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Wednesday, 24 June 2015
Our Response to Moral Decline - Part One

Our country was founded on biblical values, yet today the moral fabric of our society appears to be collapsing with increasing rapidity everywhere we look. It is right that it distresses us, but let us not think that it is the first time in history that it has happened. We need only to reflect on the recent advent of ISIS and that of the Nazis before them, to realize that evil has been in the world throughout the ages and even today, but it has mostly been somewhere else. Centuries ago, the Apostle Paul wrote:

What is revealed is God's anger from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people who in their wickedness keep suppressing the truth; because what is known about God is plain to them, since God has made it plain to them. For ever since the creation of the universe his invisible qualities - both his eternal power and his divine nature - have been clearly seen, because they can be understood from what he has made. Therefore, they have no excuse; because, although they know who God is, they do not glorify him as God or thank him. On the contrary, they have become futile in their thinking; and their undiscerning hearts have become darkened. Claiming to be wise, they have become fools! In fact, they have exchanged the glory of the immortal God for mere images, like a mortal human being, or like birds, animals or reptiles! This is why God has given them up to the vileness of their hearts' lusts, to the shameful misuse of each other's bodies. They have exchanged the truth of God for falsehood, by worshipping and serving created things, rather than the Creator - praised be he for ever. Amen.

This is why God has given them up to degrading passions; so that their women exchange natural sexual relations for unnatural; and likewise the men, giving up natural relations with the opposite sex, burn with passion for one another, men committing shameful acts with other men and receiving in their own persons the penalty appropriate to their perversion. In other words, since they have not considered God worth knowing, God has given them up to worthless ways of thinking; so that they do improper things. They are filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and vice; stuffed with jealousy, murder, quarrelling, dishonesty and ill-will; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God; they are insolent, arrog ant and boastful; they plan evil schemes; they disobey their parents; they are brainless, faithless, heartless and ruthless. They know well enough God's righteous decree that people who do such things deserve to die; yet not only do they keep doing them,but they applaud others who do the same. (Romans 1:18-32 CJB).

Sounds familiar, doesn't it! Still, it is the first times that, in these United States, the institutions and authorities upon which we once depended to set us straight when we strayed seem to now be leading the charge in declaring what is wrong to be right, and what is right to be wrong. We should not be surprised though, because the Bible predicts that, as the end-times approach, it will happen.

Come back tomorrow, because that's not the end of the story!

Posted By Michael Rudolph, 10:10am Comment Comments: 0