WHY WE NEED CHRIST IN OUR CULTURE OF DESPAIR BEYOND DESPAIR 20 SEP 2016

WHY WE NEED CHRIST IN OUR CULTURE OF DESPAIR BEYOND DESPAIR: A message about modern & postmodern man, & the postmodern rejection of both truth & progress.(20 SEPT ’16) Martin Luther, the great reformer understood spiritual timing. He said that if one were talking about truth, but not addressing where Satan was precisely attacking, then one is not professing Christ & is a disgrace. We need to be aware of where he attacks. The man or woman of God must resist the World in whatever form it takes around him or her. Two months ago, I wrote about the Postmodern view which destroys all that we Christians hold dear. The postmodern man has rejected the concept of truth. Our culture has truly entered into a morass of despair beyond despair where the only meaning people find is to have fun, to self-actualize yourself doing whatever one pleases & thinking whatever one wants. Culture has disintegrated into little selfish entities with no absolute truths to guide them, only their own befuddled opinions.

There is no language in the postmodern worldview that would allow a person to know Christ. But what is not realized is that what preceded it, the modern worldview also prevented a person to know Christ…it only allowed a “nominal Christianity” to exist, a Christianity that was a shadow of the real thing, built upon a philosophy of meaningless, which now has morphed into Postmodernism. The gulf between the original Christian Worldview, experienced by me for instance while Amish, is almost incomprehensible to modern man, & now so foreign to postmodern man that those of us who have a burden for the lost, are seriously going to need help from the Holy Spirit to bridge the communication cultural gap. “Beloved…I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.”(A)

SOME HISTORY. The gulf that separates my Christian worldview from the postmodern man’s worldview is an enormous chasm. The gulf that separates the modern worldview that I grew up around from what preceded it is also a chasm. An Amish child told to behave & be good would know specifically what was expected (& could be expected to behave). A modern child would give you a blank stare not knowing specifically what you were talking about. A postmodern child would ignore what was said, & simply do what it felt it wanted. Were an early American from the time of the American Revolution to have arrived in 1950 America, he would find it difficult to converse with modern Americans. He came from a time when right was right, men were men, and wrong was wrong. People understood cause & effect. Men like Benjamin Franklin could be experts in a wide-range of subjects, and whether one was deist or Christian, everything made sense. A single person could grasp much of what was known. An 18th century American would be totally mystified by the current gay movement, which is an expression of the breakdown of right v. wrong…male v. female Christian worldview that dominated Western Civilization in Europe before 1890 and America before 1935. Today, he would be aghast at the high level of dysfunctional children, many of which need to be institutionalized, compared to the how children were mostly competent & functioned alongside adults back them. The way truth & knowledge are understood seriously impacts whether one can adopt the Christian worldview needed for salvation. Christ said, “Now this is eternal life that they may know You, the only true God, & Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”(B) The real truth sets us free. I have seen it set meth addicts, cultists, transsexuals, criminals, frightened people and you name it free.

THE DIVINE FACTOR IN SALVATION. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them.”(C) Arguing a person to accept Christ is counterproductive. Winning them over by Madison Avenue advertising is also a waste of time, although some churches attempt it. Churches are trying to appeal to people…to entertain them to attract their attendance in church while leaving their worldviews intact. I sat through a series of lectures which broke down the Christian Worldview, as it contrasts to the modern worldview. The differences are enormous. They are worlds apart…but most “Christians” have never given up their modern worldview. The drift began with the German philosopher Hegel, who the Illuminati venerate. Hegelian dialectics were used by Marxism/socialism. Next, Illuminati philosophers picked up where Hegel left off. Then art [like Van Gogh, Cezanne & Picasso] & music picked up the drift, & gradually it seeped into mainstream society, before finally infiltrating the churches. It was a sophisticated slow death of culture that started at the top. Notice how modern films depict a nihilistic meaningless life. The Modern view was that the real things in life, love, purpose & faith were irrational. The rational was science & medicine that saw man purely in mechanical terms…a biological machine. Along this lines, Sir Julian Huxley advised mankind to adopt some kind of religion [spirituality] even though no god exists; so a new vision & new freedom requires the prison of theism to be tossed.

LIFE TODAY: Eat, drink, survive by making money, travel, be entertained, & do what thou wilt…there is nothing larger than ourselves. There is no bigger purpose for modern man. And where does this lead? to lives of addiction, to lives of incarceration & separation. And these crisis moments, the storms of life are when people first begin thinking for themselves. What am I doing with my life?? How do I get out of this mess I made of my life?? You don’t know the holes in the roof until the storm rains. And so the storm leaves us things to fix. Perhaps for the first time we find ourselves praying! Parents should not solve all the storms of life God sends their children. Don’t steal their lessons from them. Overprotective parents spoil the child to develop faith. One big lesson is that we are not self-sufficient. We need God to succeed. “God gives grace to the humble…Therefore humble yourselves…”(D) As David humbly said in faith during trouble to God, “My times are in Your hand.”(E)

FAITH. The basis of the Christian faith is not faith in our own level of faith like Freemasons Robert Schuler & Norman Vincent Peale teach, but it is faith on the finished work of Christ. Yahshua, the author & finisher of our faith (F) said, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.”(G) “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.”(H) People get through the storms of life (which Nature, the World, Satan, & God can cause)…as I say, people get through the storms of life with a sense of destiny & purpose with God Almighty. They see these interruptions as temporary in God’s plan for their lives. “All things work together for good to love God and are called according to His purpose.”(I) “The God of heaven, He will prosper us…”(J) The Lord says, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, …thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future & a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”(K) Yes! Let’s seek Him with all our hearts!

FINAL THOUGHT. My experience is that today’s generation will not stop & ask themselves important questions about life until they are into some deep trouble. My prayer is that there will be knowledgeable, wise Christians who can help them bridge the gap from their culture of despair beyond despair to our worldview of hope & purpose when they are open to the truth.

(A) 3 JN 2 (B) JN 17:3 (C) JN 6:44 (D) I PTR 5:5-6 (E) PS 35:15 (F) HEB 12:2 (G) JN 17:4 cf. JN 19:30 (H) 2 COR 3:5 (I) ROM 8:28 (J) NEH 2:20b (K) JER 29:11