I keep hearing the word "credibility". And ask, credibility with whom? With the majority who look for acceptance with their peers and the broad secular culture, or with the few who stand firm on God's revelation, rejecting compromise and accommodation? The principal thrust of this issue is to challenge Christians to confront the culture and restore our nation to God's eternal values and purpose.

Along with theological liberals, evangelical leaders all too often follow the ever-changing and ever-declining culture. Unlike Luther, Wesley, Wilberforce and other reformers, Christian leaders are largely reluctant to stand against the secular tide, particularly when placed under pressure. As a consequence, we see the broader Church in constant retreat, increasingly influenced by the moral relativism of secular humanism, and adopting a largely social gospel.

However, what terrifies me more than anything else is the ease, and extent, to which many Church leaders and pastors are seduced by false teachers and fleshly messiahs. Pastors must exercise greater discernment. Who else can the flock turn too for truth and protection? Where are the pastoral discerners of this age?

This widespread lack of discernment is not only true of the Church, but of humanity itself. Indeed, Einstein once stated that two things are infinite; the universe and human stupidity. He well understood that in spite of the vast achievements of modem civilisation little had changed in terms of human nature. In this century alone, false religions and political messiahs have deceived untold millions. Almost overnight Germany was transformed by Hitler from a highly civilised society with Europe's foremost universities into a culture engaged in barbaric atrocities and mass genocide. The same Justice who largely composed the lofty human rights ideals of the German Constitution was later sentenced in the Nuremburg war trials for crimes against humanity.
In similar fashion, Marxist and Communist propaganda successfully seduced some of the world's foremost intellectuals and academics (theologians included), who seemed blind to the suffering and servitude produced by the atheistic workers utopias. Even after the collapse of the Berlin wall and the Soviet Union many of these intellectuals and western philosophers continued to defend communism.
The extent to which intellectuals can be deceived has been demonstrated by Dr Ray Hayman, professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon. Dr Hayman is the U.S. Defence Department advisor on "deception" and was responsible for exposing the spoon bending psychic Uri Geller. Says Hayman, "The more intelligent you are the more easily you are deceived". How susceptible are scientists? According to Dr Hayman scientists are "very susceptible" to deception. The "context" is almost everything, says Hayman. Many scientists accept Darwinism as a fact even though Darwin's theory of evolution has never been empirically proved.
As acknowledged by Dr Colin Patterson, Chief Palaeontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, "there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument". For such reasons the Nobel Prize committee does not regard evolutionary science as worthy of any real endorsement. To quote New Scientist (Dec. It, 1986), "Evolutionary biology does not fall within the Nobel committee's definition of prizeworthy science."
In spite of the dubious status of modem scientific theory, undiscerning Church leaders and academics have largely abandoned the creationist Biblical model and unnecessarily modified their theology and apologetics to conform to the evolutionary scientism of our time. In their scientific illiteracy they have abandoned the "Created" universe of Biblical revelation, and now champion the "Creative" evolutionary cosmology of Paul Davies, Hugh Ross, Polkinghom, Birch and others, which has more in common with philosophical naturalism and New Age pantheism than Biblical theism.
The current crisis in secular and theological thinking is best summed up by the apostle Paul, who said, "they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing to be wise they became fools".