HANNIBAL – Pathway Editor Don Hinkle and Hannibal-LaGrange University (HLGU) President Anthony Allen opened the 2015 Worldview Conference at HLGU here, April 2, by urging Missouri Baptists to witness faithfully to an unbelieving society.
Reading from Jeremiah 23:16-17, Hinkle said that the secular media is much like the false prophets of old.
“The media takes a moral position that flies in the face of biblical teaching,” he said. “There is open hostility to Christian teaching and biblical truths.”
For this reason, he added, Christian journalism has never had such a great “opportunity to fill a niche and a void” by reporting the news from a biblical perspective. He also encouraged Missouri Baptists to express their own views by writing letters to the editors of newspapers and to “communicate truth on social media.”
“Live to influence unbelieving neighbors,” he said.
According to Allen, the cultural challenge to biblical truth, which Christians in America now face, is nothing new. After all, the apostle Paul once took the gospel to places that were “spiritually decadent,” and before that Jeremiah faced people who were “spiritually depraved.” Recent events reveal that 21st-century America is similarly depraved, he said.
“For decades we have seen culture decaying,” Allen said. “These are symptoms of a deeper malady. It is an issue of the heart.”
Reading from Proverbs 14:34, he added, “The nation that rejects the righteousness of God is a nation without hope or a future. It’s important to have not only national repentance, but personal repentance. Revival begins personally in our hearts.”