Confessing Christ in an Antichristian Culture

Old Testament reading: Judges 10:6-16 – New Testament Reading: Hebrews 10:26-31

Confessing Christ in an Antichristian Culture
“When God Abandons A People”
Romans 1:16-32

Wayne J. Edwards, Pastor

In the first 17-verses of Romans 1, the Apostle Paul drew the attention of his readers to the power of God’s grace, God’s love, and God’s mercy in imputing the righteousness of Christ to all those who hear and heed the gospel. (Roman 1:16-17)

In the last 14-verses of Romans 1, the Apostle Paul drew the attention of his readers to the power of God’s wrath which He will pour out on those who reject His gospel as the only means whereby they can be saved. (Romans 1:18-32)

• While our faith in Jesus Christ includes God’s forgiveness of our sins, first and foremost, God’s gift of salvation delivers us from God’s eternal wrath. (Romans 1:18)
• Before Jesus died, He cried out, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” At that moment, the eternal wrath of God that rightfully belonged to us because of our sins was poured out upon Jesus. That is what is meant by the term, “Jesus died for our sins.”

However, while the born-again believer will not endure the eternal wrath of God (1 Thessalonians 5:9), there are other aspects of God’s wrath to which some believers will not be immune.

• Eschatological Wrath – in Matthew 24, and Revelation 6, the Bible describes the cosmological events that will take place in the first half of the tribulation. The Apostle John said the massive earth-shattering events that will be so strong the people will cry out for the rocks to fall upon them, “for the great day of His wrath has come.”
• Cataclysmic Wrath – this includes the natural phenomenon of storms, floods, earthquakes, etc., as well as terrorism, war, and man’s sheer meanness.
• Consequential Wrath – i.e., whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap, and he always reaps more than he sows. Every choice we make sets in motion specific irrevocable forces that will bring about the fruit of God’s blessings or the fruit of God’s judgment.
• Abandonment – there comes a time when God will abandon a person, family, city, town, nation, and even a whole generation of His people. He simply removes His restraining grace and allows them to suffer the consequences of their sinful choices. (Judges 10, Proverbs 1)

In Romans 1:24ff, the Apostle Paul said God’s wrath is released in three stages with each step preceded by the phrase, “God gave them up,” or “God gave them over.”

• • The Greek term “paradidomi” describes the act of a judge handing a convicted criminal over to those who would carry out their punishment.
  • While the reason for the release of God’s wrath is a type of sin, the effect of God’s wrath is a deeper or more violent expression of that exact sin nature.

In Romans 1:24, the Apostle Paul said, because these pagan nations of old:

• • Suppressed the truth about God –
  • Did not glorify God as God –
  • Were not thankful unto God –
  • Rejected the God who had revealed Himself to them and created a lesser god whom they considered to be more like them –

Step one – Vs. 24:

“God also gave them up to uncleanness in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves.”

• • The first indication that a society has abandoned God and that God has started to release His wrath upon them is any kind of sexual immorality that leads to the dishonoring of the physical body, which was created in God’s image, and for God’s glory.
  • God strictly forbids any kind of sexual activity outside of the bonds of marriage.

Step two – Vs. 26:

“God gave them over to degrading passions.”

• • Sexual passion is pure when expressed between a husband and wife as a part of their marriage relationship.
  • Paul described any other kind of passion as “degrading,”e., impure, wicked, shameful, perverted, and inverted. “Women exchanging the natural function of the body for that which is unnatural.”
  • The natural function of the female body is to be a mother, to bear and nurture children, for God created the female with that specific mothering instinct.
  • When the 2^nd phase of God’s wrath is released upon a society, the Apostle Paul said even the women become filled with degrading passions, and in so doing, they not only lose their virtue, as it is described in Proverbs 31, they also forfeit their partnership with God in the process of procreation.
  • Paul said the same was true for men who “abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error.”

Step three – Vs. 28:

“Just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind.”

• • The literal meaning of the word “depraved” means “to be tested and to be found useless, disqualified for its intended purpose.”
  • When the moral law that God inscribes upon every human heart becomes so debased that a person’s conscience can no longer function, they have no hesitation to “do things which are not proper.” (See verses 29-32)

The consequential wrath of God’s abandonment:

• • While sexual immorality has always been a part of the sinful culture, secular history books document the events of 1960 as a “sexual revolution” in America. The consequence of that movement include:
  • The birthday of the Playboy empire and the proliferation of the multi-million-dollar commercial pornographic industry.
  • The dissolution of the two-parent family, the neglect of children, and an increase in sexually-transmitted diseases, some of which have no known cures.
  • Today, all kinds of pornography can be accessed online, and all kinds of sexual activity can be ordered through certain channels.
  • According to the National Human Trafficking Website, there are over 40-million victims involved in the sex-trafficking industry.
  • 25% of them are children 12-14. A child is sold for sex over 20-times per day, and when they can no longer be used in that way, they are sent to labor camps to serve as slaves.
  • In the 1970s, 12-women laid the groundwork for the second phase of that sexual revolution by establishing the academic justification for “radical feminism.”
  • Because of their satanic power and political influence, these 12-women attained complete power over the media, the majority of publishing houses, Hollywood, Disney, and what is being taught in public schools from kindergarten to the university.
  • However, they are also responsible for the destruction of many marriages and families, which led to the abuse of children and to 63-million abortions in America since 1973.

In the 19th century, the battle was against the evils of:

• Communism – “From each according to their ability, and to each according to their need.” (Karl Marx)In the 19th century, the battle was against the evils of:
• Evolution – the gradual change in the characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. (Charles Darwin)

In the 20th century, the battle was against the lies of:

• Agnosticism – Not sure there is a God
• Atheism – I’m sure there is no God
• Liberalism – A loving God will not condemn anyone
• Humanism – Man is his own god

Today we are reaping the fruit of those lies through:

• Feminism – Sexual equality
• Naturalism – Human reasoning
• Hedonism – Pleasure is life’s goal
• Mysticism – Spiritualism – neo-paganism – “wokeism”
• Materialism – He who dies with the most toys wins

While the names of the “isms” have changed, the goal has been the same for the last century:

• To remove the God of the Bible from the minds of the people.
• To remove from the minds of the people any notion of individualism, loyalty to family, or national patriotism, as well as their religious dogmas, so the government can be sovereign overall, in all, and through all.
• To separate children from their family, their religion, their nation, and their culture; to destabilize society to make it easier for communists to seize power and control.

Over the last 50 years, we have seen them systematically achieve their goals by:

• Removing the Bible as the absolute standard of morality.
• Removing public prayer from the classroom!
• Removing the Ten Commandments from the courtroom!
• Replacing the celebration of the Lord’s birth and resurrection with a celebration of Christmas, Easter, or unnamed seasonal holidays.
• Using music and all forms of media to transmit a mindset of rebellion and anarchy among our children and our youth.
• Urging the government to assume more and more responsibility for raising children through government-sponsored programs, including “free” education from kindergarten to the universities.
• No longer is the public education system about reading, writing, and arithmetic, but social justice for the disenfranchised, gender equality, and the affirmation of gender dysphoria.
• Under the guise of inclusivity, tolerance, and religious pluralism, the goal is to indoctrinate children with the Marxist/Socialist ideology and the “woke” theology of acceptance and fairness.
• It is the same pattern Adolf Hitler followed in 1938 to take over Germany to introduce communism, and we are seeing it used in America today to introduce the New World Order that will soon be headed up by the Anti-Christ himself.

How Christians should respond:

• While we may not like what is going on, we must accept it as being within God’s sovereign will for the day in which we live.
• That being said, we should not waste our time trying to change things from the top-down, whether in the leadership of our government or in our religious denominations.
• We can no longer expect the systems of this world to respect our biblical values, much less assist us in upholding them.
• Therefore, the only antidote to the Marxist ideologies that threaten the souls of our children is to do whatever is necessary to restore the biblical concept of the home and to prepare to live apart from the world as much as we can until Jesus calls us to “come forth!”

“But the Lord is faithful,
and he will strengthen you
and protect you from the evil one.”
2 Thessalonians 3:3