The presentation pointed out some very interesting findings that didn’t get much media attention.
Dr. Fagan found a link between poverty and worship. He found that children that live in high poverty areas are much more likely to succeed in getting a good education if they regularly attend church.
And because getting a good education is the leading factor in escaping poverty, there is a direct link between poverty and worship.
To clarify, the data from the study Dr. Fagan used shows that there is a 14% increase in education with children that regularly attend church. No government programs comes close to the effects of worship.
What this means is that if you live in poverty, one of the best, if not the best way to help your children escape poverty, is to bring them to church regularly.
The Reason
Now let me explain why this is. I’m not going to tell you that money will fall out of the sky into your lap if you go to church every week. The Lord usually doesn’t work that way.
But here is what happens; when you worship the Lord, your mind becomes transformed into his way of thinking, and the transformation of your mind leads you to make wiser decisions that result in greater wealth in your life.
Everyone wants wealth, but few realize that worshiping and studying God’s Word is the best way to build wealth. The opposite is also true. The best way to destroy wealth is to turn away from God’s laws and reject his instructions.
This is spelled out in Deuteronomy 28;
“1 If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. 2 All these blessings will come on you …”
“15 However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you: … ”
Gaining the knowledge of the Lord results in a double blessing; first, he will bless you because he is a God of rewards and rewards those that seek after him, and second, his ideas are better than ours because as our Creator he knows us better than we do and he knows what will prosper us.
No government program in the world has or will ever be more effective at creating wealth then gaining the knowledge of the Lord, which happens when we worship the Lord.
Life and Death
There is one other point I want to highlight in Dr. Fagan’s presentation, and that is the link between parents that want to have children, and church attendance.
The greater the church attendance, the greater the % of parents that want to have children, because they have hope for the future and are willing to make personal sacrifices for the next generation.
The birth rate every nation needs to remain a stable population is 2.1 births per mother, as noted in Mark Steyn’s book “America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It”.
When a nation turns from God, their church attendance drops, which results is a drop in interest in having children, which leads to the drop in birth rate. In the last decade, the new Atheism movement has gained popularity among the young people across several nations and caused their birth rates to drop, Germany and Austria at 1.3, Russia at 1.2 and the Spain at 1.1.
In all these nations, church attendance has dropped and along with it their birth rates have fallen below 1.5. No nation can sustain itself below 2.1, so these nations are actually dying.
You see the knowledge of the Lord is not options, it is a matter of life and death. When a nation turns from God, they are harming themselves and turning away from life.
“But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death."” – Proverbs 8:36
There is no middle ground, no neutral positions to take. It is irrational to deny the reality of the kingdom of God.
Jesus truly is the Way, the Truth, and the Life – and there is no other knowledge that can sustain a nation.