While the Church Was Sleeping Society Changed — E.A. Johnston

Awakening From Spiritual Slumber

There is a verse of scripture which speaks of opportunities missed by slumbering believers. It is found in Romans chapter 13, beginning in verse 11. And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed.

The night is far spent, the day is at hand. Let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly as in the day, not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh to fulfill the lust thereof.

Our passage speaks of the great necessity to awake from slumber, for there is much to do when the hour is late. The night is far spent, our text declares, and this passage of scripture from Romans is an indictment against the church in our day, for she slumbers on pillows of conformity and compromise, and she sleeps the sleep of death.

The Church’s Compromised Gospel

And while the church was sleeping, society changed. And that's the title of my message this evening, friends. While the church was sleeping, society changed. For the last several decades in this country, the church has been on a building campaign to expand her already bulging empire, and when the church decided to become bigger, she compromised the message of the gospel, so not to offend sinful man.

It became a diluted gospel that was easier to swallow, so we could grow our congregations with people who believed themselves to be Christians, based on this compromised gospel, which omitted the horrid doctrines of the blackness of sin, the horrors of hell, man's duty of repentance, and man's necessity of regeneration.

What took place in the last three or four decades has been a church that went silent on sin, and when she went silent on sin, she fell fast asleep on a bed of conformity to the world, and while the church was sleeping, evil in society has been abounding.

The Church’s Lost Voice in Society

Our national sins became multiplied. Our government began to call evil good and good evil, while the church was silent in her spiritual slumber, but something horrible happened, and now it's too late to do anything about it.

For a while, the church was sleeping. Society changed. It's not the same country anymore, and there's no turning back. The church dropped the ball to have a voice when she had the chance to do something about it.

Back in the 1950s, the church still had a voice of authority in the land. As a matter of fact, a television commercial was kept off the air nationally because of the influence and power of the Methodist Church.

Early television wanted to advertise a product that showed an outhouse in the commercial, and the Methodist Church thought it was too offensive, and she spoke loudly against it and kept it off the air, but as the decades wore on, the church herself became compromised to the world, and the world became more brazen in broadcast media, and perversion spilled into the living rooms of America, and no one seemed to care about the open sewer that was polluting this land, and the church's silence against sin spoke volumes to a sin-loving society that grew more and more wicked with each passing decade.

Silence in the Face of Growing Evil

While the church was sleeping, sin abounded in high places in the land, it reminds me of the days of Nazi Germany, where a German pastor made the following comments about the increasing evil in his day, and his failure to cry out against it.

He said, I didn't speak out because I wasn't a socialist, then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist, then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Catholic, then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

And that's where we are today, friends, in this evil militant country of ours, which hates God and all things holy. While the church was sleeping, society changed, and the change that has occurred will not impact the sleeping church anymore, for she'll just be rudely awakened to the knock of those who desire her to marry them, or else they'll threaten lawsuits, and the government will remove the tax-exempt status of that institution for being unwilling to do what they are told to do by a militant force, backed by a militant government, and now it's too late for the church to do anything but to sit back and watch her large campus shrink as her financial donations shrink from losing her 501c3 status, then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.