(with footnotes)
This current generation, it is true,
Are lovers of pleasure,1 more than of God.
Their entertainment exploits do accrue,
And treasures of their leisure get the nod.
Their measure is materialism,
While over the Lord God, they ride roughshod.
And how view we this age – modernism,
Pluralism, eroticism, and
Militarism, radicalism.2
Against all these the Christian takes a stand.
The Bible’s prophecies speak of decline11
At the close of the Church age, in each land.
‘Mid persecution, God’s own must align
With faith and love upon a hostile earth.
Resist the devil, and in God, recline.
How long was it after angelic birth
That Satan fell from heaven like lightning?3
Furious now, he plants for all he’s worth,
Wickedness so great, it is frightening.
With false wonders, and all power and signs
And with deception that is heightening –
This rebellious one, and from ancient times,
With his angels, down to the earth He was thrown –
Master of this world, in whose realm he shines.
But to God, all future history is known,
And Satan will be crushed under our feet,4
For God’s word in all its splendour has shown
The future time when all will be complete;
A coming time for Satan’s cessation.5
Meanwhile, he works with cunning and deceit.
Dissemination of information
Is rampant and constant with mobile phones.6
They eat, sleep, talk, walk their fixation.
Facebook; rock music, all day through headphones,
Distraction and curse the devil applies –
Vehicle for Satan through tones and semitones –
We have a world of arrogance and lies,
Distorted, delusional, mangled mess.
Where honesty’s cloaked in subtle disguise;
5Causes man generally to confess
That good is evil and evil is good;7
Sweet is sour, and sour parades in sweet’s dress.
For us Christians, it must be understood
That these are the days of darkened light.
We must withstand, as Christians have withstood.
It is against the world’s darkness we fight.
We are not blinded to Satan’s foul schemes.
The world might be dark, but our view is bright.
So many endeavours touch the extremes
Of fanciful foolishness of men’s lives.
They each build around them uncertain dreams.
Satan’s horde is diligent, and it strives
To pervert the eternal human soul
For hell, and from heaven, so it deprives.
Therefore, it is Satan’s ultimate goal
To confuse, confound, pervert and hate;
To bring the nations under his control.
Why do the nations rage and legislate8
Against what’s upright, moral and decent,
While every essence of sin they dilate?
Duped, they seek out paths that are putrescent –
Abortion to twenty-two weeks is law;
Homosexual marriage – God’s law rent.
Many more would swell the list of man’s straw.
Why do people imagine a vain thing,8
Opposing God’s word against which they gnaw?
Satan they are aiding and abetting,
While giving credence to the “isms” of men,
And it is God they are abusing.
And what of this world’s “isms” can we say then –
Humanism, liberalism and
Environmentalism and its yen?
So many more will claim the devil’s brand –
Abortion, sexuality, gender,
Human relations, we can expand.
In all of this, who is the offender?
He, through human history, the insurgent,
Thrown out of heaven, from all its splendour.
In these last days, his vileness resurgent,
And for their ruin, among the nations moves,
So they, from all truth, become divergent.
All ideologies vile, he approves.
He promotes demonic fermentation.
God’s precepts, among the nations, he removes.
Vile Satan, what caused in you, gestation
From perfection to your full decadence;
From the Anointed Cherub, to mutation?
In all you are and do – an abhorrence
As among men you move and infiltrate,
But in God’s righteous judgement – dissidence.
Education streams you adulterate.
Governments and rulers are in your pay.
All men’s ambitions – desecrate.
In the United Nations – have your sway
To every land on earth. You organize
Such, that every human being is your prey.
Any spark of decency – tyrannize,
And seek destruction of the human race.
All that’s good and holy – you demonize.
All that’s not of God, you surely embrace.
Iniquity and evil are your being.
In righteous eyes, an absolute disgrace!
With eyes opened wider, we are seeing
One aspect of this world’s false devotion.
From all its errors, godliness is fleeing
From evolution’s evil promotion:
“Survival of the fittest” it acclaims,
Then all human values face demotion.
Unleashed, vaulting pragmatism proclaims
“I fight for my existence tooth and claw”
The biblical principles, it disclaims,
Of adherence to God’s compassion law.
God said to love your neighbour as yourself,
Not to squash him under, for more and more.
We hear the term “ev’ry man for himself”
For evolution’s doctrine has that theme:
“Others are lesser value than myself.”
The hurting ones may cry with silent scream.
As they are not the fittest, you ignore
Their pleas. For evolution’s cruel regime
Will murder the yet unborn child, before
It can mount its defense, its case to raise,
So it’s evolution we must abhor.
Harken here! God knows the ways
Of the murderers, and the ruthless mob;
Those who ascribe to subjugating gaze;
Whose hearts unchecked, with wicked passions throb;
Who are evolution’s selfish offspring,
But your future’s sure. God you cannot rob!
In this chaotic world with its blurring
Of divine boundaries that are set in stone,
Man is launching into an authoring,
Where humanism’s future is unknown
In its reckless abolition of God,
Its futile chase, one day it will bemoan.
Man will bow to none other, than the rod
Of his legislated humanism.
Men of influence think it warped and odd
That Christians might raise a criticism
Of their ungodly and satanic lives.
They accuse the Christian of dogmatism
While they engage their atheistic drives
With all pre-flood9 urgency and yearning –
Godlessness, until judgment day arrives.9
What of these days when men’s hearts are burning,
Inflamed to pursue so sinful a course?
All around, to evil they are turning.
It’s the Bible’s prophecy we endorse,
When it sheds light on the present last days;
When we see from standards, certain divorce,
And women and men move with hearts ablaze –
Money lovers, self-lovers, ungrateful,1
And obedience to parents decays,
Conceited, brutal, reckless and boastful
Irreconcilable and unloving
Treacherous, malicious gossips, hateful,
No self-control, unholy, reviling.10
Comprehend these things, but don’t be alarmed
But note well, for these things are beguiling.
The confused world in ev’rything is charmed
By subtle guile and enticing delights,
And will embrace actions by which it is harmed.
The pleasures of sin will stir appetites,
But the Christian with God, he understands
The world is entering darkening nights.10
The rulers of the world lift up their hands
To execute agendas they devise,
Imagining things vile for all their lands;
To institute their plans considered wise –
They know not what, because their vision’s blind.
They plot to culminate their sure demise,
Yet think the strategies they have outlined,
And those on which to lavish much acclaim,
Are policies to benefit mankind.
The God who rules will not deny His Name,
Though Satan’s active in his deception
With “God is dead,” advancing his own fame.11
But where rests God in the world’s rejection?
With humanism’s tune, the nations ring.
Their loyalty? Another owns defection!
The nations rage, and all their hatred bring
At the behest of their commander vile;
His praises claim; his attributes they sing.
The nations’ goals – their “leader” will defile:
Their Satan by whose power they are fixed.
So God’s right? His claim they will revile.
With craftiness … hatred and love come mixed,
As Satan holds the nations in his sway;
Their minds, unknowingly, are all transfixed,
So evil is good; evil for good, repay!
Usurper’s role, angel of light impressed,
And gilds the nations grasping in dismay.
O, Lucifer, god of this world possessed,
You guide the peoples with your unseen mind
Ensnaring them; in vileness you invest.
Through governments, your demons are entwined.
Their laws, with humanism, you endow,
And godliness, with tragedy, maligned.
Named “prince and power of the air” for now –
Usurped through fiendish pride, you renegade,
Defeated, but to Christ one day, you’ll bow.
The world’s condition now is retrograde12
But for the Christian, of greater concern,
Are abominations that masquerade
In Christian circles, where truth, one will spurn
And errors of doctrine and faith, accept.
Where now is the person who will discern
The evil that entered while clergy slept;
When ties to God’s holy word were detached;
And away from God’s truth, wicked men stepped.13
From once sound doctrinal statements, are scratched
The virgin birth, eternal punishment,
Repentance and sin. Liberals attached
Themselves to pursue spineless appeasement
To the world’s vulgar standards of Satan.
God’s honourable truth met abasement.
Many churches preach the dogmas of man.
The Bible’s teachings have been watered down.
Laodicea’s weak tepidness began14
In the eighteen hundreds, and hangs around
With insidious leaven,15 dictating
Godless doctrines inside churches, that crown
Not God and His gospel, but abducting
From truth, they will surely have their reward.
All sin, the lake of fire is attracting.
Christian, look up! We belong to the Lord.
He will deliver us by His power.
He is coming soon! Praise with one accord!
NOTES ON PART 5:
- Lovers of pleasure and entertainment, sporting events, music, iPods and computer games and all the rest are a feature of the current times. What is wrong about all this, is the word “MORE/ RATHER” as in this passage referring to the last days – 2Timothy 3 v 1-4 “Realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come, for men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, unloving, irreconcilable, malicious gossips, without self-control, brutal, haters of good, treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
- There are so many “isms” we could apply to our present age. It is interesting to look them up. The ones chosen here are, in my opinion, most relevant to the time of writing.
- Satan’s fall. How long after Lucifer’s creation did he fall from heaven? It is impossible to answer because of the Bible’s silence. The various ideas people have are the conclusions from their individual philosophies. For example, those who subscribe to Creation Science (Answers in Genesis) claim that the creation of everything, including angels, is only 6,000 years ago. Because of that stand, the adherents place the creation and the fall of Satan almost at the same time. It is a very confining position. Those who believe in a much older angelic creation have a greater latitude in time, but nothing can be accurately known.
Those who subscribe to an older universe (some up to about 11 billion years as the oldest level) believe the fall could have been eons ago. There is an interesting thought that Satan’s fall to earth caused a judgment on earth that resulted in the earth being covered in water and darkness as it was when God began to refashion the earth from Genesis 1 v 3 onwards. It is a huge area, as is why the earth was “formless and void” in Genesis 1 v 2 and a parallel passage with the same expression in Jeremiah 4 v 23-26 where Jeremiah is describing the results of judgment. The only accurate fact is that Satan’s fall was sometime in the past before he tempted Eve.
- Rom. 16 v 20 “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.”
- Satan’s end is certain. He is active only for a season and is always on God’s leash. When the Lord reigns for the 1,000-year Millennium, Satan is chained in the abyss (Rev 20 v 1-3 “I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand, and he laid hold of the dragon, the serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the abyss, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he should not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were completed. After these things he must be released for a short time”).
After that, Satan goes out to deceive the nations for war against God, but he is taken and thrown into the lake of fire forever – Rev 20 v 7-10 “When the thousand years are completed, Satan will be released from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together for the war. The number of them is like the sand of the seashore. They came up on the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city, and fire came down from heaven and devoured them, and the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are also, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”
- The mobile/cell phone revolution has been astounding. The older generation sees these devices as a curse to social interaction from the days when people spoke to each other at bus stops, on trains and in the street. Now it is all look-click-look-click-read-type with human voice silence. What these phones have done is to make information and events known almost immediately throughout the world. That puts Revelation 11 v 10 right into context, a concept no earlier generation could ever understand. A recent report claimed that 68% of people went to sleep with their phones under the pillow or very close to them. Such is phone dependence and addiction!
- Much of morality and God’s precepts have been turned upside down only since about the year 2010. Australia has seen an immorality revolution since only 2017 with the adoption of homosexual marriage, gender neutrality, a child’s sex withheld from the birth certificate, abortion now to 22 weeks, forbidden to use the term “boys and girls” as in Victorian schools, and the widespread advancement of what is known as LGBTQIA (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer, Intersex, Asexual).
The Bible has an answer to this, very clearly. God’s standard is immutable. Isaiah 5 v 20 “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and light for darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! Isa 5:21 Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight! Isa 5:22 Woe to those who are heroes in drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink; Isa 5:23 who justify the wicked for a bribe, and take away the rights of the ones who are in the right!”
- Psalms 2 v 1 “Why are the nations in an uproar and the peoples devising a vain thing? Psa. 2:2 “The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers take counsel together against the LORD and against His Anointed: Psa. 2:3 ‘Let us tear their fetters apart, and cast away their cords from us!’ Psa 2:4 ‘He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord scoffs at them.”
- “Pre-flood.” There are two main references here for this entry. There are two references only, in fact. Here is the first – Genesis 6 v 5 “Then the LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” That is a serious statement about the sin of the human race. Before the flood came, men were so wicked that every thought and action was continually evil. We will not reach those days like that before the Lord returns for His Church (the Rapture), but we are certainly walking the downhill slope.
Regarding the judgment day to come, the second reference was given by Jesus – Matthew 24 v 37-39 “For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah, for as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking; they were marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away. So shall the coming of the Son of Man be.” The flood took them all away in judgment. At the Second Coming, all who are not the Lord’s in the Tribulation will be taken away in judgment. In the Tribulation, wickedness and men’s hearts will be as bad as, or almost as bad as what was before Noah’s flood.
- 2Timothy 3 v 13 “But evil men and impostors will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.” The Bible is clear that things at the end of the age get worse and worse. 2Timothy 3 v 1 “But realise this, that in the last days difficult times will come.”
- The “God is dead” movement was very popular in the 1960s especially among the intelligentsia and academics. The movement spread to the streets. The same concept is very much alive in universities and caused the rapid rise in atheism. It is the general belief of communists and the socialist left. One day all the God-deniers will receive a huge shock.
- The older generation, as never before, is astounded at how rapidly the world has changed in ways never thought possible. Every facet of human life is touched. There are increased laws of restriction and abolition of human rights. Gender, sexuality, marriage, decency, trust – all have been reversed. Two to five hundred years ago, art, music, literature etc., were grand but have declined into ugliness. One of the best examinations ever written on this subject is “How Should We Then Live? – The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture. It is a major Christian cultural and historical documentary film series and book. The book was written by theologian Francis A. Schaeffer and first published in 1976.” Source: Internet.
- The Bible is our only authority, and for ages past was upheld as the inspired word of God. Then in the last couple hundred years, the rationalists and the advocates of “higher criticism” mainly in Germany questioned the authority of the Bible. One major Australian denomination, full of liberalism, claims the Bible “contains the word of God” but is not the word of God. This is why churches can accept all the gross evils of gender and abortion and marriage. You pick and choose from the Bible what you want and what you reject.
- Laodicea was one of the seven churches John wrote to in Asia Minor in A.D. 96. It was a smug church that was run by the people, not by spiritual men appointed by God; a church that had shut God out of the equation. The Lord condemned them because they were tepid, lukewarm, and a disgrace. They stood for nothing and shut the Lord outside the door. The study of these seven churches is a truly enlightening revelation into the historical progress of Christianity for the past 2,000 years. Revelation 3 v 14-22 is the letter to Laodicea.
- “insidious leaven.” Without exception, “leaven” in the Bible is always evil. It is NEVER good. The Jews search and eliminate every hint of leaven for Passover. God commanded unleavened bread for the Passover in Egypt before the exodus in Exodus chapter 12. Jesus warned of the wickedness of Herod – Mark 8 v 15 “And He was giving orders to them, saying, ‘Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.’” He also warned of the wickedness of the Pharisees – Luke 12 v 1 “Under these circumstances, after so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they were stepping on one another, He began saying to His disciples first of all, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.’”
Paul warned about the evil working of leaven – 1Cor 5 v 6-8 “Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough? Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened, for Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Paul infers that evil does its work – Gal 5 v 7-9 “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth? This persuasion did not come from Him who calls you. A little leaven leavens the whole lump of dough.”
One of the most misunderstood parables is one of the Kingdom parables of Matthew 13, the one about the leaven – Matthew 13 v 33 “He spoke another parable to them, ‘The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three pecks of meal, until it was all leavened.’” It is the incorrect teaching to say that the leaven is the gospel which permeates through the world to make the world righteous. In fact, it is the opposite. Leaven is always evil. In the early days of the church (and we will look at Constantine later – Part 6, Footnote 15), much evil entered the church and permeated through the church and the world. A type in scripture is always uniform. It can’t mean one thing on most occasions, but something else another time.