Alarming Times
We live in alarming times. The world is given to idolatry. Providence raised up America as a bulwark against the tide of rank rebellion. We had been the product of the Protestant Reformation, where liberty obtained from God’s grace and acceptance translated into the civil goal of freedom from tyranny in all it’s forms.
Falling from grace is so imperceptible. This is not the case only with the layity. When even religious leaders have fallen away, God raises up a prophet, if there is hope. The Reformation fought its way into the Promised Land of Christendom and established a fortress in America. But as has happened so often in the past, the fall from grace has gone unnoticed, and the great grandchildren ten generations removed know nothing of their forefather’s faith, courage in the face of death, and experience with divine help and His work in the heart.
Paul, looking back and marking the past decisions of Israel that led to the dissolute empire of Rome, saw a cause and effect scenario, “When they knew God, they didn’t….” The slow but sure descent from righteousness to degeneracy shows the natural bent of fallen human nature and an evil personality behind it all, working for the demise of God’s more precious of all creations.
When the character of God is not kept foremost in our thinking, when He isn’t given first place in our priorities, when man becomes his own standard of morality, we fall deeper and deeper into corruption.
This principle was shown through the captivity of Israel in Egypt. Even though given an area in which to live, separated from the rest of the Egyptians, the sights and smells and sounds of debauching idolatry had its influence on the austere lifestyle bequeathed from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Therefore, after hundreds of years of living so close to all of that dissipated environment, when Moses came to return them to holiness, they were perfect strangers to it and treated purity of heart as weird and Moses as a crazed man.
Sin’s most obvious trait is it’s tendency to justify itself, and, because of this, Moses had great difficulty training the nation to remember the Creator as their fathers had in former ages. Eventually, some of the younger, teachable and trusting, generation learned to substitute the new innocent frame of mind for the old self-indulgence of idolatrous Egypt; however, none but a handful of the adults learned it.
So what can we say about today? Didn’t God bring up Protestantism from a decayed Christendom that was ready to vanish away? Wasn’t God in the Reformation, giving bravery to lay down life for the cause of truth? Certainly He was. But what has happened to the love of truth and the courage to maintain it? Where do we see the character of Christ being searched out and lived by the children of the reformers?
Once settled into the land of promise, Israel continued to struggle with the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations. But God faithfully raised up judges, priests, and prophets to bring the people, called by Jehovah, back to revival and reformation. But following the second half of Solomon’s reign, in which he institutionalized Egyptian paganism, the ten tribes of Israel to the north of Jerusalem seceded from the two southern tribes. Being separate from the temple and located closer to the worldly nations of the Fertile Crescent, the ten tribes, while retaining the holy name of Israel, quickly fell away from consecration to the God of their fathers.
They had religion, a brand of ceremony copied after the Gentile nations around them, fully to please the senses and never to appeal to the heart. The human heart yearns for access to goodness and purity, as the Holy Spirit broods over the whole race and calls and woos it toward the peace that comes only from being right and living rightly before God. But a contrary influence attracts away to the indulgence of self and an attempted peace which is fretful and shallow. The deeper lack cannot be denied and convulses to the surface, like the body attempting to reject a poison. Thus, the grisly scene on Mt. Carmel in the presence of Elijah; the public display of a normally private ceremony, gasping for imagined happiness and self-manufactured joy like drowning men, crying and cutting their own flesh because their religion of forced sentiment had made real peace of mind impossible to attain, and which finally took them past feeling like an addict in wretched pain and teetering on insanity. False religion, the human attempt to supply the yearnings of the heart, leaves a deeper and deeper spiritual deficit, and acts as an addictive drug torturing its victims while promising paradise, until at long last they are completely bankrupt in spirit and controlled by devils.
Only truth and love from pure religion can properly keep an individual clean of self-directed religion and a society from idolatry. Only the power of the Holy Spirit in collusion with truth and wisdom keeps the interests of this present life subject to the principles of the eternal kingdom of heaven. The examples from the past, as found in the Bible, provide for honest and upright merchant trading, and protects against materialism and the weakening of an empire. But, when the purity of true religion is subterfuged by idolatry, materialism then replaces the buying of simple necessities of life, the race for wealth displaces honest commerce, and the institutions of industry and labor descend into slavery.
The markets and bazaars of apostatized Israel began to fill the senses of their customers with the message that this world as the only hope for happiness. Music appealed to the lower nature, soothing the conscience that this life was the only concern, leading the people to forget the heaven to win. The people who had known prosperity through faith left the high plane of life God gave them to enjoy.
The Assyrian empire grew rapidly, extending its power across the Fertile Crescent. Quietly, imperceptible to Israel, did it loom higher and higher on their horizon. Because of Israel’s disobedience, the Lord raised up the power of Assyria, and then had them come down to Israel to take them captive. The ten northern tribes were taken away and scattered to the four winds. By then, they were so much like the rest of the idolatrous world that they blended right in and were never heard from again in sacred history.
America, what have you become? How much longer will God allow you to misrepresent Him? Where is the moral uprightness and dependence on Him and His love that characterized the Protestant Reformation? Don’t you see the idolatry that has swept you away and is about to sweep away all of the privileges and freedoms which you hold as eternally your right? America, America, if you had only known the peace God had reserved for you. But now it is hidden from your sight.
Falling from grace is so imperceptible. This is not the case only with the layity. When even religious leaders have fallen away, God raises up a prophet, if there is hope. The Reformation fought its way into the Promised Land of Christendom and established a fortress in America. But as has happened so often in the past, the fall from grace has gone unnoticed, and the great grandchildren ten generations removed know nothing of their forefather’s faith, courage in the face of death, and experience with divine help and His work in the heart.
Paul, looking back and marking the past decisions of Israel that led to the dissolute empire of Rome, saw a cause and effect scenario, “When they knew God, they didn’t….” The slow but sure descent from righteousness to degeneracy shows the natural bent of fallen human nature and an evil personality behind it all, working for the demise of God’s more precious of all creations.
When the character of God is not kept foremost in our thinking, when He isn’t given first place in our priorities, when man becomes his own standard of morality, we fall deeper and deeper into corruption.
This principle was shown through the captivity of Israel in Egypt. Even though given an area in which to live, separated from the rest of the Egyptians, the sights and smells and sounds of debauching idolatry had its influence on the austere lifestyle bequeathed from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. Therefore, after hundreds of years of living so close to all of that dissipated environment, when Moses came to return them to holiness, they were perfect strangers to it and treated purity of heart as weird and Moses as a crazed man.
Sin’s most obvious trait is it’s tendency to justify itself, and, because of this, Moses had great difficulty training the nation to remember the Creator as their fathers had in former ages. Eventually, some of the younger, teachable and trusting, generation learned to substitute the new innocent frame of mind for the old self-indulgence of idolatrous Egypt; however, none but a handful of the adults learned it.
So what can we say about today? Didn’t God bring up Protestantism from a decayed Christendom that was ready to vanish away? Wasn’t God in the Reformation, giving bravery to lay down life for the cause of truth? Certainly He was. But what has happened to the love of truth and the courage to maintain it? Where do we see the character of Christ being searched out and lived by the children of the reformers?
Once settled into the land of promise, Israel continued to struggle with the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations. But God faithfully raised up judges, priests, and prophets to bring the people, called by Jehovah, back to revival and reformation. But following the second half of Solomon’s reign, in which he institutionalized Egyptian paganism, the ten tribes of Israel to the north of Jerusalem seceded from the two southern tribes. Being separate from the temple and located closer to the worldly nations of the Fertile Crescent, the ten tribes, while retaining the holy name of Israel, quickly fell away from consecration to the God of their fathers.
They had religion, a brand of ceremony copied after the Gentile nations around them, fully to please the senses and never to appeal to the heart. The human heart yearns for access to goodness and purity, as the Holy Spirit broods over the whole race and calls and woos it toward the peace that comes only from being right and living rightly before God. But a contrary influence attracts away to the indulgence of self and an attempted peace which is fretful and shallow. The deeper lack cannot be denied and convulses to the surface, like the body attempting to reject a poison. Thus, the grisly scene on Mt. Carmel in the presence of Elijah; the public display of a normally private ceremony, gasping for imagined happiness and self-manufactured joy like drowning men, crying and cutting their own flesh because their religion of forced sentiment had made real peace of mind impossible to attain, and which finally took them past feeling like an addict in wretched pain and teetering on insanity. False religion, the human attempt to supply the yearnings of the heart, leaves a deeper and deeper spiritual deficit, and acts as an addictive drug torturing its victims while promising paradise, until at long last they are completely bankrupt in spirit and controlled by devils.
Only truth and love from pure religion can properly keep an individual clean of self-directed religion and a society from idolatry. Only the power of the Holy Spirit in collusion with truth and wisdom keeps the interests of this present life subject to the principles of the eternal kingdom of heaven. The examples from the past, as found in the Bible, provide for honest and upright merchant trading, and protects against materialism and the weakening of an empire. But, when the purity of true religion is subterfuged by idolatry, materialism then replaces the buying of simple necessities of life, the race for wealth displaces honest commerce, and the institutions of industry and labor descend into slavery.
The markets and bazaars of apostatized Israel began to fill the senses of their customers with the message that this world as the only hope for happiness. Music appealed to the lower nature, soothing the conscience that this life was the only concern, leading the people to forget the heaven to win. The people who had known prosperity through faith left the high plane of life God gave them to enjoy.
The Assyrian empire grew rapidly, extending its power across the Fertile Crescent. Quietly, imperceptible to Israel, did it loom higher and higher on their horizon. Because of Israel’s disobedience, the Lord raised up the power of Assyria, and then had them come down to Israel to take them captive. The ten northern tribes were taken away and scattered to the four winds. By then, they were so much like the rest of the idolatrous world that they blended right in and were never heard from again in sacred history.
America, what have you become? How much longer will God allow you to misrepresent Him? Where is the moral uprightness and dependence on Him and His love that characterized the Protestant Reformation? Don’t you see the idolatry that has swept you away and is about to sweep away all of the privileges and freedoms which you hold as eternally your right? America, America, if you had only known the peace God had reserved for you. But now it is hidden from your sight.
posted by David | 6:38 AM
2 Comments:
I feel the pleading in your voice behind this post. I think it is a good thing to examine ourselves. We truly need to humble ourselves and pray, and pray and pray...
However, as you've told me before, we can't give up on people yet.
Who can judge who is sincere and who isn't? Only the Lord knows the state of the heart. Remember when Elijah lamented that he was the only Godly man left and God replied, "I have many who have not yet bent the knee to Baal." I believe it is the same today.
I see more glaring contrasts between those who have Jesus living in their hearts and those who only have a head-knowledge of Him.
At times it is overwhelming, the lack of truly spiritual people in Christendom, but every so often I connect with someone who IS in a living relationship with Christ. Those without the real connection are all words & theology- rigid and proud. They love themselves and those like them, but far be it from them to extend genuine love or concern for anyone who holds a "lower standard" or a differing view. Contrast that with the warm, accepting spirit of the relationship seekers- a servant heart, a genuine smile and an attitude of encouragement- that is what keeps this weary pilgrim going...
I like you because you are a thinker and because you so eloquently share your thoughts. Thank you!
Thanks, Trailady. I want to be a thinker, not just a follower. I've been accused of being a parrot because I read from EGW, but I find her such a breath of fresh air, a very deep thinker and a seeker.
I haven't given up on America. There is still a great work for her to do in giving the gospel to the world. But there are some big surprises coming up. Many who thought they were going to be part of the Latter Rain, won't be. And vice versa. I know what you mean about the rigid and proud. But many, like you say, are also seeking and aren't getting what they searth for--Jesus and His mercy for them. And, you're right, its good to meet a genuine child of God.
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