Three Sad Headlines

• I was looking at The Christian Post today and at the end of the article I was reading saw these three current headlines (each is a link to an article).
• Gay Marriage OK in Denmark Churches
• Small Ky. Church Bars Interracial Couples From Membership
• LGBT Groups Boycott Salvation Army's Red Kettles
• They each speak to something about our current circumstances that I find profoundly sad for the people of the world and for the church as well.
• The first article speaks of the inability of the Church to recognize its role as witness to the truth of God's Word, even in a society that rejects it.  Of course the "church" referred to in Denmark is a state, Lutheran body that has long ago moved away from viewing the Scripture as meaning what it says.  Nevertheless, a body claiming to bear witness to the Jesus of the Bible that shreds the truth of that same Bible by its decisions grieves the Lord Jesus even more than it does me, and obscures even further the knowledge of God.
• The second headline reveals the evil that resides among those of us who claim to be Bible believing Christians.  If you read the article, you will discover that this church had 15 members in a business meeting vote 9-6 for this satanic idea.  Being a Baptist, congregationally-governed church (as our church is), there is no one to tell them they are in sin and must change and repent, at least until Judgment Day.  Their denomination says that all they can do is ask them to change, and then perhaps withdraw fellowship.  A note to those denominational leaders: it's always a good idea not to fellowship with "synagogues of Satan," according to Revelation 2:9.  What makes this especially sad is that nine people in one church have done something that has made headlines in a world that loves to mock Christians.  
• Finally, the third headline shows that something that should not be news is news.  The idea that a group that advocates behaviors that the Bible prohibits would boycott the work of a church denomination that believes in the Bible's authority and thus opposes those behaviors should not be a shock.  It only is shocking to the person who doesn't understand that there are still those who believe what Christians universally believed until the middle of the last century, and still believe in large numbers.  What saddens me is that Bible believers have become so invisible in a land where we once were well understood, if not universally accepted.
• I am especially burdened in this Advent season that we be CLEAR on who Jesus is, where we get our knowledge of Him and of God's will (the Bible), and our conviction that what we learn of Him and His will there is truth to be followed.