That Is Prophetic...
What I do know is that our youth are abandoning the faith upon entering their adult years in great numbers.
As pastors and educators we need to look for answers why.
I have an answer for your concerns about the number of young people falling away from their faith. The answer, you suggest we Pastors look for is in:
Matthew 24:9-11 (Amplified Bible) - "Then they will hand you over to suffer affliction and tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for My name's sake. And then many will be offended and repelled and will [a]begin to distrust and desert [Him Whom they ought to trust and obey] and will stumble and fall away and betray one another and pursue one another with hatred. And many false prophets will rise up and deceive and lead many into error."
2 Thessalonians 2:3-4 (King James Version) -"Let no man deceive you by any means: for that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; Who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God."
2 Timothy 4 - (A)I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to (B)judge the living and the dead, and by His (C)appearing and His kingdom: preach (D)the word; be ready in season and out of season; (E)reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great (F)patience and instruction. For (G)the time will come when they will not endure (H)sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and (I)will turn away their ears from the truth and (J)will turn aside to myths."
Romans 1:20-32(Amplified Bible)
-"For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). this sounds a lot like the affirmation of Hebrews 11:1 So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification],(B) Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and [c]godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools [professing to be smart, they made simpletons of themselves]. And by them the glory and majesty and excellence of the immortal God were exchanged for and represented by images, resembling mortal man and birds and beasts and reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their [own] hearts to sexual impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves [abandoning them to the degrading power of sin], Because they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, Who is blessed forever! Amen (so be it).(C) For this reason God gave them over and abandoned them to vile affections and degrading passions. For their women exchanged their natural function for an unnatural and abnormal one, And the men also turned from natural relations with women and were set ablaze (burning out, consumed) with lust for one another--men committing shameful acts with men and suffering in their own [d]bodies and personalities the inevitable consequences and penalty of their wrong-doing and going astray, which was [their] fitting retribution. And so, since they did not see fit to acknowledge God or approve of Him or consider Him worth the knowing, God gave them over to a base and condemned mind to do things not proper or decent but loathsome, Until they were filled (permeated and saturated) with every kind of unrighteousness, iniquity, grasping and covetous greed, and malice. [They were] full of envy and jealousy, murder, strife, deceit and treachery, ill will and cruel ways. [They were] secret backbiters and gossipers, Slanderers, hateful to and hating God, full of insolence, arrogance, [and] boasting; inventors of new forms of evil, disobedient and undutiful to parents. [They were] without understanding, conscienceless and faithless, heartless and loveless [and] merciless. Though they are fully aware of God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve to die, they not only do them themselves but approve and applaud others who practice them."
As I see it Deacon, our entire walk is to be based upon faith. Faith in something you can't see is probably the most difficult part of following Jesus, and with our young people growing up in a society that demands physical evidence to back up their convictions, it is easy to understand just why there is going to be a "great number of believers who fall away from their faith in the end times."
I believe we are closer to the return of Jesus than we have ever been since He ascended, and it is also a time when believers will have to believe in more in that which is not seen in order to hold fast to our faith in God to save.
There will be many things that will come out of science, and other fields that will deceive and shake the faith of believers, like never before. If young people can't believe in the Gospel as it is written, without tangible prove and validation that they can hold in their hands and see with their eyes, than they will lose the battle before it ever begins.
Faith is the key, and it is the only key. Yet today's church is looking for something more easily understood in order to explain what they want to believe. This will result in a groundswell of false-prophets, sent by the devil to "tickle" their ears!
That is not much of an answer, but, it is Biblical and necessary that we help our youth to under that "FAITH is the assurance (the confirmation, [a]the title deed) of the things [we] hope for, being the proof of things [we] do not see and the conviction of their reality [faith perceiving as real fact what is not revealed to the senses]." Hebrews 11:1 is the root of holding on, keeping the faith, and the essence of all things held to be true.
Shalom,
Pastor Paul :type: