We are living in truly extraordinary times. As I pen this article, two of the most powerful nations in the world are at war, or on a war footing; Russia against Ukraine and China significantly escalating tensions and its war-footing with Ukraine.
Jaw-dropping developments happen daily.
Besides war and potential for escalation on a historic scale (think worldwide nuclear destruction), immorality has reached scales not seen since biblical Old Testament times with Sodom and Gomorrah.
In those days, immorality became so offensive that whole cities literally beat down the doors of their neighbours to corrupt and defile them. It got so bad that God had to completely level the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by fire from the Heavens.
If you think our day is radically different; think again. In that day, sexual sin had corrupted cities; in our day it has corrupted the world. We now live in a time where people can believe they are the opposite sex and demand others believe likewise. We can disagree with God and change ourselves into other genders, or reject gender and even our own humanity. The right to murder a child is defended and celebrated; and tears are shed when such rights are upheld.
About our desperate state one modern commentator recently said that if God does not soon judge our world, he will have to bring Sodom and Gomorrah up from the grave and apologise to it, as we have exceeded even their wickedness!
It seems that fire from above may once again be seen in our day unless the Christian world wakens from its slumber, turns away from allowing a wicked world beat down its doors to corrupt it, and becomes radical in its desire to see God save a lost world.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
Put another way: desperate times call for biblical measures. But not the kind of ‘biblical’ measures we see in modern Christianity. Indeed, in many respects, the modern Christian life and service to God looks nothing like it used to look like in the Bible; especially the book of Acts.
Western Christianity has made an artform out of this life; living for self and pleasure and imitating the world. Most disturbingly, we’ve begun to call this ‘God’s will’; excusing ourselves from Christlikeness and from doing what Christ did while on Earth to go to the lost and broken to show them the way of Salvation.
Similarly to Jesus, in the book of Acts Christians didn’t merely sit in rooms and talk about truth and the Gospel. They didn’t just affirm that those things were true and good, and didn’t just agree that the world needed them. They didn’t just confine Christianity to Sundays and one morning meeting.
For Acts believers, their Christianity wasn’t just belief but action, not just learning but doing. As example, they didn’t just pray that God would move, but moved to see God answer their prayers. Most importantly, they didn’t just cry out for change and for others to change, but themselves changed and cried out to God for personal holiness.
The result was an astounding and radical transformation of their world, as believers allowed God to work through them what He was working in them. Believers took Jesus’ great commission seriously, and set about to share the Gospel. A desperate and depraved world heard believers preach in the streets and shared the hope they had in every neighbourhood and public square.
From this boldness and willingness to risk it all, whole towns, regions, and nations came to know Jesus Christ; the only who could save them. Miracles of healing also flooded the world, truth was spread abroad, and the wicked had an example of Jesus to know the difference between good and evil.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, which means believers must again become desperate for the souls of humanity. We must again become desperate for a radical Christianity which lays down its own life for God’s Kingdom.
If Sodom and Gomorrah teaches us anything, it’s that the days are evil, the writing is on the wall, and if we don’t act now to live what we believe, our desperate day will become a day of devastating destruction as we suffer the same fate as the ancient world.
Christian: now is the day to become desperate for the Gospel! Now is the day to become desperate for holiness. And now is the time to be bolder than ever before, to pray like the life of this world depends on it, and to lay down our lives for the one who lay His down for us: Jesus. Acts encourages us that our efforts won’t be in vain; for God will move in power to radically transform our world.