In Nazi Germany, out of 65 million people, there were 45 million Protestant Christians. And out of those 45 million, only 150,000 of them stood up against Hitler. That’s something like three out of every thousand. The Church in American today is on the verge of being just as passive as the Church in Nazi Germany was. In this blog, I present a challenge to all of us as modern Christians to rise up and take a stand for Truth — not in the future when things get worse, but right now. Let’s not become silent at the very moment we need to speak up.

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I have a burden for the Church today and it’s not saying that we don’t have truth or we don’t have Jesus — it’s that we’ve lost an integrity of focus. There is a worldliness that has crept in and an acceptance of worldliness, to the point where what used to be obvious that it shouldn’t belong in the Church, is now not so obvious to us. If I was to put a word to it, I would call it passivity. When I look at the German Christians in World War Two, if I was going to describe what took place, I would say it was passivity, where they saw something that was wrong outside their front door. They saw the mishandling of Jews, and yet it was politically incorrect to speak. And so as a result, they chose to be a quiet bystander instead of engage and shine light in a darkness. I feel like we are susceptible to a similar pattern that overcame Nazi Germany.

In Nazi Germany out of 65 million people, there was 45 million Protestant Christians. And out of those 45 million, only 150,000 of them stood up against Hitler. I don’t remember what the number is, it’s something like three out of every thousand. That’s not allowed, okay? That isn’t the right direction for the Church. I feel a vulnerability to pulling that bystander role in the midst of a Holocaust. The Church of Jesus Christ in America has been given something amazing. The Church of Jesus Christ around the world, has been entrusted with the Word of God and this is when we’re supposed to live it. We have one shot at this thing and we need to live now — right now. Not in the future when things get worse, but now. This is when we rise up and we shine light. If the Church functions, as it ought to function, the world will be changed. If the Church goes silent, when it needs to speak, the world will be destroyed. We will repeat historical patterns and there will be terrible things that can happen if we do not rise up and speak and live and shine a light in the very hour we need to.

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