“When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.” – Psalm 42:4
We have all heard and engaged in conversations about how life used to be. The elders can tell some fascinating tales of no running water, of walking miles on a dusty road to the store, of freezing cold winters, frost so thick that it looked like snow, and a single pot-belly wood stove for heat. But those were still the good ole days, deemed such because life seemed simpler and better. The elders were respected, children more obedient, people were kinder, compassionate, honest, and hedonism existed only in the largest cities and only at night. There wasn’t as much on TV, but there was more of what mattered in people’s hearts.
Today, the world is a dangerous place, and wickedness rules the night as well as the day. Our children and young people are under a vicious attack by liberalism’s ripening and poisonous fruit. There is virtually no sector of society that has not been invaded and infected by the toxic atmosphere being made ready for the Antichrist kingdom.
It is a perilous time, a time of great stress. Professing Christians who are casual and passionless in their relationship with God cannot accept the reality, much less endure the weight of it. The specter of a brutal future is too much for them to consider and prepare for. Innumerable people, including a vast number of professing Christians, are buying into the lies of psychiatry and psychology that label every spiritual malady as a disease. Some have become legal drug addicts.
Churches are founded, and in a few months, grow exponentially with stress-free preaching and world-centered entertainment. Truth is being banned as the glaring factor hindering not only world peace and unity, but also the brass ring prize, a human-contrived utopia. In a number of venues today, declaring oneself as a Christian is to become a social pariah. Jesus is the most hated name in the world. Sin is honored—godliness is cursed. Political leaders now lie so profusely that they create a fantasy world each time they speak. Up isn’t up any longer and down isn’t down, unless it is convenient. Traditional morals are being rolled in the mud of tolerance and political correctness. And it’s not going to get better.
In the midst of this caldron of diabolical influences and sin’s consequences, there are people who refuse to relinquish what they know is true for the obviously evil new social paradigm. Good for them. That paradigm is composed of several tenets. Here are a few of them:
- There are no absolutes, especially moral absolutes.
- Humanity does not need a god. We can solve our own problems.
- Christianity and Judaism are the remaining hindrances to world peace and unity.
- Global Socialism is the panacea to all of society’s ills, including poverty and war.
The world’s societies are merging because of the Internet and digital technology. Thus, the new paradigm requires a New World Order. To succeed in establishing a New World Order, forces in the secular and religious world are systematically breaking down the old order. The fact is, they will accomplish what they are attempting to do, because eschatological prophecies must be fulfilled. There will be an Antichrist heading a global government, and a False Prophet leading the one-world religion. No one but God can stop that from happening. It will come on the heels of a cashless economy, which in the hands of evil people will bring every individual on this earth under submission to a ruler.
If we are at that point in history, we will have to face some facts, make some adjustments to our mindsets, and cease trying to conduct “business as usual”. Professing Christians must either cease dodging the reality checks or deception will overtake them. The storm is coming. It will arrive no matter how well people manage to avoid the reality of its approach.
Now for some harsh truth that does not bring me joy to report. America is not going to be restored to some point in history when we enjoyed the “good, ole, days”. America is under judgment, and the worst is yet to come. Our nation has slaughtered over 50 million babies. Aborted babies (I reject the word “fetus”) have been harvested for decades for cosmetics and scientific research, but sufficient outrage and appropriate action never materialized. Now the merciless and calloused abortion industry is selling the body parts of aborted babies. The outrage over the revelation of that latter atrocity did not linger openly in society longer than the outrage over the killing of Cecil, the lion.
America’s leaders have kowtowed to liberals, especially in the news media, and have permitted the incremental expulsion of God and His word from public recognition. However, our government infested by the same liberals insists that we honor Allah, Islam, and the Koran. Allah does not have the attributes of God, Whom the Scriptures clearly portray as love. The first Commandment is not ambiguous as God declares, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” – Exodus 20:3
America has accepted and honored the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, homosexuality, which is the ultimate defilement by Satan in effigy of the image of God. Professing Christians who condone this sin join the rebellious besmirching of God’s nature. They are subject to becoming just as reprobate as homosexuals (Romans 1:28-32). Thus, there is now a significant number of ordained ministers, and even some denominational leaders, who are reprobate or apostate.
That leads me to another point, but not by any means the final factor in America’s spiritual declension. American Christianity is now accepting to a significant degree the worship and prayer practices of people who worship false gods and idols. Israel was repeatedly judged for this sin. With the acceptance of Contemplative Spirituality, professing Christians have opened the religion to the entrance of many corrupt activities and heresies.
Millions of people have accepted Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, in which he promotes Contemplative Spirituality. Warren was appropriately named “America’s Pastor”. It seems as if the gates were opened and the walls were breached. A flood of New Age doctrines has poured into Christianity. Sarah Young’s “Jesus Calling” has influenced millions of gullible professing Christians. Other heretical books by influential professing Christians, such as Sue Monk Kidd, Ruth Haley Barton, Richard Foster, Brian McLaren, Rob Bell, et al., have flooded the Christian literature market. Numerous conferences convene across the nation to disseminate more of the heresies. Entire denominations have embraced the spiritual sewage. One of the most troubling consequences is that Protestant leaders are encouraging ecumenism with Roman Catholicism.
Christianity (the religion), now riddled with vile and extremely dangerous heresies, is too weak to mount a viable protest against the marketing of baby body parts. It cannot mount a defense, much less an offense, as a diabolically controlled society aggressively forces its evil agenda, systematically erasing every vestige of God. I keep waiting for a response that is significant enough to, at least, slow down the encroaching evil, but it never comes. There are only smatterings of pitiful complaints that have about as much effect and power as vapors in the wind.
Finally, I want to point out the fallacy of longing for and striving for a return to the good ole days. In every statement and every effort to return Christianity to the good ole days, there is a mistaken belief that referencing a certain period in history, promoting a religious paradigm, presenting a particular societal pattern, and so forth, can undo the apostasy that permitted this catastrophic and ubiquitous invasion of evil. The modern world does not want the good ole days. They have bought into the promise of a new world of peace and unity.
However, not even the dreamers of the good ole days are being honest. Do they wish to return to the time of a Great Awakening, when people were honest with God? Or do they desire to return to the era when they had a measure of respect in the world, when they had the means to influence society, yet flitted it away by focusing on the gifts more than the Giver.
Long before Contemplative Spirituality, before New Age gurus masquerading as Christians spoke at denominational conventions, before Sarah Young channeled a demon impersonating Jesus, and before Rick Warren’s heretical bestseller, Christianity was being inundated by the Positive Confession doctrine and the excesses of the Charismatic Movement, including its host of false prophets and money-hungry false teachers. Nobody stopped this horde of wicked people. Their heresies were not rejected, but adopted. No wonder that many evangelicals today cannot recognize or resist this new wave of heresies. A significant number did not reject the first wave.
Listening to popular preachers today, I recognize in their statements the influence of decades-old heresies. They take up offerings as if God is desperate and the givers need to be promised a return (something that cannot be delivered). I have watched recent conferences designed to mount a push back against the diabolical tide. They want to return to the days when they played loosely with the gifts of God. It was an era when numerical growth was the standard of success. During that period church buildings were built, not as tools for the kingdom of God, but as monuments to the pastor presiding over numerical growth. Now that the halo of that period has past, and the gloomy cloud of apostasy looms over everything, they frantically attempt to revive religious patterns and practices. They hack at the symptoms while leaving the roots intact. They are more interested in their demonstrative and exciting style of preaching, and in peppering the congregation with provocative buzz words and phrases, than in dealing with the underlying problem.
The problem is not alcohol consumption, the worldliness of professing Christians and their church meetings, lack of preaching the Gospel and no altar calls, the absence of emphasis on certain fundamentals of denominational belief systems, etc. The reason the world system has now become more powerful than Christianity in American society is simple: Christianity has proportionately become so weak because devotion to God, His nature, His authority, and His truth has been abandoned.
“Oh, but that’s too simple,” people may declare. There’s no denying that everything in the kingdom of darkness is designed to distract people from being devoted to God. Adam and Eve sinned after listening to Satan. The first and major casualty of their sin was devotion to God. God came as usual in the cool of the evening, but they hid from Him. The fact is that professing Christians have been prayerless, have not maintained intimacy with God, became materialistic, frolicked with the world system in numerous forms of entertainment, and allowed their spirits to be plundered by diabolical indulgences. Church meetings are either cold, formal, and dry, or are hyper-charged with licentious reveling in spiritual wickedness. In either case, the result is the same—departure from fellowship with God.
Thus, I do not believe professing Christians wish to return to a life of commitment, passion, devotion, and total obedience to God’s will. They only want to return to an illegal status quo, a period when God was dealing with them but they were too busy enjoying His benefits to respond to Him. It was a period during which He was pointing out their unfaithfulness and warning them of the consequences, if they persisted in doing things their way. However, they were too preoccupied enjoying the fruits of Churchianity. While they played, Satan worked.
In my opinion, we are now at the point where judgment has arrived. Judgment is coming in greater measure. The condition of the world is too far gone to turn around. Diabolical forces are ravaging society. An exceedingly dangerous response would be to lead people to believe that everything is going to be okay. It is not going to be okay. It does not matter how much professing Christians are electrified with emotion by demonstrative and stimulating speeches, books, or meetings. The world system outside of the church building is in exactly the same condition as before—and worsening. In fact, during the time of the Sunday morning church meeting, its condition may have actually worsened.
Our response to the impinging wickedness must remain to expose and oppose it. However, our response to the reality of its unprecedented gains in modern society must be to prepare for more and increasingly harsh judgment upon this nation and the world. We are at the point when pastors and other Christian leaders ought to be informing their listeners that we can no longer expect God to bless America. I do not expect many of them to do so, because neither they nor their congregations can endure the negativity. However, the only way to survive this end-times darkness and subsequent judgment is to prepare for it. Not one person will be prepared who does not believe that he or she has to prepare.
This is not a pleasant article to read. It is not pleasant to think about, to consider the ramifications if it is true, and to motivate oneself to respond accordingly. The temptation is to flee to the safety of churches and preachers who are placating the stressed-out masses with prophecies of peace when there is no peace. There will be strong impulse and subsequent temptation to reject the message by impugning the legitimacy of the messenger. The overwhelming desire will be to deny that things are as bad as represented here. There will be reverse optimism of pointing to the minuscule representations of godliness while ignoring the preponderance of wickedness. Verses will be taken out of context, conjecture added, and the result confidently preached and repeated to persuade minds to accept a different narrative. In spite of all the effort to project an alternate portrait of the period we are in, each day will bring news and information to the contrary.
We may be aboard a mighty ship navigating through icy waters. One each side and in front there are floating masses of ice. They increase in size and number as the captain, crew, and everyone else reassure us that we will eventually break into clear water. But look ahead, if you can bring yourself to do so. See that solid mass of ice? There is no clear water in the direction we are headed. However, no matter how much we protest or attempt to get people to see what we are seeing, the ship continues on the same course.
Do we join the deluded ones, eat, drink, and be merry? Should our response be to remain silent, pray, and hope that we are wrong about what we have seen? Do we continue to warn people even when they are becoming angry by our intrusion into their fantasy of a safe voyage to a secure harbor?
The case could be made based on the weight of majority opinion that I am wrong. Of course, I could in fact be wrong. History is evidence that Christianity and subsequently the world have righted themselves repeatedly. Someone could point out that the world system has never been godly. True, but it has been influenced by godliness to the extent that it was much less obtrusively antichristian. But can one conclude that I am wrong by considering relevant data?
At some point, the utopia that the multitudes under diabolical influence are striving and cajoling for will be reached, albeit briefly. If people hold out from recognizing the truth until that point is reached, then they will be deceived and join the world-wide partying.
All that the majority of professing Christians need to be convinced at this moment that we are not in the end-times is for Satan to throw them a bone—a semblance of peace, prosperity, and security. In America, a conservative or republican president would do it. The church bells would ring, horns would honk, and millions of professing Christians would breathe a massive sigh of relief heard and felt around the world. They would engage in highly emotional high-fiving, flock to the pleasure pools, revel in sports, go shopping, and bury their minds in television for several hours each evening, only without the portent of government oppression.
They would also consign the “naysayers” (and I am one) to oblivion. All the excesses, the heresies, heretics, prayerlessness, and every other aberration in Christianity would be embraced with renewed vigor and a sense of vindication. In fact, Christianity would enter the fast track to apostasy with no hills and roadblocks to slow down its ecumenical consummation with Roman Catholicism and other religions. There would be no impending doom to deter the remaining holdouts. No one would think about God’s judgment and certainly would not consider the ramifications of the merger.
Truly, they will deem the dark cloud to be lifted. The party will begin. Weak professing Christians will be swept up in the celebration of the apostate ones. They will readily accept the laws and regulations that would alarm them if the same legislation were introduced today. Individuals crying out warnings will be demoted to the status of yapping dogs. In the inebriating ecstasy of perceived “victory” over the forces of evil, they will be susceptible to anything. They will have narrowly “escaped” a dictatorship, the presidency of the “wicked witch of the south”, and believe that they have the upper hand.
What would be lost in such a celebration is the fact that the ship is still headed for a massive iceberg the size of a large city. The underlying factors that caused apostasy and a hedonistic antichrist spirit in a huge section of Christianity and the world system still remain. There would not actually be a victory in the election of a conservative or republican president. It would be merely a deceptive façade that millions of professing Christians will mistakenly view as a spiritual turnaround in America.
While it would be less stressful, and we would enjoy a period of joy and excitement, there would be at least four more years before we again consider our nation’s decrepit spiritual and social condition. Although there would be relief from the prophetic voice, it would be very dangerous for the spiritual condition of America if a conservative or republican were elected president. We would not return to the good, ole days. Instead, we will have taken a philosophical drug that, like a terminally stricken patient on morphine, would immunize us from the pain of an advanced spiritual cancer. Our appointment with judgment will still be fulfilled at the appointed time.
Therefore, I will not join in the desperate hubbub to select a “deliverer” from the consequences of this nation’s wickedness. I will vote for a godly person as a matter of duty. But I have no unction to view such an individual as the answer to this nation’s affliction. Besides, at any moment, a catastrophic terrorist or natural event could devastate our nation or world. I will hope that with more four years we will win some people to Christ, and convince more people to prepare for the coming storm. It may be more difficult to accomplish those goals, but I will always hope.
The fact is, we are as fragile eggs being rolled about in a room of sharp corners by forces that we cannot control. The answer is not in or of this world. The answer is to return to God, to devote our lives and put our hope in Him and His great salvation. The danger is in trusting that humanity and its devices will somehow overcome the judgment and wrath stored up by godless and rebellious society. That is not going to happen. If professing Christians believe that it is, and that somehow emotional church meetings, elections, or anything else can bring it about, then self-deception has broken through the last barrier.
“O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity.
Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.
Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods: for in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.” – Hosea 14:1-3
