But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come. - 2 Timothy 3:1
As The Word promises, perilous times are here. The Greek word for perilous is "chalepos" meaning difficult, furious, hard to bear, dangerous, grievous, troublesome, fierce and savage. These are the times we live in.
Watching villainous gangs spit on police is difficult to process. Allowing mobs of furious protesters to congregate, while forbidding law abiding worshipers to gather is hard to bear. De-funding and disbanding police, in the literal face of rising violent crime, is insanely dangerous. Burning churches and defacing history is grievous. Governments standing by, while family-built businesses are destroyed, in the name of "peaceful" protests is troublesome. Shooting and running over police officers is fierce savagery.
Liberals bully-shame many into seeing, hearing, discussing, and experiencing current events - real and artificial - through the purchased, political prisms of "equality", "social justice", and "black lives matter". In those words and their tone is the false premise that there is systemic and wide-spread inequality, injustice, and racism in our society. Spoken and unspoken, is the insinuation that anyone not actively involved in the paid-for protests with rabid mobs chanting their chants, looting what they are looting, and destroying what they are destroying is guilty, racist and privileged. Refusal to co-protest is labeled by the woke cancel culture as being or siding with unjust, privileged, racists; who for the most part, don't even exist.
There are certainly many incidents - one being one too many - of racism and injustice played out on many stages. However, we do not live in pre-MLK times or culture. The underlying, guilt-producing, false accusation is that a large populous of under privileged people is being strategically exploited, on a massive scale. Someones somewhere are saying that I am personally at fault - so I should keep quiet. Those same someones are saying that the prevailing system, or any system based upon individual accountability for that matter, is at fault - so the system should be overthrown. Lastly, those same "voices" are saying that reparations of some kind are owed by "us" to "them" - so there should be a mass transfer of wealth.
In addition, fundamentally false accusations, aimed at the offending general populous, are leveraged as sick justification for crimes of all sorts; which for the most part harm the very group of "under privileged" people the false moral high grounders claim to stand for. Turning a blind eye to the aberrant and violent criminal behavior is demanded as "reparation". Many governments, politicians, and journalists are falling for it. Many are too cowardly to confront the crimes, paid to turn a blind eye by the protest industry, and/or compromised themselves to the point that they need the lawlessness promoted by the gangs of rioters to avoid prosecution themselves.
Heinously hidden in the barrage of accusatory narrative and optics, is the warped implication, that individual accountability for personal decision making and lifestyle choices is "old school thinking", "conservative", and "judgmental". Anyone, or any group holding someone accountable for poor personal decision making, and destructive lifestyle choices, is bully-labeled as intolerant, evil, and phobic. Anyone expressing dissent against harmful lifestyle choices, is a hate criminal waiting to happen. Yet, roaming free, are those who express real, vile, and violent hatred toward police, governments, businesses, and individuals who have for the most part benefited from their own wise lifestyle choices, wise personal decision making, and wise family decision making. How did this degradation happen to a society that once treasured and touted high morals and performance standards?
One explanation is the conspiring evil spirits of rebellion and lawlessness operating in the riots and their ripple effect. Those spirits conspire and war against Godly accountability. These are the same spirits that rose up in Eden, taunted God, and tempted Eve with demonic, God-doubting inducements. The spirit of rebellion asked Eve and is always asking, "Did God really say?" The spirit of lawlessness connivingly asked Eve and is always seductively asking, "You will not surely die?" The enemy taunts God and tempts us, working overtime to make us doubt what God said and to doubt our accountability to Him; literally the oldest trick in the book.
Be assured, regardless of what satan says, the media says, the culture says, or sometimes even the church says, God really says that we all have accountability to Him. The Word (Psalm 11:5) really says that God, "hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." God really says (Hebrews 9:27) that, "each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment. God really says in Romans 6:23, "the wages of sin is death." But also be assured, He also says in Romans 6:23, "the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." God offered His Son on the cross as the wages for our sin, and covering for our judgment. We are all invited to humbly admit and confess we need the covering, and to accept His extravagant gift.
Another explanation for the warping of our society is the on-going distortions of the definition of good and evil. The Word warns against it in Isaiah 5:20. "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter." (Isaiah 5:20). They "go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." (2 Timothy 3:13). This is the end times degradation of our culture explained in Romans 1 and 2 Timothy 3.
Romans 1 explains that God gives over the minds of those who choose to reject Him to depraved thinking. It is the result of their choice to worship created things as opposed to worshiping The Creator. Those who worship the created things live a hypocritical form of godliness that denies its power (2 Timothy 3:5). We are called away from those people, having nothing to do with them. Instead, we are called to live out authentic love; our “love must be sincere, hating what is evil; and clinging to what is good." (Romans 12:9)
One last point..... The riotous protesting, and media attention it draws, reminds me of a magician cleverly deceiving a mesmerized audience through distraction to accomplish their trick; to make something disappear (God-reverencing law and order) into thin air, and/or to make something appear (lawless radical socialism) out of thin air. The enemy is using the sound-good, feel-good smoke screens of equality, social justice, and black lives matter to instill insanity, corruption, perversion, conflict, offense, and hatred - all having at their core a lawlessness and rebellious end times spirit of anti-Christ. Matthew 24:12 puts it this way; "Because lawlessness is increased, most people's love will grow cold."
Notice that the byproduct of lawlessness and the accompanying disorder is that the love of most will grow cold. The Greek word for "will grow cold" is "psycho". In other words, the byproduct of lawlessness is people growing cold toward others and becoming psychos. It's what we are watching in our society.
God ordained the governing authorities (Romans 13:1) that many seek to rebelliously overthrow because He is a God of order (1 Cor 14:33). His Order is the soil of trust and peace for love to grow. Disorder is the devil's soil where distrust and disturbance grow. Come Lord Jesus!
PRAYER
Abba Father. Please help me to see the situations of today, situations in society and situations close to home, through the Eyes of Your Word. Help me Lord to respond out of the Heart and Wisdom of Your Word. Amen in the Blessed Name of Jesus Christ our Lord.
VERSES
1. Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings. - 1 Peter 5:8-9
2. Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, `You must not eat from any tree in the garden'? "The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, `You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die. You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." - Genesis 3:1-5
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