One of the greatest attractions of Christianity to me is its sheer absurdity. I love all those crazy sayings in the New Testament—which, incidentally, turn out to be literally true—about how fools and illiterates and children understand what Jesus was talking about better than the wise:, the learned, and the venerable; about how the poor, not the rich, are blessed, the meek, not the arrogant, inherit the earth, and the pure in heart, not the strong in mind, see God.
~Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
Prophets, such as, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop were screaming to us at the top of their lungs about this day… 35 years ago.
We are coming apart in this world, beloved. The end is near. The end is near, at least for those of us who bought into the Western lie of humanity being the sum and substance of truth and justice. We listened to the German philosophers echo what the evil one hissed and whispered many thousands of years ago in the garden: “Did G_d really say?” We answered, “well no, we guess He did not.” And things have been coming apart since those few decades before the First World War.
We, in the West, have chosen the foolish things of the world and made them wise. We have chosen to say that there is meaning in the things that are meaningless. And worse, we have chosen to say that that which is most real – the spiritual, and the existence of Absolute Truth – is only the manifestation of superstition and ignorance. And in cutting the rope that once held the ship of the Western State moored to the quay of Absolute Truth – we have enabled what started as the inevitable drift from shore to become a headlong rush towards crashing rapids and falls.
The perversion of the normal mores of life, and the forcing of those same twistings back upon those who were just trying to live quiet lives should not surprise us. That we are not yet being beheaded in The West for standing in Christ, should be the thing that leaves us in awe. Surely, The Holy Spirit has His hand on us for a something.
And another thing can be simply seen, the violence we see now is a natural consequence of a culture focused on itself instead of its Creator. That we kill each other in droves inside and outside the womb should not be a surprise. Rather, that the droves are not legion should be the thing that brings amazement. For surely, it is Him who does keep us from destroying ourselves wholesale.
Some would say that the evil in this world is evidence that we need more of a focus on mental health. Perhaps this is true. But perhaps we are looking at the issue from the wrong side. His Word does most clearly tell us that the beginning of wisdom is the true fear of the only thing in the universe we should fear – Him. This fear does indeed bring the clarity necessary to see the world for what it is; and to see ourselves for what we are – both severely broken apart from Him.
We have, beloved, come to a crisis in the West. The dream is still real, but the life has gone out of it. It is only a shell and soon to collapse. There is no forward momentum in the West, and there is no sense that there is anything really to get us moving forward. And as desperate as things may seem, this is very good news. For we have come, like Isaiah, to the moment when the support we felt from the worldly structures around us has disappeared.
We have come to the moment where we need to look up and see Him. For when we do, we will clearly see the problem. The problem is us.
We are a people unclean.
We have unclean lips.
We have unclean thoughts.
We have unclean desires.
We have unclean everything.
We are completely unclean, but we have not yet changed our mind so we can believe it. We do not yet believe it, but we must. We must see ourselves for the undone people we are.
Said even more simply, repent and believe the Gospel. We are dead and will be left dead in our sins without Jesus.
There is a tremendous upside to all of this though.
Can we see it?
In seeing ourselves as the broken people we are, He is then able to begin His work of clearing away the wreckage and both paying and paving the way back to wholeness. Because the Gospel is completely true, and it is amazingly effective – for it is the very Person and work of G_d on our behalf. And because it is G_d doing the clearing and paying and paving, the work can proceed in an extremely fast manner. So, said simply again, if the West repents and turns back to G_d in brokenness, we could be back on track within a few short months.
Oh L_RD! Grant us the grace of repentance. Bring us to the belief in You alone that casts any confidence in ourselves aside.
