Renew The Church! – website and Blog

I ended my last Blog post, in response to Covid-19 sweeping the world, with this warning that I believe we were – and I hope still are – hearing from God:

Can we learn from this world-wide chastisement that God is ignored, marginalized, neglected, disobeyed at our peril!  Will we believe the Message of Fatima, and in earnest, repent?  Or will He have to repeat Himself more loudly.

Covid-19 is still a threat.  Yet even as we have already begun to put the pandemic in the past, as we have already begun to think in terms of reopening, moving forward, getting “normal” again, a spark got lit in the tinderbox of secular American culture.  I tremble to think, and to say, we have not heard anything – not for decades of this crisis building, have we heard or seen the eruption coming.  The first plague: a fiercely contagious and deadly virus sweeping across the world into a pandemic.  The second plague: a wildfire across the nation of riotous destruction that was not wild at all, but was anticipated and awaited by poor lost souls led by the enemy of mankind, indeed of all creation, indeed the enemy of God from the beginning. There is  “the lawless one,” who has been restrained by the merciful God, until the last days when the actual last day is very near.  The lawless one seeks only to destroy, to confuse, to overturn, to rebel.

The Lawless One

2 Thessalonians 2:1  Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you, brethren,
2  not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.
3  Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition,
4  who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.
5  Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you this?
6  And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time.
7  For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way.
8  And then the lawless one will be revealed, and the Lord Jesus will slay him with the breath of his mouth and destroy him by his appearing and his coming.
9  The coming of the lawless one by the activity of Satan will be with all power and with pretended signs and wonders,
10  and with all wicked deception for those who are to perish, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.
11  Therefore God sends upon them a strong delusion, to make them believe what is false,
12  so that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.

The Lord warned us, 2000 years ago!  In the last days, men will “refuse to love the truth”!  And in this rejection of truth, they will open their souls to deception, to delusion, to falsity, to the lie. They sought and found “pleasure in unrighteousness.”   Rejecting truth, they reject God; loving unrighteousness, they reject the good and the holy, and instead seek and love sin.  This is the path of death, this is the way of darkness, of condemnation, of hell – the destined eternal abode of satan.  This is the possible fate of many, dear brothers and sisters, in this nation that declared at one time, “In God We Trust.”

Yes this nation once was thought of as “a Christian nation,” so many in it professing faith in Jesus Christ.  This was once a culture of popular decency, treasuring honesty, fairness, justice and truth.  Yes there have always been crooks and liars, adulterers and thieves – but even they knew they were in the wrong!  Even the criminals knew they were committing crimes, that they were in fact guilty and did deserve punishment, in justice.

But that was then, when men and women by the millions lined up to sign up and serve in the Great War to defend this nation, and the way of life we had formed in America.  That was “the greatest generation” – and it was not so many years ago.  But how America has changed. Now, by the millions, innocent unborn babies are intentionally killed, with the sanction of our judicial system.  Now, marriages are broken and dissolved in serial divorces, children are abandoned and deeply wounded, left to raise themselves with every employable adult remaining  in the household out working, to bring in more money so that everyone can have all that they want, that is, all that is for sale.  That which can only be given and received in love – that which is really needed – that is much harder to find for both the children and the adults involved.

And now lie after lie is presented and believed; that which is good, natural and true is rejected, and the evil, the abnormal, the false is celebrated and praised.  Pornography is main-stream, homosexuality is the new normal, “gender” is not God-given, no, it is optional and the choice of the almighty “me”.  Our pleasure is unrighteousness, God is unwelcome, His very Being is denied and worthy only of jokes and ridicule.

Friends, can we learn from this second piercing chastisement that God is ignored, marginalized, neglected, disobeyed at our peril!  Can we listen to the Call of Fatima, and in earnest, repent?  Or will He have to strike again, harder.  God is calling us!  God is calling to His People, His Church, be holy!  Be light in this ugly darkness!  Offer to the Lord loving acts of reparation for the sins of His people, and for the whole world.  Show the world lives of righteousness, of prayerful faith, of sober judgment concerning the things of God, of joyful living – simply and truly – in the holy will of His Word.