Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
As a believer, I can read this and not be offended. God speaks to us about our sins. He tells us that if we want to hear Him, we need to deal with this or that sin that hinders us. Israel had the same thing happen to them. They stood at the foot of Mount Sinai and heard the audible voice of God. Their response was that they would listen to Moses, but they didn't want to talk to God. I can't comprehend this. If our God speaks, then why would you not want to hear Him? The truth is that when He spoke He gave commandments. These commandments spoke straight to the sin of the Israelites that they were already practicing since they came out of Egypt.
God doesn't only speak against sin. There are many more grand things that He tells us. I think that sin is the one thing that hinders us from hearing His voice, though. When we're unwilling to give up our sin (whatever it might be), we are unwilling to hear the voice of God. God will speak to us about it and tell us how to overcome. But if we would rather keep the sin, then we have now treasured an idol.
This goes back to our last Scripture in Romans 1. In fact, since verse 18, we have seen this getting more and more clear from Romans. No one is without excuse. It is obvious that God must exist. Anyone who claims He doesn't has a predetermined mindset to rule Him out. This is why we have atheists who tell us that the world looks designed, but we need to continuously remind ourselves that it isn't. In physics this is known as the Anthropic Principle. Other scientists call it the Teleonomic Argument. Everything looks designed. The way that everything interacts together would suggest that it can't happen by chance.
What is the result of atheism?
The result is that we worship created things instead of the Creator. We make idols. We will serve something. It will either be God who created all things or it will be a demonic power represented by animals, reptiles, the sun, government, or other created things.
Idolatry is the sign of unbelief. We think that people who have idols are people that believe in some sort of God. This isn't true. People will give their lives over to dumb idols. Sometimes they aren't obvious like Molech or Ba'al. Sometimes they come in the form of sports figures that make $50,000 per pitch of the baseball. Then we want to complain about the wealthy getting wealthier. Why would we complain about the wealthy getting wealthier while the middle class gets poorer if we're supplying the wealthy with all their money through our idol worship?
Think about all of the celebrities that make insane amounts of money for singing one song, or playing in one movie, or being endorsed by Coke or Pepsi. All the while, we continue to complain about how we don't get any of the wealth that the big corporations we're working for are making. Walmart is a super-huge industry that barely pays its employees. Yet the Walmart CEO makes just under $1 million a year salary.
How do we define atheism?
Atheism cannot be merely the outspoken belief that there is no god. It has to be the inward value system that expresses all too well that they believe there is no god. People who might not be atheists that act in a way that says they don't believe in a moral higher power, or that they would be judged by this moral higher power, are atheistic in their thinking. They might not be outspoken atheists. They might serve their god with fervor. However, somewhere down the line they have just decided not to question the outright obscene acts that they perform.
Atheism is a mindset that claims that there will be no judgment. There is no higher moral standard that we need to uphold. The moral standard is given by the community. Thus, Hitler did the right thing. Of course, the rest of humanity disagrees, but the state of Germany continued to imprison and terminate Jews and Christians alike. If we say that the world population is what decides morality, then we have no basis to claim there is morality. What about issues like abortion? If the world governments all conclusively decide that abortion is not immoral, does that really mean that it isn't immoral?
Lets take something that we all know is wrong: rape. Lets make it an extreme. Say that the world governments say that it is okay to rape women to death. It is okay to sexually assault women to such an extreme that they even die over it. It isn't immoral. Does the majority opinion that it is okay to do such things make it okay to do them? Where is the moral standard?
The reason I get into this is because when we look back at Romans 1:24-27, Paul is bringing these things together. Why do we have such rampant sexuality in America? You don't need to look any further than idolatry. We worship our televisions, celebrities, sports teams, government, political views, religious institutions, academia, and have based our whole existence off of serving those idols. We have given over all morality.
Paul touches on homosexuality. He seems to call it a judgment. When a people will abandon the God that created all things to worship the created thing, sexuality in general is the result. This is a preliminary judgment. There will be a greater judgment to come. And if we do not heed the greater judgment, then there will be another yet greater. I'm not saying America will collapse. I'm saying unless we turn back to God, we will suffer judgments unthinkable.
There was a time in Israel and Judah's history when people ate their own children. If God would allow on His own people such extreme famine to occur that they would eat their own children to stay alive, what can we expect for America? Not even 10 years after Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans (70 A.D.), Pompeii was also destroyed. In 79 A.D. Mount Vesuvius erupted. People were trapped in the city to burn alive by the molten lava.
In Germany, the same towns that they had the Nazi death camps, bombs came crashing down onto civilians. The history books tell us that there was so much heat generated by the bombs that the streets and asphalt melted. People were getting stuck within the asphalt only to burn to death or blown up by the bombs. People couldn't flee. They couldn't get out of the cities.
In the year 1937, the Japanese invaded Nanking, China. They absolutely devastated the city. Women were raped to death. Men were hung by their tongues to die. People were used for bayonet practice. Pregnant women were gashed open so the fetus would fall to the ground and be killed. 300,000 people were murdered at the hands of the Japanese soldiers. For what reason? They believed that the Chinese people were dogs and unfit to live. It was all about national pride. When you serve an idol like the Emperor, or the government, the only thing left to take place is grotesque genocide of any other nation or people that you might disagree with.
Japan got bombed at the end of World War 2. The number of civilian deaths in Nagasaki and Hiroshima within a few months after the bombing was 246,000 (166,000 in Hiroshima, 80,000 in Nagasaki). The death toll continued to pile up in the years to follow. The total number of deaths prescribed to these bombings today is numbered at 450,000. God will not be mocked, a man reaps what he sows. In the same way, we can say that the nations will reap what they sow.
Let me jump back to a point I made a couple paragraphs ago. When you serve an idol like the Emperor, or the government, the only thing left to take place is grotesque genocide of any other nation or people that you might disagree with. What is it that America is worshiping? They are worshipping media, political government, atheistic academics, and sexuality itself. What is it that goes against these things? The Church stands against all of them. Who do you think will be the ones persecuted and imprisoned within the next couple decades?
Judgment comes first to the House of God. Because we have not lived in a reality to show the unbelieving world an alternative to their idols, God will send judgment. It comes to the House of God first. This doesn't effect what I believe with Israel being persecuted in the last days. I believe that will come too. The antichrist will bring about a latent anti-Semitism because the principalities and powers know that to destroy Israel is to destroy the Kingdom of God. His rule must go forth from Zion and Jerusalem. There must be a redeemed Israel. This is why Hitler was so passionate about the genocide of the Jews. He was under satanic illusion and deception. They are the gods of the nations. They have the power to influence and manipulate institutions. Governments do not answer to the politicians; they answer to the demonic forces residing over them.
This once again goes back to the point that Paul makes. It is the belief in these demonic systems that causes immorality. Morality itself is not given esteem. It is attacked and mocked. These demonic forces do everything within their power to degrade human life and to destroy the idea of morals. This is why we see in America an all out attack on gender roles, family importance, sexuality, pro-life/pro-choice, freedom of speech, freedom of choice in health insurance (including whether or not to have it), etc.
The gods of this world are influencing the nations, and they are influencing most heavily the next generation. I don't think that churches will last another 2 generations. If we continue the way we've been going, we simply won't exist. There has to be a change. We have to get back to basics. We have to start wrestling with these powers. The next generation won't survive if we aren't willing to die for their sakes. If we aren't willing to put away our lives for the purposes of God, then Christianity in America will be close to non-existent.
Certainly God has the power to keep us. We are in a critical time now. We will either need to choose to be apostolic or we will choose to be apostate. The two extremes are the only options. If we don't conform our lives now to the image and purposes of God, then the Church in America will be an apostate church. It is very possible (and highly probable) that we will have both extremes. What needs to be decided from you is whom shall you serve? The Creator, or the created thing? Nothing is outside of your grasp as far as immorality if you will not repeat the words of Christ: "Get behind me Satan, for it is written, 'You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.'"
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