Sword & Trowel 2019: Issue 1
TRIUMPHS OF THE CHURCH IN AN ATHEISTIC AGE
– by the Editor –
He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar- jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not pre- vail against it (Matthew 16.15-18).
1THE GATES OF HELL O
UR MAIN interest in this article is the promise of the Lord that the gates of hell
should not prevail against the church. But what does he mean by the gates of hell?
They are the gates of Hades or of death and the realm of the dead. They represent the place from which the demons of hell emerge to attack the people of God. They opened to send a host of demons to attack Christ on Calvary, but he triumphed over them, and over death, and led captivity captive (Ephesians 4.8). Those formidable gates represent the continuing war against Christ’s peo- ple in every age. There is constant persecution of a physical kind in different parts of
the world. Also, there is the form of persecution that comes through false religion polluting and obscuring the true, rejecting the need for a Saviour to extend forgiveness and conver- sion. Today, there is also a twisted form of evangelicalism telling people they can have God and the world at the same time. There are numerous forms of false religion manufactured by Satan to confuse and maim and bring down if possible the churches of Jesus Christ. Then there is atheism, rank un-
belief, of which we see so much in our day. For several generations the theory of evolution and other argu- ments of atheism have been drilled into the masses by educators and the media, resulting in a brainwashed, materialistic society with barely any remaining instinct for God. On an entirely different flank, the devil marshals materialism and af- fluence to capture the appetites and desires of Christian people to distract them from concern for souls and the work of the Gospel. The shrinking of the church is his aim, and its dilution as a dedicated force, leading to its extinction. Here we are in an age when
many churches are very small, and materialism and atheism seem to be entirely triumphant. Is it still true that the gates of hell have not
Triumphs of the Church in an Atheistic Age page 25
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