"Why are so many Churches DYING?"

[Mark H. Stevens, Th.D]

I know some will read this and think I am over reacting or overzealous, but remember this one thing…Satan wants you to remain ineffective! If your church is stagnant, prayer meetings dead, and the people of God immature that’s where the devil wants you to stay! Rise up and decide today to address the question, “Why is my Church dying?” I think our churches have become “clubs”, If you don’t wear the right clothes and know the right people, you can’t ever advance in the “Kingdom of Church”! It is a shame that many of churches in the inner city are filled with insensitive people that look down on people that don’t dress like YOU DO! The fashion show MUST stop! Ministry means servant-hood and caring! If you can’t hug a homeless person because you are wearing Gucci or Armani, then you need to go to the altar for some serious prayer!

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

You don't even know that you are rejecting the commandments. I am sorry, and hope that you learn to do the Sabbath. Sunday is not a day to gather for the Lord. Period. I hope it works out.

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

Yes I have and I continue to. It was not easy at first, but you work at it, and eventually it is second nature. What is wrong with not lying? What's wrong with not killing? What's wrong with not stealing? What's wrong with keeping the Sabbath Day holy, having a church gathering, and not doing work on that day? What's wrong with not having graven images? What is wrong with not coveting you neighbor's belongings? What is wrong with not committing adultery? What is wrong with honoring your mother and your father? What is wrong with having not other god's before the true and living God? What is wrong with these commandments? They are not hard once you practice keeping them.

[Mark H. Stevens, Th.D]

He forgot self-righteousness

[Apostle T Spivey]

The reason our churches are dying because we no longer have prayer, or fasting. WE ALSO WHEN WE FAST WE DO AS WE PLEASE. Isaiah 58 CLEARLY states that we are not to be busy bodies when we are fasting Read it. Yet we feel that we can shoe shop (ladies) while we fast and guy's we think we can go wash and work on your cars(caddy's benz or what ever. We think that gators are symbols of the annointing and that Donna vinci and Rose bud(hats) represent a great prayer life. The mother board has become the diva board as that want to look like the young people in th echurch, WE NEED tO gET bACK TO jESUS.
APOSTLE SPIVEY

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

People have no knowledge, and give heed to seducing spirits, and false prophets, preachers and ministers. That is why all churches are dying.

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

I did not forget anything, you are the ones trying to be self righteous. I follow what God says is righteousness, and not what my preacher says.

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

You are calling me a liar? check this out.

1John 2:4-5 He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.

[newview]

"...You don't even know that you are rejecting the commandments. I am sorry, and hope that you learn to do the Sabbath. Sunday is not a day to gather for the Lord. Period. I hope it works out...

See there is no law and you are upset that there is no law against the saints gathering on Sunday.
God knows how to uphold His word and He does not need us to add laws or take them away to assist in governing His flock.

You know what this reminds me of?
When Israel was returning with the Ark of the Covenant which they had recovered from an enemy.
Now remember the only people to touch the Ark were to be the high priests - no one else. That was God’s instructions and God’s pattern. It was not to be touch - so it had to be transported in a very precise way. But here comes this well intentioned man of Israel. As they were carrying it - it seemed to be about to tip and fall so to prevent it from falling Uzzah ran over to keep it up right. What happened?

I Chron 13:
7 They moved the ark of God from Abinadab's house on a new cart, with Uzzah and Ahio guiding it.
8 David and all the Israelites were celebrating with all their might before God, with songs and with harps, lyres, tambourines, cymbals and trumpets.
9 When they came to the threshing floor of Kidon, Uzzah reached out his hand to steady the ark, because the oxen stumbled.
10 The LORD's anger burned against Uzzah, and he struck him down because he had put his hand on the ark. So he died there before God.

Uzzah had good intentions and a sincere heart - intending to steady the Ark of the Covenant but God did not need his help. God knows how to keep what He has set in place.
If you think a person going to church on Sunday will stop anything set in place by Him - you worry too much.
He does not need us
adding to His word
or twisting His word
or making null and void His word
or reducing the words of His prophets and apostles to ignorant unlearned musing of mere men
or replacing His word with carnal historical commentary
or denying that the bible is God inspired ---> to get His program across.

It does not make the Sabbath null and void just because His people worship Him on Sunday.
But fear not. God loves to be worshipped every day- even Sunday.

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

He does not like to be worshipped on sunday, it is a smoke in his nose. You have no understanding. Why would you gather on a day that a man set in order. You are worshipping another God when you gather on sunday.

You are worshiping the sun god.

[newview]

"He does not like to be worshipped on sunday, it is a smoke in his nose..."

Give me scripture that He does not like being worshipped on Sunday.
You have no scripture.
Why do you feel it is necessary to help Him?

[newview]

"He does not like to be worshipped on sunday, it is a smoke in his nose..."

Give me scripture that He does not like being worshipped on Sunday.
You have no scripture.
Why do you feel it is necessary to help Him?

[Hezekiah Ben Israel]

Isaiah 65:1-5 I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name. I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts; A people that provoketh me to anger continually to my face; that sacrificeth in gardens, and burneth incense upon altars of brick; Which remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments, which eat swine's flesh, and broth of abominable things is in their vessels; Which say, Stand by thyself, come not near to me; for I am holier than thou. These are a smoke in my nose, a fire that burneth all the day.

Sacred Days in Christianity

Source: Walter Woodburn Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, p. 60. Copyright 1946 by University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Used by permission.

Remains of the struggle are found in two institutions adopted from its rival by Christianity in the fourth century, the two Mithraic sacred days, December twenty-fifth, dies natalis solis [birthday of the sun], as the birthday of Jesus, and Sunday, "the venerable day of the Sun," as Constantine called it in his edict of 321.

Pagan Sun’s Day

Source: Walter Woodburn Hyde, Paganism to Christianity in the Roman Empire, pp. 257, 258, 260. Copyright 1946 by University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Used by permission.

[p. 257] Modern Christians who talk of keeping Sunday as a "holy" day, as in the still extant "Blue Laws" of colonial America, should know that as a "holy" day of rest and cessation from labor and amusements Sunday was unknown to Jesus… It formed no tenet of the primitive Church and became "sacred" only in course of time. Outside the Church and became "sacred" only in course of time. Outside the Church its observance was legalized for the Roman Empire through a series of decrees starting with the famous one of Constantine in 321, an edict due to his political and social policies rather than, as Eusebius thought, to religious ones. For he took the day not because of the Christian custom of meeting then to commemorate the Resurrection but from "the venerable day of the Sun" (Mithra), and especially in order to give to Roman slaves respite from labor which their Semitic brothers had enjoyed for centuries. So much confusion in identifying Sunday and the Sabbath has been inherited by Britain and America through Puritan influence that it seems well to recapitulate the well-known facts…

As the Jewish element in the Church waned the Christians came to feel the need of a fixed day for [p. 258] meetings to replace the Sabbath. Then Sunday, like other pagan festivals such as Christmas, came gradually into being, first as a fit day for worship and later one for rest…

[p. 260] Parallel to the Church movement … but independent of it another had been developing in the State which after an obscure past culminated in Constantine’s decree of 321 when the observance of the "day of the Sun" was imposed on the Empire, a decree marking an epoch in the history of Sunday as the beginning of both civil and later of ecclesiastical legislation. Now dies Solis, sacred in various solar cults and notably in Mithraism, was to play a role as the Christian Sunday as Christmas did a little later.

Exodus 20:3-5 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;

You are worshipping another God when you gather on Sunday.