True Discernment

from Lighthouse Trails Research:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, un-thankful, unholy,Without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.  (2 Timothy 3:1-5)

There is a frightening phenomenon that I have observed lately. I have been seeing the unhappy spectacle of young people, between their teens and early thirties, reared in the evangelical subculture, yet denying Christ.

They don’t consciously do it; I have no doubt that they don’t realize they are denying the Savior, but indeed they are, and in many cases with a vehemence!

The watershed for these young people is the acceptance or rejection of homosexuality. Through a distorted concept of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, homosexuals are now considered to be the new victims of oppression; and those who would in any way judge it as evil are now the new bigots. They have erroneously likened themselves to blacks or Jews.

In fact, we have come to the point in our post-Christian, paganized culture, where it is not even enough to “tolerate” homosexuality; the pressure is on to become advocates of it, to champion it; and there is a new freedom for people to hate and demean anyone who would dare call it into question.

The age group I mentioned at the beginning of the article—teens through early thirties—are perhaps vulnerable for a number of reasons:

It is they who have been, for the most part, deliberately propagandized through our public schools to develop “sensitivity” to homosexual issues and to question even their own sexuality long before they have even entered puberty.

Anti-bullying campaigns and whole school days of self-imposed silence in solidarity with “gay” students have been invented by “gay activists” in order cast homosexuality into a kind of victim status, thus tapping into the natural sympathy and sense of fair play of the young.

Thus, to this generation, interaction with and acceptance of homosexuals is an easy bona fide, a way to assert that “I am compassionate, open minded, unprejudiced and much more loving than the traditional Christian church.”

This is how they deny Christ. In the name of “being loving” and “understanding,” they repudiate the revelation of God given to us through Jewish prophets and Christian apostles, without a second thought.

Our Christian sexual mores are not mere constructs of uptight pastors, priests, or rabbis; they are a revelation from God!

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and they two shall be one flesh . . . and what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.”

Man didn’t originate the above—that is God’s definition of marriage. Jesus cited it as being “from the beginning” the original intent for marriage.

That revelation from heaven caused a moral earthquake in the ancient world, transforming paganism’s exhausted, debauched, rotting societies, offering a wholesome life-affirming alternative. Here is how columnist Dennis Prager, who happens to be a practicing Jew, describes it:

When Judaism demanded that all sexual activity be channeled into marriage, it changed the world. The Torah’s prohibition of non-marital sex quite simply made the creation of Western civilization possible. Societies that did not place boundaries around sexuality were stymied in their development. The subsequent dominance of the Western world can largely be attributed to the sexual revolution initiated by Judaism and later carried forward by Christianity.

This revolution consisted of forcing the sexual genie into the marital bottle. It ensured that sex no longer dominated society, heightened male-female love and sexuality (and thereby almost alone created the possibility of love and eroticism within marriage), and began the arduous task of elevating the status of women.1

But this generation dismisses that for the most part. For the cheap “holier than thou” feeling of compassion, sophistication, and solidarity with an oppressed minority, “Christian” young people align themselves with the cause of homosexual marriage at the expense of those who seek to proclaim the Word of God to this generation.

This is how they deny Jesus and don’t even realize it: they repudiate His teaching on a very important subject, and they side with a world in rebellion against God’s moral order. Not only do they not realize it, in fact they actually believe they are being more merciful and Christlike than other Christians.

Sides are being taken in this culmination of the cosmic struggle between righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, the truth and the Lie, and neutrality is impossible.

I think we need to reach our own young people because they don’t seem ready to stand for Jesus at the point where the world most resists Him.

They are confused about what love is but arrogantly believe they are more sophisticated and compassionate than the whole of the Christian church through the centuries.