1.0 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
The prosperity gospel sermons that primarily founded the church of Christ in this era have led to its apostate state. Sadly, modern Christians have failed to recognize that the church's current apostasy essentially amounts to a house that has abandoned its allegiance to the Lord. Mankind can literally survive on every word that comes from the mouth of Jehovah the God of covenant because He upholds His promises with such vigor. The church of Christ made the greatest error in history when she became preoccupied with maintaining her earthly livelihood and neglected to remember that righteousness is the most crucial foundation upon which her provision was well promised. Then there came the deception, as if in an answer to her prayer, one in the guise of the prosperity gospel from heaven, which she readily accepted without any careful afterthought.
For this reason, the church has essentially preached a false brand of Christianity that promotes living a life of spiritual recklessness and compromise with sin for the majority of her life. The excesses of worldly wealth and pleasures have clouded the church's vision of prosperity, marginalizing holiness in the process. This has essentially made the church too weak and faint spiritually to even embark on the treacherous path that Jesus outlined for her at Calvary on the Cross. Despite the church's early recognition of the bloodstained highway of holiness, her actions seem to indicate that she was not drawn into a bitter dispute with the wider highways of this sinful world.
The Lord Jesus clearly inflamed the church into an enduring dispute with this evil, dark world after His intense suffering on the Cross. The church raised a red flag about the church's flirtation with sin so that she wouldn't give the enemy the upper hand in her life because of His unwavering status on the Cross and the suffering of things existing as they did. Nothing positive has come from the church's worship, nor has God been exalted by her praise, because they have given in to the subtly demanding demands of this sinful world. In the absence of holiness, the evidence of christian walk is today worthless to break the stronghold of rebellion in the church and summon Godʼs might, because human capacity, strength and power have indeed predictably weakened in the face of such a humongous mountain of earthly darkness to surmount.
Unfortunately for todayʼs apostate pastors, while this scenario perfectly rolls out, faith, which is the pillar of christian walk in the church now reposes in God. This kind of weakening of faith is what has opened a huge door to deception and rampart falsehood into todayʼs house of the LORD. Only a righteously obedient walk in the highway of holiness can unravel for the church the true defining intent of holiness when the LORD said,“Above all things, I desire that you prosper” (Isaiah 35:8-9).
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The enemy is determined to exact revenge by making the church suffer the same humiliation as he did after losing his inheritance in paradise. Understanding that we cannot suppress the noise of our sinful nature on our own, the enemy has always exploited inherited frailty and used deceptive tactics to trap those who do not place their full trust in God. Specifically targeting the church, he has created new plans and avenues of attack.
At the time of our Lord Jesus' birth in a cozy Bethlehem manger, the adversary was aware that Someone had arrived with a divine mandate to challenge his rule over humanity and ultimately free the church. This caused the adversary to tremble much, at the angelʼs message attesting the authority of the new born King. Much as it was difficult to fathom the mystery of this great sacrifice of love, the glory and the peace and majesty and the joy of heavenly communion, were mightily manifest abound. That the Son of God should come to this earth as a man, certainly filled the adversary with fearful amazement and with an extreme sense of apprehension, to mention the least.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
This prophesied end-time renaissance is rapidly approaching. Significantly, righteousness and holiness are once again being restored throughout the world by an unmistakable Holy Ghost revival that is starting today. The endtime Holy Ghost revival's grace and youthful humility will ultimately disarm the prosperity priesthood's prejudices in their entirety, allowing the Holy Spirit to speak to people's hearts and their minds to become consciously open to the word of God. Although the earth has not yet completely experienced that blessed revival, the spiritual decay of today does represent a notable deviation from the usual course of events.
This is due to the fact that any church that primarily travels the road of holiness ought to have explicitly trusted the LORD's counsel when it came to matters of repentance. Fears of the Messiah's unannounced return are also starting to surface, even in the most pro-prosperity and money-preaching environment.
The church, in her most sublime and spiritual moments, is all too aware that there was never a life on Earth that was limited, and that this was not the original purpose for which Jesus was crucified and died in order to pay the horrifyingly high price of salvation. The prosperity gospel has chosen to tolerate worldliness and spiritual decay within the Christian fraternity rather than confront the sin that has infiltrated the church today due to its blatantly obvious innate spiritual deficiencies. As joyful as they may appear in the present, this type of apostate church cannot afford to overlook the sorrow and fear that their lack of preparedness will bring about when the Messiah returns.
1.5 Research Hypothesis
In order to pursue the objective of this study, the following generalized statements have been designed to guide and aids in obtaining the result for the experiment to be conducted. For this work, the null hypothesis will be represented with H0 while the alternative hypothesis will be represented with hypothesis H1.
Hypothesis One
- H0: There is no significant relationship between apostasy and church growth
- H1: There is significant relationship between apostasy and church growth
1.6 Significance of the Study
It is the faulting of the word of God in this dispensation, that has largely magnified apostasy today and the blatant practice of open lawlessness and shameless heedlessness in the church of Christ. As pronounced in the word, in his open expression of his intention to prosper mankind here on the earth, nevertheless was it Godʼs object that such prosperity focus the heart of the church entirely into the perishable decay realm.
By design though, Godʼs ultimate blueprint for manʼs creation very much implied that every blessing of prosperity would be able to cause him to be caught up with the Messiah in the glorious gathering at rapture. However, it is now more and more evident and to a greater extent that the conception of this novel plan of God still remains for the most part, misconstrued to the present church.
For this reason, the grievous spiritual misinterpretation that today presents the false gospel of prosperity, has by and large wiped-out the churchʼs authority and honour, to a state of near-irrelevance. With most of todayʼs believers in this degenerate condition, worship observance has now been seriously reduced to a mere formalism.
1.7 Scope of the Study
The scope of the research is focused on the apostasy and church growth.
1.8 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, there were some problems encountered which stood as limitations to the research work. Some of the limitations include:
- Time Constraint:
The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Financial Constraint:
Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection (internet).
1.9 Definition of Terms
Apostasy:
The abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief or principle.
Church Growth:
Church Growth is a movement within evangelical Christianity which aims to develop methods to grow churches based on business marketing strategies.
