Daily Devotion
A
Pentecost Every Hour
By
Dan Betzer
Guest Writer
CBN.com
-- In his vital book, "Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry Church," Dean Merrill
tells us that Paul's words to the Romans are being fulfilled in this generation.
"Where sin increased, grace increased all the more." Merrill shines the
light on the Christian movement in China. That nation had a mere one million known
believers in 1949 when the Communists took power. Under what you and I would call
unendurable conditions, that church has grown to between 50 and 80 million. Leith
Anderson writes that we read of 3,000 persons coming to Christ on the Day of Pentecost.
Yet, in mainland China, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, there is now a
Pentecost every hour! Meanwhile, in the United States, 60 churches shut down every
week. The growth rate among white churches in this country is absolutely
flat. Why? Perhaps it is because the American church has forgotten its reason
for being. Exodus 13 reminds us that when Moses took the Israelites out of Egypt,
he took the bones of Joseph with him. In "Soul Tsunami," Leonard Sweet
said, "Postmoderns who are Christian must not go anywhere without carrying the
bones and stones of memory with them, the memory of our past, the memory of our
ancestors, and the memory of our holy places. To abandon the past is to forget
what we know." We need to once again unearth the skeletal structure of
what the church is: It is the embassy of Christ on this earth, taking His glorious
message to everyone, not only in other lands but in America, too. Does your church
have an altar? Do you witness to the lost? Has the spiritual fire gone out in
your own soul? We jeopardize our future by forgetting our past.
Used with permission by author, Dan Betzer. Previously published on ByLine OnLine, copyright © 2005 Media Ministries of the Assemblies of God.
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