From the ill-fated Tower of Babel until our present-day, men have repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempted to create their own Heaven on earth, as well as their own way from earth to Heaven. In other words, mankind has failed time and again to forge a one world government and a one world religion. Still, despite our many failed attempts and the fact that each has forged something more similar to hell on earth than to heaven on earth, human hubris keeps us convinced of our capability to independently create our own utopia. Fallen man appears to be perpetually deluded into believing himself more than able to produce a paradisiacal planet apart from the divine Potentate (1 Timothy 6:15).

Someone once quipped: “The doctrine of original sin is the only philosophy empirically validated by thirty-five centuries of recorded human history.” Yet, in spite of such empirical validation, our world today shuts its eyes to thirty-five centuries of indisputable evidence and marches on to the precipice of its rebellion against God, believing all the while that it is but one step away from some manmade Shangri-La.

To prove to oneself the depths of spiritual deception in our present-day world one need only consider the lunacy of multiculturalism. It’s inanity is easily gleaned from the fact that it adjudges cannibalism as nothing more than a mere matter of taste. The very diversity championed by today’s multiculturalists as the mortar that will bring and hold us together is actually the built-in dividers that the Bible says were divinely inserted into the human race at the Tower of Babel to render all future attempts at globalism null and void.

It would be bad enough if multiculturalism alone was blowing smoke in the eyes of our fallen world, but when you add the smoke and mirrors of ecumenism, not to mention its recent inroads into today’s evangelical church, today’s spiritual fog is getting so thick that it’s hard to see the truth right in front of your eyes. Take for example an upcoming interfaith initiative being sponsored by the Interfaith Alliance and Human Rights First.

This initiative, called “Faith Shared: Uniting in Prayer and Understanding,” calls upon churches to invite Muslim Imams to read the Koran in their pulpits on Sunday, June 26. The initiative is designed to show Christianity’s supposed respect for Islam in the wake of recent Koran burnings. So far more than fifty churches have signed up to participate in the event, including the Washington National Cathedral.

Although the Bible clearly teaches us to respect all men, regardless of their religion, it does not teach us to respect other religions, all of which are false and imperiling to men’s immortal souls. Unlike the Apostle Paul, who anathematized all teachers of false religions (Galatians 1:8-9), today’s churches invite them into their pulpits to read from their spurious “sacred” texts the heretical doctrines upon which their false religions are based.

Now, before we chalk up this contemporary departure from the faith once and for all delivered to the saints as something solely found in the moderate sector of modern-day Christendom, let’s consider some things like the recent espousing of universalism in Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every person Who Ever Lived, and Richard Land’s recent avowed obligatory departure from the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, a group committed to assisting Muslims in filing suit to allow for the building of more mosques in America.

Land, who serves as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, has insisted that his resignation from the group had nothing to do with a change in personal convictions. Instead, it was merely necessitated by his obligation to properly represent Southern Baptists, some of whom felt that a denominational leader’s involvement in lawsuits designed to multiply the number of mosques in America was “a bridge too far.” I must confess that I’m one of those Southern Baptists!

For the life of me, I can’t imagine the Apostle Paul serving on the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques, participating in “Faith Shared: Uniting in Prayer and Understanding,” or failing to anathematize Rob Bell over his new book. Oh, I know that we’re not suppose to be this confrontational when it comes to matters of faith today. We’re all suppose to play nice and gently persuade others, as though it is the power of our persuasion rather than the power of God that turns men from their sin and to the truth about Christ.

It appears to be people’s feelings, not their souls, that is first and foremost on our minds today. What matters most is not that their souls are saved, but that their feelings don’t get hurt. Yet, how we preach “the offense of the cross” without anyone being offended or avoid offending our politically correct world while proclaiming to it the one “name under heaven…whereby [it] must be saved” is beyond me (Galatians 5:11; Matthew 24:9-10; Acts 4:12).

Jesus Himself said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.” (Matthew 10:34-36).

The sword that Christ brought is the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:17). It is “quick and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12). It is also that by which Christ shall judge the world and by which a Christ-rejecting world will be condemned (John 18:31; Revelation 19:11-21).

Still, we are told today to blunt the sharp edges of the two-edged sword and to sensitively prod a world at enmity with God toward Christ with the slightest, imperceptible pricks. Of course, few people are cut to the heart anymore by the convicting power of the Holy Spirit, but at least we’re trying to hold hands with a fallen world that pierced the hands of Christ on the cross of Calvary almost 2,000 years ago. In addition, we’re aiding and abetting mankind in its final attempt to erect a Tower of Babel—a one world government and one world religion. Never mind that the Book of Revelation commands us not to do so (Revelation 18:1-5), we’ve convinced ourselves that we know better than God and that the best way to win this world is by playing nice and giving our nod of approval to its last-ditch effort at a manmade utopia.

In the face of all of this, we’ve just received another demoralizing report on the sorry state of affairs in Southern Baptist life today. Granted, we’ll attempt to whitewash it as best as we can, but the undeniable facts are these: church membership has declined for the fourth straight year and our baptisms have hit a sixty year low. At the same time, however, militant Islam continues to be the fastest growing religion in the world, as well as the fastest growing religion in the United States of America. All in all, we continue to lose ground while spiritual deception sweeps our planet. I can’t help but wonder how all of our church growth gurus are going to explain these continuing trends, especially in light of our spiritual sensitivity training and our improved marketing technics.

Do you suppose the problem could be our refusal to unsheathe our sharp two-edged sword? Should I dare to suggest that the problem may be our soft-soap peddling of the Gospel to a politically correct world? Rather than speaking with authority the absolute truth of God’s Word, as our Lord did (Matthew 7:28-29), we sheepishly present the Gospel as our personal opinion so as to avoid offending anyone. Far from unashamedly acclaiming it, we apologetically suggest it, as though one’s spurning of it is devoid of serious consequence.

What do you think would happen if we unsheathed our sharp two-edged sword and started mightily wielding it in the world today? What if we became unapologetic about our faith and started boldly proclaiming it without fear of raising the ire of today’s politically correct masses. Instead of giving a wink and a nod to our fallen world’s futile last-ditch effort to create its own heaven on earth, what if we opposed this historically verified foolishness and fearlessly pointed the world to Christ, its one and only hope of Heaven?

I say it’s time we brandished the steel of the Scripture. What do you say? What do we have to lose? As far as I can tell, only the immortal souls of men, which are actually placed more in peril by our sheathing of the sword of the Spirit than by our unsheathing of it. As the Bible teaches, it is only by our “preaching” of the “incorruptible” seed of the “Word of God” that men come to “believe” and are “born again” (1 Corinthians 1:21; 1 Peter 1:23). One thing for sure, men won’t be “saved” if we keep trying to protect ourselves from persecution in this politically correct world by continuing to dull the sharp edges of God’s two-edged sword.