Garrison Keilor once said, speaking of childhood — “I think of it as the olden days, the good old days when life was simple — but it’s just not true.”

I think as Christians, we have this same illusion about the glorious past.

We think if we could turn the clock back to 1950, everything would be better, or maybe even farther back, to the revoluntionary war times when we truly were a “Christian nation”.

For some of us, turning the clock back to the Jesus movement of the late sixties and seventies would do the trick.

While our society was definitely more moral during times past, it wasn’t necesarily more “Christian”.
Oh, sure, maybe more people went to church. And that’s good.
But the true disciples of Christ, those who live out the gospel have always been, and always will be a minority.

Do I want worldwide revival? Of course I do.
Do I want a country that honors the Lord? Yes.

But do I think it’s ever going to happen? No way.

Why?

Because Jesus said these words:

… narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.  – Matt 7:14

Narrow. Few.

Those aren’t at all inclusive, widespread words.

Look at these quotes:

I believe our gospel churches, our Christianity, is thin and anemic, without thoughtful content, frivolous in tone and worldy in spirit.

…today the preaching to a large extent is cheap, frivolous, course, shallow and entertaining. We in the gospel churches think that we’ve got to entertain people or they won’t come back.

Our fathers sang “O God, Our Help in Ages past,” and we sing junk.

This tragic and frightening decline in the spiritual state of the churches has come about as a result of our forgetting what kind of God God is.

When do you think these words were written?
Sounds like they could be written today.

But actually they were written by A.W. Tozer who died in 1963.
So these words were most likely written during the glorious 1950’s, but certainly before the rock and roll, and drug counterculture of the sixties.
And Tozer saw major problems even in that “Utopian” age.

Listen to another quote:

These stern old men with their stiff notions have gone, but what do we have in their places? Indifference and frivolity. We have no Roundheads and Puritans, but we arrange flowers and play lawn tennis!

We have no contentions for the faith because our amusements occupy all our time. This wonderful century has become a child and put away manly things. Self-disciplined men, men of integrity and true grit, are now very few and far between as compared with the old covenanting days.

 When were these words written? 1930s? 1960s? 1980s?

These are the words of Charles Spurgeon, whose ministry spanned from 1854 to 1892.
The book is undated, but was pre 1900.

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

There is a temptation as a church, to imagine the past as different than it was.
And then, we go up in arms when we see an evil culture all around us.

We picket and we march and we sign petitions, hoping to attain to our “glorious past”.
Hoping to legislate our culture into the kingdom of God.

Zechariah 4:6 reminds us though, that this isn’t how God works:

Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of Hosts.

And again, Jesus reminded us, that as the time gets closer to His glorious appearing these things would happen:

BUT know this, that in the last days perilous times will come:
For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power.  (2 Tim 3:1-5)

The world is an evil place. But we are to be “salt and light”.

So don’t pick up a sword, or a campaign sign.
Pick up the Word of God, and be Jesus’ hands and feet.
Be light in the darkness.

Don’t look backwards, look forwards. Look to bring people to heaven through the power and the annointing of the Holy Spirit.