Do You Choose Glitz And Glitter Or The Sun And The Moon?

Did you know that here at Menai Anglican we have only about 60% of our members [not those in our data base but those who attend] in church each weekend? And 25% of our members only come at the most once every three weeks.

Some people reckon that we’re mad to aim at having 1100 regularly in church by the end of 2016 http://www.menaianglican.org/information/vision/, but if everyone turned up we would have just under 1000 in attendance!

I’m not saying that there aren’t good reasons from time to time for missing church, but the truth is, it’s often just too much effort or other things seem more attractive.

I make that point because I think the book of Revelation does.  John paints this picture of our culture as the “Great prostitute” [Revelation 17:3-5] and it looks very attractive, but it’s a shallow beauty. This woman is the “material woman”.  She is all glitz and glitter but no substance. In fact, she is full of filth and decay [17:4]. That is our world; our culture. [1 John 2:15-16].  In contrast remember John’s description of the church in chapter 12.  He describes her as a woman clothed with the sun and with the moon under her feet and who has a crown of 12 stars on her head. There is something of real substance!

The church is the heavenly woman, and as we’ll see in chapter 19, she is the bride of Jesus. John gives us these two pictures and encourages us to compare them, and there is no comparison! Why would we align ourselves with the culture and not God’s people? Why would we not make every effort to meet with those who comprise the bride of Christ?



Bruce Dingwall