Have you not brought this upon yourself by forsaking the Lord your God, when he led you in the way...Your evil will chastise you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God; the fear of me is not in you, declares the Lord God of hosts.
--Jeremiah 2:17-19
As a thief is shamed when caught, so the house of Israel shall be shamed: they, their kings, their officials, their priests, and their prophets, who say to a tree, ‘You are my father,’ and to a stone, ‘You gave me birth.’ For they have turned their back to me, and not their face. But in the time of their trouble they say, ‘Arise and save us!’ But where are your gods that you made for yourself? Let them arise, if they can save you, in your time of trouble; for as many as your cities are your gods, O Judah.
--Jeremiah 2:26-28
It seems sometimes like this country is in the same situation Judah found itself in during the days of Jeremiah the prophet. Have we not bowed down at the altar of self? Have we not made for ourselves gods of material things, and even humanistic thought? How many people demand to know "If God loves us, why did He let 9/11 happen?" These things came to mind as I was preparing a sermon on Psalm 33:11-12--The counsel of the LORD stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, the people He has chosen as His own inheritance.
I was going to put the followng into the message, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized it was a rabbit trail. So, here are some leftover thoughts.
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On July 21, 1925, in the little town of Dayton, TN, Satan began turning this country upside-down. First, he managed to have the teaching of creation expelled from schools. In the aftermath of the famous “Scopes trial”, Darwinian evolution—this silly notion that says that we came from monkeys—began to be taught in schools.
Today, it is the status quo. And in schools all around the country, children are being lied to and being fed a bunch of gobbledy-gook about how humans used to be chimps. And because of this teaching, what have people come to think of themselves? We’re nothing more than glorified apes. And that this life is all there is. So go out and live however you want to, because when you die, it’s over.
And if we’re evolving into something better, then there are bound to be people who would be more than happy to help that evolution go more quickly. Some people may even get the idea that blond-haired, blue-eyed, tall, fair-skinned people are the most favored in this evolution. So let’s get rid of the dark-skinned, the brown-eyed, the dark-haired, the short...the Jew. Six million dead Jews testify to the power of evolutionary thinking. And guess who said this (answer at bottom):
‘If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behaviour to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…’
Next, Everson v. Ewing. It was during this Supreme Court case that the phrase “separation of church and state” made its way into the American vocabulary. I'm not going to go into all the details of the case. But I do want you to know this: that phrase is NOT IN the Constitution, and it was not written by ANY OF THE AUTHORS of the Constitution. It was not even part of any official government document. The phrase “separation of church and state” comes from a personal correspondence between President Thomas Jefferson and the Danbury (Conn.) Baptist Assoc. Here is that phrase, in its proper context:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.
He’s telling these people, “Hey, don’t worry about the government trying to tell you how to worship, how to pray, what hymnal to use, King James only. The government is prohibited from sticking its nose into your beliefs.” THAT is what this “wall of separation” is for. It’s not to keep religion out of government—it’s to keep the government out of religion. This statement from Jefferson actually strengthens the “free exercise thereof” thingy. But to hear many people today, you’d think the First Amendment is there to keep people from praying over their meal at Shoney’s, or to keep somebody who works at city hall from putting up a Bible verse in their cubicle.
Then, in 1963, along came Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The famous atheist--by the way, her son got saved right before she died--argued that schools should not lead prayers and that Bibles should be removed from schools—even though these things had been in schools for nearly 200 years. She said that her son had been "harassed" and "intimidated" for not taking part in these activities. (Years later he admitted that never happened, and that Ms. O'Hair had made that stuff up.). And she succeeded in having prayer and Bibles removed from schools. Because of “separation of church and state.” Ya know, say what you will about Satan, but he can be patient when he wants to be. He waited until just the right time to use Madalyn Murray O’Hair. He waited until he got just the right people on the Supreme Court.
When children are taught they're nothing more than monkeys. When they are taught that the Bible isn't that important. When they are fed a bunch of garbage on MTV, and beer commercials, and Seventeen magazine. And when the world says, “Ooh, over there! Look! Britney Spears! Look! Lindsey Lohan! Look! Paris Hilton! You need to be like them!” And parents buy into this crap, and sell their kids’ eternal souls just to keep them quiet and keep them happy for a little while. Rather than teach their children what’s right and what’s wrong. Rather than “fighting the good fight of faith,” they throw up their hands, and turn their children over to Satan.
Then in 1973, Satan had a Supreme Court stacked with the most liberal, un-Christian, and flat-out godless (not to mention Constitutionally inept) justices. And on January 22 of that year, Warren Burger and six other justices sentenced over 30 million unborn children to be slaughtered before they even took their first breath. They upheld Roe v. Wade, and legalized abortion. As if it wasn’t bad enough already. Not only was human life devalued by evolution. But now, human life was worthless. Because once a child is born, that child is a human. But, because that child is still growing inside of his or her mother, we’re not talking about a child—we’re talking about “choice.” We’re talking about “reproductive rights.” I hope I am abundantly clear in what I'm about to say. A woman’s rights END where the umbilical cord BEGINS.
Walk out your front door. Turn on your TV. What do you see? Violence. Crime. Prostitution. Drugs. Child abuse. Spousal abuse. Murder. Homosexuality. Abortion. Divorce. Pornography. Child pornography. Hatred. And yet the Evolutionist says that the human species is evolving into something...BETTER?? The evolutionist, the beer company, the gay “rights” activists, the abortion supporter, the people that want to legalize drugs. They don’t care about YOU. They're not marching for these “rights” because they care about YOU. They want you to support them so they can go on living however they want to, even trampling on your rights in the process.
They are slaves to sin. They are slaves to Satan. They are blind, they do not know God. Nor do they know Christ. They are lost. And they need our prayers. Because they are not the enemy. Satan is the enemy. He is using atheists, and school teachers, and rappers, and actors, and singers, and anybody else he can use—he’s using them to lead people to destruction. And Hell.
Let me finish with a quote from a book that just came out called, “What’s So Great About Christianity?” The author wrote this book as an answer to the many books by atheists that have come out over the last couple of years. This is how he views atheists:
The atheists no longer want to be tolerated. They want to monopolize the public square and to expel Christians from it. They want political questions like abortion to be [separated] from religious and moral claims. They want to control school curricula so they can promote a [worldly philosophy] and undermine Christianity. They want to discredit the factual claims of religion, and they want to convince the rest of society that Christianity is not only mistaken but also evil. They blame religion for the crimes of history and for the ongoing conflicts in the world today. In short, they want to make religion – and especially the Christian religion – disappear from the face of the earth.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD. If the people in this country don’t stop tolerating these attacks on our Christian liberties. If this country doesn’t return to the truth. If this country keeps tolerating attacks on the very name of God by these forces of evil—then 9/11 will be just a taste of what’s to come.
After those attacks, churches were filled to overflowing. It wasn’t a year later that the country rolled over, hit the snooze button, and went back to sleep. What will it take to shake this country up once again? The people of Israel had to be taken captive by Babylon, and by Assyria, and Persia. They turned their backs on God, who had “delivered them from Egypt.” You see Him referred to that way many times in the Old Testament. Has this country turned its back on the God who delivered us?
(Answer to the "Who said it?"--Jeffrey Dahmer on why he did what he did.)
