A TIMELY MESSAGE FOR AMERICA TODAY    #305

Good Day Meetpastordan Readers…I’ve looked forward to this topic for quite a while, because it’s a topic our culture needs to hear and think about.  When I look at today’s world, I see a sad state of affairs that has resulted from man’s best effort at playing god.  I say that because when God created this world, he proclaimed it “good,” and good in God’s terminology means perfect. So, just look around you; does our world look perfect to you?  Remember, it was paradise for a brief moment, but then an event, referred to as “the fall”, occurred. After that, everything changed!  And what was “the fall”?  It was when Sin entered the world; It was when God’s proudest creation (Man) became disobedient and took the focus off of God, and put the focus on “self”. That perspective has been the dilemma of Mankind ever since that downfall.

Because God created us for a relationship with Himself, He knew He would have to give us something no other member of the animal kingdom had, and that was a brain for rational thinking. That was necessary “so we could choose” to enter into that all-important relationship with Him. (FYI…All other members of the animal species live by instinct.) But, therein lays the rub. Man could also use his free-will for something other than for what God intended, and that is exactly what happened.  But God, being omniscient, knew what direction Man “would choose” even before he created us. Therefore, his plan, as outlined in Ephesians, 1:3-4, tells us, “Even before He created the world (and Man), He choose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes.  His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ., and this gave Him great pleasure.”  This is unmistakable!  God’s plan was always to redeem us from ourselves by sending Jesus to pay the ransom for our sins. What mercy!  What grace!

Now let’s jump from Creation to the New Covenant (after Christ’s resurrection) to see how Man fared in his attempt to overcome the dilemma of Sin. Romans 5:6 tells us we were “utterly helpless” in this effort.  Apostle Paul also gives another perspective concerning this same challenge. In 1 Corinthians 1:18-19, he wrote: “I know very well how foolish the message of the cross sounds to those who are on the road to destruction. (Those who have not accepted the message of Jesus’ sacrifice for us.)  But we who are being saved recognize this message as the very power of God.  As the Scriptures say, ‘I will destroy human wisdom and discard their most brilliant ideas.”

Here is the unfortunate truth.  Even though God’s plan (the Gospel of Grace) is available to everyone, not everyone wants to accept that message. This situation was nailed in John 3:18-20: “But those who do not trust Him (Jesus) have already been judged for not believing in the only Son of God.  Their judgment is based on this fact: The light from heaven came into the world, but they loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.  They hate the light because they want to sin in the darkness.  They stay away from the light for fear their sins will be exposed and they will be punished.”  Romans 6:23 explicitly explains our choices: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we trace the rise and fall of civilizations in the Bible, or in ancient history books, we can clearly see that when a culture is in line with God’s will, or returns to God’s will, that culture is blessed, for instance Nineveh, or Israel after Malachi delivered God’s proclamation.  But if a culture turns its back on God, for instance Sodom and Gomorrah or Canaan, we would find fire and brimstone, floods, plagues, pestilence, wars, famines, etc. The Bible defines the collapse of a culture as turning away from God, such as exalting the teachings of Man, or participating in idol worship. Ancient history books would refer to the collapse of the same culture as being the result of greed, manifesting itself in a desire for more power, wealth, and control. Notice that in both cases, the fall of a culture begins by being out of line with God’s Will, His Wisdom, and His Teaching, which obviously means we are in line with Man’s will, his wisdom and his teaching.  In both cases, the end result is yielding to “self” and turning away from God.

So, let’s return to Apostle Paul’s presentation in 1 Corinthians 1: 20-25: “So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters?  God has made them all look foolish and has shown their wisdom to be useless nonsense.  Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never find Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save all who believe.  God’s way seems foolish to the Jews because they want a sign from heaven to prove it is true.  And it is foolish to the Greeks because they believe only what agrees with their own wisdom.  So, when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended, and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.  But to those called by God to salvation, both the Jews and Gentiles, Christ IS the mighty power of God and the wonderful wisdom of God.  This “foolish” plan of God is far wiser than the wisdom of human plans.”

We don’t have to delve very deep into the nature of today’s culture to see why the message of Jesus is so threatening.  It is the same story as relayed above in John 3: 18-20. Our culture is a self-absorbed culture that doesn’t want to yield to anything greater than “self”. In fact, its battle cry is: “Who are YOU to tell me what is right or wrong?  I have my own truth!”   

Now let’s superimpose what we have just read over the culture in which we live today.  Let’s look first in terms of being out of line with God’s will? Since our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, and since it was dedicated to God by our first President and the congress on April 30^th, 1789, do you think God might be angered with what He sees?  Think about all of this; it all has to be an affront to Him: the removal of the 10 Commandments from our schools and public buildings, the assault on religious celebrations and traditions, the ascent of a more secular governing body that has already become so mired in political agendas that it can no longer function in the best interest of its constituents, a blatant refusal by sanctuary cities to uphold the rule of law, an abortion industry that has profited from murdering millions of unborn babies since Roe vs Wade in 1973, a country that is the largest exporter and promoter of pornography in the world today, an entertainment industry that is hell-bent on “numbing down” and “dumbing down” our collective sense of reality and morality by championing the latest “social  enlightenments”, such as redefining the” traditional family structure” as the “new norm”, or the acceptance of lying, cheating and stealing as “just the way it is today”? Wow! It appears that we now have just exposed another answer to the question in the first line of the next paragraph. 😊

How, you might ask, did we sink to such a deplorable state? And I would answer that whenever a culture chooses to exalted the teachings of Man over the teachings of God, calamity is not far behind.  Let me now interject two messages from Jonathan Cahn, author of “The Harbinger”, who worded the above principles so beautifully: “If America upholds God’s eternal standards and follows His unchanging ways, then it will be blessed with His favor…His protection…His prosperity. But if America should depart from the ways of God, if it should disregard His eternal standards, then the smiles of heaven will subside, and the blessings of God will be withdrawn, including its prosperity and its protection.  As God has been expunged from American life, idols have come in to fill the void; idols of sensuality, idols of greed, of money, of success, comfort, materialism, pleasure, sexual immorality, self-worship, self-obsession. The sacred increasingly disappeared, and the profane took its place.”  Does any of this sound like America today?

I’ll close with what I believe to be the answer: “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14) May God continue to bless America…and may Americans have eyes to see and ears to hear.

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May God Bless ya…

Dan Presgrave (a.k.a. Pastor Dan)