A Prediction (February 2019) About
the Future of the Churches in America
by Stuart DiNenno
This is where I believe we are headed if the present trend of apostasy, with all its perversions, continues on the current fast track.
By 2030 (11 years from now), or 2035 at the latest, it won’t be possible to have a church in America, in the traditional way, if that church doesn’t accept sodomites/lesbians into fellowship. All churches that bar these sexual deviants from their assemblies will have to “go underground” in the sense that they won’t be able to maintain ownership of the property that we typically associate with churches today (i.e., tracts of land with buildings and all the appendages). They also no longer will be able to support full-time salaried ministers. This will be due to several things (in no particular order):
(1) The sizes of the congregations that don’t go along with the new “morality” will be greatly reduced because few in the churches even now have the conviction and courage to stand against the various forms of societal pressure that will come against such churches, and most will leave any organization that does not comply. Eventually, it will cost Christians their friends, their families, and their careers if they don’t conform and are known to belong to dissident organizations, and let’s face it — there aren’t many who will stand that test. Consequently, there won’t be enough “bigots” left in such congregations to support, or even to justify supporting, the expense of ownership and maintenance of the buildings, the land they possess, and the ministry staff. And by this time such churches already will have left or been rejected by their denominations, so support for them will be limited to only what can be generated internally.
(2) The national government likely will rescind any non-profit tax status of non-conforming churches (whether they are 501c3 or not), and national, state, and local governments will pass anti-discrimination and “hate crime” laws that will bring penalties upon any church and its officers that excludes people from its meeting place because of their “sexual orientation”.
(3) Those few churches that don’t go along are likely to be targeted by discrimination lawsuits which will cost too much to defend even if they could be won, and the odds of winning them will be increasingly unlikely as the American judicial system becomes more and more thoroughly infected with egalitarianism. This will force such churches to divest themselves of the property they hold, either directly as a result of such lawsuits or to avoid being vulnerable to such lawsuits.
(4) The churches that still resist are going to be few and far between, and so they will be easy targets for local activists. Pressure will be brought against them and will rise to the point where it won’t be possible to assemble peacefully in the same place weekly due to loud protests and even incursions into their places of assembly. Local police by this time also will have been conformed to the new “morality” and likely will do little to prevent disruptions other than perhaps try to intervene when overt acts of violence are committed. This will happen in the major cities first but will soon spread to all heavily populated suburban areas and then to outlying localities. Any non-conformist churches having more than a small number of members or being located somewhere other than a remote location likely will be targeted.
Of course, I cannot be sure about the timing but I believe this is where we are going to end up, if there is no intervention of the present trends anytime within the next 10-15 years.
And when it happens, please remember that it all began with the lie of racial egalitarianism before it progressed to the lie of gender egalitarianism and then to the lie of sexual egalitarianism.
False doctrines of equality beget other false doctrines of equality. The acceptance of lies inevitably leads to the acceptance of other lies.
A dark and sadly, quite possible, vision of the future. Let us hope and pray for better things that pertain to salvation.
“There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will accomplish this.” (Isaiah 9:7)
I’ve been saying that the church needs to voluntarily forgo the tax exemption and stand boldly for right as salt and light in the world. The tax exemption is just thirty pieces of silver, silencing voice! Jesus would not have made that unholy bargain!