December 15, 2012

This has been quite a year:

• In March our daughter, Jenifer, gave birth to our fourth grandchild;
• In May my wife, Dollie, retired after 35 years in public education – and on her last day of work her mother passed away;
• The following month we went to California to celebrate my mother’s 102nd birthday;
• In July we were invited to Cambridge, England for a week-long seminar sponsored by Christian Heritage, an evangelistic and discipleship ministry that operates out of the historic Round Church in Cambridge;
• Three weeks after we returned home, my mother passed away, and a week later we gathered for a memorial service with our extended family in our family’s hometown of Springfield, Missouri; and
• In early October our youngest child, Andrew, announced his engagement.

Meanwhile, this has been a tense and turbulent year in the life of our nation. As you know, in June the U.S. Supreme Court struck a blow against personal liberty when it voted 5-4 in favor of the constitutionality of Obamacare – undoubtedly one of the most indefensible and foolish decisions the Court has ever rendered.

Then in November Obama, perhaps the most incompetent and corrupt president in U.S. history, was reelected in what was the most crucial presidential election since the Civil War. For Christians, this should be particularly alarming. As the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops warned earlier this year, the Obama administration poses a threat to religious liberty that is absolutely unprecedented in American history. But ironically, he was reelected not only because 90% of the media actively supported him and his political base turned out en masse on election day, but also because thousands of evangelical pastors and other Christian “leaders” – either out of ignorance, timidity or apathy – failed to educate their congregants regarding the moral and spiritual issues at stake in this election. As a result, Obama won surprisingly easily as millions of evangelical Christians didn’t even show up to vote.

In the midst of all of this, we have had a very full and productive year of ministry for which I am most grateful. As you’ll notice below, “Areopagus Seminars and Forums – 2012,” we sponsored five semester-length seminars during the year (three history and two apologetics courses) and eight forums, along with a variety of other lectures and workshops. In addition, I wrote or revised five booklets that we’ve now published at Amazon.com including one that has generated considerable media attention: “The Gospel According To Barack: Where Did Barack Obama Get His Ideas About Christianity?”

We live in critical times. Politically, economically, socially and morally, our culture is rotting and collapsing all around us. Now I don’t claim to have the gift of predictive prophecy, but here are ten predictions for 2013 for which I am quite confident:

Ours is a culture under siege by militant secularists who won’t be satisfied until the last vestiges of traditional Christianity are banned from public life. To use the analogy of “barbarians at the gates,” for decades these people have been ransacking the city, besieging one citadel after another, and wreaking social havoc in the process. For a civilization as immense and complex as America, the process takes a while. There are countless skirmishes and continuous house-to-house street fighting, and sometimes the barbarians are beaten back – at least temporarily. But as the last election decisively demonstrated, large portions of the city and its cultural institutions have already fallen, and the situation looks exceedingly grim.

Yet many Christians, including many pastors and church leaders, remain uninformed and unengaged (and seemingly uninterested) in the great moral battles of our day. For many, their understanding of Christian discipleship is unduly narrow. While they rightly emphasize the cultivation of a disciplined devotional life, personal morality, and church involvement, they overlook our calling to be a source of light and truth in the midst of an ever-darkening society that calls evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20). As Martin Luther reminded the ultra-cautious Erasmus in the crucial early years of the Protestant Reformation, “Though we be active in the battle, if we are not fighting where the battle is the hottest, we are traitors to the cause.”

In the course of thinking and praying about the direction of our ministry over the past month, a theme has continually come to mind from Psalm 11:3: “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” Our culture is in crisis and its foundations are being destroyed because, for too long, too many Christians have been uninformed and unengaged when it comes to the great challenges and conflicts of our time. As a result, we are losing our Christian-influenced heritage in this nation by default. Never before has the crisis been so severe, and never before has it been more imperative that Christians be prepared to respond to the great issues confronting us today. We have a limited amount of time, energy and resources in this life, and we have a spiritual and a moral responsibility to use our time, our energy and our resources most efficaciously to advance the cause of Christ.

I appreciate very much your involvement in the ministry of the Areopagus, and I hope you’ll continue to support this work with your prayers, your active participation, and financially. To continue our work, we need the ongoing support of our Areopagus Associates – those who value what we do, have benefited from our ministry, and are led to help support us financially. With your ongoing involvement and assistance, we can continue to expand our outreach and fulfill our mission of educating and equipping Christians to be beacons of light and truth at this time and in this nation in which God has chosen to place us.

Continued blessings, grace and peace – especially during this Advent season.

Jefrey Breshears
President, The Areopagus

P.S. The Areopagus is close to reaching our budget for 2012, but presently about $4,000 short. If you can help us eliminate this deficit, please know that your financial contributions are much valued and appreciated. Contributions can be made through PayPal on-line at www.TheAreopagus.org, or you can mail your contribution to…