Immorality Rampant in our Churches

A survey at the Hong Kong airport in 1999 found that 45% of those questioned admitted to having sexual relations with a stranger while on holiday. That is almost half the people surveyed! When we read statistics like this we often pass them off as things that are only occurring in the world. Yet that is not the case at all! Surely one of the most prevalent sins of the last days is immorality! Our Churches are eaten up with it, from the pew right up to the pulpit! Hardly a week passes that I do not hear of some pastor or pastor's wife that has gone into immorality! The stories are heart wrenching! Real lives are being destroyed along with scores and scores of churches! It is not other groups as we would like to think, it is happening in our Independent Baptist churches. At a preachers' fellowship a few months ago, one of the preachers told about a pastor right here in my state whose wife had an affair with an evangelist who was staying in his home while he conducted a revival meeting. We seem to have lost all consciousness of sin! Wickedness like this needs to be exposed. We need to dig our heads out of the sand and realize immorality is rampant and needs to laid bare and blasted like never before!

Yet in spite of the barrage of reports that we are growing so accustomed to hearing, the trend in our circles is to water down the preaching. I for one am tired of hearing our leaders say "Let's focus on how good God is and let's avoid all these questionable things." One such preacher said, "We can't build our churches with that kind of preaching." In my mind I find that to be a very questionable statement! These questionable things that we are supposed to be leaving alone are the same things that are promoting all the immorality! Let's face it, immodest dress, worldly loose living, and the total lack of preaching on any standards for courtship are major issues that are seldom, if ever, addressed! Why? Clearly we have too many that are more worried about a paycheck than the purity of the church! I believe the great need of the hour is men who will preach and expose sin as never before! Let's not forget what the Word of God says, "Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body." This is a life and death matter! God only knows how many lives and marriages could have been saved if the preachers would have kept the hammer down on the sins of adultery and fornication and every other sin associated therewith!

Steve Mays - Trumpet Editor