"Perilous Times"

In recent months I have found myself more and more aware of the rapid decay of our nation. It is not only evident that we have departed from our basic governmental foundations and under-pinnings, but we have also allowed ourselves to be swept away by the currents of our compromising, God-less culture.

Now, let me clarify, I do not mean to insinuate that we have jettisoned religion, even religion that many call Christianity. What I mean to say is that we have left, in large measure, "the faith once delivered to the Saints", that is, biblical Christianity!!
We are a nation of "comfort-lovers", a nation of apathetic "self-seekers"! We give lip-service to God and His word, but, in reality we love ourselves and our temporal things far more than God and vital holiness.

Pauls' words to Timothy come to mind: "But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power." (2Tim.3:1-5)

Does this not describe the day in which we live with great accuracy? We are a nation of organizations, of political groups, of churches, of individuals, that have been "rocked to sleep" by the music of self-indulgence and greedy pragmatism!

God is simply a means to an end, a heavenly "vending machine", a celestial genie who we use when needed and forget about when all of our present desires for "health, wealth, and prosperity" are met.

Tragically though, this is not the Holy God of scripture! This is not the Sovereign God who commands all men every where to repent or perish, no, this is the God of men's fallen and depraved imagination, a God made in man's "image", rather than the true God that is declared to "hold our breath in His hand", and testifies to us that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord"! This is the Creator and Sustainer of all things that warns: "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." (Psa.9:17)

We are doing despite to the matchless grace and long-suffering of God and we are daily, as a nation, and as individuals, rebelling against His precepts, and rejecting the way of life so that we might continue to fulfill our own evil desires for autonomy and fleshly gratification!

I cry in my heart with the prophet Jeremiah: "....turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the LORD my God." (Jer.31:18)

Our only hope as a nation is that God would "make His arm bare" and send forth His quickening Spirit to turn us from our race to destruction, to awaken us from our drunken stupor and our lethargy!

Brothers and Sisters, may our God grant us hearts of discernment and compassion so that we might not be content to "lay in our beds" and entertain ourselves with the "pleasures of sin for a season" while men and women, and our nation devolve into greater and greater darkness and misery!!

I pray that I and you who read this are not as those in the days of the prophet Ezekiel when the LORD lamented, "And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found NONE." (Ezek. 22:30)