De-Christianising the Culture

“The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered themselves together, against the Lord, and against his Christ; ‘Let us break their bonds, and cast away their yoke from us’” (Psalm 2:3).

We are witnesses, in these days, to the fulfillment of this prophecy.

Reflecting the political ideology of Fabianism, it has happened gradually, over the last forty years. In Australia, the foundations were laid before WW2; they began to bear fruit with the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972.

Feminism 

It was during this time that feminism emerged as a doctrine of the “progressives” and the advent of the contraceptive pill lent momentum to the feminist movement. No-fault divorce, the breaking of marriage vows without a reason being necessary, was legislated. Concurrently, pornographic movies, television shows, books and magazines, until then banned by law, made their appearance on the open market. The family, the instrument that God created for the transmission of the culture, came under siege. Family support payments, hitherto made to the husband, were made to the wife.

Now it needs to be stated that God’s order for families could only work if God was part of that family’s daily life. In many families that was not the case, and what was intended to be a beneficial order and structure for families became, for many families, a vehicle of tyranny and oppression. But God gives no man authority in a family, other than to be a reflection of the Fatherhood of God and the husbandly sacrifice of Christ.

Nevertheless, God’s order for marriage remains as it was and, despite the fact that it was abused by many, it remains the only way to bring God’s blessing to families and to provide a safe and secure environment for the raising of children and the transmission of faith from one generation to another. The fact that it doesn’t work in some families reflects a disorder in those families, not in God’s way.

However, many Christian families were caught up in the deception of this God-hating maelstrom of feminism, suffering irreparable harm with eternal consequences.

These things happened not because of the power of the world, but because of the lack of power in the Church. The modern Church bore no resemblance to the Body of Christ written of in scripture; true faith could not be nurtured and grow.

The professional Ministry and the Club type membership cut the Church off from the living Head; the righteousness of God was supplanted by a new religious righteousness, conformity to the doctrines of men. Church leaders fraternized with the mighty of the world and pontificated at length in the public media on “important” social issues. In the meantime, their hungry sheep looked up, and were not fed. True faith was stifled.

Well fed and self absorbed, this powerless, visionless Church understood and accepted the place it was allowed in the new world order that had emerged; it acquiesced in the new arrangement, whereby its relationship with the world became very much like that between Judaism and Rome. Born in blood as a religio illicita, an unlawful religion, it had evolved into a dormant parody of the truth, a religio licita. Thus, it had no answer to the onset of feminism; it did not even comprehend the danger or see the evil hand behind it.

Feminism was the first blow in “breaking the bonds” of the Lord and His Christ.

Abortion

Once the claim was established, and became accepted politically and socially, that the rights of women, as individuals, exceeded any obligations to anyone else, including husbands and children, the demand for absolute control to do as they wished with their bodies, was inevitable. Thus, following hard on the heels of feminism, came abortion.

The rationale for abortion “rights” for women was firstly, that women should have control over their own bodies, and secondly, that the unborn child was not really a person but just foetal tissue, something like a wart or cyst.

This, of course, is a lie; human life and identity begins at conception. When “the Holy Spirit came down upon Mary and the power of the Most High rested upon her” (Luke 1:35), she conceived, and subsequently “brought forth” a Son. The human life of Jesus Christ, the man, began when the power of the Most High rested upon Mary; and so it is with all children.

Abortion strikes a blow at “breaking the bonds” of the Lord and His Christ in several ways.

Firstly, it repudiates the nurturing nature with which God created women and leaves them with agonizing regret for the rest of their days; at the same time, it is sabotaging God’s created order.

Secondly, it undoes something that God does; He gives life and the abortionist deliberately takes it away. This too, undermines God’s created order and authority.

Finally, abortion is child sacrifice, a heinous idolatry to the god of this world. When God is preparing to do something, His enemy often jumps in first and slaughters the innocents; the advent of Moses is an example; the advent of Jesus is another. On both occasions, the world power spewed for his bile in destruction of children en masse. So it is with the legalisation and public funding of abortion on demand.

The West, of course, is reaping what it has sown in the mass murder of its children.

Ironically, abortion has so reduced the population of western countries, that they are dependent upon foreigners to keep their economy running. What this means, of course, is that eventually, those foreigners, who choose to bear their children rather than kill them, will eventually outnumber the original inhabitants and take over those countries, which have prospered under God and have now turned their backs upon Him. In Australia, this means that Australians of Anglo Saxon origin, will soon be relegated to the status that were given to aborigines following white settlement; fringe dwellers of society.

Psalm 2, above, goes on to say;

“The One sitting in the heavens laughs at them, the Lord ridicules them” (Psalm 2:4).

We can see why. But the blood of the innocents will yet be avenged by an angry God; He refers to abortion as “playing the harlot with Molech” (Leviticus 20:5). The West has sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

Euthanasia

It is a natural, and almost inevitable, step to go from legalising abortion to legalising euthanasia; even the justification is the same: “After all, they’re not really human are they?”

The term ‘euthanasia’ is widely misunderstood and misused. It properly refers to the intentional bringing about of a person’s death. It may be voluntary, that is, something that a person chooses, for example, in order to relieve that person’s suffering. It may also be non-voluntary as, for example, in Nazi Germany, where euthanasia was a decision imposed by a court of law on those who were deemed to be of no social utility or worth, such as the aged, infirm, handicapped, mentally deficient and gypsies.

Present day advocates of non-voluntary euthanasia, such as Peter Singer, justify their views on the grounds that some human beings, such as newborn babies, advanced dementias and the mentally retarded, have lives lacking in dignity and worth. And the most objectionable aspect of this notion that some lives have no value whatsoever is that it supports the argument for non-voluntary euthanasia; that is, legalised murder.

Studies of euthanasia, such as that of the 1994 House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics, conclude that where voluntary euthanasia is legalised, non-voluntary euthanasia, that is, murder, soon follows.

Proponents of voluntary euthanasia argue that the ‘right not to be killed’ can be waived by an individual, thereby allowing a medical practitioner, for example, to legally terminate the life of a patient on request. The example most commonly advanced to support this argument of waiving the right to life is that of people with terminal illnesses who believe that they no longer have a worthwhile life.

But no responsible doctor will routinely kill patients on request, so to be a party to voluntary euthanasia, a doctor is making the patient’s reason for wishing to be killed, his own reason for killing the patient, meaning he renounces any moral independence or integrity. It also makes an assumption that the patient is in a position to make such a judgement about his own life, and that the doctor should be bound by it. Moreover, It further assumes that the only value that attaches to a life is the value placed on it by the person whose life it is. But dying is not only a personal or individual affair. The death of a person affects the lives of others, often in ways and to an extent that cannot be foreseen. John Donne was right; ‘no man is an island unto himself’.

But the most compelling argument against legalising euthanasia is that man is made in the image of God and euthanasia, like murder, is the deliberate extinction of that which is the gift of God Himself. And that, of course, is what is behind the advocacy of euthanasia; Godless men seek to supplant God and make Godlike decisions about life and death for themselves. And behind it all, lies the evil one, who comes to “kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

Euthanasia is the logical next step in “breaking the bonds” and “casting their yoke away from us”.

Homosexuality

If, as has now become the doctrinal orthodoxy of that most pernicious of religions – Godless humanism – we humans have sole rights over our own bodies, then we may use them as we see fit; thus, homosexuality has become an accepted, and even an approved, practice; frowning upon it is, itself, frowned upon.

Once again, it is important to note that the historical criminalisation of homosexuality and the violence often dished out to homosexuals was itself, unjust and unacceptable. A homosexual, arsenokoites in Greek, is in the same class and, in the eyes of God, attracts the same condemnation as other sins and sinners; fornicators, perjurers, kidnappers, liars, idolaters and adulterers. Sin is sin, and practicing homosexuality is a sin. Romans 1:24-32, 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:10 make that clear. It is also clearly stated in the Law:

“And you shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).

If homosexuality is a sin just like other sins, its authorisation, by legislation in the Parliament, of marriage between sodomites, and between lesbians, is a step too far; it is giving the finger to God, and that is exactly the intention of the Godless proponents agitating for same sex “marriage”; to “break their bonds and cast away their yoke from us”. But God is not mocked, and society’s approval of sodomy has had tragic results, with many “receiving, in themselves, the due recompense for their deviation” (Romans 1:27); the AIDS epidemic, which still continues in the homosexual community, must be seen in this light.

Gender Fluidity

The abandonment of God’s standards in relation to human sexuality has led to an outbreak of deviations and perversions, and the emergence of an ever expanding lexicon to describe them. Thus, we have the alphabet soup, LGBTQI etc., which seems to evolve each day with more letters being added to describe the latest fashionable deviation.

As a result, we now live, according to the false prophets advocating these perversions, in an era of “gender fluidity”. The word “sex” is not used in the discussion of the new terminology, because sex has to do with biology; if you are born of the male sex, you will always be a male, irrespective of what “gender reassignment surgery” you undertake. But gender, in the new lexicon, has to do with how you feel, irrespective of your biology, so if you feel like a woman, you can expect to be treated like a woman. This sort of bizarre thinking reinforces the demand for same sex marriage. It is rationalised in this way; while you may both be of the same sex, if one of you feels of a different gender, you should be able to marry. It is with such issues that the national Parliament occupies itself!

 “And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Not so, says the world; there are trans, queer, intersex, gender fluid and, apparently, 58 gender definitions in the brave new world of identity politics. All of these latter day social distortions are challenging the truth of Genesis 1:27, and the challenge is an existential one; belief in God. The architects and advocates of these changes defy God and, going further, deny that God is. They seek to remake the world in a humanistic image, which is, of course, in a demonic image.

But where has the Church been in this upheaval of our culture and traditions? In acquiescing to these developments in their embryonic stage, a worldly Church took the tiger by the tail; now the tiger is about to turn upon the Church and devour it.

The Church at Slumber

One of the most interesting features of the social upheavals and the triumph of Godless humanism in its march through our institutions, is that its beginning coincides with the establishment of the Uniting Church in Australia. The Act of Union in 1977 incorporated the Uniting Church from the Methodist Church, the Congregational Church and a large percentage of Presbyterian parishes.

One of the articles of faith in the Act of Union is that the Bible “contains” the word of God; this wording was arrived at after much discussion and argument and its adoption was followed by the resignation of a goodly number of ministers, who maintained that the Bible, as it itself claims, is the Word of God. Thus, the Uniting Church was conceived in heresy and born in schism.

It is routine now, and has been for many years, for the Uniting Church to ordain proclaimed and acknowledged homosexuals as Ministers of the Word. Indeed, an avowed lesbian was elected to the position of head of the National Assembly, the peak body of the Uniting Church.

Some Observations

There are three observations to be made about this phenomenon of same sex “marriage” and its attendant disruptions of established social policy.

Firstly, it is rooted in the alienation of youth from the prevailing culture; this is not unique to this day and age; youth has always felt a need for crusades. Since WW2 there have been a number of rebellious youth movements, including bodgies and widgies, mods, rockers, skinheads, beatniks, hippies, bovver boys, and other manifestation of youthful dissatisfaction and immaturity.

Many of these movements were relatively benign, but there has been a continuing escalation in the destructive nature of their protests since the 1970’s. One reason for this is that this propensity for youth to rebel was captured and shaped by educators in Universities, teacher training colleges and schools; thus the youthful inclination to challenge parental norms took on a more sinister character and became an organised political movement directed at overthrowing Christianity and removing its legacy from the values and attitudes that had always shaped social policy. As it is written:

“Let us break their bonds, and cast away their yoke from us”.

Many of their objectives have been accomplished, as we have seen, but these are just curtain raisers; the main game is yet to come.

Secondly, these social developments of the last forty years are all manifestations of cultural collapse; this is particularly so when transgender mania, the explosion of gender identities, occurs. The fascination with the androgynous generally occurs in the late stages of cultural collapse; as for example, in ancient Rome and, more recently, in Oscar Wilde’s late 19^th century Britain, the Weimar republic in Germany, France in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Even the Church today has forgotten that upholding God is the only way to uphold the culture.

Thirdly, it is part of the assault on masculinity, which gave birth to feminism in the first instance. But there is a serious disconnect between the fascination with transgender culture and what’s waiting in the wings. In all cultural collapses, there is this pattern of weakened masculinity while, at the gates, await what philosophers refer to as the heroic example of masculinity; the warrior class, such as the Visigoths, Vandals and Huns of history, who each took their turn in sacking Roman provinces, as well as Rome and its eastern capital, Constantinople. The modern example is the Islamic Caliphate; ISIS is standing by and waiting for the cultural collapse to reach its zenith, before sweeping all before it in triumph.

 

What Happens Next?

All of these manipulations of the social order are underpinned by anti-discrimination legislation introduced in the Hawke/Keating era. Discrimination, of course, is nothing more sinister than choice; we are continually discriminating in the choices we make every day; what to eat, where to go, who to see, what to buy; in fact, what to do. And God urges us to exercise the power of discrimination continually; “Chose this day whom you will serve” (Joshua 24:15). So anti-discrimination legislation is, in fact, anti-God legislation; we are forbidden by law to choose.

Moreover, a whole new language has emerged to assist communication in the new Godless culture; it follows the example of Orwellian Newspeak. For example;

“Women’s Liberation” is the term used to describe the economic conscription of women into the workforce and away from caring for their homes and children;

“Pro-Choice” is used to describe infanticide;

“Feminism” describes the masculinisation of women;

“Marriage Equality” is marriage between sodomites and between lesbians.

“Inclusiveness” means the exclusion of those holding views inconsistent with the new cultural paradigm;

“Diversity” means rigid conformity to the new social norms;

“Tolerance” means intolerance of any views other than those of the new culture.

In this new world order, the gospel is hate speech; you may not preach what the Bible has to say unless it conforms to the new social paradigm legislated by our Parliaments. Already, the Human Rights Commission, the quasi-legal entity set up to enforce anti-God legislation, awaits the passage of same sex “marriage” legislation and is no doubt gearing up for the hate speech hearings that will surely follow.

Massive fines and jailing of the few Church Ministers who will insist on standing on the Word of God, will scatter many sheep; persecution and prosecution will become the experience of those who remain faithful and true.

But there will be a continuing Christian Church, just as there is in Communist China. It will be a Church that will conform to Government policy and directions in its preaching and its activities; it will be a Church that will not claim that the Bible “is” the Word of God, but that it “contains” the Word of God. And whatever is considered to be the Word of God will certainly not contradict the conventional wisdom of the world. Ministers will be licensed by Government, just as they are in China.

The Christian Church in Nazi Germany continued, with very little loss of membership. What really aroused Germans in the thirties were the glittering successes of Hitler in providing jobs, creating prosperity, restoring Germany’s military status and moving from one triumph to another in foreign policy. While a few evangelical pastors objected to the degradation of Church life and Christian culture, the vast number of Churches remained well attended, despite altars draped with swastikas and Mein Kampf replacing the Bible on the altar.

In reflecting on the history of these times, we tend to remember the Martin Niemoeller’s and Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s and overlook the fact that 45 million German Christians remained in their Churches.

The character of the attacks on our culture that have been recounted here have one objective – the total eradication of Christian influence in our culture and the final destruction of that degraded relic that is the modern Church. This is evidenced by the fact that Muslim mosques remain untouched by these events; no-one is dragging Muslims off to the Human Rights Commission; there is little being canvassed of Muslim doctrinal attitudes towards homosexuals.

Despite Christian orthodoxy rejecting the sin but accepting the sinner, it is the Christian community that is under attack, and accused of hate speech and promoting the suicide of homosexuals for holding to the orthodox Christian position that forbids marriage between people of the same sex.

The blind eye that is offered to Muslim doctrine, which favours the execution of homosexuals, and the violent denunciation of Christians, who regard sexual relations between people of the same sex as sin, exposes the character and nature of the same sex movement; it is anti-Christ.

What do Christians do?

Christians have been deceived into thinking that their job is to make the world a better place; whereas, of course, their job is to let the Holy Spirit make them better people and become Christlike; if they do that the world will automatically be a better place. But the deception persists that improving the world is their role in life; the problems are all “out there”, in the world, rather than in the believer.

This is nonsense; the world is destined to be destroyed, along with the sin with which it is contaminated. But this false desire to improve this world is a form of idolatry of the heart, and so Christians find for themselves pastors and teachers who will lead them in this ungodly crusade. These pastors have no new treasure (Matthew 13;52): they have only old treasure, second hand revelation, recycled ad infinitum.

They are hirelings (John 10:12-13) and because God is not in their knowledge (Romans 1:28) in the pursuit of their mission to make the world a better place, they are inveigled into a mock battle that God has not called them to, and that they cannot win.

In this waste of spiritual resources and emotional energy the spirit of anti-Christ is “wearing out the saints” (Daniel 7:25); the outcome of all this misplaced dedication and labour is frustration and disappointment, a sense of failure, loss of faith and falling away from the Living God. Satan is triumphant!

So what can the believer do to make an impact on the world? The believer can do nothing, but Christ Jesus can do much! If the believer will just do that which the Lord has commanded, the world would certainly become a better place overnight. “Seek first the kingdom and His righteousness”, Jesus said, “and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). Typically, Christians seek the kingdom and His righteousness as an afterthought, after deciding, themselves, on the course that they are going to take, so of course, nothing is added to them; they are on their own.

The decline in the Church’s influence and the increasing degradation of society is eloquent testimony of that.

Many will say that the Church is meant to be salt and light to the nation (Matthew 5:13-14) and this is true; salt purifies and preserves, and that is the beneficial influence that the Church is meant to have on the society in which it is placed. But firstly, you must “have salt in yourselves”, Jesus said (Mark 9:50), and if you have lost that saltiness, which can only be maintained by abiding in the source of all purity, then it is fit for nothing except to be thrown out and trampled under the feet of men (Matthew 5:13). Isn’t this what has happened?

Similarly, light only exists where it is connected to the energy source; if the sun didn’t rise every morning, we would be living in perpetual darkness, and the truth is that we are; this world is under the authority of the prince of darkness and the only true light that exists, is in the light of Christ that shines forth from surrendered saints;

“For God, the One saying ‘out of darkness light will shine’, has shined in our hearts with the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God in the presence of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6).

So being “salt and light” necessitates that we have salt and light in ourselves and Jesus tells us how this can be accomplished; “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you”. What things? Well, Jesus was talking about the necessities of life in this world, at the time; and what is more necessary than salt and light, if the world is to be purified and preserved and darkness dispelled by the True Light that is only to be found “In the presence of Jesus Christ”?

The forgotten truth is that Christians don’t have to do anything to make the world a better place; they only have to empty themselves and yield themselves up as empty vessels to the Lord Jesus Christ. The work to be done is His work, not ours.

So if you seek the kingdom first, as He says, you will find that you will become an empty vessel that Christ can use and the Spirit can fill; then, and only then, can anything be added to you.

What is added are the things that only He can add, not what we might add; we won’t find them at seminars, conferences and Bible colleges; we will only find them on our knees at the feet of Jesus. They will be added – passive voice – we can’t add them.

The problem for Christians is that they want to get active; they want to “go forth”, like those of the third heart in the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:14), in which the Word was choked by the things of this world.

The only activity that Christians should be engaged in is the activity of emptying themselves and seeking first the kingdom; once emptied, they will be surprised by what God will do, although they will not necessarily have any knowledge of it. The great saints of the past didn’t know they were great saints; but those around them could see that Jesus was living His life in them.

To go out into the world to “do things” for God is like going out into a field without a plough. We should remember that God doesn’t actually need any of us; but we like to pretend that He does, and so we make a big thing of it when someone agrees to “work for the Lord”; because today, the “work of the Lord” has become more important than the Lord of the work.

It is time for Christians to recapture their mission; to be Christlike. This means each believer taking up his priesthood under the only true High Priest, Christ Jesus. That is what we are asked to do, but it has become too difficult for many; so they seek refuge in the comfort of religion, which, in fact, is to seek refuge in the Law, only in another form.

This only happens because they do not know or understand the righteousness of God, so they cannot submit themselves to it; like the Jews, they have invented “their own righteousness” (Romans 10:3). But it is not a righteousness that leads to salvation.