According to the Catholic News Agency, there have been more mosques built in France in the last thirty years than the Catholic Church has built in the last one hundred years. There are now more than 1,500 mosques and Muslim prayer centers in France.
In the last five years, the Catholic Church has built 20 new churches in France, but they have decommissioned sixty.
Muslims are now immigrating to Europe at the rate of about one million per year, according to the CNA, and projections are that there will be 40 million Muslims in Europe by 2025. Another report put the current number of Muslims in Europe at 50 million, predicting that that number would double in the next 20 years.
Europeans who fear the invasion of Muslims are moving to Australia and New Zealand. The number of people leaving Germany and the Netherlands now exceeds the number of Muslims moving into those countries. Europeans know what is coming, and many are getting out while they can.
One writer on the CNA’s website stated that in the Diocese of Lyon in France, over 400 parishes have closed, that elderly priests believe that the Catholic Church in France will be extinct within 20 years, and that priests won’t wear their clergy uniforms in public.
According to another research group, Christian Research, because only about 2% (another report puts it a 4%) of England’s population attends church, and because their average age is 64, England’s churches will be extinct by the year 2040.
That same research group found that more churches are closing in England than are being built. The Methodist Church lost three hundred congregations in the past seven years, and the Church of England lost over one hundred.
While most denominations have started new churches in England, it is the Pentecostal Church has created the most new churches. However, most of these have come out of African communities. Blacks from Africa and the Carribean account for only about 2% of England’s population, but in London that group accounts for about two-thirds of all churchgoers. Christian Research says that black churches in England have grown by 18% in the last five years, while all others dropped 5% in the same time period.
Also in London, a plan to build a 70,000 person capacity “super-mosque” is underway, at a cost of about 100 million British pounds. The cost of construction is apparently being underwritten by Saudi Arabia. At the same time, many churches in England are being converted to mosques, being converted to businesses or homes, or being abandoned altogether.
When Europe began to abandon its Christian roots and beliefs several decades ago, and began adopting secular views in their place, interest in the church gradually eroded away, even though recent surveys have shown that most people in Europe still consider themselves to be Christian. Even so, support for and attendance at churches has dropped so low that the remaining Christians are financially unable to keep their church doors open.
The closure of so many churches in Europe is indicative of the spiritual condition of the people there, and the spiritual vacuum it has created has allowed Islam to spread like wildfire. It will not be long before Europe will be living under Sharia law and the violence that goes along with it. Look for mass emigrations from Europe to begin within the next decade.
Unfortunately, the United States has traditionally followed the European model, though we usually lag years or even decades behind. But time is catching up with us as many people along our west and east coasts have already abandoned Christianity, instead embracing the more secular, “enlightened” thinking. Some denominations in America have rejected the teachings of Scripture in favor of humanistic worldviews. It is inevitable that churches that adopt this kind of philosophy will decline and eventually disappear.
Think it can’t happen here? According to The Intercultural Institute for Contextual Ministry, Inc., it already is. Their studies have shown that 60-70% of churches in America won’t exist 15-20 years from now.
Here’s another startling statistic that they released at a recent local Baptist seminar. Out of Tulsa’s population of 800,000, only about 2% of them are Baptist Church attenders. Extrapolate that statistic over the rest of the denominations we have, and it is easy to see what a small percentage of our population goes to church.
If churches do close on a mass scale, it is probable, even certain, that the same spiritual vacuum will lead to an invasion by Islam in our country as it has in Europe. The question is, will we do better than out European counterparts to stand up for our faith and save our churches?