Rethinking the Gospel

The biblical gospel is in crisis in the contemporary American Church. This is the result of cultural and ecclesiastical factors and influences, but most of all, biblical ignorance. For various reasons, multitudes - perhaps the majority - of American Christians know very little about the biblical text, and particularly the Old Testament scriptures. Tragically, knowledge of the Scriptures in the contemporary Church has been largely reduced to Sunday School snippets and stories and doctrinal and moral proof-texts employed for personal, theological, ecclesiastical and evangelistic purposes. The result is the virtual loss of the "good news" as the Scripture understands it; at best, the contemporary "gospel" bears only a faint resemblance to its scriptural counterpart. This message calls for a rethinking of the gospel in light of the "good news" promised in the Old Testament scriptures and proclaimed in the New with the coming of the Lord's Messiah.