I do not worry about the future of the Church, for it is glorious. I worry more about my generation, for they appear to be heading to perdition: it appears that (as we move into a post modern form of Victorianism where one’s power correlates with the ability to faint in outrage over smaller and smaller things) that the bigger issue is that we will be called trolls, convicted of hate speech, lose our ability to host things, have complaints to be deleted from Google, and removed from this marketplace into that grey part of the net where no index exists, akin to the map where the cartographers used to say Dragons lived.

For if we are faithful, we will be deemed to be homophobic, against Islam (for destroying the pretensions of both the Cathedral and the Islamist are the first steps in evangelism). There is a reason I pay for this web site to be up, and do not use wordpress.

WordPress would be more convenient.

But I need to pray more for this generation: as the hippies go to meet our maker us punks have a problem. We had some recollection of the faith before divorce destroyed our families. And we rejected it, like our parents and our older brothers.

But to do that we miss out on the glory to come.

After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!” And all the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying, “Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.”

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

“Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple; and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

(Revelation 7:9-17 ESV)

I am not worried about the Church, for God runs it, God controls it, and even the gates of hell cannot destroy it. I do worry about our nations: for as we lose the faith, we become credulous, foolish and tyrannical. We lose our sense of charity and we become tribal. We forget that in that great crowd John saw there were people of all nations, all languages, all tribes.

And they were leading the worship. If you click on the next video, be aware that it is Orthodox, in Church Serbian, and very long… the music of the church has taken many forms, not all of them hillsong. And they will all be part of that cloud of witnesses, and mixed into the melody.