One of the standard comical lines on the television show Monk was that someone would compliment Adrian on his unique ability to solve cases....and Monk would respond with....."It's a blessing".....then he would pause as we all knew what he would say next...."And a curse."
Well it is a perilous situation....and challenging.....but a blessing to be so thankful for knowing that our Lord and Savior and coming King of Kings Jesus Christ is at the very door in His triumphant return in righteous judgment. Perilous because of what is ahead....a wake-up call for all of us to look inwardly and prepare....challenging because there is a blindness upon evangelicalism....like a blanket....and it is difficult watching just about everyone grope around in the darkness....oblivious to the clear warnings....almost step by step warnings....in God's field manual to all of His children....but then one of those warnings....is that if they have no interest in warnings....then no warnings will they understand!
Jeremiah did not want the job that God had given him. He just wanted to get married and live a simple life....but God told him that he was not even going to take a wife. He kept going to the king and the princes and telling them that God was going to judge them....but the false prophets were always there to tell them that they were going to make Judah and Jerusalem great again! This went on for forty years! Even when Jeremiah's prophecies started coming true....that didn't cause the people to believe him. I think of Billy Graham when I think of Jeremiah....and I think of many other ministers faithful to God's Word who....their days of warning done....are gone on to be with their Lord! I do think of the few ministers today who are still warning the sheep....but then I think of the vast auditoriums that I see on television....filled with smiling evangelical faces....following false prophets....like Joel Osteen!
I'd like to ask the blinded evangelical of today....just what is it that you want? Do you really think that you can just go back to building a 401 and watching your children go off to college....this as God has departed the church....and law the land....with violence everywhere....as we fill our stadiums that are becoming nothing but gladiator arenas?
We no longer have compassion for suffering people....for the alien....for whole nations victimized by mass murdering despots....or for anyone overly susceptible to a killing virus.
There was a time when the evangelical was not racist....but Fox news and talk radio constantly beat it into us how superior we are to everyone else. It started with Trump's promises to us during the last campaign how he will keep those low-income people away from our communities. We let that not-so-subtle racist campaign promise slide....and pastors let that slide....and God let us continue our slide into oblivion.
Forty years ago we might quite naturally talk about the frog in the pot under a slow boil....using that example to warn of where we were heading....and here today we ourselves are....frog soup!
Only naivety can explain why we cannot see war coming. Only obscurantism can explain how we cannot see artificial intelligence as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy....and only stubbornness can explain not admitting that the level of violence in this world today....along with what is ahead....is just as in the days of Noah.
"But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark." That passage is from the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24....which is also recorded in Mark 13 and Luke 21. We almost should have that discourse memorized. Eighteenth century pastor/theologian John Gill's commentary which I refer to often....makes some interesting comments on 'marrying and giving in marriage." He points out that there is nothing wrong with marrying and giving in marriage....that what is meant here is 'libidinous and unlawful marriages." Is that not a scourge of this age....for not only do we 'marry' anyone we want....any gender....but we live any gender that we choose to live.
Absolute chaos is ahead....and artificial intelligence will be there to help us out of the mess we got ourselves into! The mesmerizing hold that political campaigns have upon us is perpetual. Fox cable....talk radio and podcasts have become a curse....pulling us back in the fog covered fetid swamp of anger and hatred every time that we show any signs of humility. God is judging us as He had judged Judah and Jerusalem....and this after he had judged and taken off into oblivion the ten northern tribes....just as He has previously led our liberal/progressive/pagan element of society into oblivion.
