There's no reason to assume the apostasy is worldwide. We shouldn't assume it to be global or even in America. I can make the claim that it would be in the Middle-East because I believe in an Assyrian anti-christ with a limited empire of ten Mid-Eastern countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_al-Mahdi
The Assyrian anti-christ was predicted by Nostradamus. There is some confusion as to whether the French prediction means Assyria, Syria or simply Arabia. All of Nostradamus' stuff is equally confusing......until after the event.
The messiah that is
predicted and worked for by shiite Muslims is al-Mahdi or the 12th Imam. It is believed that his point of origin will be Quraish/Mecca, Saudi Arabia. Muslims that work and pray for his coming are called twelvers.
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Statistics indicate that there has been a steady decline in church attendance everywhere, meaning world wide. I thought about inserting a graph or list of figures, but there is a lot of controversy and not a little confusion regarding poll results.
For example, Gallup Polls state that regular church attendance in America as of 2010 stands at 43% of professing Christians. Unfortunately, people tend to exaggerate their answers in everything from sex to salvation and actual head counts put attendance closer to 18%. Many pastors agree with the lower figure. The next question is whether these figures represent ALL Christians or is separated between Catholics and Protestants. If separated for Catholics in America only, the per centage is much lower. In France, Catholics are the largest group of Christians. Their official attendance poll (not head count) hovers around twenty percent. However you may examine the numbers, attendance of all types of Christians in all countries has dropped considerably in the past twenty years. Projections for the next twenty to thirty years show attendance to drop by half current levels.
The pope recently mentioned the alarming drop in church attendance in Europe. Protestant Bible colleges and missionary schools now list Europe as a possible mission field because of the drop in numbers there. I know this because my son has been exposed to the numbers while attending his school. I know this because our family has hosted foreign exchange students from the Phillipines, Germany, Spain and France. The stories they tell us are all the same. Everywhere.
Church attendance and mission work in South America has dropped below that of Europe. I've been there and I've talked to missionaries that have come out of the area. People there are returning to the old religion and the old ways. S.A. religion was an influence on the people who became the Philistines/Baal worshippers in the Bible. It's a long story,but the influence can be traced
and it's on the rebound.
Central America remains open to mission work and those two week working visits (that are little more than spiritual slumming) that a lot of churchs like to sponsor. Stories I've heard from the Guatemalan highlands indicate that this pleasant situation may not last much longer.
It is not recommended that anyone visit the islands of the Caribbean which are politically unstable. Public officials in nations like Haiti make extra money from extracting bribes from health workers and Christians who try to do good. If a Christian aid worker is unable to pay the proper bribe, they are jailed. A bribe used to be around three hundred dollars a head when I visited the area years ago. I imagine its gone up since then.
In North Africa and the Middle East, Christians are under attack as Muslim ethnic cleansing begins in earnest. There is no voice raised on their behalf, anywhere. ANYWHERE. Apparently Christians have chosen to deny that their bretheren are suffering and dying for the faith there. Not even lip service is being given to it.
If this isn't the face of apostacy, then somebody please tell me what is.
In China the church has been underground for years. There are no accurate figures available. Stories I've heard from mission workers there indicate that Christianity no longer has the attraction it once enjoyed. The increase in work hours (not necessarily wealth) and lack of leisure time may have something to do with it. There is no government persecution that I know of, but then NOBODY would care anyway would they?
Central and Southern Africa is pretty much up for grabs. The entire region is politically unstable (due to Muslim religious influence and radical activity). Missionaries are no longer encouraged to go there. A few tiny areas remain open to mission work (Kenya & Nigeria), but they are dwindling.
Bottom Line is that Christendom is on the defensive everywhere. As I wrote before, if the current MASSIVE GLOBAL apostacy of the church isn't what the Biblical prophecy is indicating then I'd like to read WHAT IS. I read a lot of protestations, but no one is able to quote testimony, numbers, and statements by leaders that indicate otherwise.
Finally, the greatest evidence that the Great Apostacy is upon us is that Christians are so busy DENYING IT, choosing instead to make flippant jokes about real situations, real numbers, real statements from leaders who know what they're talking about and real suffering. Islam is on the rise worldwide and is predicted to exceed the number of all other religions COMBINED in just a few years. Muslims are making NO JOKES about their plans at all!
The Great Apostacy is here folks and we are neck deep in it.
The next event is the rise in interest in the Muslim twelfth imam al-Mahdi (see link above). Coincidence? I think not.