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So in answer to my friend's question, I cannot force anyone to become my friend on Facebook. Neither can I force anyone to join the Bill's Bible Basics Forum. The only thing which I can do is to be a faithful witness. Then, I have to leave the results to God. As I have already made clear, only God can draw people to Himself, and to Christ, as He sees fit, according to His own purposes, whether they are young, old, or somewhere in-between. It cannot be a work of the flesh, such as has been occurring in so many American churches for quite a number of years now. Why not? Because that method is surely doomed to fail, and will only produce a generation of shallow Christians who will depart from the faith when the going gets rough. It surely will eventually, because God always tests our mettle, and burns off the dross. Only those Christians who are grounded in the Word -- and not bribed by modern church gimmicks -- will endure in the end.

As I thought about this, it occurred to me that the fact that there are so few young people involved with the BBB ministry, and by extension, with Christianity in general, is a rather sad testimony against both them, and us. Against us, because perhaps it reveals that some of us have not been living up to God's standard, or been the Christian examples that we should be. And against the younger generation, because it likewise reveals how callous, hardhearted, rebellious and insensitive some of them have become to the Voice of God's Spirit. So clearly, there is guilt on both sides of the fence, and room for improvement.

I hope you now realize that this problem is not limited to the Bill's Bible Basics ministry alone. I am willing to bet that if you look at your Facebook friends list right now, you will discover that aside from perhaps members of your own immediate biological family, you'll find very few pics of people who are in their early twenties, or even younger. Most of your Facebook friends will be around your own age, or perhaps even older. True or false? So you see, there is indeed a serious spiritual generation gap when it comes to our Christian faith. It is slowly dying on the vine, and the current wave of liberalism has a lot to do with it.

So to reiterate a point I made earlier, if there is one thing I know with certainty, it is that God will accomplish through the Bill's Bible Basics online ministry, what He desires to accomplish. His Word will not return unto Him void. The Word I share will fulfill its purpose, and bear the fruit that He desires. This is made evident by verses such as the following:

"For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it."


"Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:"


"He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves ‭with him‭.‭"


"Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.‭"


So, the truth is that I may never even see or know the full effect of the BBB ministry in this current life. I may never know every individual who has been reached. I may never know whose lives have been touched. I may never know who accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. I may never know who has decided to dedicate their lives to the Lord's service as a result of something I have written. I may never know who was inspired, motivated and encouraged to plow on because of something I've said. That is where faith enters the picture. We just have to do what we believe we must do, and trust God for the rest. While you and I may not immediately see the results of our labors in this present life, God certainly keeps a record; and perhaps in the life that is to come, He will reveal it to us. It is my earnest hope that my works will follow me, and that God will be pleased with them, just as your works will follow you too. Consider the following additional verses:

"If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it? and he that keepeth thy soul, doth not he know it? and shall not he render to every man according to his works?"


"For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works."


"And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:"


". . . I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works."


"And I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."


"And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works."


Continuing our discussion regarding Facebook friend requests, in addition to being of a young age, there are a number of other conditions where I will reject a friend request. They include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following, in no particular order:

1. If the page in question contains excessive vulgarity.

2. If the page promotes Islam or any other false religion.

3. If the page is strictly a business page with no detectable interest anywhere in Christianity.

4. If the page has any text, images or links which invite the visitor to engage in viewing pornography.

5. If the page is primarily geared towards husband or wife shopping.

6. If the page promotes the LGBTQ lifestyle in any way.

7. If the page is entirely, or almost entirely, in a foreign language which my English-speaking friends will not be able to understand.

Please understand that in addition to determining how much the person making the friend request is sincerely interested in our Christian faith, my other concern is how the page will affect any of my current Facebook friends who may decide to visit the page. Will they have a positive experience? Will it edify them and encourage them in their Christian faith? That is why some of the previous conditions are in place. I do not want to unknowingly lead my current friends into a wolf's den. That is why I never click blindly on the "Accept" button when new friend requests appear under the Facebook menu. I take the time to visit each page individually, in order to determine where the person is at in a spiritual sense. So it is wise to vet all of your friend requests. To do otherwise is to ask for trouble.

Regarding this Facebook age issue, it has also occurred to me that Facebook may possibly have certain mechanisms in place which purposely prevent younger audiences from intermingling with older audiences. Granted, I have no concrete data with which to prove this point, but it seems to make sense to me. After all, Facebook needs to protect itself as well. As you may know, Facebook requires that all new members provide a valid birth date. While one can lie about their age, sooner or later, they may get caught, because sometimes Facebook requires a valid ID before they will make certain changes to a person's account.

This in fact happened to me a number of years ago, and I felt very uncomfortable about it at the time. You see, when I first joined Facebook back in early 2011, I was using my online writing alias which I have used since 1997. That is, the WordWeaver. Well, after a few years, Facebook demanded that I begin using my real name, even though I saw a lot of people who were very obviously not using their real names. I really wondered why I was being singled out. At any rate, to prove to them that I am who I claim to be, I had to email them a copy of my local government-issued ID card. It has my photo on it, my birth date, my gender, my mailing address, and other personal info. I really did not like having to do that, but it was either that, or they were going to delete my account. At least so they said. So what could I do? In the end, I surrendered my personal privacy so that I could continue being a Christian witness on Facebook.

But my point is the following. If Facebook has a database which contains all of our birth dates -- which is highly likely -- then they could very easily create an algorithm which would match potential friends by age, and likewise prevent people of a certain age group -- such as young teens and pre-teens, for example -- from sending a friend request to people of another age group -- such as adults and older Facebook members, and vice versa. Even if we are not aware of this going on behind the scenes -- assuming that it does occur -- Facebook can reasonably justify taking such steps, because such age matching will protect young people from potential online predators.

Of course, the negative side to all of this, insofar as we are concerned as active, online, witnessing Christians, is that this kind of age matching will prevent us from reaching out to younger audiences. So this may possibly explain why I -- and perhaps you as well -- receive so few friend requests from very young people. In other words, it may simply be that Facebook has set up certain technological barriers -- a.k.a. algorithms -- to prevent this from happening. Again, I have no clear proof that Facebook does this, but it seems to make sense to me that they would, for their own protection.

This is directly related to another concern I have had as of late, regarding our ability to be a witness on Facebook. Many of us have made it a priority in our lives to be an active witness of our faith. For some of us, it is the only reason why we joined Facebook in the first place. For me personally, it is in fact the entire reason why I purchased my very first computer back in 1993. It was not a luxury item to have fun. It was a tool which I wanted to use to be an online witness of my Christian faith. You will find this discussed in the article entitled "The Internet: Our Final Frontier; Your Last Chance?". By God's Grace, I have endeavored to faithfully do this ever since that time.

But my concern is that with all of the compartmentalizing that Facebook has been doing, it is in fact limiting our ability to be a witness to nonbelievers, and shrinking our potential audience. My age matching theory is just one of the ways in which this is happening. Another way is through the use of tags. I don't know if Facebook still employs the use of tags or not. I am not referring to the practice of tagging people in posts, but rather to adding descriptive tags to your timeline or page. Years ago, it used to be possible to do this. I just checked, and I found no way to add tags, unless I missed it somewhere in the settings. If I am not mistaken, it's possible to add tags when you make a new Facebook ad.

But the point is, if you do have tags associated with your timeline or page, what that essentially means is that unless a person uses those specific tags in their Facebook search, your timeline or page may never appear in search results. The end result is that they won't even know that you exist, and you may never have an opportunity to be a witness to them. You remain basically invisible to them, unless someone happens to recommend your page to them, or by some odd chance they happen to come across your page out of the billions of Facebook pages which currently exist. How likely is that to happen?

Regarding Facebook groups, Facebook has talked about making them even more interest-specific in recent weeks. Of course, they are painting this as a good thing because it will allow folks to have more intimate, tightly-knit groups that center around certain topics. While this may be true, at the same time, if your goal is to reach the world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then this compartmentalization will have the exact opposite effect. Why? Because just like I explained earlier, the only people who may be able to find you will be those who have a specific interest in Christian topics.

For example, about a week ago, two questions popped up in the BBB group. These were questions generated by Facebook. The first question asked me if the BBB group is related to Christianity, to which I responded in the affirmative. The second question asked me if the BBB group is related to Spirituality, to which I again responded that, yes, it is. So I imagine that the BBB group is now classified under "Spirituality/Christian", or something like that. I don't know if Facebook intends to create some kind of visible group index where people can see what is available. But if not, then once again, that means that unless a person uses those terms in the Facebook search field, they may never know that the BBB group exists.

So I hope you can see how in a subtle way, all of these different things are in fact limiting our ability to be a Christian witness to the nonbelieving world. Due to all of this political correctness, and people being so afraid to offend each other over the littlest things, it appears that Facebook may be corralling us into our own specific groups where we won't offend nonbelievers. If this is indeed the case, it may get to the point where we are just preaching to the choir. In other words, we will just be sharing the Gospel with those who already agree with us. That is not going to do much good insofar as saving the unbelieving world is concerned.

Now, as I said, if you are only interested in fellowshipping with like-minded Christians, then these moves by Facebook won't really be a problem for you. In fact, that is how most churches operate already. They basically preach to the choir, and rarely obtain new members outside of their little clique. And even that is slowly shrinking, to where many churches are closing their doors every single year. However, if you are on Facebook to be a witness to others outside of your immediate Christian circles -- that is, to nonbelievers -- then, yes, this compartmentalization will limit your overall audience, and limit your witness.

Returning to the topic of the Bill's Bible Basics Forum, and the age range of our current members there, granted, the BBB Forum Members Gallery currently only shows about 150 avatars out of my total of just under 5,000 Facebook friends. As a result, the ratio between young and old members could change as I slowly add more avatars, and invite more of my Facebook friends to participate on the BBB Forum. However, as is, in looking at the gallery, it left me with a strong impression, and it is indeed a rather sad one. My friends, we are losing our youth when it comes to faith in the Lord, belief in His Word, and a strong interest in dedicating their lives to service to the Lord. It just seems that many of them do not have the same passion for the Lord as we older folks do.

Now, we can try to attribute this lack of serious interest in the things of God to a variety of reasons. For example, maybe it is due to their age. They are young, and still entranced by the things of this world. They have not lived as much as we have. As such, they may not yet realize the things which are of true worth in this life. Many of us were much the same way when we were at that age. It is only after we have gotten married, had a few children of our own, and endured the many struggles of raising a family in this modern world, that we have come to appreciate the value of serving the Lord and dedicating our lives to Him. Of course, that is not true in every case. For example, in my case, I knew at a young age that I was meant to serve the Lord; which is what I began doing shortly after reaching my eighteenth birthday.

But I think this lack of interest on the part of our younger generation has a lot more to do with something else, other than mental and spiritual maturity. I believe that they are being overcome by the spirit of the world. More specifically, I believe that they are being overcome by the liberal spirit of the world. Think about it. From the time they enter the public school system, they are being pounded by it. They are being taught to not have faith, but to trust in science, and to trust in their government. If they manage to go as far as the college and university level, it becomes even worse. The public school system is bad enough with all of its negative influences, including the way that the LGBTQ crowd has gained such heavy influence there during the past decade. But we all know that university life is even worse. It is a veritable breeding ground for liberalism, atheism, and every kind of rebellion against God.

This spiritual decline and spirit of rebellion in our youth is not something that just began yesterday or even last year. As some of you will no doubt realize, it's been a very slow, ongoing process which began decades ago. In fact, I would venture to say that it probably began during the 1950s with rock 'n' roll music, swivel hips, and everything associated with that era, and has gotten progressively worse since that time. With the advent of the hippie generation, free love and drugs during the 1960s, the train of rebellion sped up even more. Now it is raging down the tracks to destruction. This wicked spirit of rebellion is evident everywhere now within American society. Many of us can attest to the fact that we have never seen it so blatant as we see it now. Tragically, other nations are following suit as well. Satan is certainly having his day, sad to say.

So while it may appear to some of my readers that I have in large part pointed the finger at the younger generation in this series, make no mistake. Clearly, there is enough blame to go around to everyone. These sinful activities have always been present in human society, going back literally thousands of years. The big difference is that in previous times, they were done for the most part in secret. They were hidden in the closet. Now, however, as I have already stated, they are done openly, in public, and without any degree of shame or embarrassment whatsoever. They have even become the laws of our land, and of an increasing number of other nations too. So just as the enemy has become emboldened, so too, we have been forced to become emboldened as well, in order to expose their sins. In short, an emboldened enemy also requires an emboldened witness against them. I am reminded of something that Jesus said in the Gospels:

"If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin."


While I obviously do not agree with or accept many of the things which are now occurring in the established church system and the various denominations, I do understand why they have been led to do the things which they now do. I am referring to all of the gimmicks which they employ in order to try to attract young people to their congregations. This includes rock music in their churches, night club lighting, and all of that other nonsense that they use. The churches are desperate to win back the youth. But from the looks of it, they have not met with a whole lot of success. That is, unless you consider their feel-good brand of religion to be a success story. To me, it is merely entertainment; and as I said earlier, all they are going to produce is a shallow, weak generation of Christians who aren't going to be able to withstand the winds of adversity.

As I have mentioned in previous articles such as "Musical Ministries and Wordy Preachers", the fact of the matter is that Jesus, the Apostles and the early Disciples didn't have to resort to using gimmicks in order to reach and win the lost. They never endeavored to become popular. They simply preached the straight Gospel truth, and let the chips fall where they may. They preached "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand". They relied upon the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and not on gimmicks, as becomes very clear by verses such as the following:

"In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judaea,‭ And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."


"‭‭From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."


"And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners? But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance."


"Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,‭ And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel."


"And they went out, and preached that men should repent."


"And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things?‭ I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.‭ Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem?‭ I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."


"And he spake this parable unto them, saying,‭ What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it?‭ And when he hath found ‭it‭, he layeth ‭it‭ on his shoulders, rejoicing.‭ And when he cometh home, he calleth together ‭his‭ friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.‭ I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.‭"


"Now when they heard ‭this‭, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men ‭and‭ brethren, what shall we do?‭ Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."


"‭‭Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;‭"


"Repent therefore of this thy wickedness, and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven thee.‭"


"And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:‭"


"Whereupon, O king Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision:‭ But shewed first unto them of Damascus, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the coasts of Judaea, and ‭then‭ to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, and do works meet for repentance.‭"


"Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"


"The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance."


"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."


"‭‭Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent.‭"


"Repent; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will fight against them with the sword of my mouth.‭"


"Remember therefore how thou hast received and heard, and hold fast, and repent. If therefore thou shalt not watch, I will come on thee as a thief, and thou shalt not know what hour I will come upon thee.‭"


"As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.‭"


So as you can plainly see, Jesus and the Christians of the First Century were not politically-correct menpleasers. They were not afraid to preach the straight truth, even if it did offend some people. They were more interested in convicting people of their sins, so that it would lead to repentance, and thus to their being won to the Kingdom of God. How unlike so many of the modern churches which are more interested in quantity, and a feel-good religion, so that they can continue to fill up their coffers at the expense of the naive sheep.

Those of you who have been with me a long time know that I am the same way. I make no excuses for what I preach. That is the least of my concerns. I endeavor to follow the example of our spiritual forefathers. I just want to preach the truth of God's Word. I just want to be a faithful witness, regardless of how people react to the Gospel message. I will not rely on gimmicks to win the lost. I will not pretend to be cool so that the Gospel message is more palatable for some people. I will not water down the message, or endeavor in any way to be politically correct. It is what it is, my friends, and we all must simply stand firm, despite all opposition. Like many of you, in spite of my own personal sins and shortcomings -- and they are indeed many -- it is my hope that someday I too will hear that blessed "Well done, thou good and faithful servant . . . enter thou into the joy of thy lord."

Please go to part three for the conclusion of this series.

⇒ Go To The Next Part . . .

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