This title comes from 1 John 2:15-17 which tells us this: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him, for all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”

When I first paid attention to those words, especially that phrase, “all that is in the world,” I thought, “Really? That is all there is, here? How is it so, and what does it mean?”

Are those three passions what guides everything that happens in the world? James tells us that such passions are what really fouls our prayers: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members? You lust and do not have. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures” (James 4:1-3).

Those three allurements have been the tactical weapons of spiritual warfare that the devil has used since his trickery with Eve in the Garden of Eden. She saw that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil had fruit that was “desirable to eat, was beautiful to look at, and would make one wise.” And she ate of the fruit of it…and died, spiritually and eventually, physically.

The passage above from James tells the history of mankind since that day in the Garden. It bears the “you come first after me” mentality.

Is there not something else in the world, something of enduring value? Surely there must be…we hopefully think. But no, for as Job says, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Basically, Job is saying, “Naked I came into the world, and naked I shall leave it.”

Therefore, Mark 8:36 has great meaning for our consideration: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?”

Job’s summation, however, gives us the clue to the correct attitude and direction we should look for our purpose in this world. His conclusion was, “Blessed be the name of the Lord!”

A couple of directives tell us how to prioritize things in the right order. Matthew 6:33 says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these thigs will be added to you,” referring to the basic essentials for life that are listed there. Then, Paul writes in Philippians 4:19, “My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.” Need seems to be a key thing here, but note that the priority is God first, then He is the One who provides.

The Scripture says it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:23). Why? A rich man can lose sight of God in the midst of his wealth where almost any need he has can be purchased. The things of this world choke the truth that there is a day of reckoning ahead. Have you noticed that many rich people have a passion for the power of a political office, sometimes for the right reasons, but other times for ungodly pursuits?

The history of the Hebrew people in Old Testament times shows a terrible and constant rejection of God as central in their lives. They had confirmed a covenant with God to keep His commandments but were obviously unable to do so, for the lure of the world around them was too much. The law was meant to bring them to God for His mercy and help, but they only turned more and more into moral degradation. God, then, would allow judgment to come upon them by the hand of evil nations. Then they would seek Him. Has the situation changed in these latter days?

It was the incarnate Jesus with whom Abraham bargained for the city of Sodom lest the Lord destroy it (Genesis 18). Centuries later, Luke records Jesus saying, “As it was in the days of Lot, so will it be in the day of the revealing of the Son of Man” (Luke 17:28-30).  Then, the city was shown as saturated with homosexuality (Genesis 19), and He added that they were in a “party-time atmosphere,” eating and drinking, buying and selling, building and planting, but totally unaware of their hovering doom.

They desperately wanted to “know” those two “men” who had come to Lot’s house. But as soon as the two angels got Lot and his wife and two daughters out of the city, sudden destruction came and destroyed Sodom with all of its people. Take note of this: Jesus said, in Luke 17:28-30, that “as it was in the days of Lot, so will it be in the day of the revealing of the Son of Man.”  That lifestyle of Sodom is being urged upon this country, this world, in the form of a civil right by the order of a court and by public opinion. The Scripture says, “They have no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:18).

“All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father but is of the world” (1 John 2:16); and Jesus said in Matthew 6, “You cannot serve two masters, but… seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

The question is, “are we willing that Jesus is all-sufficient for us?” Paul did write this: “For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power” (Colossians 2:9-10).

Contact email:  andwegetmercy@gmail.com  

 

Observing the Death of a Nation

Writing an article with this title and subject is admittedly risky, almost so as “date setting,” but I have taken the position of a contrarian in other instances as well. Why is it as a contrarian?

The upsetting drama of “Make America Great Again” has proven successful on many fronts despite heavy resistance from both sides of the political arena and has sparked a subsequent rallying cry of “Keep America Great.” It must be so painfully apparent to many of the Marxist-leftists threaded in our judicial, legislative and executive branches of the government that their ideas just do not work. Or perhaps they have not taken a look at others who have tried Socialism—Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba and, oh yes, Venezuela.

The latter, so fresh in the news, is a pitiful example of the final end of an experiment in Socialism. The “more equals” who want to control those “lesser equals” only know how to spend their resources and never how to employ those resources wisely. Thus, it is the same as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher once observed: “Socialism works until they run out of other people’s money.” That proverb of Solomon’s is worth noting in this connection: “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

It is clear that the principles of freedom stated in our Declaration of Independence of the individual rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are those that work. It is on the foundation of John 10:10 in the words of Jesus Christ that I venture into this subject:

“The thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy; I am come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”

I have no medical expertise in the academic or professional sense, but I will soon arrive at my 85^th birthday, and observations over those years may be effective enough for the comparisons I will make in this article. (I am referring to the matter of the processes of dying.)

When a person begins to die, the body starts shutting down its automatic operations. His immune system is overcome with disease, perhaps, which results in the shutting down of strategic organs that support other body functions. Eventually, this body, which was destined to die the moment it was born, comes to an end. Those final gasps for breath may well be the automatic reaction of the built-in defense system in the human body to hang onto life, though the spirit and soul have already departed—for the believer, “absent from the body, present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8).

At the conclusion of this article, we will be left with the question of the nation, “Are we now in those last gasps for life?”

While the God of the universe is sovereign over the nation, it is the Constitution that is the common document that all elected officials swear to uphold in their official duties. It is the foundation, or life-core for the nation’s existence. Like the human body, it is the immune system that holds the nation together. Many, I feel sure, swear that oath of office with no intentions of obeying it.

There should be a requirement that a review of an official’s performance in respect to that oath be made before he is allowed to run for office a second time. Charisma and popularity are not enduring qualifications for truth in job performance. Results of the next election do nothing to vet the aspiring candidate’s job performance in his prior term of office.

One very heavy identification of a dying nation is revealed in Isaiah 5:20 which says “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!”

That is a common recurrence in the nation today, turning our justice system upside down. A justice system that favors one person or party over another is not true justice as God would define it. Someone has said “we have the best government that money can buy,” and that comment is proving itself, seemingly, more and more every day.

Many years ago, President Madison and others noted that the Constitution was made for a moral people. Following are areas that are like the gasping of a dying person; and a nation hanging onto its sovereignty with a Constitution constantly under attack is comparable to the struggling immune system of a human being.

Closest, probably, to the heartbeat of the Constitution is the now transparent attempt to undercut our system of justice with the one-sided effort to reverse the Trump election win. It is becoming steadily clearer that even the obviously biased special investigation into a “Trump-Russian collusion” to steal the election from Hillary Clinton has turned up more collusion in the Department of Justice by the Democrats to benefit her election results.

It is a testimony to the forward thinking of the framers of the Constitution to create a Constitutional Republic not based on a popular vote. When the system of justice is not equal to all citizens at the highest level of leadership, then the gasping for a breath of life becomes painfully evident.

When Chief Justice Roberts changed the issue in the Obamacare case that was before the high Court, my heart sank with the realization that an apparent violation of procedure had been done that would impact the integrity of the Court forever. The chief justice changed the question of the penalty provision in the Affordable Care Act to a tax issue and not a penalty one, as I understand the circumstance at hand. It seems proper procedure that he should have remanded the case back to a lower court to determine the real issue. The question also arose as to how a tax bill now had been created and which branch has the authority to originate a new tax law.

Another glaring circumstance that is sucking the life out of the nation is the drive for open borders to the country. It is subtly apparent that the leftist desire for more and more illegals to be here is for their votes. The resounding cry against any requirement to show citizenship at the voting booth is evidence enough for that conclusion.

It might be added that it would be easier to control a population heavily infiltrated with illegals as menial laborers or on welfare who are available to support the “elite” who are “more equal” than others. It should be noted, as well, that “sanctuary cities” that harbor criminals from rightful prosecution are evidence of disdain for our justice system and concern for the lawful citizenship.

A third evidence of gasping for life is the almost rush to legalize habit-forming drugs—marijuana—for recreational use. Statistics show that such use dulls the intellect, and the user becomes less productive in whatever area he is engaged. That problem is multiplied when other people are affected by the user, such as driver safety. Dumb down the nation to kill its obvious domination in the world—one of the Saul Alinsky rules for rebels, no doubt. A nation of low-level peons is more easily controlled for benefit of the elite status.

Another sickness in the nation is the reckless defiance of the law in riots as “so-called protests” funded by high-level leftists who favor the breakdown of responsible citizenry. One alarming aspect of this sickness is the problem that a leftist-liberal judge in one district court can issue an injunction order that it alone can bind the whole nation. It is clearly a malfunction of the system of rightful justice.  

The sexual revolution demands that everyone must surrender his moral integrity to the perverted lifestyles of the LGBTQ+ community, which stands for Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender-Queer-+. Perhaps most noticeable in this struggle is their attack on Christian facilities—businesses, schools and organizations—on the basis of civil rights for services that do not match the beliefs of those entities.

The First Amendment to the Constitution clearly says that Congress shall make no law affecting the practice of a particular faith. The sexual revolution seems to bypass Congress by way of the courts to make their demands for conformity to their wishes. Yet, the courts are not the law-making branch of our Constitution. Since the advent of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 1973, it appears that the heartbeat of our nation’s life has been greatly injured beyond repair.

This introduces the most horrid sector of our society, the destruction of a life in the womb—abortion. Abortion-providing entities have asserted dominance they don’t deserve but have because of fear of the cost of challenging them in court. There have been over 60 million abortions in America since 1973, and it is an industry in itself. But it is wholesale murder, no less. The captivating demand for freedom for abortion at any time has taken on the appearance of the ultimate birth-control procedure. It is becoming likened to tumor-caused disease, and the offensive growth must be removed.

This obvious rejection of the sanctity of life can only spread to include every person in the nation. The judgment of God is hovering over this nation, ready to be revealed.

In another arena, the incessant warnings of impending disaster from climate change, formerly known as global warming, demand that the world must turn from all energy sources except wind and sunlight, along with a host of other things that are said to be the cause of all these horrific natural disasters. Of course, those proponents do not take into account the prophecies of the Bible; for to them, God does not exist and man has utterly failed to take care of the planet for the benefit of his longevity.

God says that all creation is groaning within itself in eagerness for the redemption of mankind—those who are to be redeemed—and the Bible predicts upheavals in the earth and atmosphere such as described in Luke 21:5-28 and in the preceding text, along with Romans 8:19-22 as referenced above.

Turning back the clock on modern developments to conditions as they were a century or more ago would not solve such problems as those believers hold. Some of the solutions are downright silly and thoughtless as to their implications, thus showing the lack of wisdom that denial of God reveals. Proverbs 9:10 says, “Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.”

Finally, the surrender of convictions of honor and righteousness and embracing the world, as the whole of Christendom has done, compares to an individual on his deathbed having refused the medicine and treatments that would restore his energy and vitality. Deviant sexual behavior among high-level clergy and pastoral personnel shows an undercurrent of falling away from the faith in these last days, just as the Scriptures predicted.

We are reminded of the Scripture that says, “Now these are the ones (seeds) sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word, and the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mark 4:18-19).

Has it come to the place that fewer and fewer people are guided by the fear of God, that is, a reverence for His moral character and holiness, His eternal attributes, and a respect for His ability to exact judgment upon man’s sinfulness?

It comes to this: “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? (Mark 8:36). As applied to a nation, to what end do these many detractors think they will achieve?

Contact email:  andwegetmercy@gmail.com