I was driving home from an awesome Sunday morning at Catalyst. It was Mother's Day, and I was fired up about celebrating my wife, who is an incredible mother of four, and my mom, who is miraculously still alive after putting up with me and my brother for 18 years.
All over Facebook and Twitter were references to mothers. Different quotes extolling the virtue of mothers, thankful sons and daughters writing glowing tributes to their mothers on their pages and via tweets, tearful pictures of mothers long gone. Yes, it was a deluge of thankfulness via social media on Mother's Day.
I was almost to my street when I looked to the right. To my right was a soccer field. Teams were playing.
You gotta be kidding me.
What kind of people agree to schedule a sporting event on Mother's Day? This is supposed to be a sacred day- a day set aside where you get together with family to celebrate the woman who brought you into the world, who wiped your butt and changed your diapers, who provided for you when you were helpless and couldn't care for yourself. This is a day to celebrate the sacrifices of the woman who nurtured you, cared for you, raised you, and sustained you through nine long months of pregnancy. And you're playing sports on that day?
We have become a society that diminishes the sacred.
Mother's Day is on a Sunday.
Sundays stopped being sacred long ago.
We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough for sports. So, we as a society agreed when the coaches and organizers started scheduling games on Sunday mornings. Now, millions of Christians choose to take their children to sporting events on Sunday mornings, not being content with their children playing sports the other six days a week.
We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough to shop. So, we as a society decided that Sunday would be the day where we go to Wal-Mart and do all our shopping for the week.
We diminished the sacredness of Sunday. It became a day to do whatever we want to do. Check that. That's a wrong statement. It became a day where we agreed to do what others told us to do.
Sunday became a day where coaches told us what to do- show up for your soccer match. Doesn't matter if you are a member of a church. Doesn't matter if you believe that worship is important. Doesn't matter that we've had six other days this week to play. You be there on Sunday morning. Sunday became a day where we made up for our laziness and over scheduling during the week.
We diminished the sacredness of Sunday. So it naturally progresses that we would schedule sporting events on a sacred day devoted to celebrating mothers.
You can say, come on Dave, you're being a little extreme here. I'm not, actually.
Have any of you noticed the onslaught of Satanism in the last few years?
Satanism? You mean, worship of the devil and all that?
Yep.
In Oklahoma, Satanists are planning on erecting a statue of Satan next to a display of the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse. This would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. Yet, a company in New York has agreed to build it and has released the drawings and plans of what it will look like.
At Harvard University, a student group (in the name of diversity, of course) planned a celebrate a Satanic ritual called the Black Mass. This unashamed mockery and desecration of the Christian religion received a landslide of criticism and was cancelled at the last minute. The Black Mass consists of upside-down crucifixes, substituting urine for wine, repeatedly stabbing a loaf of bread, mocking the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in history has used naked people as altars for the elements, lapsing into orgies and sadomachism.
How did all this Satanism pop up all of a sudden?
Because nature abhors a vacuum, and when the sacred is diminished, the filth and perverse will move in.
By our lack of honoring the Sabbath, by our lack of regarding the sacred, by our lukewarmness in commitment to God, we have allowed the occult and the Satanic an open door to enter our society. Satanism and the occult cannot thrive where the people of God are strong and committed. However, that has not described the Body of Christ for a long time.
Here, America, we are reaping the fruit of our lukewarmness and our lackadaisical attitude towards the sacred. Our disregard of the holy things, our disregard for the glory of God has come home to roost. Our disregard for the glory of God and the urgency of His mission has not only affected the church- it has opened the door for Satanism to enter our society and be seen as a legitimate thing deserving recognition.
We criticize the Satanists for their Black Mass and their desecration and mockery of the Christian religion, but are we any better?
Is stabbing a loaf of bread and dipping it in a bowl of urine to mock the Eucharist worse than sleeping in on a Sunday morning or choosing a soccer game over worship? At least the Satanist doesn't profess to love Jesus. The Christian who professes love for Jesus but completely ignores everything He says- is that Christian any different? Or is he in fact worse?
In Revelation 3, it would seem that Jesus would prefer the Black-Mass-recognizing-Satanist over the lukewarm Christian, because only one of the two people listed above got vomited out of Jesus' mouth. Let me give you a hint- it wasn't the Satanist.
I think it's time that we as Americans, and Christians especially, take a look at how we have diminished the sacred. Let's take a look at our lukewarm commitment to our faith and to our churches. Do we really think that God would allow lukewarm commitment and the disregarding of His glory forever?
He is allowing the blaspheming hordes, the Satanists, the occult, into our country as a judgment on our own disregard for His glory. He is allowing us to truly see what the absence of His presence looks like. He is allowing us to see that we have too long taken for granted His love, His goodness, His grace, and His power in holding back the evil in this world. Well, no more. He is allowing the evil forces of this world to grab front-page headlines. The Satanic forces have been empowered and have momentum, because the Christians have been far too lukewarm and dismissive of God and His glory.
In Ezekiel 10, the nation of Israel had become so corrupt that the glory of God literally rose up out of the temple and departed. One of my seminary professors called this "the saddest chapter in the entire Bible." It was a time that God washed His hands of the nation, packed His bags and left. What happened next, with the protection of Israel gone, was horrific- Israel and Judah were overrun with foreign invaders that captured their cities, ripped unborn babies from pregnant mothers, carted the people off into slavery and exile, burned crops, starved the people, etc.
Do we think we will escape a similar fate?
We look eerily similar to the nation of Israel right before the glory of God departed. This alarming rise in Satanism and the occult, accompanied by the growing attempts at silencing Christians, threatening the faithful, may be the beginning of the end. Israel faced judgment because they diminished the sacred and disregarded God's glory. This is bad news for a society such as ours that is doing the exact same thing.
All over Facebook and Twitter were references to mothers. Different quotes extolling the virtue of mothers, thankful sons and daughters writing glowing tributes to their mothers on their pages and via tweets, tearful pictures of mothers long gone. Yes, it was a deluge of thankfulness via social media on Mother's Day.
I was almost to my street when I looked to the right. To my right was a soccer field. Teams were playing.
You gotta be kidding me.
What kind of people agree to schedule a sporting event on Mother's Day? This is supposed to be a sacred day- a day set aside where you get together with family to celebrate the woman who brought you into the world, who wiped your butt and changed your diapers, who provided for you when you were helpless and couldn't care for yourself. This is a day to celebrate the sacrifices of the woman who nurtured you, cared for you, raised you, and sustained you through nine long months of pregnancy. And you're playing sports on that day?
We have become a society that diminishes the sacred.
Mother's Day is on a Sunday.
Sundays stopped being sacred long ago.
We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough for sports. So, we as a society agreed when the coaches and organizers started scheduling games on Sunday mornings. Now, millions of Christians choose to take their children to sporting events on Sunday mornings, not being content with their children playing sports the other six days a week.
We decided as a society that six days a week weren't enough to shop. So, we as a society decided that Sunday would be the day where we go to Wal-Mart and do all our shopping for the week.
We diminished the sacredness of Sunday. It became a day to do whatever we want to do. Check that. That's a wrong statement. It became a day where we agreed to do what others told us to do.
Sunday became a day where coaches told us what to do- show up for your soccer match. Doesn't matter if you are a member of a church. Doesn't matter if you believe that worship is important. Doesn't matter that we've had six other days this week to play. You be there on Sunday morning. Sunday became a day where we made up for our laziness and over scheduling during the week.
We diminished the sacredness of Sunday. So it naturally progresses that we would schedule sporting events on a sacred day devoted to celebrating mothers.
You can say, come on Dave, you're being a little extreme here. I'm not, actually.
Have any of you noticed the onslaught of Satanism in the last few years?
Satanism? You mean, worship of the devil and all that?
Yep.
In Oklahoma, Satanists are planning on erecting a statue of Satan next to a display of the Ten Commandments outside a courthouse. This would have been unthinkable even ten years ago. Yet, a company in New York has agreed to build it and has released the drawings and plans of what it will look like.
At Harvard University, a student group (in the name of diversity, of course) planned a celebrate a Satanic ritual called the Black Mass. This unashamed mockery and desecration of the Christian religion received a landslide of criticism and was cancelled at the last minute. The Black Mass consists of upside-down crucifixes, substituting urine for wine, repeatedly stabbing a loaf of bread, mocking the body and blood of Jesus Christ, and in history has used naked people as altars for the elements, lapsing into orgies and sadomachism.
How did all this Satanism pop up all of a sudden?
Because nature abhors a vacuum, and when the sacred is diminished, the filth and perverse will move in.
By our lack of honoring the Sabbath, by our lack of regarding the sacred, by our lukewarmness in commitment to God, we have allowed the occult and the Satanic an open door to enter our society. Satanism and the occult cannot thrive where the people of God are strong and committed. However, that has not described the Body of Christ for a long time.
Here, America, we are reaping the fruit of our lukewarmness and our lackadaisical attitude towards the sacred. Our disregard of the holy things, our disregard for the glory of God has come home to roost. Our disregard for the glory of God and the urgency of His mission has not only affected the church- it has opened the door for Satanism to enter our society and be seen as a legitimate thing deserving recognition.
We criticize the Satanists for their Black Mass and their desecration and mockery of the Christian religion, but are we any better?
Is stabbing a loaf of bread and dipping it in a bowl of urine to mock the Eucharist worse than sleeping in on a Sunday morning or choosing a soccer game over worship? At least the Satanist doesn't profess to love Jesus. The Christian who professes love for Jesus but completely ignores everything He says- is that Christian any different? Or is he in fact worse?
In Revelation 3, it would seem that Jesus would prefer the Black-Mass-recognizing-Satanist over the lukewarm Christian, because only one of the two people listed above got vomited out of Jesus' mouth. Let me give you a hint- it wasn't the Satanist.
I think it's time that we as Americans, and Christians especially, take a look at how we have diminished the sacred. Let's take a look at our lukewarm commitment to our faith and to our churches. Do we really think that God would allow lukewarm commitment and the disregarding of His glory forever?
He is allowing the blaspheming hordes, the Satanists, the occult, into our country as a judgment on our own disregard for His glory. He is allowing us to truly see what the absence of His presence looks like. He is allowing us to see that we have too long taken for granted His love, His goodness, His grace, and His power in holding back the evil in this world. Well, no more. He is allowing the evil forces of this world to grab front-page headlines. The Satanic forces have been empowered and have momentum, because the Christians have been far too lukewarm and dismissive of God and His glory.
In Ezekiel 10, the nation of Israel had become so corrupt that the glory of God literally rose up out of the temple and departed. One of my seminary professors called this "the saddest chapter in the entire Bible." It was a time that God washed His hands of the nation, packed His bags and left. What happened next, with the protection of Israel gone, was horrific- Israel and Judah were overrun with foreign invaders that captured their cities, ripped unborn babies from pregnant mothers, carted the people off into slavery and exile, burned crops, starved the people, etc.
Do we think we will escape a similar fate?
We look eerily similar to the nation of Israel right before the glory of God departed. This alarming rise in Satanism and the occult, accompanied by the growing attempts at silencing Christians, threatening the faithful, may be the beginning of the end. Israel faced judgment because they diminished the sacred and disregarded God's glory. This is bad news for a society such as ours that is doing the exact same thing.
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