As we stand on the cusp of a new decade, it’s a moment of reflection on the past and a time to consider the future. In this episode, we delve into the transitions and the arbitrary nature of decades, with a special focus on the passing of the 1980s. Our discussion centers on past enthusiasms about prophecy, societal changes, and the unforeseen realities that challenge our expectations. We recount the pivotal moments and cultural shifts that defined the 80s, drawing connections to Biblical prophecies and exploring the broader implications of societal trends such as moral decay and economic prosperity.
SPEAKER 01 :
This being the last Sabbath of the 1980s, it seems somehow unreal that one could go by it and not comment on it. Now, I happen to be one of these people who, though, get tired of all the television programs that run over all the events of the last year, every year and the week leading up to New Year’s Day. Sometimes it gets just a little bit boring. Then you come to a the end of a decade, and they have to trace out all of the events that took place since the turnover of 1980. I can hardly wait for the wait week leading up to the year 2000 when they go back over all of the events of the last century as we turn it over. And yet, as I said, it seems unreasonable to just go on as though this were not some landmark. The landmark, I might say, is absolutely arbitrary. It is strange indeed that That one minute you’re in the 1980s and the tick of the clock and you’re in the 1990s and somehow that makes a difference. And yet there are some peculiarities about these decades and the cycles and the spirit that seems to pervade different cycles of time as time passes. And I was reflecting, in a sense, on the passage of time. For one thing, about the passage of the 80s and the entry of the 90s, I never imagined for a moment that I would be here today. In 1958, I began listening to Garnerton Armstrong and Herbert Armstrong on XCLO in Monterey, Mexico. I believe that was the station. And also on XCG, two major clear-channel Mexican stations, high wattage, that covered the central and western parts of the United States. I listened to them regularly. I got angry. I got intrigued. I was infuriated. I argued. I struggled. And yet when all was said and done, I could not get away from the things that they were saying. Later in that year, in the autumn of 1958, I went to Ambassador College and was introduced to the culture, as it were, of the worldwide Church of God. I have mentioned before, and I think most of you are aware of the fact, that the Worldwide Church of God published a booklet back in the 50s entitled 1975 in Prophecy. that title was derived from another publication that had 1975 in science. That is, what would the world be like in 1975? Some speculated it would be a utopia, that we’d have solved this problem and that medical problem. And Mr. Armstrong decided, well, he saw the return of Christ on the horizon. He saw the day of the Lord approaching, and so he decided to tell them what 1975 would really be like. And out of that rather arbitrary booklet, In the arbitrary selection of the date, a subcult grew up within the worldwide Church of God around the dates 1975 and 1972. Now, part of the rationale of this was rather curious. There was a theory about the times of the Gentiles being 2,520 years that was to end in 1982. But it was reasoned if you take the seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity off of that 2,520 years, that brings you back to 1975. Now, exactly why we should remove those seven years of Nebuchadnezzar’s insanity, well, that’s not entirely clear. But in order to make it match, 1975 was reason enough, and everyone latched on to it, and away they went. Three and a half years, and you’d have to kind of be in on the story to understand all of the ramifications of it. Three and a half years before 1975 was early 1972. And that was the time the church was supposed to go into a place of safety. Well, in 1958, when I went to Ambassador College, I bought into all of this thing. After all, you know, it was 14 years away until the time when the church would flee and 17 years away until the presumed return of Christ came. And, you know, when you’re 24 years old or thereabouts, 17 years, man, that’s a lifetime. People who are in their mid-50s, they’re old people. The idea that time is going to pass and 30 years from now I’m going to be up 54 and 55 never even really crossed my mind back in those days. So all those things were going to happen. And, of course, I looked ahead in those years to 1975 as the far distant future. But time has a way of passing. And the clock just keeps on ticking. And every December 31st, there was a New Year’s Eve. And every January 1st, there was a New Year. And we passed years and we passed decades. And there had been 31 of those years since that time. And here we are, ready to go into 1990. As I said, I never thought that I would be here on the last Sabbath of 1980. Here in Tyler, here in the United States. I figured the kingdom of God would have long since come. And I had all sorts of prophecies that I could lean on. I could look at world events. I could look at the decay of our society. And I could match up a lot of the things that were going on around me. with Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Revelation, the moral decay of our country seemed to be right on schedule. You could lay out so many of the things that were happening in our society on a graph and plot them, and they all seemed to go right out the top, along about somewhere between 1972 and 1975. We used to cluck like hens over the divorce rate. You know, what a terrible thing. So many marriages were ending in divorce. Well, it was bad. One in four was ending in divorce. What is it now? One to one? What nature of increase is that? How do you quantify that? I mean, in those days, we were really astonished and appalled that the divorce rate had risen to the terribly high rate of one in four. Now there’s a divorce for every marriage. We thought in 1958 that the venereal disease rate in this country was awful. We had never heard of AIDS. We had no idea of a fatal venereal disease. Syphilis, gonorrhea, the different things all succumbed to one or the other of the antibiotic treatments, and there were other exotic treatments for advanced stages of it. They weren’t, generally speaking, fatal in our world. We had no idea where the thing would go. The number of unwed mothers was a national scandal in 1958. It has become a national irrelevancy. It is so common, so plain, nobody even cares anymore. And when was the last time you saw statistics published on the front page or any page of your newspaper about unwed mothers in our society? It just has come to the place where it doesn’t even seem that important anymore. I remember doing an article in the Plain Truth magazine back in those years on famine. And where famine was going. And the horrible food crises that were facing our country. And you could plot the level of production. You could plot population growth. And we saw terrible crises coming in the 70s. Well, certain things happened. A lot of people died. It kept some people from dying of famine. They died of other things. A lot of people died. There were improvements in food production, but we went on. And now there are still famines, and children are dying in Ethiopia, but it doesn’t somehow seem quite as important now as it did then. And, of course, the earthquakes that have been taking place in this year, we looked around and plotted them, and there were lots of earthquakes, but there was nothing quite like 1989 going on back in those years. And I began to wonder to myself, just suppose… Back in the 60s, let’s say about the year of the Six-Day War in Israel, if we had had a year like 1989, then what would we have thought? Well, we would have been packing our backpacks and getting our hiking shoes in order for the long trek to Petra, wouldn’t we, Larry? We’d have really been getting ready about the time of the Six-Day War. We would have known that it was time to move, that prophecy was on the march. And here is 1989, and we probably, I have to say, have become somewhat blasé about it. Now, somewhere along the line, I did begin to realize, I don’t remember when it was, but from a study of the Old Testament prophets, I began to realize that the patterns that you saw there of moral decay, the pattern of societal collapse, was much greater then. than it is now, that it was at the time that I was looking at those things. And I began to realize that although I saw many patterns of prophecy taking place, although I saw some of these things coming to pass, and although I saw that the day of the Lord was probably within my lifetime, at the same time I did realize that if we were going to match the patterns of prophecy, that the moral decay, that the crises in our society, that the things for which Israel was condemned and the things for which Israel went into captivity, would really need to get worse among our people than they were at that time. And indeed they have. But they will have to get, and they will get, worse yet. The major lesson, I think, that comes to me with my reflections on the passage of time on this last Sabbath of the 80s is that your perspective distorts what you see. And your values distort. have a lot to do with how bad is bad. And our values have been radically changed in the last 31 years. I choose 31 because, as I said, 58 was the year that I came into the church. It was the year I began to look. It was the year my values were offended by what I saw going on around me in society. And now in 1989, I have to confess that my perspective and my values have changed, and I have to stop. I have to look. I have to think to make myself realize how far we have come, where we are. It is terribly difficult to see things from God’s perspective. We always see things from our own. We judge things from our own. We weigh things in our own scales. You know, it’s hot and cold are relative terms. We were a lot more comfortable in 40 degree weather after we had minus one than we were the week before in 40 degree weather. The things that you have experienced, the things that have gone on, change the way you feel about nearly everything. Most people… unfortunately, when they open their Bibles and start looking at prophets, have really not much interest in God’s perspective. They are far more interested in what is going to happen simply as events than they are in why they are going to happen and what reason there might be behind it and where it all might lead and how it might affect their lives. What do you suppose God’s perspective on the 90s And the passage from the 80s to the 90s might be. Well, of course, in the first place, the tick of the clock that will change us over from the 80s to the 90s is largely irrelevant. On the other hand, I think someone did point out that we are supposed to set our clocks, is it back or forward, one second on midnight tomorrow night, because in order to get our clocks in sync with where the world is going around the sun, the timing is not perfect. We have gotten one second off over a period of years, and we have now come to an adjustment. I hope that all of you will be up at midnight and will be sure to make that one-second adjustment on your clocks at that time. But the fact is, as I said, it is all arbitrary, and yet there is a change that takes place, and we can put names on them. For example, we talk, if I use the word roaring in connection with a decade, is there anybody here that doesn’t know we’re talking about the roaring 20s? That we attach these labels to them because decades or periods of time seem to take on characters. if you talk about the depression you look into the time of the thirties and of course the time leading up to the thirties truth is that the roaring twenties extended well into the thirties and the day in the depression did not uh… start until well i’m sorry the the roaring twenties ended in twenty nine a little bit early one year before and the thirties of course were the years of depression leading up to the forties and of course everyone knows what dominated the forties it was world war two the war The ethics of the war, the values of the war, the propaganda of the war, the coming home from the war, the getting of jobs and building a life after the war, the war dominated the 40s. And then came the 50s. We call it, didn’t we, the fabulous 50s? There may have been other terms for it. Actually, in many ways, a high watermark of this century was the 1950s. People are, you know, they are preoccupied with the movies of that time. They are preoccupied with the music of that time. They are preoccupied with the cars of the 50s. They are preoccupied with the clothes of the 50s. It’s really funny. At the Feast of Tabernacles this last year, we had a 50s party. And here came all these kids who had not even been thought of, and their parents were not even married in the 50s, with bobby socks and coming in to play 50s music and talk about 50s things with pictures of 50s cars on the walls. And here we are back in the 50s. It was a great time. It was the time when I came of age. It was the time I graduated from high school. And the 50s has a lot of nostalgia for me. The 60s came along, and we equate a lot with it with the sexual revolution. the beginning of the Vietnam War, the 60s were kind of lost on me. I was in England through almost all of the 60s, and I came back to the States to sing along where everybody knew songs that I was not particularly familiar with. And it was all a little strange to me at that time. But it was a time of, as I said, of a sexual revolution, of casting off of restraints and casting off of moral values. And you can sort of put it into that particular period of time. And the Vietnam War got started. It did not reach the great crisis that it did in the 70s. The 70s were a period of time of disillusionment with government. Between the Vietnam War and Richard Nixon, our people basically lost confidence in their government. We did some good things in the 60s and 70s. We did some exciting things. We, you know, sent men to the moon and brought them back safely again. All that was a part of that. Then came the 80s. And the 80s was a time of restoration of confidence in government. We began to feel good about America again. And the cycle, it seems, and the cycles do come, of patriotism began to roll back into our people. They had had enough of this thing of putting America last or blame America first, as was so dominant in one of the speeches at the Republican Convention. There is a concept… That I think some German philosopher introduced it. I’ve forgotten his name at the moment. It’s quite old among philosophers as a concept. The word is zeitgeist. In German, it means the spirit of the age, actually, or the ghost, as it were. The word geist means ghost or spirit. And the word zeit means day or age, day in the sense of age. And there is a zeitgeist in the world at any given point in time. There is a spirit that dominates the things that are going on so that we are able to talk about the roaring 20s. We are able to talk about the 30s. We are able to talk about the fabulous 50s. We see things, a spirit that brings a wave of a sexual revolution through our country in the 60s, of which we are now reaping the harvest of that, by the way, in the late 80s. All this type of thing goes on routinely. The 1980s ended early. The zeitgeist changed, not in 1990. It changed in 1989. Because if anybody, how could you possibly be alive in the world today, much less be aware or watching the news or keeping track of world events and not realize that there has been a fundamental sea change in the world, a change in the basic zeitgeist. Now, all these things, the little changes that took place from the 20s to the 30s and the 30s to the 40s. Now, the 40s was a big change because of the war. But then came the 50s. And between the 50s and the 60s, the 60s and the 70s, There are changes in the zeitgeist, if you will, but they are small changes. The change that took place in 1989 was fundamental, basic, one of the biggest changes to take place in the history of man and perhaps the most significant change to take place in modern history, period. It remains to be seen how far it’s going to go. But an ideology has finally failed. Actually, not finally failed, finally recognized as a failure is communism. And the change that is sweeping the world as a result of that, well, all I can say is that the world will never be the same again. I won’t belabor that. Mr. Armstrong has gone into it. I’ve talked about it before. But the change is the 90s have already begun, regardless of what the clock says. And the 90s are going to be different in some very, very strong ways from the 80s, and you’re going to, I suppose, wait to see what will happen. But I’m being asked a lot these days, well, what do you think will happen in the 90s? Now, my natural inclination, being a cautious person, is to say, well, you know, who knows? I’ve You know, I know it’s going to be an exciting time. It’s going to be a tumultuous time. There are going to be major changes in the world. I can say a lot of things without saying anything and without making any commitments. But I’ll tell you what I think I’ll do today. I think I will stick my neck out just a little ways and tell you what I think may be ahead in the 90s. Now, I’m going to hedge my bets, though, at the same time. This is not a prophecy. I will make no prophecies today. Because the Bible says if a man tells you something’s going to come to pass as a prophet and it doesn’t come to pass, you’re supposed to take him out and stone him. I do not have that kind of confidence regarding any of the things that I’m going to tell you today. But I do want to tell you what I think may happen in the 90s, what I think probably will happen in the 90s, and perhaps more important, I think we need to understand why it may happen. Because when it comes to understanding the future, just knowing what is not enough, you have to have some idea of why First, looking at economics, I believe that we are going to see increased prosperity in the 1990s. I believe that there will be increased prosperity for some for a while, not for all for the whole decade, but for many for a while. There are many people, I tend to call them sundowners, who keep coming up with the great crash of 1990, or the same sort of people were writing the great crash of 1974 or 1970 or 1980. Somebody’s always foretelling a crash. It’s the same as the old story about the boy who cried wolf. Through time, people will always be foretelling crashes. When a crash occurs, somebody is made right. At that moment of time, any time a major event like a crash takes place, somebody will look like a prophet because he was saying that it was coming. On the other hand, there will be all sorts of people who have been saying at different times who were all wrong, and nobody will know whether this man was wise or whether he was lucky. I will tell you, he was lucky. You can just put that down in your book. Because the forecasting, if anybody could seriously and truly forecast these things, there’d be no reason in the world for him to tell anybody why he should do it. If he really knows, he should just go about basically making himself a very rich, filthy rich person. Because if you can forecast it, you can get rich. If you’d like to know how, consult your financial advisors. We are going into a time, I think, even in this country, of continued prosperity. Why would I say a thing like that? Well, when you study your prophets, and today I won’t take the time to go back into them in great detail because I have done a lot of this before. When you study your prophets, you learn that when Israel falls, when Israel finally comes to grief, it happens at a time of unprecedented prosperity. Israel is doing well. They’ve got freeways full of cars. They’ve got gold and silver. They’ve got money in the bank. They are spending like drunken sailors there as though there is no tomorrow. They have got money. They are prosperous. They are well to do when they fall. It doesn’t happen that Israel, over a period of time, slowly becomes more and more impoverished, that Israel just gets less and less, and they become a second-rate or a third-rate or a fourth-rate or a fifth-rate people economically until finally they go out with a little… just like they weren’t there, I mean, quietly. It just doesn’t happen that way. We are told in Israel that the breach that they have made is going to be to them like the swelling of a wall whose fall, when it comes, will come suddenly at an instant. And I’ve likened it to a large brick retaining wall that you can see if you stand back and sight along it with your eye that it has swollen in the middle. And you can walk along and you can see cracks in it and you know that sooner or later that wall is going to come down. But it will be there until the moment that it does. And it’s going to be much that way with this country. that we will be prosperous, we will be buying and selling, we will be marrying and giving in marriage, we will be doing all the things that we do until that wall breaks, until that wall falls. And when it falls, the return of Christ will not be very far behind at all. So you don’t have to think in terms of… some slow, long, drawn-out process of decay, although I would say that the days of our being the head are rapidly coming to a close. But we can be a second-rate nation and be pretty well off in this world. So look for increased prosperity. For many, our national debt will increase. I feel so safe in this one. I feel that if we’re still here as a people by the year 2000, the national debt will be higher than it is today. Anybody want to argue with me on that one? If we haven’t collapsed, is there any school of thought that believes that Congress is going to go to work And do whatever, cut their spending and raise taxes and do whatever we have to do and make Americans bite the bullet and really get down to brass tacks so we can really pay off our national debt. Anybody believe that? Nobody believes that. Well, I tell you, this takes no courage to make that one. National debt will increase. This one will be a little different. Japan, I believe, in the 90s will experience a crash in their stock market. a crash of rather dramatic proportions. Again, I don’t think this takes a great deal of wisdom or knowledge. If you watch your economic news, you’ve been seeing the Japanese stock market making new highs and new highs and new highs. And then their Federal Reserve or their equivalent of the Federal Reserve comes along and raises interest rates, which in this country sends the stock market down. It sent the Japanese out in the market to buy some more stocks. And so it goes. They are in a speculative phase in Japan now that’s not all that different from 1929. Everybody is making money in stocks. Everybody has been making money in stocks. And if you go in to buy a Japanese company today and you buy 100 shares of some Japanese country, in many cases the price-to-earnings ratio is such that on the earnings of that country it would take you 40 to 50 years to earn back the cost of that stock, not to mention whether you would ever get any dividends from it. Now, why do people do that? Well, they pay those very high prices because they expect the stock to be earning more next year and the year after and the year after than it is now. That’s one reason. The other reason is what we call the greater fool hypothesis. I know that I’m a fool for paying this much for the stock, but there will be a bigger fool when I get ready to sell the stock who will pay more for it, and I will make more for it. But what’s going to happen in Japan when we go into our next recession? Next question, is there anybody here who believes that we’re not going to ever have another recession in this country? What happens to the Japanese when we go into our next recession? What proportion of their corporate profits depend on the United States buying Japanese cars and Japanese television sets, Japanese video camera? Japanese video recorders. And these are probably all Japanese made back here. Maybe a few of them are Taiwanese. I don’t know. But you can be sure every one of them comes from somewhere west of Los Angeles or west of Honolulu, I should say. Where are they going to sell these things when we stop buying? Europe? Well, you see, Europe is a very tight community and Europe make their own. And Europe is, you know, they’re doing their own thing economically. I think we may very well see one of the biggest stock market debacles in history of any stock market take place in Japan sometime in the 1990s. What will happen then? Well, I think that a crash in the Japanese stock market will create shockwaves in a lot of different places and we’ll probably bring down our own right along with it. And guess who that will leave while we have our recession, the Japanese have their crash, and then we have our stock market fall as a result of their fall. Who do you suppose that will leave in the strongest position in the world economically? Russia? Jerusalem, the Israelis? The South Africans, perhaps? Someplace in Latin America? Everybody knows Europe. Europe. The United States of Europe. It’s easy to see how that could happen, how it could take place, and I think we will see Europe is the dominant power. That we’ve been forecasting for who knows when. I believe we will see it in the 90s. I think that as a part of the pattern, we will see not merely the strengthening of the European economy, but the dramatic weakening of other economies as a result of overextension, overbuying, overpriced in the Japanese market. I think we can see that in the 1990s, I feel free to forecast that we will see expectations of a global society increase. Now listen to me, you know, hear carefully what I’m saying. People will increasingly expect, look for, and anticipate a global society. People will be disappointed. A global society will not happen. History is against it. Now, if you will just use common sense for a moment, I don’t know how much history you’ve studied, but all of us should have had to have some on the way through school. Graduating from high school, you ought to have been exposed to it along the way. But common sense should tell you that nations, that freedom among people, tends to cause people to, what’s the word, I don’t mean necessarily to split, but to atomize, as it were, almost, to break down into smaller and smaller groups, to become more involved with their own little local community, with their own local people and the things they want to do. Freedom tends to divide. You actually have to, either by crisis or by conquest, force people into unity as a society. Societies don’t grow naturally in freedom into greater and greater unity. They are coerced into unity by crisis, or conquest. So consequently, we see, what do we see now happening in Eastern Europe? Do we see a movement toward a one global society? Not at all. We see a people who have, because of conquest, been forced into a single society or a one society or a, not a global one, but the Warsaw Pact along with the Soviet Union into an Eastern European society. As soon as they are given freedom, how long does it take from the time they even are allowed to speak freely? How long did it take for them to be able to break away and break up? Not long at all, did it? The sovereign nations were gone just like that. They fell like dominoes. We used to worry about the domino theory. Well, somebody pushed the domino from this end and it fell back on them. And now, apart from the sovereign nations of Eastern Europe breaking away from communism, nations inside the Soviet Union, because they can speak, because they are free to express themselves, free to hold up their hands and vote against the Communist Party, are doing so. And unless it is maintained by conquest, the Soviet Union will fragment. The Soviet Union will pull apart. It won’t necessarily fall apart in ruins, but it will not move toward greater and greater cohesiveness. It will move toward less and less. Now, the movement that will take place in the 90s toward more fragmentation in society will actually sit in contrast to a greater interdependence economically. And this is where I think some of the confusion arises. in people’s expectations of one world society come from. They realize that as time passes, we depend on the Japanese, and the Japanese depend on us. Therefore, our economies are becoming increasingly locked together, so that our economy will then also be increasingly locked in with Canada’s. And Mexico depends on us, and so Mexico will tend to be locked into our economy. And so it goes internationally and internationally as this country is locked to that one and this one is locked to the other one. The idea is that because of interdependence economically, that nations will become more and more one society. Don’t you believe it? It doesn’t work that way. Just because we are dependent on the Japanese and they on us has not caused us to love one another more, has it? Because we really depend on Japanese and because we buy their goods in this country, does that mean we really like the Japanese people? Does it mean that culturally or sociologically that we are drawn closer to them? No, no. Economics is a matter of necessity. It’s a matter of money in the bank. It’s purely a matter of practicality. It’s nothing that we do except we just do it because it makes money. That’s all. When it stops making money, it won’t do it anymore. In many cases, the more people are drawn to each other economically, the more resistance to one another culturally, you see. The Canadians sitting across our northern border with whom we have had an interdependent relationship ever since the origins of our country still resent us. They pass laws requiring Canadian content on Canadian television stations. They’re afraid that our society, our culture, our values will absolutely overwhelm them. And they spend a great deal of their waking hours figuring out ways that it won’t happen so that they can keep their identity, so they can be separate, so they can keep us away in that sense that at arm’s length. They want to be friends, but they do not want to be one society with us. The Europeans… have never been one society and they never will be one society. Oh, they’ll be united economically. And they may be united militarily. But you remember the image in Daniel that we have often referred to as the image of Europe? The ten toes of this beast. What were its ten toes made of? Do you remember? Iron mixed with miry clay. which while they can be joined in a way, will not cleave to one another. In the European economic community of the United States of Europe, as cohesive as it will be, as powerful economically as it will be, the Germans will not be speaking French. The French will not be speaking German. The English are not going to take up German or French. The Italians are not going to give up their language and their culture. Nobody’s giving up anything. They’re just cooperating economically. and militarily, and their currencies and what have you, for their mutual benefit for a while. And the old suspicions, the old hatreds, the old fears, the old stereotypes, the old prejudices are every bit as deeply seated in the British and the French and the Germans today as they ever have been. And Margaret Thatcher, The leader of Great Britain has said that she does not want that close a relationship with Europe, that she does not want Britain to surrender one bit of their sovereignty to a European power and has no intention of doing so. And I don’t believe that as long as Margaret Thatcher is prime minister, that Britain never will surrender any sovereignty to Europe. Some nations will, we are told in the book of Revelation, they will give their power for one hour. to the beast. They will surrender their sovereignty for a short period of time to a supranational power. They will do it out of crisis or they will do it out of conquest. They will not simply grow together. So you will see people’s expectations of a global society grow, but you will not see the global society as a reality. It will never happen. because people are just not made that way. One other thing I think we will see happen in the 90s, the zeitgeist, the spirit of the age, will overtake Israel in the Middle East. Judah is morally bankrupt. They have so thoroughly corrupted themselves by the way in which they have carried out their war with the Arabs now that they are becoming sick of it themselves. They’re beginning, you know, as people often joke about the guilt complex that Jews have, that they are the national purveyors of guilt. I think they jokingly refer to a Jewish synagogue. The name of it was Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt. The Jews tend to be, you know, aligned toward guilt anyway. Now you begin seeing in newspapers and publications coming out of that part of the world the deep divisions in Jewish society that are growing over the revulsion with the way the leadership in Israel is handling the situation with their neighbors. The idea of killing children does not go down well. You may argue that it needs to be done. You may argue on a global perspective, well, when they took Jericho, they went in and killed man, woman, and child and didn’t even allow any of the animals to live. You can quote that, surely. And it is in the Bible, and God did instruct them to do that. But how would you feel having done it yourself? How would you feel about taking a child by its legs and dashing its head against the wall? How would you feel if you were a soldier required to fire into a mob of rock-throwing kids and knowing that a couple of them had been killed? You may have felt like you had to do it, but you would feel guilty and you would dream about it. It would haunt you. And Israel is beginning to be haunted by what they are done. The guilt is beginning to eat at their heart. Also, they are losing support nearly everywhere. More and more people are becoming aware of what is being done. More and more people are becoming aware of the way in which it’s being done and of the resistance, even in the Israeli army, for what is being done. And support is disappearing. In the 1990s, I suspect that a solution to the Palestinian problem will be forced. Israel I think it will be forced on them short of war and that they will be handcuffed as it were by their own people by their own guilt by their own lack of moral force and by the loss of the moral high ground which they felt they had at one time into accepting a solution to the Palestinian problem the new zeitgeist I mean this this peculiar peace that’s breaking out all over the world this very dangerous peace where we want to diffuse all the crises and The world will finally turn its attention to the Middle East, and that crisis also will be diffused for a while. And of course, we then know what will follow on the heels of that diffusing of it. More on that in a moment. In our country, in the 90s, the family will continue to disintegrate. There will not be a revival. There will not be a major turnaround. There will not be a going back to old values. The divorce rate will probably not increase a great deal because people more and more are not bothering to get married. More and more families will disintegrate. I think I may have mentioned to you that one day I drove by a church and here was a couple coming out and they were throwing rice at them and getting married. And I had this peculiar feeling come over me. I didn’t recognize it until I got a few more blocks down the road. And then I realized what it was. I was surprised. I was surprised that people are still getting married. It’s getting almost that bad. It will be worse before we get through the 1990s. There is the family will continue to disintegrate. The moral standards of families will continue to go because there is no one to call them back. Who’s going to call them back? Who’s going to call for a change? Who’s going to persuade people to do things a different way? Where is the moral force, the moral suasion going to come from to reverse the decay in families and the disintegration of families in our society? Who’s going to do it? Swaggart? There was a time when Jimmy Swaggart could stand up and preach as vehemently as any man I have ever heard. about homosexuality, about moral depravity, about theft, about sex, about adultery, about fornication. He could stomp across the stage, dance and throw his Bible and throw his coat open and have sweat flying everywhere and just thunder about with moral indignation about these things. All of his teeth have been pulled. He can’t bite it anymore. All he can do is gum at it. It’s a pity. It’s a pity. But at a time when this nation needs preachers The preachers have been sold down the river by some of their number to the place that many people assume that a lot of them are like that. And they can’t understand the fact that preachers like anybody else can have moral lapses. Preachers like anybody else can commit sins. Preachers like anybody else can make mistakes. And boy, when we find one that does, everyone loves to jump on it. But the net effect is that the preachers have squandered their influence. And they haven’t just done it really altogether by moral lapses like Swaggart. It hasn’t just happened there. In fact, I really believe that the ministry, the preachers, the evangelists, and all of them could easily survive moral lapses on the part of religious leaders. You can go back to the early years of this country. I forget the preacher’s name at the moment. Oh, yeah, Henry Ward Beecher. who was one of the great preachers back east in the early years, back at the pre-Civil War years, was a very powerful preacher. He had a moral lapse, and it became somewhat public knowledge during his time. He didn’t destroy people’s confidence in churches or in preachers or evangelists, not at all. But you see, that was a different world. What has happened is that the preachers for 100 years now, the seminaries in particular and the preachers in turn, had been hacking away at the foundation upon which they stood. They had nowhere to stand anyway but the Bible. And so they have taken out hammer and chisel like a bunch of fools on a Berlin Wall and have been hacking away at that on which they stood. And they filled it with cracks. And it caused people to lose confidence in that foundation, which is the Bible. And so consequently, when time passes… and one of them, like Jimmy Swaggart or Jim Backer, falls, then it is seen by many people as simply confirmation that the whole thing was a sham in the first place. They don’t merely see the one man or the other as an aberration or as a man who failed to live up to the high religion that he espoused. They see his religion as as corrupt and the source of his religion as corrupt. And because he waved this document in the air when he walked across the stage and because so many preachers have been hacking and cutting at it for generations anyway, more and more people decide, well, there is no foundation here for me. I can’t put any roots down here. So in the 1990s, our families will continue to decline and there is no one to call them back. In Jeremiah 23, it tells us a part of the why. As I said before, we would talk about what would happen and we would talk about why. Jeremiah 23 has a lot to say about why. Woe be to the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, saith the Lord. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God of Israel against the pastors that feed my people. You have scattered my flock. You have driven them away. You have not visited them. Behold, I will visit upon you the evil of your doings. It’s going to come back to haunt you. Now, there’s an inset here dealing with the return of Christ, the establishment of shepherds that will feed God’s people. And finally, but coming on down in verse 9, Jeremiah speaking says, My heart within me is broken because of the prophets. All my bones shake. I am like a drunk, like a man whom wine has overcome because of the Lord and because of the words of his holiness. For the land is full of adulterers. For because of swearing, because of cursing and profanity, he says, the land, the country just mourns. The pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up. Their course is evil. Their force is not right. For both prophet and priest are profane. He’s not talking about the priests of Baal across somewhere. He’s not talking about the prophets of Moloch. He’s talking about the priests and prophets of Yahweh. That’s what he’s talking about. He says they’re profane. Yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, saith the Lord. Wherefore, their way. shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness. They shall be driven on and fall therein, for I will bring evil upon them even the year of their visitation, saith the Lord. I don’t know what it’s like in this country, but even when I was living in England, there was an article appeared by a psychiatrist there who said that the largest category of people with serious mental problems that he dealt with were clergymen, ministers. The reason was fairly simple. that they were standing up in public and espousing a way of life that they were not themselves living. They were standing up and preaching from a book that they themselves no longer believed. They had come to the place to where they didn’t believe that Jeremiah was inspired by God. Why should they? For Jeremiah condemned what they lived. They no longer believed that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were reliable witnesses of Jesus Christ because the teachings of Jesus Christ that they preached condemned what they were living and doing and preaching. And so they began to Hack away again at the foundation. He said their ways are like slippery ways in the darkness. It’s a poetic way of saying they’re going to go crazy doing what they’re doing. I have seen a folly in the prophets of Samaria. They prophesied in Baal and caused my people to err. I have seen the prophets of Jerusalem, a horrible thing. They commit adultery. They walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evildoers that none does return from his wickedness. Think about it. in their actions and in their preaching. They actually strengthen the hand of people in doing wrong things. And they are fundamentally responsible, he said, for the fact that no one will turn around. I ask you, where are you going to go? If you were to hope for, plead for, yearn for a repentance, a turning, a revival of interest and concern about God and the family and righteousness in our country, where is it going to originate? Where is it going to start? The person who stands up and tries to preach it looks like a fool in the eyes of most people. You stand up and preach about it. You preach about adultery. They think you’re silly. You start preaching against homosexuality and you may put your life on the line. That’s the way it goes. He continues to say, I’ve seen a horrible thing in all these things. They strengthen the hand of evildoers that none returns from his wickedness. And then he says, they are all of them unto me like Sodom and the inhabitants thereof like Gomorrah. Choosing to go right into those two cities, which were bastions of homosexual conduct, in particular, of immorality in general. Therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts concerning the prophets, I will feed them with wormwood, I’ll make them drink the water of gall, for from the prophets of Jerusalem is gone forth hypocrisy into all the land. That’s the word. Not just profanity. Hypocrisy. It’s truth, as the Australians would say. It’s truth. From them, right from the churches and right from the pulpits, has gone forth hypocrisy through all the land. The family won’t turn. Now, I wouldn’t argue that there are little exceptions here and there. There’s a voice here and a voice there crying in the wilderness. But you know who mainly is listening to them? People who already believe them. People who already believe in the family and are trying desperately to hold on to their belief, they will listen to the people who are preaching pro-family. But nobody else. A little pocket here and a little pocket there. It’s almost like when Elijah was ready to give up, God said, no, no, I have reserved 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal. There will be a remnant at any given point in time. But a remnant is not much. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, don’t listen to the words of the prophets that prophesy to you. They make you vain. They speak a vision out of their own heart and not out of the mouth of the Lord. They say to them that despise me, the Lord has said you shall have peace. And they say to everyone that walks after the imagination of his own heart, don’t worry. No evil will come upon you. For who has stood in the counsel of the Lord and has perceived and heard his word? Who has marked his word? Where are we going to find a person that stands in the counsel? That’s the advice, the instruction of God. Look, you won’t find. Behold, a whirlwind of the Lord has gone forth in fury. Even a grievous whirlwind, it shall grievously fall upon the head of the wicked. The anger of the Lord shall not return until he has executed, until he has performed the thoughts of his heart. In the latter days, you will understand it perfectly. Oh, you know, up until this point, I could have thought, well, boy, that is awful. Those things those Jews were doing back there in Jeremiah’s day. And then he has to throw this at me and say, it’s going to not be really until the latter days that you’re really going to understand what I’m telling you. And here we are. And I have to confess, yes, I really do. I have not sent these prophets to But they ran. I have not spoken to them, but they prophesied. Now, they can get out and tell you about a vision from the Lord. They can tell you, oh, I saw the Lord and he stood by my bed and he told me to do this and he told me to do that and he told me to tell you to send me my money. He can tell you all kinds of things about God. But God says, I didn’t send him. I haven’t spoken to them. They prophesied. And this verse 22 is to me one of the most astonishing verses in the entire Old Testament and one that says so much, far more than I think many people realize as they read over it. He said, these false prophets, these men that God did not send, these men that God would not speak to, men that he wouldn’t own up to even knowing, as a matter of fact. He said, if those individuals had caused my people to hear my words, then they would have turned them from their evil way and the evil of their doings. And it’s the truth. It’s so. God promised in another place that his word would not return to him void. Do you realize that in the 17th century and the 18th century and the 19th century, that preachers in England and the United States who would open up, stand up in front of the people, generally speaking, put this book up here, read this book and preach from this book, that with whatever other errors they may have made in interpretation of the book, they did believe the book. And they caused people to know it and caused them to read it and caused them to be aware of what was in it. Some of the greatest men that have ever provided leadership for our own country were Bible-reading men. They would sit down and read their way through it. You will find their speeches and their writings liberally sprinkled with quotations right out of the Bible. Anybody Man, woman, child, prophet, true prophet, false prophet, I don’t care who it is, who will cause people to hear God’s word, will cause people to turn around from their wicked ways. That’s what he says. Now what are we going to conclude then is happening in our country among preachers? I would have to conclude that They’re not preaching this book anymore. And the fact is, I think, that you go to church many places. There are exceptions, of course. There are churches that go one way and churches that go another. But in many cases, you will go to church and you will hear a scripture read, you know, as a part of the scripture reading. And then the pastor will get up and give a sermon on a theme of that scripture. And that will be the last that you will hear of the scripture. And you will hear good psychology. You will hear good living. You will hear how to solve your personal problems. But again, you’re on your own when the time comes to hear God’s word. He said a little later in verse 25, I have heard what the prophet said, that prophesy lies in my name. That in itself ought to be sobering, shouldn’t it? To anybody that stands up and presumes to speak in God’s name, God says, oh, I heard what they said. Those individuals that got up and prophesied lies in my name saying, I have dreamed. I have dreamed. Oh, yeah. How long shall this be in the heart of the prophets that prophesy lies? They are prophets of the deceit of their own heart. Much of the time, I feel fairly safe and sane most of the time. When you hear someone talk about a vision from God and the live stream this, and I’ve got this from the Lord. that the man is a liar and God will call him so when his turn comes. These people think to cause my people to forget my name by their dreams, which they tell every man to his neighbor, as their fathers have forgotten my name for Baal. The prophet that has a dream, let him tell a dream. He that has my word, let him speak my word faithfully. What is the chaff to the wheat? You hear what he said? Here is the wheat. The dream is a chaff. Someone comes along and says, I had a dream. Someone asked the question. I thought it was rather interesting. What is the difference between having a dream or between God speaking to you in a dream and dreaming that God spoke to you? What’s the difference? But you see, Jeremiah comes along and says, tell me your dream if you wish. But he who has the word, let him speak God’s word faithfully because a dream is chaff. God’s word is wheat. Is not my word like a fire, saith the Lord, and like a hammer that breaks in pieces the rock? Therefore, behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that steal my words, every one from his neighbor. Behold, I am against the prophets, saith the Lord, that use their tongues and say, the Lord says. Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams and do tell them and cause my people to err by their lies and by their lightness. Yet I sent them not. Therefore, and I did not command them. Therefore, they shall not profit this people at all. So in our country, the decay and disintegration of the family will not get better. It will get worse. In the 1990s, the drug war will be lost. Unequivocally lost. It will either be lost by capitulation, and we will legalize drugs, which I do not expect to happen. The reason I do not think it will happen is that because by now, All the people who sell drugs with their cartels and all their networks of people are so powerful and so rich that they can easily sway the votes of whichever legislators they need in order to make things go the way they want them to go. I’ll never forget something one of my uncles told me once when they called all the fellows out where he worked up in northwestern Arkansas. They were heavy equipment operator types. They were just working men. They called them all out, and they stood up there, and this was before an election. And a preacher from a local church came by to make a speech to these guys and shake hands with them and try to persuade them to vote dry because their local option was up for an election. We’re going to have liquor in our little community. And when a preacher came to my uncle, my uncle looked him right square in the eye and says, by the way, preacher, he said, which bootlegger is paying you? And boy, the man flushed red and went on his way. And of course, probably no bootlegger was paying him. But it may very well be that some bootlegger was paying the legislators who would ultimately vote on this question. Because the fact of the matter was that they had a vested interest in keeping the price of liquor high, didn’t they? Making it expensive. Because the truth is, we legislate drugs in this country, and Merck, and I forget the other big pharmaceutical houses’ names, would all be free to make them and sell them down at Eckerd Drugstore or Goods Pharmacy over here or wherever it may be at cheap prices. Go in for a dime and buy yourself. You don’t have to go rob somebody’s house of television sets and VCRs and video cams and all this in order to support your drug habit. It’s cheap, that stuff is. It doesn’t cost much to make it. It would be pure. People wouldn’t be dying because of poisons that had gotten into them. They would all be pure. They would all be safe. Don’t worry. It won’t happen. Because we have some of the best congressmen and senators that money can buy. And there’s plenty of money to buy them with. And it’s the way things work. Anybody who doubts that should take a good hard look at the Lincoln Savings and Loan Scandal and you’ll understand how the system works. I’m not saying that the senators involved were immoral men or evil men or dirty men or rotten men. It’s just the way the system works. The people who were in got elected by money, and money talks. So the drug war will be lost. Simple as that. It could be lost by capitulation, but the chances are what we’ll do is we’ll just keep on fighting, and people will keep on dying, and neighborhoods will keep on dying, And children will keep on being born addicted to drugs. And some of the films you see of these little babies in hospitals with tubes running in and out of them here to there as the hospitals, because of their ethical and moral obligations, have to keep them alive. They have no hope in life. They have no chance at having a normal life. They were born addicted to cocaine or addicted to heroin or worse. And so it goes. But it will go on. We will lose the drug war, I think, because no one seems to understand that the drug situation in this country is a symptom. It’s not the disease. It’s just a symptom. Drugs are not addressed in the Bible because drugs as we know them didn’t exist. They addressed the one drug they had, and that was alcohol. And while it was not prohibited that people could use it in moderation, You can have a drink here, have a drink there if you wanted to do so. That drunkenness was prohibited, and the effects of it were known and despised in the Bible. But you see, the problem of drugs, alcohol, and the time when they do become problems to people is when the people have become morally bankrupt. They are down to the place to where, you know, there are always people who will try things because they feel good. But there are also people who will grab hold of them or they will try to fight their way back out of those things when they realize what they’re doing. The problem is they’ve got when the time comes to try to fight their way back. They have nowhere to go. And many of them have no reason to do it. What do they fight their way back to? This is where I think the biggest part of the problem of the problem. But you see, to recover from the drug sickness that infests the nation as a whole, we would have to recognize that there are moral absolutes in this world. We would have to, as a people, recognize the existence of God. We would have to, as a people, begin to recognize that there are laws that regulate the way people live. We would have to begin to take a more moral approach to life. And where is all this going to come from? How is it ever going to take place? Who’s going to call us back to it? We’re into the situation in this country now, and there’s a silliness about it. It has gone beyond rational argument into total silliness. To where a little town or community over here, when Christmas time comes along, will go out and put a little manger scene out there because Christmas is the Christians, the birthday, supposedly, of the Christian Savior, Jesus Christ, a little baby in a way, in a manger, and all the symbolism. This is Christmas. Now, theoretically, when it came around to Hanukkah, they could put candles up recognizing the Jewish holy days. Theoretically, when the Feast of Trumpets down at the courthouse, you could put trumpets, you know, a bouquet of trumpets or what have you outside to recognize that this is a Jewish holiday. You could do all these things as the year went on, simply honoring that portion or the other of your population, couldn’t you, as a people? So the courthouses say, well, the majority of our community are Christians, and we recognize those people’s religious heritage by putting a little creche, a little manger scene out here on the lawn of the courthouse. Supreme Court decides you can’t do that unless you have a Santa Claus or some other Christmas symbol that is not religious connected with it. In other words, you have to have something pagan in order to have the creche. on the front lawn. Of course, you know, the whole Christmas thing is pagan. But the idea of the birth of Christ is not. And the honoring of the birth of Christ in itself is not. What many people don’t realize is that old Santa Claus is nothing more than a Christian, a perversion of a Christian saint. They have made no move at all. When they insist on them adding Saint Nicholas, they are adding a Catholic saint to the manger scene to somehow balance it out somehow in somebody’s mind. Some of the things that we are doing, our society and our court, don’t blame the Supreme Court. All they are is a reflection of the way we are. Our society is determined that there shall be no official recognition of God, that God or Jesus Christ will play no role in our society, in our government, or a dominant role among our people. They’re determined. And we will get our wish, and we will lose the drug war, and our families will continue to fall apart. Now I want you to go back with me to the first chapter of Isaiah because it has so much to do with the why of many of the things that are going to be happening in the years just ahead of us now and why some things are going to happen and why some of the good things we would hope for will not happen. This is a prophecy directed primarily at Jerusalem and at Judah at a given point in history. But on the other hand, it’s been said those who cannot learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them. And these things are written, according to Paul, for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. And here is a statement made to a people. Oddly enough, as you read along, you’ll get the same impression you did from Jeremiah that these prophecies are going to be understood perfectly in the end time, not in Isaiah’s own day. The vision of Isaiah, the son of Amos, verse one, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham and Ahaz and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, were lopped right into a particular historical context, place, time and people. It is for Jerusalem and it is for Judah. So you can all just feel real safe that none of this has anything to do with you, right? Well, you might think about it very carefully as we go along, because there is another old saying, if the shoe fits, wear it. Hear, O heavens, give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken. I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knows its owner. The ass knows its master’s crib. But Israel does not know. My people don’t consider. A stupid ox knows who it is, knows where it belongs, and the ass knows where it belongs. He says, but not my people. He’s speaking specifically of Judah, and of Jerusalem, a sinful nation, a people laden, that’s burdened, loaded down with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors. They have forsaken the Lord and provoked the Holy One of Israel into anger. They are gone away backward. This verse is very sobering to me. Because I have read the history of Israel and I know the corruption, both religious and moral, of the people. I know how things went and how they progressed down through all their period of time. I know that there were times when because of the way they lived, because of their sins, because of their corruption, that God turned his back and walked away from them. I also know from what I’m reading here that there came a time when they provoked him to anger. Now, you think that through, why don’t you? And realize, I mean, can you understand how that there would be a time when God would get so disgusted with the people and say, I’ve just had it with them, I’m disgusted, I’m going away, I don’t even want to hear about them again. And then there could also be a time when you would want to have something to do with them and they would be yours and you’re concerned about them, but they have become so corrupt that it becomes a provocation there is one thing to be turned off. It is another thing to be provoked to anger. How far do you suppose our people need to go before we provoke God to anger? There were a lot of wicked cities on the earth when Sodom and Gomorrah were still there, weren’t there? And yet the whole lesson of Genesis is that these two places got so bad that God himself came down personally to see just how bad it was and decided it was necessary to obliterate both of them. Now he says to Jerusalem, there came a point in time where you provoked me to anger. When are we going to get there? Because it sure seems that we are hell-bent for it, doesn’t it? That we are trying to find a way. With some exceptions, hopefully still in our people, we may still have a few lots here and there. Maybe the only reason why God hasn’t dealt with us worse before now. He continues talking about their provocation in verse 5 by saying, Why do you want to be stricken anymore? I mean, haven’t you had enough? Haven’t things gone bad enough for you already? Don’t you realize that the evil that has come your way has not been bad luck? It’s been because of your sins? What do you want? Do you want more? You will revolt more and more. The whole head is sick. And the whole heart is faint. And if there ever was a description, frankly, of our people… That is it. We are a sick people. Every once in a while, somebody stands up and makes us feel proud of ourselves about something. We were proud on the 200th anniversary of our country. We were proud at the Olympics in Los Angeles. We were proud here and there. But then we watch the evening news night after night, and if you watch it too much and too long, what do you get? Sick. Because of the things you see. And the faint heart is, once in a while, we have the courage to invade a country like Grenada or Panama. We have the courage to stand up for something once in a while. Most of the time, our heart is just too faint. In fact, we were nearly too fainthearted to do anything about Noriega. From the sole of the foot, even to the head, there is no soundness in it but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. They have not been closed. They have not been bound up. They have not been mollified with ointment. Pray tell, who would have done that? Who would have healed them Who would have bound them up or put salve on them or mollified them in some way? The people that he seems to always come back to lay this at their doorstep are preachers, prophets, priests. They just don’t do it. He said, your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land and your presence, and it’s desolate like it’s overthrown. And the daughter of Zion is left like a cottage in a vineyard. like a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, like a besieged city. And they were, you know. There had been an invasion of the Assyrians when they finally took the northern tribes into captivity. They besieged Jerusalem. They went right around them and left their city there like a little lodge in a garden of cucumbers, the cucumbers being soldiers all around, and nothing but this little lodge right in the middle of everything. And then he says, except the Lord of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we would have been like Sodom and we would have been like Gomorrah. Then comes the reply. Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom. Give ear to the law of our God, you people of Gomorrah. He’s not talking to Sodom. He’s not talking to Gomorrah. He’s talking to Jerusalem and to Judah, and he calls them Sodom and Gomorrah. You wonder how far do we have to go before he would refer to us in the same terms. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices to me? Reword it. To what purpose is the multitude of your religious observances? You know, what is the point in all these things? I am full of the burnt offerings of ram and the fat of fed beasts. I’m not even taking any pleasure anymore. I’ve got all I need of that. I’m not concerned about your churches. I’m not concerned about your religious observances. I don’t care about your hymns. I don’t care about your sermons anymore. I’ve had it with all of that. When you come to appear before me, who has required this at your hand to tread my courts? Don’t bring any more vain oblation. Incense is an abomination to me. Well, he commanded incense, didn’t he? Sure he did. He expected incense to be brought into the temple. He thought he would be put on the coals before the altar, and a cloud of smoke, a sweet sense would go up. Why does he say then, incense is an abomination? Because all worship coming from a corrupt heart is abomination. For a person to go through the motions of religion, through the motions of ceremony and of sacrifice and of standing up and kneeling down and making motions and going here and going there and doing obeisance at that altar or that idol, all of the things that we do religiously, all our religious acts, if they are done from a wrong heart, God says, in sins. An outward form of worship is abomination to me coming from you. Because of the way you people live your lives. It’s kind of a shocking thing in a way. Because people think that they gain points somehow. Get credit with God for Sabbath observance or Holy Day observance. Or burning incense if it was the time. Or making a sacrifice if it was the time. God said, you lose ground. by religious observances that you would go through as a formality when you will not take care of the widows and fatherless children, when you will not look after the poor, when you will commit adultery with your neighbor’s wife, when you will steal from your neighbor, when you will do all these corrupt things, and then you go to do a religious observance, you lose ground with God. For that, he says, is hypocrisy. It’s like Jesus said, I wish that you were cold or hot, but you’re lukewarm. Read that you’re hypocrites because you’ve got the religion on the one side, but it has not changed your heart on the other. You’d be better off not being religious at all than you are being religious and being a hypocrite. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons and the Sabbaths. The calling of assemblies I cannot away with. It is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. He’s not saying this, by the way, to the northern tribes who had changed all the holy days. He’s saying this to the Jews who came in and kept the Sabbath. He couldn’t stand the Sabbath the way they were keeping it. He took no pleasure in Sabbath keeping by people who would not obey the remainder of the commandments. Your new moons, your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I am sick of them. You understand that? We don’t have to look for pagan holidays in here, although, you know, in some cases I think that’s what he meant. But the fact is that keeping even God’s holy days with a wrong heart, you know, by a people who are corrupted so many ways, who would come before him after having engaged in child abuse, he said, I’m sick of it. I can’t stand it anymore. Your new moons, your appointed feasts, just away with all of that. I don’t want to see it anymore. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Oh yeah, you can get up in church. You can lift up your hands when you’re praying. You can close your eyes and wave your hands back and forth like you’re praying to God. He said, go ahead. You spread forth your hands, I’m going to hide my eyes from you. Pretty tough words, aren’t they, coming from God. Yea, when you make many prayers, I won’t hear Why won’t I hear? Because your hands are full of blood. Well, not mine. You know, I haven’t killed anybody. But on the other hand, you know, if you think about it, bear in mind again that these words were spoken to Jerusalem and to Judah. Do you think God takes pleasure in soldiers shooting little boys who are throwing rocks? Now, fine, if he had told them. to go in and wipe out the Gaza Strip, he might very well have done that and they would have done it and that would have been one thing. But God didn’t tell the Israelis to go in and wipe out the Gaza Strip. You remember when they went into the land, they were told to drive out the heathen completely. They weren’t to administer them. They weren’t to control them. They weren’t to keep them inside the land. They weren’t to govern them. They were to get rid of them. They were either to leave or be killed. It was as simple as that. Under that option, most of them, I think, would have left. But what Israel has done is the same thing Israel of old has done. They kept originally, wasn’t it the Gideonites or the Gibeites? I forget which one it was. They kept them in the land. They made an agreement with them. Instead of going ahead and driving them out like God said, he said, okay, there are going to be thorns and briars on your side from now on. And God does not approve of a people living year in, year out, year in, year out, oppressing their neighbors, killing children, Oppressing women. He just doesn’t approve of that. It’s unjust and their hands are full of blood. And it will come home to roost. Conquest is one thing. As I said, living there year in, year out. And again, it doesn’t require God to punish them for it. They’re punishing themselves. They are corrupting themselves. It is eating away like a worm at their own heart, at their own soul. what they are doing. And Israel, the Israelis and the Israeli government and the Israeli people are changing as a people from what they were. Those who know them, those who have watched them, and those who visit them will surely know that that is true. This is a prophecy of what’s going to happen to them as a result of the way that they have gone. Wash you, Wash you, make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes. Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Seek judgment, relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, let’s reason together, saith the Lord of hosts. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If you be willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the lamb. If you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured with a sword. For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. Ah, there’s a lot more, but I won’t take the time to go into more of it today. I would think, though, that if you were looking for a New Year’s resolution or a New Decades resolution, you’d go a long way to do better than what you just read. Wash you. Make you clean. Put away the evil of your doings from before my eyes and cease to do evil. That means wrong things. I don’t know what your wrong things are. I don’t know what your sins are, your errors, your evils, your petty evils and great evils. But he says, put them away from before my eyes. That’s an interesting expression itself. From before my eyes. I can see what you’re doing. I’m tired of looking at it. Stop it. Cease to do evil. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow. You know, those are some things that a person can take into the new year and believe that he will not go far wrong in doing them. The 90s, 1990, and the years following, I think are going to be a very exciting time to be alive on the face of this planet. I think it’s very important, though, that you and I take a good hard look at ourselves as the new decade begins realizing not only how far the world has come, but how far we have come with the world, how tolerant we have become of things that we would not have tolerated 20 years ago, how comfortable we are with things that would have made us very uncomfortable 30 years ago, and how much we could stand in jeopardy before God along with the world that we live in because we have corrupted His way and have allowed an evil… perhaps even to allow our hands to be defiled with blood in ways that we had not known. It’s a new decade. Give it some thought.
