DAILY CATHOLIC WEDNESDAY August 5, 1998 vol. 9, no. 152
KEY TO LIVING GOD'S WILLColumn by Father John H. Hampsch, C.M.F.
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INTRODUCTION |
"Faith: Key to the Heart of God"Fifty-First Installment: Survival of the Spiritually fittest part oneWhen the end time persecution comes, and it is perhaps not too far away, there is going to be a flaking off of the charismatic renewal. Only those who have deep faith will survive what'' coming. There will be real hardship mass confusion. Clergy and hierarchy may be contradicting one another; conflicting doctrines will be presented contrary to official and biblical teaching; so that many will flounder in confusion, wondering what to do, what to believe. Survival will be to the spiritually fittest - those deeply rooted in faith. Prayer meetings of hundreds will be perhaps decimated to a handful of five or six. These will barely survive, with the odds stacked against them. From these little pockets of truly faithful people, the New Jerusalem, the new church, will be built. The others will fall by the wayside.Those with weak faith will not survive. Jesus asked the rhetorical question, "When the Son of man comes again (the Second Coming of Christ), will there be faith left on earth?" (Luke 18:8). We see people now who have some moderate degree of faith, who play around the lower levels of faith but who are not really cultivating their faith. They exercise faith merely to get their pains relieved. They don't cultivate faith for yielding to God's love, or faith for converting whole countries from communism, or faith to save starving millions. They cannot think of faith beyond its use to relieve an earache or a toothache; that's the tragic limit of their faith. When the pressure is really on, they will drift away. Only those will survive spiritually who have cultivated a close companionship with Jesus and absolute security in Him, who never question His will for them. Sadly, they will be few. Jesus is going to rebuild His body, His Church, with only the very best building materials available-the "remnant" few, as Isaiah calls them. When you see a handful of charismatics in every city going around raising the dead and walking through hospitals emptying them of patients by instant healing, you will witness a spread of Christianity as never before. From the faith of these faithful few will spring forth faith throngs of other faithful ones. And God's Church will flourish as never before! Take China with a fourth of the world's population, most of whom have never even heard the name of Christ or seen a Bible. Far less than one percent of the people is Christian. Walk into a country like that and try to evangelize it without the Holy Spirit's power, without faith-spawned miracles and you'll find yourself butting your head against the Great Wall of China. But go in there and start curing incurable diseases by the thousands and other faith-released miracles, and watch those Chinese come flocking to Christ. In other countries, you would see countless Muslims and Jews turn to Christ. That is going to be the day, but it is going to start with a very few faithful Christians. In the next installment, part two of "Survival of the Spiritually Fittest.
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KEYS TO LIVING GOD'S WILL DAILY CATHOLIC |