Hi Friend,

It is hard to think of God as being discouraged but there was a time when He became — can I say the word — depressed, because evil had taken over the world.  It was so bad that God said He was sorry He made man. Maybe the closest comparison a man could imagine is having a child grow up and wishing they had never been born.  What an utterly depressing thought. Children can do some pretty awful things before a parent could ever reach that point.

Evil was so ubiquitous that there was only one man on earth that was worth saving.  So God destroyed every human except Noah and his family.

Listening to the news today one wonders if we are nearing that stage again.

It is frightening that some well-respected moral teachers have come to believe that America — and the world — may have reached a point of no return.  Dr. James Dobson writes that there is in America, “a popular culture that represents evil personified.”  He goes on to say that “They have made this country the pornography capital of the world and built its financial empire on perversion, pedophilia, profanity, infidelity, sexual enslavement, illegal drugs, lawlessness, gambling, power mongering, dishonesty, greed, hatred, racism, and violence. This moral degeneracy has resulted in shattered families, public schools that are corrupting our young, and seething hostility to the institution of marriage. God’s holy name has been reduced to a sacrilege.”

Was the world prior to the flood any worse? No wonder God was grieved.  And no wonder that righteous people today are depressed.

Franklin Graham has written something just as scathing.  These are not fringe personalities that are prone to hyperbole.  They have been at the core of American religious and cultural moral thought.  All of their lives they have been a bedrock of support for family structure and religious training — the foundational structures of civilization.  When men who work at that level believe we may be reaching the point of no return, we should heed the warnings.

We have heard enough from pandering political fools prattling on about the basic goodness of man.  The Bible does not teach it. History disproves it and parents who instill character in their children know it’s a lie.

If man is basically good, explain the likes of Stalin, who killed at least twenty million, and maybe as many as fifty million of his own citizens.  Or Mao, who murdered over a hundred million of his people.

Then there is the spectacle of the Aztec, Mayan and Incan peoples — I can’t call them civilizations — who sacrificed to their gods hundreds of millions of human beings on pyramids which stand today as mute testimony to their barbaric religion.  Or America which has assassinated over sixty million babies.  We elected a former president who advocated that parents have a right to eliminate the life of a child up to two-years after he is born.

Have I made my point sufficiently?  People who believe the Bible understand that man is not basically good.

Jesus was even more blunt.  He referred to mankind, including his disciples, as evil.  In spite of man’s nature Jesus offered hope.  “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” (Matt. 7:11)

This hope stands as a beacon of light in a corrupt world.  America has had its periods of enlightenment when the nation repented.  There is a call to repentance now.  A huge event scheduled to occur on September 26th on the National Mall in Washington D.C., is called THE RETURN and you can find more information by going to https://thereturn.org/. It will take place on the Saturday between the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement, a biblical time for self-examination and repentance.  We plan to livestream segments of it from our church website.

There may yet be a chance for our country to turn around, but it takes individuals committed to God.  You can’t change the world — but you can change you.  Every good world changing event is preceded by repentance.

Jesus promised that when these terrible events occur, “for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.” (Matt. 24:22)

Be one of the Elect!

Until next time,

Jim O’Brien