Explore the profound insights of ancient prophets like Jeremiah in understanding the root causes of societal decline. This episode shifts the focus from technological apprehensions to the crucial moral imperatives that underpin our existence. Through a rich narrative, it underlines the importance of true prophecy, not to forecast doom but to steer society towards introspection and moral awakening. A call to action for individuals to turn the world upside down by impacting one life at a time.
In the summer of 1999, there was a chicken little phenomenon of gigantic proportions. You may remember it. Someone came up with the idea that our older computer programs only had two digits in the year field. Remember that? At midnight December 31st, all those computers would switch to double ought in the date field, which could be interpreted as 1900, which would throw the banks into chaos because they would not be calculating interest rates It might even be an unintelligible date. Computers would crash, and everything would come to a halt. Power grids might shut down. We would all be without electricity. Air traffic control systems would dissolve into chaos, and airplanes going from city to city wouldn’t know where to go, might not even fly. Elevators in high-rise buildings would stop working, would freeze. Some cars and trucks wouldn’t even start. Your old 37 Chevy pickup would, though, because it didn’t have any of those computer things in it. The stock market would shut down. Food couldn’t be delivered. Your water faucets wouldn’t run water. So you better have a big old trash can in your garage that you filled up with water just in case you couldn’t get any water out of the taps. The Internet, oh, the Internet was full of advice about what to do to get ready for it. Meanwhile, the people who really knew were telling us we didn’t have a thing in the world to worry about. The people who were inside, the people who were working with the nuts and the bolts, the people who were going through the banks and computers, they’re working them all out. They said they’re right on track. Everything is going to be just fine. But some people wanted to worry anyhow. Probably some of those people who wanted to worry anyhow are right here right now. People bought generators, stocked up on water and food. Even people who knew better were affected by all the hoopla and felt they had to do something about it. We had some really interesting discussions on the CEM forum about this, and I never could get anybody to take my bet that nothing would happen. Now, do you recall what happened on Y2K besides the greatest fireworks display in the history of the world? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing. All the people who were playing Chicken Little on the forums and the Internet and so forth got real quiet after that. But one fellow posted on the Internet forum, he said this, and I quote, We mustn’t lose heart. There is still time for something bad to happen. You remember the story, don’t you, of Chicken Little? I found about three versions of it on the Internet. Once upon a time, there was a dear little chicken named Chicken Little. One morning, as she was scratching in her garden, a pebble fell off the roof and hit her on the head. “‘Oh, dear me!’ she cried. “‘The sky is falling! I must go and tell the king!’ And away she ran down the road. By and by, she met Henny Penny going to the store. “‘Where are you going?’ asked Henny Penny. “‘I’m going to tell the king the sky is falling,’ answered Chicken Little.” How do you know the sky is falling? Asked Henny Penny. Well, that’s a good question. How do you know? Because a piece of it fell on my head, she replied. Oh, may I go with you? Asked Henny Penny. Certainly, said Chicken Little. And she hastened on, followed by Henny Penny. Now the story goes on, and it’s a lot of fun. I hope you’ll tell it to your children many times as they’re growing up. It’s great fun for the children to hear, and I recommend it because of the lesson it contains. But Henny Penny collected a whole raft of people as she made her way down the road to the king, and by and by they became tired. And I’m abridging the story. They became tired. They sat down to rest, went out from behind the rocks, jumped foxy-loxy. “‘Where are you going?’ he asked with a sly grin. “‘The sky is falling, and we’re going to tell the king.’ They all said together, and I can hear all our little feathered friends squawking and quacking, “‘The sky is falling. We’re going to tell the king.'” How do you know, asked Foxy Loxy, who was wending his wicked eyes. Turkey Lurkey told me, said Gander Pander. Goosey Pussy told me, said Turkey Lurkey. Ducky Dattles told me, said Goosey Pussy. Cocky Locky told me, said Ducky Dattles. Henny Penny told me, said Cocky Locky. Chicken Little told me, said Henny Penny. A lot of finger pointing. A piece of it fell on my head, cried Chicken Little. And we’re going to tell the king. It’s a cute story. A lot of fun. Kids love it. Silly, very funny for children. It gives all of us a shorthand code for people who panic and follow the crowd just because someone said so. And of course, all these people saying the sky is falling was based entirely upon the erroneous conclusions of one person. Now, what makes this story, the story of Chicken Little, different from the boy who cried wolf is that the boy who cried wolf intended to deceive. He actually knew what he was doing. He was having fun and making people jump up and down with excitement over the fact that a wolf was coming. Chicken Little was quite sincere and quite stupid, and so were the rest of her stricken little band, Turkey Lurkey. Gander Pander, Goosey Poosey, Ducky Daddles, Cocky Locky, and, of course, Henny Penny. But the effect of the chicken littles of the world is similar to the effect of the boy who cried wolf. It tends to desensitize people so that when the sky does start to fall, they won’t believe it. I have a grown-up name for the chicken littles of the world. I call them sundowners. We had a fellow on the CEM forum earlier this year who was warning all of us of impending economic conditions in the world. The Japanese banks were going to fail. All the countries of the world would yank their money out of the American economy. The American dollar would go into free fall. Soon the United States would be like Argentina. It was supposed to happen. I think it was supposed to happen by spring of this year. If not, it was certainly supposed to have happened by the feast. It hasn’t happened. And I think perhaps he’s consoling himself somewhere that the thought, cheer up, something bad can still happen. He’s a sundowner. I don’t know what it is about would-be prophets. I don’t know what it is about people. They read the Bible, they see the terrible things that are going to happen in the end times, and they seem to look forward to it. They want to talk about it. They want to tell us all the things. They’re quite sure something terrible is going to happen. They want to be the first to tell us about it. And one gets the feeling that they would be terribly disappointed if something happens to prove them wrong, even if it turned out to save thousands of lives. Now, there are several things in all this that I think we all need to think carefully about. The first is this. The end for this country when it comes will not be because of computer failures. It will not be because of a banking failure. It will not be because foreign investors take their money out of this country. It will not be because terrorists set off a nuclear device in Washington, D.C. It will not happen because of earthquakes, famines, or wars and rumors of wars. It will not happen because we’ve been struck by a meteor. No. And while the sundowners keep blowing all these trumpets and nothing happens, they are accomplishing nothing worthwhile. They are desensitizing people to the real prophetic message of the Bible. And the real prophetic message of the Bible is, is not economic, it’s not political, it’s not military, it’s not governmental. The real prophetic message of the Bible is moral. We need to be talking to our neighbors about the collapse of morals that has been proceeding apace in this country and has not abated since 9-11. Everybody’s calling 9-11 the day America changed. So how have we changed? Well, it’s a lot harder to get on an airplane these days. That’s changed. We’re far more suspicious of Middle Easterners in a cafe somewhere talking about 9-11 and 9-13 than we were. That’s a change. The anti-God, anti-prayer crowd is a little quieter right now than they were, but that’s already changing back. People were a little quicker for a while to go to church and a prayer service, but they tell me that we’re getting back to normal on that. But you can look around the country for any substantive change in our morality, and you can’t find that. There has been no substantive change at all. At the core, we haven’t really changed much since 9-11, and frankly, it was kind of foolish to think that we would. America is in the midst of a 100-year decline, and an event like 9-11 is not enough to turn it around. Now, I want you to understand I’m not a sundowner. I look at the United States of America today, and I see much to admire. Incidentally, so does the rest of the world. There’s still an enormous reservoir of good in this country, but the good in this country is leaking out through dozens of cuts and sores and it is simply not being replaced. As of this moment, we are nowhere near as bad as the nation of Israel and the nation of Judah were when the prophets stalked their streets and told them what was about to happen to them. We’re not there yet, but we are headed in the same direction fast, and we are headed there for precisely the same reasons. Now, the second thing I want you to understand about all this is that the sundowners may talk a lot about prophecy, but they really don’t have a clue. The sundowners are merely pessimists. Real prophets are not pessimistic. They are realistic. They are talking about the way things are, the way we are headed, and the way it’s all going to turn out. And believe it or not, the real prophets say that in the end, it will turn out. There’s going to be a lot of pain between here and there, they say, but it will turn out. Now I want to contrast today the sundowners with a man named Jeremiah. Jeremiah’s name has been really co-opted by people today. When they speak about a Jeremiah, they’re talking about a prediction of unrelieved gloom. They’re talking about a person who is down on everything. Jeremiah really wasn’t quite like that. In Jeremiah chapter 8 and verse 20, Jeremiah begins to give us his own feelings about about what’s going on, how he felt about his prophecies, and what he expected to come in the future. In Jeremiah 8 and verse 20, he says this, The harvest is past. The summer has ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt. I look around at my people. I look around at what’s happening to my nation. And I look at the harm that’s being done. I look at the sadness. I look at the broken children. I look at the broken homes and the families that are coming apart. And I hurt, he said. I am black. Astonishment has taken hold of me. Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people were recovered? Continuing in chapter 9, he says this. Oh, that my head were watered. and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people. Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging place of where a flea frame, and that I might leave my people, I might get away from these people, for they’re all adulteries and assembly of treacherous men. Now we’re getting to what is really wrong with these people. Their morals are shot. They are treacherous. You can’t believe a word they say any longer. And they’re everyone neighing after his neighbor’s wife. They don’t care who someone’s married to when the time comes to sleep with them. They bend their tongues like the bow for lies. They’re not valiant for the truth on the earth. They proceed from evil to evil, and they know not me, saith the Lord. You read what we realize in what we’re reading here. It’s not merely a litany of calamities to come, which is what the sundowners like to talk about. It’s why we are in trouble. It is the morals that are shot. It is the lies. It is the deceit. It is the adultery. It is the abandonment of the law of God as a guide to life. That’s what’s taking them down. Jeremiah, Jeremiah wished he had more tears to weep, which suggests to me that the poor man had just about wept himself dry. There’s an approach to prophecy that assumes that we can go into the Bible and identify all the end time players. Then we can go and identify the events that are going to happen, the sequence of events, timing of them. This approach assumes that our job as prophets is to warn people about impending doom, to tell them the sun is going down and when it is going down and how it’s going down. And these prophets tend to assume that there is absolutely nothing that can be done to change it. Prophecy is history written in advance. It’s written in the Bible. It’s going to happen just exactly this way. And what they’re concerned about is what is going to happen. What does a real prophet do? A real prophet will come to tell us why these things are going to happen. He’s going to be here to tell us where we went wrong. and what we can do about it to change the outcome. And it seems to me so few people even understand this at all. One of the purposes of prophecy is changing the outcome. Changing the outcome is one of the primary goals of prophecy. Why do you think, what is so important about us that God would ever send somebody down here merely to tell us what’s going to happen in the future, if not to change what’s going to happen in the future? Your whole country, he says, is going down. You’re going into captivity. You’re going to die by the sword, by disease, and by famine. Why would he tell you that? What’s the good of it? Unless it is to cause you to change the way you live your life. Or perhaps so that when it all comes to pass, you will understand that God was in history and it was not merely bad luck. I don’t know. I think that, you know, as we look at things, we don’t altogether see them clearly. Paul saw this very clearly. In his letter to the Corinthians, he said this. You’ll find it in chapter 10, verse 9, 1 Corinthians 10, 9. He said, let us not tempt Christ as some of them tempted and were destroyed of serpents. Neither murmur you like some of them murmured and were destroyed of the destroyer. And then he drops this little beauty in here. Verse 11, 1 Corinthians 10. Now all these things happened to them together. for examples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come. Every one of the Old Testament prophets spoke to the people of his own generation. They walked out in the streets of Jerusalem or in the streets of Samaria in the north and They looked around upon all the things that were happening. They named names. They called people down. They talked about who was invading, when they were invading, why they were invading. They gave them the whole picture. They talked to the people in the streets of Samaria and Jerusalem about the events of their time. He told them what was coming down the road, why it was coming, and what they could do about it. Here’s my question. If it only had to do with the time in which he lived and worked, Why did he write it down? Why was it written? And why has it been preserved down through these thousands of years so that you hold it in your lap right there, right now? Paul answered that question. All these things happen to them for examples, and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come, regardless of what you believe about the identity of Israel at the end time. no matter who you think the players in prophecy are. These things are written down for your admonition because the ends of the age are coming down around your ears. And we need to think in these terms because the identity of Israel and who the players are at the end time is too complicated to use as a means of impressing upon people’s minds the importance of listening to the prophets. It takes too long it’s too problematic, and it’s likely to get you in confused and trouble and will give people a way out. And I’ll tell you something. In our day and age, people don’t need a way out of facing the problems that their family, that their community, and that their nation are looking at today. These things are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come, and that should be just about enough. Now, having made that point, I want us to consider for a moment what they wrote down for us to heed and to pay attention to. Isaiah 59, one of the most powerful chapters in all of the prophets. Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save. His ear is not heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid his face from you, and he will not hear. So what’s our problem? Our economic system? Our banking system? Natural disasters? No. Stuff happens in this world. Things happen. Time and chance happens to all men. What’s our problem? Our problem is that our sin, our iniquities, our lawlessness, our decline in morals, the way we treat one another, the way we treat widows and fatherless children, the way we teach our children in schools, that there is no God. All these things, he says, have come between us and our God, and he’s no longer interested in what we have to say to him. So why should he stretch out his hand for us? Your hands are defiled with blood, your fingers with iniquity, your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perverseness. Nobody calls for justice. Nobody pleads for the truth. They trust in vanity and speak lies. They conceive mischief and bring forth iniquity. What’s our problem? Banking? Economics? Earthquakes? Asteroids? No. It’s morals. It’s the Ten Commandments broken. It’s the Ten Commandments trashed. The law of God discarded. That’s where our problem is. It’s violence. and deceit. It’s a collapse of the justice system that naturally follows on the heels of all this type of thing. And he makes it clear in the prophecy that that’s precisely why it happens. He says in verse 7, their feet run to evil. They make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they don’t know, and there is no judgment in their goings. Why? Because they have made crooked paths in Anybody that walks those crooked paths shall never have peace. Therefore, is judgment far from us, neither does justice overtake us. We wait for light and behold obscurity. We wait for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes. And in noonday, in high noon, we stumble like it was night and dead dark. We are in desolate places like dead men. You know why? You know how we have come here? And these things are true of us today as they were of them then. You understand why they lost good judgment and why they’re walking around in the dark? Because of lies. When you stop telling the truth and you start taking refuge in lies, your judgment will go to hell in a handbasket, which is precisely where the judgment in our nation today has gone. We roar, he said, like bears, verse 11. We mourn like doves. We look for judgment. We don’t find any of it. We look for salvation. It’s way off from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before you and our sins testify against us. For our transgressions are with us and for our iniquities we know them. In transgressing and lying against the Lord and departing from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart Words of falsehood and judgment is turned away backward. Justice stands afar off and truth is fallen in the street and cannot enter. Yea, truth fails and he that departs from evil makes himself a prey. He becomes the victim. And the Lord saw it and it displeased him that there was no judgment and he saw something else. He saw that there was no man, and he wondered that there was no intercessor. He wondered that there was no one standing up. No one was valiant for the truth. No one was fighting the trend. No one was saying anything. It was just going, drifting right on down the road, and nobody had anything to say. Now this is the heartbreaking statement. God looked for an intercessor among men and could not find one. Later in Isaiah chapter 30 verse 12, you don’t need to turn there, God says, Wherefore, thus saith the Holy One of Israel, because you despise this word and because you trust oppression and perverseness and you lean on that, this iniquity shall be to you as a breach ready to fall, a swelling in a high wall whose breaking comes suddenly as in an instant. It’s going to come on you as a total surprise. You know when a wall collects a lot of water behind it, And you can see it beginning to swell and you know it’s been compromised. The one thing you can never know is exactly the moment when it’s finally going to come. And when it breaks, it will not fall one brick at a time. It will all come at once. And that’s what God says is going to happen to us because of the way in which we have allowed this to happen. What is the cause of our decline as a people? It’s not a matter of Y2K problems. It’s not a matter of other nations pulling their money out of the economy. It’s not a matter of volcanoes or earthquakes or asteroids hitting the earth. It’s a matter of violence, dishonesty, corrupt courts, oppression of the poor, the helpless, and the children. Our society is a piece of work. We really care about children, don’t we? We will compass heaven and earth to find a woman who beats her little brat in the parking lot. and feel so righteous because of how we feel and how disgusted we felt at looking at that video, what that woman was done. But we will, the same people will, with the other hand, perpetuate a system that denies God and takes away the basic authority in the world for the protection of children, which is the law of Almighty God. We won’t allow God in the schools. We won’t allow prayer in school. And there never was a time when children were more in need of prayer. And they will not even allow them a moment of silence to pray. They want to continue shouting in the air so that you can’t concentrate on prayer. They don’t want prayer in the school and don’t want God there no matter what. Call it what you will. But to say that we care about children and we’re so concerned about children when we allow our children to be taught that there is no God, we allow our children to be taught in school all about sex with no morality connected to it at all. When girls in classroom and labs can be shown, I’ve seen pictures of them sitting in class putting condoms on bananas and learning how to do it in class in high school. We allow that type of thing to happen with no moral instruction to go with it. And we care about children? I’m not so sure. So what’s the solution? More religion? Let’s back up a moment. God said, bring no more vain oblations. Incense is an abomination to me. The new moons and the Sabbath and the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with. It’s iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your most solemn religious meeting, he says, is iniquity to me. Can’t stand it. Your new moons, your appointed feasts, my soul hates. They are a trouble to me. I’m weary to bear them. And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you. Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear. Why? Because your hands are full of blood. What’s the figure now on the number of abortions in this country? 40 million yet? 40 million? Our hands… are full of blood and i can’t help but remember my our brother daniel in babylon when he made his prayer to god didn’t talk about what they had done didn’t talk about all and point the finger at israel and say look what they have done he said we have done these things before you because he realized he also was guilty what’s the real solution Well, it goes on the same thing to say, wash you clean. Put away the evil of your doings before my eyes. Stop doing bad things. Learn to do well. Seek judgment. Relieve the oppressed. Judge the fatherless. Plead for the widow. The solution is moral. The solution is to teach people to do the right thing, to do good instead of doing bad. How hard is this? It’s certainly not rocket science. What God is looking for is a moral people. This nation… is not going to be turned around by politics or political movements. This nation will turn around when the hearts of its people have turned. The prophets will not do their job by making dire economic forecasts. The prophets can only do their job by turning the hearts of the people back to God. One of the saddest scriptures in all the Bible is found in Ezekiel chapter 22. Ezekiel chapter 22 says, And it’s a heartbreaker, I warn you, ahead of time. The people of the land have used oppression, Ezekiel 22, 29. They have used oppression. They have exercised robbery. They have vexed the poor and needy. They have oppressed the stranger wrongly. And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy him. And I couldn’t find a one. I couldn’t find one. There was no one there. Is it possible that the church would stand idly by while the world around them goes to hell and do nothing and say nothing to try to avert it? Is it possible that the church might say, well, God’s not trying to save the world now, and then not try to save anyone? There is a gap, of course, between God is not trying to save the world now, on the one hand, and God is not trying to save anybody, and us not making any effort to save anybody. Do you remember an incident in Paul’s ministry? You’ll find the story in the 17th chapter of Acts. I’m not going to turn there. He and Silas turned up in Thessalonica. began to speak, go to the synagogue, preach, and so forth. And before very long, a riot virtually ensued, and they found this Jason, when Paul wasn’t there at the moment, they found Jason drug him out of his house into the rulers of the city, crying, listen to this, those that have turned the world upside down have come here also. Who turned the world upside down? Paul and Silas. Two men had turned the world upside down. Is it possible in the face of this that the church would stand by and say, well, yes, our world is going down the drain, but there is nothing that we can do about it? Is it possible? Is it possible that the church would simply not care what was happening to the world around them? Because candidly, when I listen to some of the sundowners, I get the feeling not only that they don’t care, they actually would be disappointed if something bad didn’t happen. Why was Paul able to do what he did? How was Paul able to find the handle to get a hold of to turn the world upside down? Why was he able to do it? How was he able to do it? Paul was able to do it because he cared. He cared. He cared about the results of his work. He cared what came out the other side of it. 1 Corinthians 9, verse 19. Paul. For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. Unto the Jews? Well, I had to behave myself as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To those people who are under the law, I had to be like one under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law. To them that are without law as without law, being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ, that I might gain those who are on the outside of the law. To the weak, I became like one that was weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” Now, is it possible that the church would say, oh, well, Paul doesn’t understand his doctrine? Doesn’t he know that God is not trying to save the world now? Doesn’t he know no man can come to Christ except the Spirit of the Father draw him? And doesn’t he know and tick off a whole list of proof texts and so forth about doctrines? Show me all your proof texts and your doctrines, and I will show you Paul. I will show you a man who, after he got through preaching the gospel in one town, was dragged out of the city by some people and stoned and left lying under the rubble as though he were dead. Who drug himself out from under the stones, bleeding and hurting and every bone in his body, and walked down the road to another town and preached that same gospel one more time to another group of people and took the same risk again. Show me all your doctrines and I will show you a man who put his life at risk every time he turned around. who got beaten for the sake of the gospel more than once, sometimes by the Jews and sometimes by the Gentiles, and left the beating with back bloody and raw, and went out and preached the same gospel that got him beaten somewhere else again. Why on earth did Paul do this? Did it because he thought what he did made a difference in what was going to come out in the world? Here in our world right now, our children are being systematically taught in all of our schools that there is no God. They were being taught sex without morality. There were 654,000 teen pregnancies last year. There were 350,000 babies born to teens last year. Where did the other 300,000 babies go? 654,000 pregnancies. 350,000 babies were born. They were killed off through abortion. Child abuse is epidemic in the country, and everybody’s talking a lot about it. Everybody really gets excited about all the pedophile priests and all the stuff that’s going on. And as I said, we’ll compass heaven and earth to find one woman who beat her brat in the parking lot. When are we going to start doing something about the destruction of our young people in this country by telling them there is no God, there are no morals, and they have no basis for teaching them any morals? God slowly disappears from public life. The standards of morality will also disappear and the foundations of our freedom will disappear right along with them. Do you think we could turn the world upside down? Do you think it’s possible that we could actually change the outcome of prophecy? Jonah did. He seemed to be disappointed. First sundowner. You sure won’t turn the world upside down if you believe that what you do does not make any difference. You can forget about it. You’re not going to have any effect. But if you can convince one teenage girl to save her baby instead of killing it, you can make a difference. If you can persuade one teenage boy not to engage in sex outside of marriage, you’ve made a difference and you may have saved his life. If you can persuade one person you work with that the truth is better than lying, you have made a difference. The way to make a difference is to make Paul your mentor. Do whatever you have to do to save people. And don’t give me this stuff, we can’t save people. Go look at what Paul said. I bear all things to all men that I might by some means save some. Who? I might save some. God has given us the honor, the privilege, the opportunity, and the joy of being able to make a difference in the lives of other people. To know that what I do might save you is worth all I have to give. That’s what Paul would have said. Make Paul your mentor. Maybe take another look at your doctrines. Do what you have to do to save people, one person at a time. If Paul were here… he would reach out and grab the world by the shirt front and shake them till their teeth rattled. If Jeremiah were here, he would be pinning people’s ears back. You know, he would be talking to them, he’d be wetting his shirt with his own tears and holding them and trying to explain to them what they’re doing and where it’s going. If Isaiah were here, he’d be crying aloud and spare not because he’s the one God told that to. Alas, they aren’t here, but you are. Now go out there and turn the world upside down. one person at a time.
