A few weeks ago, there was a segment on the news where a dozen people were offered – for free – a Hershey chocolate bar or a ten ounce bar of silver. All of them took the candy. The candy bar was worth a dollar or two. The silver bar was worth $142.00 at spot prices on that day. People did not know the value of what was before them. There is a segment on the TV show The O’Reilly Factor (with Bill O’Reilly) called Watters’ World. In this segment, Jesse Watters asks people on the street simple questions about current events, history, and politics. Although often humorous, it is sad that people are so ill informed about this great country in which they live, and — not just our history — but current events as well.
I have just finished extensive research on a number of issues affecting the future of our civilization and culture…issues like abortion, homosexual lifestyle and marriage, global warming, freedom of religion, governmental cover ups , hidden political agendas, the influence of secret societies , the threat of Islamic terror, and Israel’s right to exist. What has blown me away is that even when presented with irrefutable facts and credible evidence, people STILL believe propaganda, Internet hoaxes, and deceptive talking points. As Isaiah has said, “Truth has fallen in the streets“.
Now we have a socialist being supported by the majority of college students and young adults in the presidential election. We have people worried about transgender bathrooms and the news media making it a big story, while ignoring the slaughter of 250 Christian women and girls in Mosul, a 16 year old beaten to death in an American high school, wild and godless gangs making our cities killing fields, the influx of Islamic radicals, the silencing of a middle school choir singing our National Anthem near the 9/11 memorial, and the continued murder of the unborn through abortion.
As darkness falls on our nation, we are choosing the temporary over the eternal, the trivial over the important, and evil over good. Even ministers and church folk are drinking the “Kool-aid” of ignorance.
While Russia was falling to the Bolsheviks, the Russian church was discussing the trim on their vestments. While our society plunges deeper and deeper into depravity and destruction, the church is busy splitting hairs over worship styles, the color of hymnbooks, and any number of peripheral issues that matter not one iota in the grand scheme of eternity. This is a critical year for Western civilization and our Judeo-Christian heritage, and we in the church of Jesus Christ need to recognize these perilous times for exactly what they are.
Several years ago, I was in Germany where we visited the Dachau Concentration Camp. Our host was telling us the story of when the camp was liberated by the Allies in April of 1945. When the liberating force confronted the citizens in the surrounding area about the horrific camp, the people claimed ignorance. “We didn’t know” was their excuse.
The commander of the Allied company pointed to the ash in the air and the smell of burnt human corpses emanating from the ovens that had been burning the bodies of the deceased…
“How could you NOT know?” was his alleged response.
So, I ask the same question… How can we NOT know? How can we not see the truth in front of our eyes? How can we continue to ignore the desperation of the times in which we live? How can we not see the writing on the wall, holding us accountable for our silence while our society slips further into the abyss? We will one day stand before a Holy God and, when asked about all of the souls we allowed to pass into a godless eternity, “We didn’t know” will not be an adequate response.
To hold to the truth of scripture is to be called a bigot. To have a problem with a grown man sharing a bathroom with a young girl is being “intolerant”. To demand that our leaders protect our borders is being “racist”. We are living to see our culture “calling good evil and evil good…” God issued a warning of “woe” to come on such. The worst of it is the awful silence in the contemporary pulpit — the failure to warn the nation. I for one will inform the uninformed, call sin by its proper name, and declare that people need to be saved. I will stand by the truth that the church cannot embrace the lies of culture and remain authentic. We must bear the scandal of the cross and refuse to be silent in the face of evil. We must care enough to speak the truth regardless of how we may be labelled — bigot, homophobe, racist, intolerant. Satan and his forces are stalking our families and communities. It is time to stop letting a liberal culture and media define us for simply believing in something and Someone. It’s time to stop being afraid of “ugly names” and start fearing for the souls of lost men and women heading into a hopeless eternity.
It is PAST time for the Church to rise up with the Word of Truth and go to war against ”the lie”.
At what cost will we keep silent?
Pastor Ron
Not according to the Bible. In Luke 15, Jesus tells us a story…
Friend, when was the last time you mourned for the lost? When was the last time your heart broke for those emotionally wounded and bleeding souls who came across your path — possibly through the doors of your church — and left untouched and unchanged? For the Good Shepherd, his reaction was immediate. He didn’t wait until it was convenient. He didn’t wait until he had gotten the ninety-nine to the safety of a barn or pen; the Bible says that he left the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and went after the one. I think the Good Shepherd understood that time was of the essence, and saving the one depended upon his deliberate and swift action.
I’m tired of the LGBT agenda that is being forced upon the American people. Understand me when I say that I don’t believe that anyone should be threatened, abused, or discriminated against because of their lifestyle. However, I do not believe that churches should have to hire someone that promotes a lifestyle contrary to our biblical world view, or be forced to affirm perversion as a “civil right”. While members of the LGBT community should not be oppressed or mistreated, neither should those of us who believe that their lifestyle is a sin be forced to agree with their choices. If you can’t “legislate morality from the (court) bench”, you shouldn’t be able to legislate immorality either.
I’m tired of we, the American taxpayers, being robbed to support leftist causes and wasteful governmental agencies. It infuriates me to see our tax dollars go to failed and failing “green” companies (remember Solyndra) and other “pet
I’m tired of Islamic terrorists being called moderates. When I was young and growing up in the South, there was a religious organization that committed acts of terror in the name of God. They were called the Ku Klux Klan. Yet, the church rose up against them and said, “You’re not Christian… You’re wrong.” It’s time for any moderate Muslims to rise up, call these terrorists for what they are, and affirm the right for Israel to exist in peace.
I am still proud when I hear the sound of our National Anthem being sung at a sporting event.
Dishonesty has been around since the Garden of Eden. 
Someone to believe. We all desire to be spoken the truth.Whether it is a doctor giving us a diagnosis, a politician making campaign promises, or a child explaining how the expensive vase ended up on the floor in a thousand pieces, we all want people to be straight with us. The fact is, however, that we have become accustomed to much less. In politics, lies and “back-room deals” have become expected, and we have grown too complacent to alter the modus operandi. On television, we see dishonesty given a pass — even glorified — as long as it serves some noble purpose, whether on a sitcom or the nightly news. As a pastor, I cannot tell you how many marriages and families I have seen torn apart because of dishonesty and deception.
I would contend that we are not too far gone. I would argue that we are not beyond expecting truth — regardless of how painful — from those around us. Getting back to a place of truth and honesty might be painful for a season, but once we you get there with God’s help, and make that your expectation, you will be amazed at the freedom that accompanies truth. As the saying goes… “The truth will set you free!”
On June 6, 1944, the success of Operation Overlord (what we commonly refer to as D-Day) can be largely attributed to the fact that personnel and equipment were where they were supposed to be, when they were supposed to be there.
Conversely, the failure of Operation Market Garden (famously depicted in the movie A Bridge Too Far) just three months later can be blamed, in large part, on the inability to get men and supplies where they needed to be in order to support troop movements and actions. Although Operation Market Garden was actually a larger operation, it failed to meet it’s objective and expedite the end World War II.
This would imply that David, as king and leader of the army, should have been with his army, Instead, he decided to hang back, and relax in the confines of his palace in Jerusalem. While there was not necessarily anything inherently wrong with being where he was (in his palace), by not being in his proper place, it allowed him to fall into temptation, and subsequently sin with Bathsheba. Not being where he was supposed to be opened the door for sin, and changed the destinies of Uriah the Hittite, Bathsheba, David himself, and an entire nation.
Maybe there is nothing inherently wrong with where you are… it’s just not where you are supposed to be. For me, as a burned-out Southern Baptist preacher in 1989, a perfectly acceptable place for me to be would have been at home with my family. However, where I was supposed to be was in Glorietta, New Mexico. Being there, and my subsequent encounter with the Holy Spirit as a result, changed my future, my ministry, and my life.
We have now in America what is referred to as The Bystander Effect. This “psychological phenomenon” was brought to light on March 16, 1964 when a young woman named Catherine “Kitty” Genovese was brutally stabbed to death while walking to her apartment at Kew Gardens in Queens, New York City. A man named Winston Moseley had decided he was going to kill a woman that day, and it didn’t matter who it was. Driving around, Moseley spotted Genovese, and followed her to a parking lot. He got out of his car, and when she began to flee, he quickly caught up to her, and began stabbing her. As Genovese screamed, “Oh my God, he stabbed me! Help me!“, Moseley continued his attack. Amid her cries for help, a neighbor eventually yelled out of his window, “Let that girl alone!“, at which point Moseley fled the scene of the crime. Lying wounded and dying, not one of the estimated three dozen+ people who either heard her cries or saw the attack came to help Genovese. After ten minutes of lying there wounded, her attacker returned, and continued to stab, rape, and rob Genovese. By the time Moseley left, and help finally arrived, it was too late. Twenty-eight-year-old Kitty Genovese took her last breath en route to the hospital.
Is His sacrifice nothing to you?
The 2015 movie Bridge of Spies tells the true story of James Donovan, an American lawyer who was tasked with defending a Soviet spy during the height of the Cold War. After being given the unenviable assignment of unsuccessfully defending Soviet spy Rudolf Abel (real name: Vilyam Genrikhovich Fisher) after his capture by U.S. authorities in 1957, the tenacious Mr. Donovan continued with appeals, eventually arguing his client’s case before the Supreme Court (which ruled against him in a 5-4 decision). Although his arguments did not sway the courts, he did manage to see one decision go in his favor…
Four years after his defeat in court, Mr. Donovan and Mr. Abel were once again reunited on the Glienicke Bridge when Abel was traded to the Soviets for downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. Not only that, but at about that same time at Checkpoint Charlie, American student Frederic Pryor, who had been held without charge by the East Germans, was being released as well.
The Heart of Abba - Ron Phillips 