Famine for God’s Word
Amos 8:11 says, “Behold the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the Words of the Lord.”
The Russian author Dostoevsky contended if there is no God, “everything is permitted.” “The end justifies the means.”
Machiavelli said, “Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.” “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
William Holmes McGuffey said, “If you can induce a community to doubt the authenticity of the Scriptures, whether there is an eternal state of retribution beyond the grave, or whether there exists any such being as God, you have broken down the barriers of moral virtue, and hoisted the flood-gates of immorality and crime.”
Samuel Adams said, “A Virtuous education is calculated to reach the heart, and to prevent crimes. Such an education, which leads the youth beyond mere outward show, will impress their minds with a profound reverence of the Deity.”
Noah Webster said, “All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.”
U.S. Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen said, “The Bible….seal up this one volume and in half a century all these hopes would wither and these prospects perish forever. These sacred temples would crumble or become the receptacles of pollution and crime.”
Chuck Colson said, “Imprisonment as a primary means of criminal punishment is a relatively modern concept. It was turned to as a humane alternative to the older patterns of harsh physical penalties for nearly all crimes. Quakers introduced the concept in Pennsylvania. The first American prison was established in Philadelphia when the Walnut Street Jail was converted into a series of solitary cells where offenders were kept in solitary confinement. The theory was that they would become ‘penitents,’ confessing their crimes before God and thereby gaining a spiritual rehabilitation. Hence, the name “penitentiary” or a place of penitents.”
Jesus asked if He would find faith when He returned. (Luke 18:8)
I find many today who have their heads in the sand and wish to ignore all that is going on around us in our own country, and in the world at large. They want to be content with running their normal treadmill of life without any uncomfortable thoughts of what may or may not come to our country in the near future. It is difficult to witness to these people and to be able to warn them about the forming of a one world government and a coming world dictator. They don’t want to hear it.
They are truly living out “The end justifies the means” and “I must adapt to the changing times”. They have closed themselves off to the truths that are in the Word of God, and thus to the voice of the Holy Spirit in their hearts. They are left to their own imaginations as to what is right and what is wrong, as they express their state of lost-ness in anger with others through crime, vice and all manner of deceit.
Yet as we can see from the quotes of those above, when one allows the secular and the material to replace the spiritual, and refuses to open the one Divine means of knowing what the Creator is like and what He requires of us, we soon crumble as a nation. Every man soon does that which is right in his own eyes without any regard for the effects upon those around him, nor upon the generations who will follow in his footsteps.
Truly there is a famine for the Word of God; and there is a great need for an Amos to stand up and proclaim to the masses what God really thinks of our human efforts to be a god unto ourselves.
Unnatural affection and relationships are increasing more each day, because we have thrown off the moral code written in the Bible and in our own hearts. Things that God judged the Nation of Israel for are now being promoted as legal and just. Violence, deceit, immorality and antichrist teachings are dominating our mindsets. Yet, while we are busy ignoring the Word of God while we satiate our fleshly appetites, the world is headed toward a one world government whose dictator will take away every pleasurable thing we ever desired.
‘It was a victimless crime… unless you count the Board of Directors and the shareholders.’
Penitentiaries do not rehabilitate the criminal anymore. The jailers themselves have become corrupt, while exploiting those under their guard. The criminals have learned how to work the system and leave jail a smarter criminal. Immorality, vice, and deceit, are the norm, instead of encouraging the use of the time to seek God for an honest change of heart. The Penitents have become unrepentant. There is no fear of God or respect for the laws of the land.
It is time to raise our voices as Christians and stand up for what is right with God, while spending time on our knees asking Him to forgive our nation and our world for their defiance of His teachings.
Joel said, “Therefore also now, saith the Lord turn unto me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth Him of the evil. Who knoweth if He will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind Him…” (Joel 2:12-14)