressure that goes with it. You see this everywhere, from public school, to movies, to TV, to music - the propaganda machine pulls all the levers and controls all the doors. The public perception now is that God has largely been replaced by evolution, because evolution is "scientific" and God is not - even though real scientific discoveries, such as genetic entropy for example, and many other examples in an array of sciences, clearly expose evolution as the ignorant farce that it is, while demonstrating the absolute necessity of a Creator. Why don't people know this? Because the truth is always suppressed in support of the manufactured narrative, which narrative is accepted by the sheeple as the truth.

What Will It Take To Turn People Back To The Creator?

This generation, as a whole, has moved far from God. At this point, what will it take to turn the tide, to turn many back to the Creator again? I found an interesting perspective on that among the comments at Pew Research regarding the study. One commenter wrote:

"If there is a God, as explained in the Bible, why doesn’t He come down and light the burning bush again, and explain how it is that he wants us to adore him?"

No doubt there is some sarcasm in that comment. However, it also touches on a real answer. People need to see God actually manifested in some tangible way to believe in Him, at this point. The God of the Bible did amazing things that revealed the gods of the ancient world to be nothing but frauds and figments in comparison with the Living God. The world needs to see the Living God, the Ancient God, intervening in history in tangible ways, with mighty miracles, as in the days of old. Many will believe once again when they see Him doing His wonders in the midst of His people, Israel, in the final days. This is so exciting, because this is exactly why we are preparing to go home in the Remnant Exodus as prophesied for these days in the Scriptures! It is so that the world may see the reality of YHWH - the God of the Bible - the God of Israel.

Another Way

Until that happens there is another way the world can see Him. 2000 years ago the Son willingly came down from heaven to manifest the Father's love, and to show us the way. When people of right heart saw Him, they loved Him, because His way was/is love. He was surprising! He was so real! Real, yet different than anyone would have expected from the divine. For starters, though powerful in word and spirit, He was disarmingly lowly in heart, and so intensely caring toward the least ones he encountered. Always caring for others ahead of himself - this is not what anyone would expect of God - yet it was so right, so perfect, so God-like. Just encountering him brought sinners to tears and changed the lives of the humble. Instead of seeing God through quaking mountains and terrifying whirlwinds they saw Him in His true essence, His amazing love.

He is still alive, and so is that love. He calls to us to let that love flow through us so the world will know that He is real! We can see Him. We can become more like Him. This is what we must do: walk His Way ourselves, as we humbly show the Way for others. The world must see the God of Israel in us.     

Tsiyon Partners, Join me tonight at 8 PM CST at Tsiyon.Net. We will consider more on humbly walking in His Way.

Shalom, Eliyahu

www.tsiyon.org