Expert: Brenda Martin - 11/10/2006

Question
The church has been expanding for 2000 years.  What are some of the obstacles within the church that have slowed expansion?

Answer
HI Michael, you asked--"WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OBSTACLES WITHIN THE CHURCH THAT HAVE SLOWED EXPANSION?"

Following the death of the apostles, the good news came to be overshadowed by-

1. Pagan teachings and philosophies.

2. False teachers distorted and polluted the pure message of truth.

3. A clergy class arose that tried to keep the Bible out of the hands of the common people.

4. Though the numbers of those who called themselves Christians increased, their worship was not pure.

5. Christendom grew geographically and became a powerful institution and a dominant force in Western culture, but it had neither God’s blessing nor his spirit.

6. On a world scale, traditional religion is still the cause of so much hatred and bloodshed that many thinking people have turned away from all religion, whether Western or Oriental.

7. The World Council of Churches, supported by 301 Protestant and Orthodox denominations with an estimated 400 million members, has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to politically oriented revolutionaries.

8. The chronic disunity observable today in Christendom’s religions is another “obstacle”

As the Bible foretold regarding “Babylon the Great,” the world empire of false religion, its symbolic waters, the support of the peoples, are drying up in many parts of the world.  (Revelation 17:5, 15-17.)

A Nobel prize winner in economics sums up the world situation by saying, “Everything is horrible.” In this, world religion is deeply involved. The “many waters” of Revelation 17:1, 15—“peoples and crowds and nations and tongues” of this godless world—have been withdrawing their support from religion, so that financial support for religion has been drying up also. (Compare Revelation 16:12.)

These are some of the “obstacles” to expansion within Christendom.

All the best
Brenda