Not every child who starts out in church stays in church; in fact, many young people are falling away from the faith and walking away from the church as they grow older. A recent survey conducted by the Barna Group, a leading research organization whose focus is on the relationship of faith and culture, found that less than 1 percent of the young adult population in the United States has a biblical worldview. Even more startling, the data shows that less than one half of one percent of Christians between the ages of 18 and 23 has a biblical worldview.
Not just America..but around the globe
Attendance is so bad in third world countries, that christians are being beheaded in mass. Recently 70 Christians in the Congo of Africa were beheaded by ISIS.
The Barna Group defined a biblical worldview as belief in the following:
• absolute moral truth exists
• the Bible is completely inerrant
• Satan is a real being, not symbolic
• a person cannot earn his way into the kingdom of God though good works
• Jesus Christ lived a sinless life on earth
• God is the supreme Creator of the heavens and the earth and reigns over the whole universe today
Why are people then leaving the church?
hose interested in the signs of the end times often take note of a warning given by Paul to the Thessalonians, speaking about the return of Jesus Christ to earth. He writes, “Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first” (2 Thessalonians 2:3). He then proceeds to explain this “falling away” in greater detail.
Paul writes that it will involve the revealing of “the man of sin…the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4). Some man is going to style himself as greater than God, pretending to be God—and people will believe him. Why? Because:
“The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason God will send them strong delusion, that they should believe the lie” (2 Thessalonians 2:9-11).
The “man of sin” posing as God will be performing supernatural acts with the help of the devil, deceiving all those who have rejected God and putting himself in a position to be worshipped by the world.
Revelation 19:20 describes this powerful religious leader as “the false prophet who worked signs” in connection with the political leader called the “beast.” The False Prophet is the same as the one called “another beast” in Revelation 13:11, who performs miraculous “signs” (Revelation 13:14-15). He is also the leader of the false church (“the harlot”) in Revelation 17:1-5. He is also referred to as “another horn” who will “persecute the saints of the Most High, and shall intend to change times and law” in Daniel 7:8; Daniel 7:20-22; Daniel 7:24-25.
