When our Lord began His public ministry, His message was simple and direct: “Repent and believe, because the Kingdom of God is at hand.” That’s still the message we, His followers must take to the world. “Repent of your sins and believe that God is here.” That command from the Lord is even more pressing today when God’s people are opposed so viciously by counter forces.
Mark 1:15 (NLT): “The Kingdom of God is near! Repent of your sins and believe the Good News!”
2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV): “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
OUR COUNTRY IS BROKEN. It is severely conflicted, sharply divided into opposing camps.
This plays out in many areas of public life where is no possibility of compromise or consensus.
- There is no compromise between those forces who accept God’s teaching that life begins at conception with those forces that believe life starts only at birth … with the caveat that the newborn can still be allowed to perish, if that was the mother’s intent.
- There is no compromise between one side that views marriage as the union of one man and one woman with those who replace that structure with alternative arrangements.
- There is no compromise between one group that says “religious liberty” means the opportunity to live out one’s faith during the week with the other side that restricts that definition to cover one hour of worship on Sunday mornings.
Those are just a few examples.
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Isaiah 5:20 (NLT): What sorrow for those who say that evil is good and good is evil, that dark is light and light is dark, that bitter is sweet and sweet is bitter.
Romans 1:21 (CSB): For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened.
The Bible warns against this, calling those things “good” that God says are evil or calling “evil” those things He says are good.
Is marriage between two women or two men good … or is it evil?
One side says it is “evil” and cites to God’s Word for His commandment.
The other side calls it “good” and relies on human reason and experience as witness. Not only that, but this side calls those who stand by God’s Word “bigots” and “haters.”
Really?
God told the prophet Isaiah nearly 2,800 years ago that “sorrow” awaits those who switch good and evil from what God ordains to what man desires. God also says (Malachi 3:6) He never changes. He remains the same (Hebrews 13:8) throughout eternity.
That means what God declared as “evil” three millennia ago remains “evil,” and vice versa with “good,” regardless of man’s “progressive” wisdom.
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Mark 4:9 (BSB): Then Jesus said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”
Isaiah 6:9 (NET): He [God] said, “Go and tell these people: ‘Listen continually, but don’t understand! Look continually, but don’t perceive!’”
TALKING TO THE “OTHER” SIDE is like talking to a brick wall.
- Heterosexual marriage? No, that’s an outdated construct benefitting the “patriarchy.” Besides, God (or the apostles) could not possibly have foreseen the love relationship that can bind two peope of the same sex.
- Religious liberty? No, there’s separation of church and state, and your “religion” becomes the building block for a theocracy, rather than a secular republic.
Each of those points can be refuted easily, but the self-styled “progressives,” those who claim they are not caught in the quagmire of the past, refuse to listen to their moral inferiors, to those they consider less literate, less worthy, and less moral than they are.
Why, they ask, should they listen to the great unwashed, who basically are “bigots” and “religious nuts.”
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THERE’S NO JOY in pointing to the sad outcome awaiting those who spurn the Word of God in the latter days. For the time being, they are part of the mission field.
So we shall.
Still, we, as a country, remain deeply divided. … with a divide that grows deeper with each passing year.
There is no reason to believe that another election, which occurs in November 2020, will change that dynamic.
Regardless of who wins the White House, the Senate, and the House, the division will grow.
Only the return of Jesus Christ will alter that dynamic.
ALMIGHTY GOD, have mercy on this country, we pray. Guide our leaders to be men and women of great faith, who hire top staff who share that faith and who serve honorably as public servants, beholden first to You and then to us. Forgive us, O Lord, for our failure to listen to Your Word and the hardness of our hearts. Direct and strengthen those of us who are Your children to lead by example, living our lives as Christ taught us to. We ask this is the loving, merciful, and magnificent name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. AMEN
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