Shalom All:

This is a lengthy article but worth the read:
Spirited away: why the end is nigh for religion
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-1342587,00.html

I've pulled clips from the article that confirm what I see.  ***Indicates what
I want to emphsis***.

I and family left the "church" a decade ago to find the Only Son of GOD,
Yeshua.  He is in Sabbath and the feasts of The LORD.  Even in this we have
had to steer clear of those who would teach us going beyond Yeshua!  It is
Yeshua who is/did the Blood Covenant that redeems us back to YHVH who we can
now call Father.

I've been posting our family website and encourage you all to "taste" Yeshua
in the way that we have.  He is real!  He is good!  He really is our Beloved!
My husband Andy and I  NOW  really know who Yeshua is and how/why He is our
Beloved Kinsman Redeemer WITHOUT the syncratism of the Greco-Roman mind set
OR the bondage of men!  Our children will not have say to my husband and me
that their faith is empty.  They too really know Yeshua!  We have Shalom!

We are already in the end of the Age.  Really know Yeshua!!  But don't ask
Ruach HaKodesh to show you TRUTH if you are not willing to follow it because
your last state will be worse than your first!

Here are the clips from the article.
---clips---
Christianity will be eclipsed by spirituality in 30 years, startling new
research predicts.

Study after study appears to prove that people are increasingly losing faith
in the Church and the Bible and turning instead to mysticism in guises
ranging from astrology to reiki and holistic healing.

So what does meditation have that conventional worship does not? Neutrality,
suggests Elizabeth Forder, who runs the centre. "We are not affiliated to any
religion and there is no belief system imposed on anybody here," she says.
"**I was brought up a Christian, but it held no real meaning for me***. I
would class myself as a universalist, believing that all religions offer the
same end. At its simplest, meditation is giving the body and mind a very deep
level of rest, freeing us to be ourselves."

That is part of the problem, suggests the Rev Brian Maiden, of Parr Street
Evangelical Church in Kendal. He believes that the liberalism of Christianity
has turned people off it. "***The people of Britain have been inoculated with
a dead, mild form of Christianity, which has given them resistance to the
real thing.  It has been diluted with human philosophy***.

Take Julie Wise, 44 and a mother of two, who was raised on a Lancashire farm
in the Church of England tradition. Three decades of religion failed to touch
her, she says, and it was only in her thirties, when she went to an
exhibition in Manchester and saw a man performing Infinite T'ai Chi, that she
felt truly spiritually touched.

You might expect those visiting her (Juile Wise) to have been raised in
broadly godless households, but this is not the case. "**About 50 per cent of
the people I see were brought up quite religiously, so the seed of
spirituality was there but the Church wasn't fulfil-ling their spiritual
need***," she says. "People are so much better educated now. They are less
inclined just to accept what they are told; they need to know it for
themselves."

This, certainly, has been the spiritual journey of Martin Rayner, a
kitchenware businessman from Windermere, Cumbria. Martin stopped attending a
Christian church when he was 20, disillusioned by the break-up of his
parents' marriage. Years later his own marriage broke down. He met a new
partner and began meditation. He also attends yoga and t'ai chi classes.
Eventually, Rayner's "New Age" spirituality led him back to his faith, and to
the Church, which he attends regularly. ***"My biggest criticism of
Christianity at the moment is that it is very verbose," he says. "You don't
get a chance to be your silent self."***

If disaffected churchgoers are seeking neutrality, they are also in flight
from judgment. "I don't want to be preached at any more", "I'm sick of being
made to feel guilty" or "I don't need to be told how to live my life," people
will say when asked why they stopped attending church. And when they speak of
their spiritual malaise, they use the language of the therapist's couch. One
Kendal woman in her forties summarised her spiritual shift thus: "A one-hour
service on a Sunday? It's not really enough time to address your self-esteem
issues, is it? I didn't find any help in the churches. I found it in a
12-step programme. That was the start of my personal journey."
----end clips----

Dianne
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