Nearing Midnight: The Real Crisis - Terry James - http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html

Crises and potential crises surround us during every waking moment. Except for those who are oblivious to what is going on in this nation and world today, the cultural and societal pathway ahead disappears into the anxiety-laden darkness of the unknown. Rather than take on the entire world and its problems in this regard, I will, for our purposes in this commentary, stick to analyzing the fearful future of this nation I love.

Most in America--and sadly, in the church (born-again believers)--falls into that category of the oblivious. Therefore, the crises, from their perspective, don't exist. All the forewarnings of coming disaster seem issued to ears that will never hear and presented to eyes that will never see. Yet, at the same time, the crises, themselves, do create undercurrents of worry. Even the otherwise diverted masses notice, at least for fleeting moments, when societal dangers disrupt their world of shopping and entertainment-for example, the murder of the children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Then, it is back to buying, selling, building, marrying, and giving in marriage, and the thousand and one other things that matter most to them.

Crises dominate the horizon politically, economically, and morally. As a matter of fact, they intertwine in such convolution as to now be inseparable so far as discerning where one aspect begins and the others end. There has developed, because of the incessant progression of assaults by evil actions, desensitization that affects the masses like a venomous bite by a deadly serpent.

The analogy is more than coincidental. It is a precise description of what has happened. The serpent of Genesis, chapter 3, has successfully injected much of America's population with the same sort of morality-paralyzing toxin that separated man from God those many millennia ago. We have indeed reached the point of becoming a people like those at whom Isaiah the prophet pointed the finger of condemnation: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20).

This crisis of moral decay was brought home to me as I listened to the minister who was selected by the 44th president to read a prayer during the Obama inauguration on January 21. He, we are supposed to presume, prayed to the God of Heaven for Him to bless the gay lifestyle in that prayer for inclusiveness and tolerance in America.

This is the same administration that has made homosexuality and those who fight for the right to openly display the debased, debauched activities of that community in a very public way as the equivalent of the black community crusading for those people's civil rights. This is the same political entity that will pull all the levers of governmental power at their disposal to protect the young of wildlife, thus to impose as much control as possible over individuals and businesses, under the guise of environmental concerns. These will, at the same time, do everything within that power to facilitate the murder of babies in their mothers' wombs for the sake of placating a voter base that desires to expediently get rid of unwanted fruits of their pleasure-seeking indiscretions.

While America sleeps, liberties are eroded one at a time, and the powers that be viciously seek to marginalize all who would disagree with their seizing by "executive action" constitutional powers the founding fathers built into the nation's safeguards through checks and balances. Even those who have until recently adamantly opposed such a power grab seem now to be shrugging shoulders and going along with the mainstream media mantra that it is just the new norm.

But the dumbing-down of the American public and apparently, too, many of those constitutionally elected to represent it, in convincing that the new norm is just the hope and change that is the natural progression of such an advanced, sophisticated culture -thus the moral implosion that continues to take its toll-- isn't the real crisis.

The real crisis is wrapped up in the following: the Church in this crucial hour is asleep, and if there is no preacher, how shall they hear? (Romans 10:14).

The Lord of Heaven might have just about reached the limits of His patience with a nation peopled by a populace that has lived the most materially-and even spiritually blessed-existence in the history of mankind. Proof that we might be near the outer limits of God's tolerance for national rebellion is the fact that there seems a collective mindset now developed like that forewarned by the apostle Paul.

Please consider with all gravity the Word of the living God. I believe it is the equivalent of Isaiah's finger pointed at my beloved United States of America:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.

Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them. (Romans 1: 21-32)