America Unravelling

America Unravelling

Charles Spurgeon wrote these words over a century ago, The yoke of affliction, disappointment, and excessive labor is by no means to be sought; but when the Lord lays it upon us in our youth it frequently develops a character which glorifies God and blesses the church. Come, my soul, bow thy neck; take up thy cross. It was good for thee when young, it will not harm thee now. America is heading at breakneck speed in acquiring such a yoke. We are but a shell of what we were. Where the aroma of our freedom and liberty once wafted throughout the world it is now the stench of our culture that permeates much of the globe. There should be no surprise here for when a civilization becomes so prosperous that its economy is totally dependent on what its malls can sell, its influence for good becomes depleted in proportion to the disgust that is generated. We have become a seller to the world of that which makes it vomit. Given time, all these nations would have generated their own pollution, we just accelerated the situation. It's the nature of man without God. They don't hate us because we are good, they hate us, many of them, because we once gave the appearance of it and have since, in their eyes, let them down. Where did it begin? Hugh Hefner is as good a guess as any but what difference does it make? Our television screens rage against God! Our streets are violent and we as a people have become desensitized to it. Our pulpits preach peace when there is no peace; thinking they are building faith in God, they are concealing His righteous anger. Gone almost, is the statesman, replaced by the pure politician. Government runs our lives, obsessed and drunken with power. I see no way that God will have mercy upon us as we exist today without a radical reformation. It would be ludicrous as evidenced from many examples in Scripture, that God would give us, as a nation, more time to sell our wares while profaning His name, refusing to let our children come to Him (those that we do not abort,) destroying His creation of the family and demanding that we are masters of our own fate. It doesn't matter what I, or anyone so inclined as I, might say. For they are just words. God has blinded us to a world hastening to destruction. We read the news as much as to say "Things are dangerous....over there!" We have become insulated by our entertainments. Our motto has become Red Solo Cup...Let's Have A Party. We cannot see a day past the Super Bowl and when that is over everything will be put on hold until the end of March Madness, and so on. We are to be pitied, but pitied only by those who do not know the majesty of God and His omnipotent power, for His mercy is as abundant as His judgments are strict, but only in response to repentance! There may very well be a yoke of affliction coming upon us for we have made it abundantly clear that only such a yoke can awaken us and even then, will our response be one of rending our garments and seeking God's mercy, to grow once again as a nation and church, or will we then blame God and those who did warn us? Do we really want to hear peace and safety when we are at the edge of the abyss? The same Scripture that recorded God's judgments upon nations recorded his mercies. It would behoove all of us in America to look into that Word to be informed of our creator, our benefactor, our sustainer up until now, our shepherd and the ruler of all the nations.

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Cablevision vs Viacom

OK, how am I going to write this blog without readers saying "Borrrr...ing!" and leaving? I've written blogs on this before and been in many conversations over the years on the topic and have not been able to generate any excitement. Now I could write about the things that this topic effects and it wouldn't be boring, in fact I write about them all the time, but as soon I mention the main subject..."Borrrr...ing!" Well, I have no choice, here it is.....cable television! Please don't leave yet. Do you love your country? Certainly you love your children! Let me cut to the quick. Cable companies bundle the stations they sell you so if you want Fox News for example you may have to take whatever else they give you. The result is that televisions all across America offer more viewing opportunities than the public can handle and at the same time contemplate the reasons for their collapsing nation. If that weren't bad enough the content of most television programming is somewhat of an hallucinogen in that you believe what you see even though it may be absurd. The image truly has taken over from the word and we are to be pitied for it. This is a part, and not a small part, of how Barack Obama was elected. My hope, and what I wrote about before, was for legislation freeing the viewer to pay for only what is desired. Attempts were made by some in Congress but nothing came out of it. Then out of the blue Cablevision sues Viacom so that they don't have to pay for the lesser viewed stations, and then raise cable rates to pay for it. If they win.... in time, for it would take a while, the American public would be the big winner. I can't write too long on this subject or I'll lose every reader. You're the only one left so this blog's for you! We abuse television and others abuse us through it. The result is, as Rush Limbaugh would call them, 'low information voters," an undiscerning public that watches Modern Family as their nation collapses. Give the Public a choice and a percentage, a high percentage I believe, will wind up with less television and less propaganda. This isn't a money issue, it's a discernment issue, and it's not a small issue. The general opinion of what I have read so far about the lawsuit is that it would be difficult for Cablevision to win. My hope, and therefore my prayer, is that somehow the cable industry's hold over the American public is broken and that we in America would have enough time to benefit from it!