 When you turn on YouTube, you constantly get people saying what is demonic or what is shocking. But what's really shocking is the fact that us as a church keep missing this. And what I found most shocking, George, was you're finding that only 55% of evangelicals believe that people are born sinners and can only find salvation in Jesus Christ. Did that shock you? This is a core evangelical Christian belief. Here in America, as well as other Western civilizations, where things can be a little bit more comfortable, where we have different amenities, air condition, Wi-Fi and so forth, all the different creature comforts that we've grown used to, we tend to forget that most people on the planet don't have it this good. Specifically, we forget that most Christians do not have it this good. Recently, we see what happens in a place like Uganda when these Muslim rebels come in and they kill a large number of Christian students at a boarding school. Of a rebel attack on a school in Western Uganda, say the teenage peoples were killed with machetes before a bomb was thrown into a dormitory. School buildings were also set ablaze. Around 40 boys and girls died and several students were abducted. Police say militants linked to the Islamic State group carried out the attack. It happened at a secondary school in a palm dwee in the west of the country and eight other people were injured and are in hospital. Dozens of fear to have been abducted. Police say the army is pursuing the fighters who would cross the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo. ADF rebels have been operating from inside the DRC for the past two decades. When you see teenagers being killed by machete being locked in a building burned alive because of their faith, you should know how serious this is across the world. There are many people who take their faith serious even under the pressure or the threat of violence. Now let me just violence I mean the threat of being killed or and or killed in a horrific way. But it's not just Uganda where 40 people were killed for their faith. This happens every day all across the globe in places like Indonesia, in places like Iraq, in places like Iran, in places like Syria. There are Christians who are devoted and committed to their faith. The problem is and this is what we're missing here in America not so much. We will see a lot of foolishness put on stage a lot of theatrics people saying things that are just off the wall people claiming to be somebody special apostle this, prophet this, bishop that and there is no commitment to the true word of God. Recently I came across an interview with George Barnard of the Barnard group on CBN. He was speaking about the decline of evangelical influence or really truth be told believers here in America those who are professed Christians. Recent findings from the cultural research center at Arizona Christian University found a growing decline in Christian beliefs and church attendance. George Barnard is director of research at the ACU center. George thank you for joining us. So the American church isn't bouncing back the way we'd hoped for after the pandemic. Evangelicals are in trouble so tell us what's happening and why. Well the big picture is when we look at some of the measures that often are looked at like church attendance we find that that has dropped since the beginning of the pandemic. A lot of people dropped out of church never returned. If we look at what's happened in the last six years you know there's there's been a very significant decline from 56 percent of adults attending at least once a month down to 35 percent now. Over the course of the pandemic you would have thought that would have been a time where more people would have picked up God's word to get guidance but turned out that was not the case and so what we've seen is a decline from 37 percent reading the Bible outside of any kind of church events during the course of a week 37 percent down now to about 33 percent. And what's even shocking is that you find that there are people who go to church who do not understand that what they're going to church for the whole purpose of them having salvation what their belief is what it leads to. They're not even sure if this faith will lead them to go to heaven. The research simply tries to estimate where do people stand spiritually and when we ask people what they think will happen to them after they die and we find that a third of the people that regularly attend evangelical churches do not believe that after they die they're going to go to heaven and only because they've confessed their sins and accepted Jesus Christ as their Savior that too is a core evangelical perspective but you've got a large share of the people in those churches that don't buy it. We see church attendance down however we do know that this is a requirement. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 10 24 he says let us consider how to stimulate one another to love which is our job and good deeds not forsaking our own assembling together as it is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more you see the day drawing near. It is required. It is necessary. It is important for us to be a body of believers who come together and to stimulate as the word says to stimulate or to stir up or to cause others to grow in love as well as indeed I don't know what you're going through and I can't help you if I don't see you and vice versa. The problem is we have just grown too comfortable. We have grown comfortable in our lives. Things are happening over there but they're not affecting me but the Bible says that we are going to suffer as we are believers maybe not as much as the next person but the more that each day passes we're going to see this happening more and more. Paul says in 2 Timothy 3 12 he says indeed all who desire to live godly in Christ will be persecuted. Now to what degree we are not totally sure but we will be persecuted to some degree he says but evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse deceiving and being deceived. I think we see that now as a matter of fact I think we've been seeing that. The problem is though I don't know that we really care. I think that we are just simply missing it and I think this is intentional. I think that we are intentionally as a body putting our head in the sand as long as it's not bothering us as long as it's over there as long as it's that church as long as it's that crazy pastor well then we have decided that we are not going to fight for the cause of Christ nor will we be as committed or concerned about the word of God. Paul leaves us his warning in 2 Timothy 4 and this he's leaving us on his deathbed. He is about to die but he's reminding us what we ought to do. He says in chapter 4 starting in verse 5 he says but you be sober in all things endure hardship do the work of an evangelist fulfill your ministry. Look what he says where I am already being poured out as a drink offering for the time of my departure his death has come. I have fought the good fight I have finished the course I have kept the faith in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous God the righteous judge will award to me on the day and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing now what some might miss from that is something that he says and we kind of gloss over a little bit but notice what he says he says in verse 7 he says I have kept the faith he didn't say I've kept believing obviously that's important but he said I've kept the faith I have held on to what the faith teaches I have not departed from the tenets of this belief which we see happening now more and more people have decided to adopt the tenets the beliefs of the world adopting to a more inclusive and when I say inclusive I mean inclusive of sin inclusive of the LGBTQ community inclusive of abortion inclusive of lifestyles that do not mimic the pattern of a godly person women behaving unlike women are to are to behave men behaving unlike men ought to behave nothing godly about them but as long as they can figure out a way to kind of skirt the world be part of the world and then also be part godly which means you're not god at all because remember to be friends with the world is to be enemies or to have enmity towards god you cannot be on both sides but that's what we have which is why you see what uh barna is reporting in his studies honestly this is a pattern that we started seeing about a quarter of a century ago and it is simply continued in evangelical churches it's been a much slower decline than say in mainline churches or other christian churches but nevertheless that decline has continued when we look even at things like people's perspectives on the sanctity of life we find that among evangelicals only four out of ten would say that human life is sacred and you've only got about half of them saying that abortion for any reason other than to spare the life of the mother or the child is morally unacceptable and the shocking part about all of this is the fact that we are simply missing it we are asleep at the wheel and we don't care as a matter of fact we probably didn't need to hear from george barna to recognize this we see it more and more people are just turning away from the word of god and we are simply missing it and how we know we're missing it is because we if we care we would be doing our number one job which is to let people know about the goodness of christ this is a world that is soon to not exist this is a world that is soon to perish and if we cared if we were concerned if we weren't missing it then we would share the gospel more so than we do now that is if indeed we do it all