Claim. Divine Principle prophesies that Christianity will divide between dying segments and rising segments — and the empirical 1960–2010 historical record of mainstream Protestant decline against evangelical and non-denominational growth is, per Hendricks, the prophecy bearing out.
Elaboration. Hendricks invokes this prophecy as the theological framing for the whole chapter (04-difference-between-populist-and-denominational, footnote 49 citing EDP pp. 4-5, 98-9, 340). The chapter’s two comparison tables — dying vs growing congregations, liberal-mainline vs evangelical — operationalize which segments are which.
The structural force of the claim: the dividing line is not denominational labels but features. A liturgy-bound, hierarchy-governed, ecumenically-syncretic congregation belongs structurally to the dying segment regardless of its formal name; a flat, lay-empowered, conversion-oriented congregation belongs to the rising segment.
For UC application: the prophecy is doubly load-bearing — UC must (1) be on the rising side empirically (which means adopting the populist form) and (2) cooperate providentially with the rising Christian segments rather than fight or assimilate to the dying ones. The latter implication shapes UC’s interreligious posture.
The prophecy is currently sourced only through Hendricks’s footnote. Tracing the actual EDP passages (especially p. 98-9 and 340) is on the “to do once DP is ingested” list.
See also. populist-church