The Silent Rise Of Apostasy In Individuals

The word Apostasy in the dictionary means a total desertion of or departure from one’s religion, principles, party, cause,etc. In Christianity it means turning away from the Christian faith. Apostasy is high rebellion. Rebellion is considered equal in wickedness to witchcraft. This is confirmed in 1 Samuel  15:23 For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.

This sin of apostasy rarely occurs within a day. It takes time to develop. A person is slowly accustomed to small sins. He still continues to pray to God and even asks forgiveness for his sins. Next day he comes back to his small sins and commits more sins. He again feels guilty and asks for mercy from God. He feels a little more comfortable with his little sins. This turns into a slow and continous cycle of sinning and forgiveness and sinning again. At this point a person is still aware of his behavior and can still turn back to God completely. However his feeling about the true nature gets numbed out slowly in the course of time.

So as time passes he feels the need for sinful forms of entertainment. The raunchy music videos which the church warned about are his secret delight. He still listens to worship music at times. Watching movies full of cuss words becomes normal to him. Vulgar arts that he shied away from as a child seem legit to him. Yet in all this he feels innocent but suprisingly has a need to hide such behavior from christian friends, church and family.

His reading of the word of God gets affected. The purpose of reading the Bible is now reduced to a chore rather than a delight. The Bible is no longer read with the intent to imitate Christ. The number of pages he would read gradually reduce.
He skims over the Gospel instead of searching for Christ in it. This opens the way for deception by way of false teaching as he longer applies wisdom and discretion in matters of doctrine.

He attends prayer services at church. Though the fire for God is in his heart, it doesn’t shine that brightly. Because the aura of darkness is stealthily taking hold of his soul.

Then all of a sudden storms of life strike the individual. Such life storms may mean layoffs, terror attacks, loss of loved ones, extreme illness etc. This man then due to continued lack of faith in God and lack of awareness of the will of God then blames Christ for all that went wrong. He then renounces the Christian faith and plays into the hands of the devil. He turns into an apostate.

Some apostates never have such storms of life. However, they get swayed by false doctrines and philosophies, hedonism, evolution, etc. Some get an offer to make money by compromising on their faith, say a woman is tempted to use her beauty to seduce a client to secure a deal for her company. If she was grounded well in the faith she would have rejected this temptation. However since she was out of sync with Christ she went into the grave sin of seducing a man who is not her husband. She then getting more promotions by her vile company abandons the Christian faith as her church preacher keeps preaching about the wages of sin.

This is not limited to the average Christian. A man of God is a great preacher but has love of fame which no one knows but him and the Lord. God sends him warnings in ways he knows to be true but he just ignores them. Months later there’s speak of an impending schism in the church. He knows it all going wrong and can stop it. But wicked religious leaders in the same church who are master minding this schism promise the man of God a great place of honor if he gives into their agenda. He sides with them and the church breaks into two groups. He still preaches but is now considered an apostate by the innocent group. For he has given up the true faith for worldly gain but pretends to work for the Lord.

When it comes to apostasy don’t be suprised to see anyone in church fall into this sin. Men, women, children, preachers, ordained church ministers are not immune to this. Even devout people who once served the Lord have fallen into apostasy.

The Lord God in his mercy is aware that the punishment for apostasy is very strong. He still let’s the Holy Spirit gently speak to the individual who is in danger of turning apostate.
Jesus waits and knocks at the doors of one heart. If someone chooses to open it then Jesus will come in and dine with him. Happy are those leave the trail of apostasy and walk again with Christ. Amen.