Reckoning and Kingdom Advance
We live in a very disconcerting time, and I often wonder what difficulties my children and grandchildren will live through. For years, we have noted that all were living off the Christian capital of the past, but with each passing generation our culture seems to race toward moral bankruptcy.
We know the trend will end because it must. There is a crash-and-burn end to every such downward spiral. Sin will not succeed because it cannot; it is the road to death and hell not fulfillment. The consequences of self-destructive moral behavior are built into God’s world because it is one constrained by ethics that proceed from the righteousness of God. Just as the laws of physics constrain us, they serve to condemn us if we flaunt them. If we jump off a cliff, God does not have to look down on us and decree a punishment – it has already been built into His Creation.
The rebellion against God that we are witnessing leads only to an ugly and painful reckoning. It must. The one consequence it cannot lead to is success.
We all have learned hard lessons in life, those we long remember, and we remind ourselves that we will “never do that again.” These life lessons represented a growth in maturity.
Currently, our culture is repudiating the life lessons of its Christian past and acting out irresponsible and immature childish whims. There will be a reckoning. Hopefully, there will be a maturity gained and hard knocks will be used by the Holy Spirit to force men to come face-to-face with the consequences of their foolishness – a drunk-in-the-gutter realization of sin and the error of our ways.
I believe in the inevitable advance of the Kingdom of God and His Christ, so I pray this phase will not progress too far. I hope for the moving of the Spirit and revival of faith and obedience. If that is happening, by God’s grace, in us, it can happen everywhere. Pray for it.