A Trend Away - Unpopular Realities
It seems as if the following realities (truths) of God have become unpopular even avoided altogether or even changed among many younger evangelicals. I will list a few realities I do not hear about much in these circles and will not mention what I think the reasons for this are in this post. Where are these on your grid? If not, why not? Jesus spoke of and conducted these throughout his ministry.
Reality 1: Hell (really Heaven also)
Reality 2: Sin (Sinful Living?) Worldliness (Call to Repentance)
Reality 3: Supernatural / Miracles
Reality 4: Holiness (related to Reality 2) Consecration
Reality 5: Judgment (the Judgment Seat of Christ) Read the parables of Jesus?
Reality 6: Gifts, specifically prophecy etc...
Reality 7: End Times, particularly the return of Christ.
Comments
Reality 7: End Times, particularly the return of Christ.
For a number of years our pastor was Tim LaHaye who collaborated with Jerry Jenkins on the Left Behind series. Tim was the Bible teacher and Jerry the fiction writer.
The reason LaHaye decided to go the fiction route was because modern day Christians are not into picking up a book on Theology. He also was concerned that the seminaries were not teaching about the Rapture and so young pastors were not equiped to teach this part of prophesy, particularly the book of Revelation. So when it doesn't get taught, the average Christian doesn't think it is important.
I have been raked over the coals for defending the Rapture. not by un-believers, but by other Christians who call it un-Biblical and "cultish."
Signs/Wonders/Prophecy were never part of most Churches (Methodist, Lutherans, etc), it was unique to Pentecostals. Even today they are the only ones that have speaking in tongues as a normal part of their service.
I can tell that you're not a universalist or a cessationist...good for you. I have tended toward both of these fallacies at different points in my walk. There is a freedom in the truth that cannot be explained...it has to be experienced. You can't tell a cessationist about the freedom of exercising the gift of prophecy or tongues, for example, it just sound like crazy-talk until you've experience it.
It's important in any discussion of cessationism to ask: When did these gifts supposedly become obsolete? Since they were obviously at work in the first century and examples of their normal continuation can be found as late as the fifth century. In fact, to this day, the Catholic dogma is that Holy Communion is a recurring miracle and documented supernatural signs continue to be a prerequisite for sainthood.
It is more technically correct to say that signs/wonders/prophecy were never a part of most modern churches (that is to say, after the 14th century). It is not coincidental that this happened during the Age of Reason, when everything mystical and supernatural was being sacrificed on the altar of Man's Intellect. It's very possible that elements of the Reformation, in trying to weed out corrupt practices like the sale of Indulgence (heaven-tickets for the dead), threw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater and it took 500 years to correct the error.