Stoned Generation

In my Bible, there's a verse of Scripture, friends, which I believe best sums up this present generation. It is found in Judges chapter 2 and in verses 10 and 11. Let me read that to us now.

And here is the Word of God. And may the Spirit of the Lord attend the reading of His Holy Word. And also, all that generation were gathered unto their fathers.

And there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which he had done for Israel. And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and served Balaam. I will stop there, friends.

Why? Why do we have a stone generation of kids today, whose lives are ruined and wrecked by sin? What happened to this generation of church kids? Kids that were raised in church, who are now grown up and entering college. Why are they mainly atheists? Why are they usually stoned on drugs, and drunk with alcohol, and sleeping around with one another? Why did we lose these kids who grew up in church, and who went to private Christian school? Are the churches to blame? I believe that's a big part of it, because the churches caved in to the demands of spoiled kids, and we gave them pizza night and movie night, instead of feeding them the true gospel of the Son of God. And we changed our whole music programs for them.

We kicked out all the old hymns about the blood, and we brought in rock music and theatrical productions, which have perverted some of the biggest Baptist churches in this land. And nobody seems to see anything wrong with it. If you're a big Baptist church, and your worship minister doesn't look like he stepped off of MTV, why, you're not with the program.

But I believe the biggest reason why so many parents have lost their kids is because, although the parents were regular church attenders, and never missed a Sunday in the home, there was no family altar in the home. There was no true godliness, but double lives. They raised their kids with a do-as-I-say mentality, rather than a do-as-I-do example.

Kids are smart, and they can see right through a hypocrite, especially when it's a parent. Yes, I believe we lost this stone generation of kids because, in the life of the home, there was no reality of God in the lives of the parents. And when the kids got old enough, they didn't want to go to church anymore, because, sadly, there was no reality of God in the church either.

We try to fake religion with loud music and entertainment, funny stories and stale jokes, and the kids are searching for reality, because everything else is fake. So they turn to drugs and alcohol and sexual gratification. How in the world can the church reach this stone generation of kids, when the church failed to reach their parents with the truth of the gospel and the reality of the Christ of the gospel, when you make it easy to become a Christian with a watered-down gospel and tell folks they are now saved when most of them are not? All you do, friends, is gospel-harden them, so that when someone hands them a track in the future, they respond with, Thanks, but I've already done that.

The sad thing is, most parents are in the dark as to what their church kids are up to. Most Christian schools are clueless as to the drugs that are dealt in the bathrooms and the ruined moral condition of their student body, until the church repents and cleans the temple of all her idols and gets back to calling sin sin and hell hot and warns this generation of lost church kids that they need to repent and turn to God and that walking an aisle and repeating a prayer and joining the church is not salvation, that if they truly want to be saved and go to heaven, then they must get under the blood, they must be born again, and saved from their sins by a blood-stained redeemer who was a substitute for sin. This stone generation are the future leaders of this nation, and I fear we have raised a generation of young people who know not the God of the Bible nor the Word of God.

The church worldwide, friends, is in trouble in this apostate age, right before the return of Christ, and very few folks seem to notice or care. The church itself seems stoned and high on a building program as it builds its empire with bricks and mortar and serves the almighty dollar more than almighty God. The difference between this generation that comprises a church of today in the West and the early church is that Christians are stoned today on drugs, whereas back in those early days of the church Christians, they were stoned to death for their testimony in Christ Jesus like Stephen was.

The blood of the martyrs is the seed for the church. The church sleeps in times of prosperity and thrives in times of persecution. If you don't believe me, friends, compare the American church to the underground church in China that lives on her knees and lives in the fires of red-hot persecution, and it's growing by tens of millions every year.

But we here in the West decided to reach the world by letting the world into the church, and where has that gotten us? It's only perverted the house of God. Unless the church repents, we will lose our kids as they take their place and make their way and mark as members of a godless society. Oh, when will we wake up as a church and stop all this nonsense that we call church on Sunday morning and fall to our faces and turn our sanctuaries into Bethels and sit in sackcloth and ashes and turn from our wicked ways and seek the face and forgiveness and favor of almighty God whom we have abandoned as a nation and a people.

Heaven help us all. Let us pray.