Doom or Hope

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TITLE: 2,000: Doom or Hope?

TEXT: Ezekiel 37:11-14

PROPOSITION: God will still be in charge in 2,000.

QUESTION:

KEY WORD:

SCRIPTURE READING:

INTRODUCTION:

We are 6 months away from 2,000.
Many are predicting doom, disaster, end of the world.
TEOTWAWKI (TEO T WAK E) The end of the world as we know it!
10 Years ago George Barna Research – What society will be like in 2,000
Here are some of their findings (see page 2)

Five Widely Accepted "facts of life" taken for "truth" by many today.

Absolute truth does not exist.

Nothing is right or wrong – all is GRAY.

Something may be wrong for you and right for me.

You and I can do opposite things – and both be right.

Unless my behavior hurts or destroys someone else,
I should not be condemned for anything.

Every person has the right to decide what is right for themselves.

Condemn no one for making a personal decision.

As long as 2 consent – the act is right.

Condemning such behavior is wrong.

A person is to be judged only on the basis of performance.

Do your job well – personal life does not matter.

Lifestyle has nothing to do with job performance.

Private life is no else's business.

The concept of repentance is an invalid concept.

Repentance = redirection of life, change of life.

Today, you are what you are – don't need to apologize, change.

The greatest single wrong is to refuse to protect a friend.

Friends accept without judging you.

I must hide their secrets, not betray their actions.

I must not judge their decisions.

Here some "predictions" of mine, right now.

35% of you think I have lost my mind. Nobody believes this.
35% of you think I am on target because this is what you believe.
30% know that some believe these things, choose to ignore them.

Ezekiel was the prophet to the captives in Babylon.

In the middle of doom, grief, give up, dispair – HOPE!

Ezekiel 37:11-14

Everywhere you look are BONES, not corpses, bones.

Teens – drugs, alcohol, STD, sex, violence

Cardboard marriages – children and adults hurt by failed marriages

Adults – bones of people who chased pleasure

Christians – who separated faith from their every day life.

Will these bones live again?

The can if they allow me to give them life.

I will restore life. You must know life begins and ends with God.

In the late 1980s, a national research institute gathered information on Americans and American evangelical Christian groups (religious people who actively try to convert people to Jesus Christ). Based on that research, a book was published that predicted what would occur in our society by the year 2000. Consider some of the predicted trends.

We would be more self-centered, materialistic, and driven to play (p. 25).
We would be too selfish to make hard commitments and sacrifices to preserve relationships (p. 25).
Loyalty to institutions would go into serious decline. We would not presume any institution was credible. Every institution would have to reprove itself constantly (p. 25).
Commitment would be out because commitment was not regarded to be in our personal best interest (p. 33, emphasis mine).
We would be a deeply skeptical people (p. 36).
Instead of accepting limitations on our lifestyles, we would rewrite the rules (p. 37).
A decline in interaction among people would make it more difficult to make friends (p. 75).
The religious attentiveness of adults would decline (p. 112).
The momentum would be against integrating spiritual belief with daily behavior (p. 111).
While 4 in 5 Americans described themselves as Christians, only 1 in 5 would say that being a Christian means having a personal relationship with Christ (p. 113).
The primary goal of life is to be happy (p. 156), but most Americans doubt that they will find enduring happiness (p. 158).

The research was gathered by the Barna Research Group and published in a book with the title, Frog in the Kettle: What Christians Need to Know About Life in the Year 2000. The book was published in 1990. As we stand about 10 months from the year 2000, do any of those things characterize our society?