I awoke with a question on my mind. Would our children recognize the presence of darkness in activities they engage in, friends they make or if a demon entered their room or classroom? Have they become so conditioned and comfortable that they would not recognize the presence of spiritual darkness in their surroundings?
Have we as adults, parents and even pastors, created an environment through rock star stages, half time shows, movie theaters and even comfortable churches, where demons are not viewed as dangerous and possibly even non-existent and where the demonic world is only considered by those viewed as extreme or “out there”?
Have we presented a “pristine Christianity” with a passive Jesus holding children on His lap instead of casting a demon out of a man at church. Or do we forget about a Jesus outsmarting Satan in the wilderness who, by the way, is still lurking around to devour whomever it may find? Or how about a Jesus who set free a Canaanite woman’s daughter possessed of a demon or the Jesus encountered by the man whose son, since childhood, was convulsed, made mute and thrown into fire by a demon? (Luke 4; 1 Pt. 5:8, Mt. 15, Mk 9) Do we forget that demons were regularly expelled by Jesus and His disciples, and these demons were often the root cause of blindness, deafness, muteness, seizures, paralysis, etc?
Do our children know about powers and principalities and wickedness in high places? (Eph 6)
Do our children know that Jesus said we have authority over all the miracle working power of the enemy? (Luke 10:19)
Do our children understand the devil is lurking around their lives looking for a way to entice and captivate them with his deception? (1 Peter 5:8)
Have we entertained our children with subliminal messages in their childhood videos, half time stages reeking of demonic imagery, or rock star shows with lyrics from hell? Do we plan for months and drive for hours to release our children to theme parks with underlying themes of seemingly harmless yet demonic messages? And we certainly need to talk about the school systems that have become embedded with doctrines of demons such as CRT, transgender acceptance and drag queen reading hours.
To many, this may sound extreme, but is it really? Our children have grown up in a world that was shaped by the internet, social media and other constant mental stimuli instead of the true Biblical values that shaped the foundation of our nation and many preceding lives before them. What was once deemed so priceless is scoffed at by many and regarded as outdated, irrelevant and foolish. A recent poll shows that only 10% of children raised in a church have a significant relationship with Jesus and stay involved. (Barna Research) Is the attraction too great and powerful for the church to compete? What if our children saw demons cast out, eyes opened, lame walking and diseased healed? Would this make a difference?
Where will this take us in the days ahead? We are not hopeless, but we must begin to turn this very large ship back in the right direction. I believe that God holds churches accountable for the condition of the nation. As churches goes, so goes families. As families go, so goes the schools, government and ultimately the nation. When the gospel of Jesus is watered down to a sweet, passive, Sunday morning experience only and without a true teaching of both sides, we result in a weakened condition, overrun by the darkness that we have ignored or just pretended didn’t exist. Like spoiled children, we have ignored what was not comfortable for us to discuss and we have reproduced after our own kind.
The only answer is to return to the foundations and truth of the gospel. It must begin in homes, where the spiritual development of children must be a priority. It is not the church’s responsibility to spiritually develop a child, it is the parent’s responsibility. We must stop catering to the whims of our culture and entertaining our children with the very poison that will ultimately cause their demise and the demise of our great nation. Any nation is one generation away from extinction.
But God! We serve a God of the miraculous and one more powerful than any power of darkness. There is still a remnant of believers that is called the church that Jesus built (Mt. 16:18) and that the gates of hell will not prevail against. There is still a group of people who are willing to look extreme, or maybe even radical for the truth that must be told. We are more than conquerors, and we must know what we are to conqueror. We need the next generation!
