HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING THE NEWS LATELY?

THE WORLD WAS FILLED WITH WICKEDNESS

*  Genesis 6:5-7 (TLB) - "When the Lord God saw the extent of human wickedness, and that the trend and direction of men’s lives were only towards evil, He was sorry He had made them.  It broke His heart.  And He said, I will blot out from the face of the earth all mankind that I created.  Yes, and the animals too, and the reptiles and the birds.  For I am sorry I made them."

THE WORLD IS AGAIN FILLED WITH WICKEDNESS

*  Luke 17:26-30 (TLB) - "When I return, the world will be as indifferent to the things of God as the people were in Noah’s day.  They ate and drank and married—everything just as usual right up to the day when Noah went into the ark and the Flood came and destroyed them all.  And the world will be as it was in the days of Lot:  people went about their daily business—eating and drinking, buying and selling, farming and building—until the morning Lot left Sodom.  Then fire and brimstone rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.  Yes, it will be ‘business as usual’ right up to the hour of My return."

HOW DID THE WORLD GET THIS WAY?

*  Romans 1:18-30 (TLB) - "But God shows His anger from heaven against all sinful, evil men who push away the truth from them.  For the truth about God is known to them instinctively; God has put this knowledge in their hearts.  Since earliest times men have seen the earth and sky and all God made, and have known of His existence and great eternal power.  So they will have no excuse when they stand before God at Judgment Day.  Yes, they knew about Him all right, but they wouldn’t admit it or worship Him or even thank Him for all His daily care.  And after a while they began to think up silly ideas of what God was like and what He wanted them to do.  The result was that their foolish minds became dark and confused.  Claiming themselves to be wise without God, they became utter fools instead.  And then, instead of worshiping the glorious, ever-living God, they took wood and stone and made idols for themselves, carving them to look like mere birds and animals and snakes and puny men.
     So God let them go ahead into every sort of sex sin, and do whatever they wanted to—yes, vile and sinful things with each other’s bodies.  Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God, they deliberately chose to believe lies.  So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things.
     That is why God let go of them and let them do all these evil things, so that even their women turned against God’s natural plan for them and indulged in sex sin with each other.  And the men, instead of having normal sex relationships with women, burned with lust for each other, men doing shameful things with other men and, as a result, getting paid within their own souls with the penalty they so richly deserved.
     So it was that when they gave God up and would not even acknowledge him, God gave them up to doing everything their evil minds could think of.  Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip.  They were backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud, braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning and continually being disobedient to their parents.  They tried to misunderstand, broke their promises, and were heartless—without pity.  They were fully aware of God’s death penalty for these crimes, yet they went right ahead and did them anyway and encouraged others to do them, too."

DOES THIS SOUND ALL TOO FAMILIAR?

*  2 Timothy 3:1-5 (TLB) - "You may as well know this too, Timothy, that in the last days it is going to be very difficult to be a Christian.  For people will love only themselves and their money; they will be proud and boastful, sneering at God, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful to them, and thoroughly bad.  They will be hardheaded and never give in to others; they will be constant liars and troublemakers and will think nothing of immorality. They will be rough and cruel, and sneer at those who try to be good.  They will betray their friends; they will be hotheaded, puffed up with pride, and prefer good times to worshiping God.  They will go to church, yes, but they won’t really believe anything they hear. Don’t be taken in by people like that."