The March 25th edition of U.S. News & World Report published a survey stating that 74 percent of Americans believe they will go to Heaven. An article in an April edition of the Albuquerque Journal stated that 86 percent of Americans are Christians. The April 29th issue of the Journal featured a story on America’s Darkest Secrets, about a poll conducted of 2,000 Americans design to uncover the facades we often put on for our bosses and spouses.

Survey says!

• Only 13 percent of Americans believe in the Ten Commandments

I’m wondering how 86 percent of Americans can be Christians while 87 percent don’t even believe in the Ten Commandments. The answer may be revealed in the next survey result: 91 percent of Americans lie regularly.

Thursday May 2nd was the National Day of Prayer. Unless there was a lot of repentance before then, God wasn’t paying attention to most of our prayers.

20 percent of Americans say they lost their virginity before they were 13. Maybe our youth group activities should start at a younger age.

Here’s a scary yet predictable figure: A third of AIDS carriers have not told their spouses or lovers – 33 percent! “People shall be lovers of pleasure,” the scripture says (II Timothy 3:4), and “Most people’s love with grow cold” (Matthew 24:12). It may be time to ask your spouse (or the person you are sinning with) if he or she is infected. If you are sleeping with someone you shouldn’t be (someone to whom you are NOT married), you need to ask them as well.

Some say that God instituted marriage before the church and so it seems that marriage is also the first institution in jeopardy: 50 percent of Americans say there is no reason to ever get married. 31 percent of married people have had or are having an affair. Sadly, 47 percent say they wouldn’t marry the same person if they had it to do over again.

If God isn’t in the home, then how can He be in the nation? The home is the most basic unit of society. Since 87 percent of Americans don’t believe in the authority of the Ten Commandments (and thus, God’s word), then we should expect rampant adultery, fornication, regular deception, and worse. Since most Americans don’t believe in the authority of scripture and adherence to moral values based upon the standards of scripture, then it is absurd for us to believe the previous surveys claiming that 74 percent of Americans are going to Heaven, or that 86 percent of us are Christians. On the contrary, it is most likely that 86 percent of us are pagans going to Hell.

It has been said by those who ridicule the “old-fashioned” and “superstitious” writings of the Bible that we in the modern era have grown out of such “primitive” thinking. They say the Bible is no longer valid today, and that we don’t need those old codes and archaic laws and regulations – we live in the Age of Reason.

Reason this: If you ignore God’s law you become lawless – immoral. If the scripture is archaic and primitive and we no longer need such standards, then how will you repair broken homes, how will you make honest people out of liars, how will you halt the AIDS epidemic, lower divorce, rising crime, and more?

It seems ironic that most people think they will go to Heaven and are Christians, yet most live their lives as if Heaven requires no morality, and the name, “Christian” is a national heritage instead of a people group who follow Jesus Christ. Why would a nation that calls itself “Christian” act contrary everything that Christianity is? Romans 3:20 tells us plainly, “Through His law comes the knowledge of sin.” Most people don’t recognize their sin because they don’t even know God’s word, or believe it if they do know it. How can a nation repent of its sin and come to Christ if it doesn’t know what sin is?

86 percent of us say we are Christians and 87 percent don’t even believe in the Ten Commandments; so much for our “Christian” nation.