[Darris McNeely] Jesus said in Luke 8:18 [Luke 18:8]– He asked the question, essentially – “When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on the earth?”. It’s a very good question. There was a new poll that came out this week from the Pew Research foundation – Pew does a lot of research, studies, and polls especially in the area of religion – and they have concluded that in the last, about eight years, the beliefs, the faith in God and religion – the religious habits of Americans have dropped, not largely, but enough to be noticeable. And it is something that does go along with exactly what we have been monitoring on Beyond Today, the state of American faith and religion. But among the findings that this Pew Research study found that the share of Americans who say they are absolutely certain that God exists has dropped eight percentage points – from 71 to 63 just since the year 2007 – a very short period of time. And the percentage of adults who describe themselves as religiously affiliated has shrunk 6 points from that period in 2007, from 83 to 77 percent. And again, one final point, the share of the US adult population who consider religion very important to them, who pray daily and attend services in a church at least once a month have declined between 3 and 4 percentage points over the past eight years.

Those of us that watch these trends understand that during the last eight years, there has been a significant decline in the culture – the popular, moral, and even religious culture – of the United States. These stats bear that out. What that means in terms of politics, as this article goes on to show, probably Democrats will be favored over these stats as opposed to Republicans, but in the long run, it is a very uncomfortable statistic showing exactly where the direction of faith, belief, confidence in God, religion, organized religion, perhaps, is going in the United States and what that means for our country – a continual slide in that direction.

These are very serious times. It is a time, in a sense, for all of us to recognize that God is doing something very significantly in this world. But most importantly, He could be doing something important in your life. When you look at a statistical study like this, it can be rather boring looking at statistics. But the bottom line is that things have changed and they will continue to change. The question for you and for I: where is our faith? And will Christ – when He returns, will Christ – even when He looks today – find our faith growing rather than declining?

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