This is your 11th hour wake up call.

There is a book I want to recommend called "Revolution in World Missions" (2003 ed.) which God is certainly speaking to me through.

The author calls Christians in the United States and other western nations to account because of our acceptance of materialism and postmodernism. In fact he doesn't just say we have accepted it, he says a lot of Christians serve both God and made, worshiping idols, because we believe in these other philosophies and worldviews as we believe in God - we are practitioners of the Social Gospel.

K. P. Yohannan correctly diagnoses our spiritual illness as idolatry and rightly prescribes that we turn back to the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of sins. We have strayed from the true Gospel and adopted the Social Gospel that claims government can solve all of our problems so long as it provides social programs (for Democrats) or leaves us alone and gives us tax breaks (for Republicans). Capitalism is the answer to our every need because the laws of supply and demand will provide for every need of the consumer if the free market economy is left alone. Socialism will provide for every need of the less fortunate who fall through the cracks of the capitalist machine. And communism will make us all equal.

Yohannan calls me back to the foundations of my faith in God, to question all the philosophies of which a degree in Political Science has bestowed upon me. He alludes this idolatry of materialism and postmodernism to the Tower of Babel. And are we not trying to create a utopia where man-made solutions are the prayer and hope of the people? Instead Yohannan calls the Western Church to throw out such teachings and come back to the truth about hell and eternal damnation for those who do not believe in the saving blood of Jesus Christ. Without the true Gospel all peoples are lost to hell, even the hell on earth we try to overcome.

So, do you live in the shadow of hell and death? If you don't, how then can you fear no evil, how can His rod and His staff comfort you - are you even aware that you need protection? I am regularly reminded of sin and hell, and the need for my own salvation. Praise Jesus for it! I am moved to great sadness for those who die without Christ as their savior for they have no one to stand between them and God in judgement, no one to say he or she belongs to Me and "I have known him/her."

Every single person you walk past, drive by, stand or sit next to today will one day face that very same situation, as will you. Your living in the presence of hell and death is essential to their salvation. (I almost typed "Your loving..." but isn't it just the same?) If you don't love those around you with the kind of Love God has for you, enough that he would DIE a most horrible death, innocent, and for no other reason than to be with you for all eternity... if you don't LIVE in the light of that truth how will others be saved from hell? I know I certainly need to live more like that.