Bibles & Baptisms - Some Good News To Give Us Hope Going Into 2025
By Michael Snyder/End of the American Dream December 27, 2024
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Even in the midst of all of the chaos and turmoil that we are witnessing in our society right now, God is on the move.
Large numbers of young people have been giving their lives to Jesus and getting baptized on college campuses all over the country, and Bible sales are way up in 2024. In fact, it is being reported that through the month of October Bible sales in the U.S. were 22 percent higher than last year...
Bible sales rose 22% through October compared to the same period last year, according to data released this month by Circana Bookscan. Total U.S. print book sales were only up 1%, according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the trend.
"The religion book market has been a bright spot of growth within the total book market since the pandemic," Brenna Connor, an industry analyst with Circana, told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Bibles are leading that growth, but other subjects like Christian Life and Biblical Studies are also up, reflecting increased interest for Christian subjects in the U.S."
I have never heard of anything like this happening before.
Bible sales have been rising since the first year of the pandemic, and this year they took off like a rocket...
Print Bible sales hit a five-year low of just under 8.9 million in 2020, according to Circana's data, before beginning to tick upward again. Sales surpassed 13.7 million in the first 10 months of this year, Circana reported.
Interestingly, this is taking place at a time when the percentage of the population that identifies as "Christian" has hit an all-time low...
The share of Americans identifying with a Christian religion hit a low of 68% last year, according to Gallup polling. Half a century ago, 87% of adults in the U.S. identified as Christian, Gallup found. About 28% of American adults are now religiously unaffiliated, according to Pew Research.
As a society, we just don't embrace institutional churches the way that we once did.
Last year, I discussed the fact that church attendance in the U.S. is now far lower than it once was...
In 1958, a Gallup survey found that 49 percent of Americans had attended church within the past 7 days. That number started to decline during the ensuing years, and by 1972 only 40 percent of Americans said that they had attended church within the past 7 days.
From 1972 all the way until 2012, church attendance within the past 7 days hovered right around that 40 percent figure. Unfortunately, over the past decade it has started to fall once again. Just prior to the pandemic, a Gallup survey found that 34 percent of Americans had been to church within the past 7 days, and now a new survey has discovered that it is down to just 31 percent.
And according to an article that was posted on Faithwire last week, the proportion of U.S. evangelicals that are giving to churches has dropped precipitously...
"The takeaway is that there has been a change over the last three years in terms of the generosity of the evangelical community, both toward church and toward nonprofit organizations or charities," Mark Dreistadt said. "We've seen a drop in giving across the board."
Infinity Concepts and Grey Matter Research found the "proportion of evangelicals giving to church fell 13 percentage points from 2021, constituting a 17% decrease in giving," according to a press release.
While 61% of evangelicals gave to their local church in the 12 months before the study, this was down from the previous timeframe, when 74% of evangelicals had done the same.
Fewer Americans consider themselves to be "Christians" than ever before, church attendance is way down, and giving is way down.
But Bible sales are soaring.
What in the world is going on?
I think that what we are witnessing is a move of God that is happening mostly outside of the institutional churches, and it appears that young people are at the forefront of it.
In 2024, an organization known as UniteUS held a series of revival meetings at college campuses all across the country, and at school after school the response was amazing...
Tonya Prewitt, founder of UniteUS, explained, "We started at Auburn University. We had 5,000 students show up, and over 200 got baptized. We next went to FSU - Florida State, the second biggest party school in the nation. We had 4,500 students come, and I believe about 350 students got baptized at that event."
The movement then swept through the universities of Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, with numbers growing along the way. Tonya calls the mission a simple one: Bring hope to a generation.
College student Haden Smith shared his experience. "Just getting to be with your neighbors and friends as they pray with you for your struggles and being open with those you normally wouldn't be open with - it was just overall powerful," he said.
And sometimes revival has erupted without any big organization being involved at all.
For example, NPR has reported on the revival that was initiated by football players at Ohio State...
Students and players deemed it a revival. The story made national news, including appreciative stories in religious publications and Fox News. Now, as Ohio State University's football team prepares for the college football playoffs, players like Henderson have a bigger platform to share their Christian beliefs.
Could all of this be the start of something really big?
Could all of this be the start of the end times revival that scripture talks about?
The Remnant of the last days is going to do things the way that Christians in the first century did things. Have you ever wondered why so many Christian churches today do not resemble what you see in the Bible? Well, the sad truth is that over the centuries churches got away from doing the things that the Scriptures tell us to do, but now God is restoring all things. Without God we can do nothing, but with God all things are possible.
Right now, we have such an amazing opportunity. During the first century, there were only about 200 million people living on the entire planet. Today, the total global population is somewhere around 8 billion. That means the population of the world is about 40 times larger today than it was back in the first century.
I believe that we are on the verge of the greatest move of God and the greatest harvest of souls in all of human history, and I encourage you to be a part of what is happening.
As wars, natural disasters, pestilences and economic problems shake the globe, people are going to be searching for answers, and Bible prophecy will become one of the hottest topics on the entire planet.
During the years ahead, so many will be consumed with despair as their lives are totally turned upside down by the cataclysmic events that are coming. Instead of giving in to fear like everyone else will be, it will be a great opportunity for the people of God to rise up and take the message of life to a lost and dying world.
For some reason, a lot of people in the institutional church associate revival with prosperous times.
But often it takes a tremendous amount of shaking to turn people back to God.
During the very difficult years that are ahead of us, the shaking will seem unbearable at times.
It will seem like the worst of times, but it will also seem like the best of times because of the tremendous awakening that we will witness.
God is calling for His Remnant of the last days to arise, and no force on Earth will be able to stop that from happening.
Originally published at End Of The American Dream
