rupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth” (Gen. 6:5, 12). Five hundred years before Christ, the prophet Jerem iah said, “ The h ea r t is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” (Jer. 17:9). Jesus said, “ For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, mur ders, adulteries, fo rn ica t io n s , false witness, blasphemies” (Mat thew 15:19). In Galatians 5:19-21, we are told the works of the flesh are “ impure thoughts; eagerness for lustful pleasure; idolatry, spirit ism (that is, encouraging the ac tivity of demons); ha tred and fighting; jealousy and anger; con stant effort to get the best for yourself; complaints and criti cisms; the feelings that everyone else is wrong except those in your own little group; and there will be wrong doctrine, envy, murder, drunkenness, wild parties and all that sort of thing” (Living Let ters). But it is left to the book of Ro mans to give us the most vivid de scription of human depravity: “ And so God let them go ahead into every sort of sex sin, and do whatever they wanted to; yes, vile and sinful things with each other’s bodies. Instead of believing what they knew as the truth about God, they deliber ately chose to believe lies. So they prayed to the things God made, but wouldn’t obey the blessed God who made these things. That is why God let go of them and let them do all these evil things, so that even their women turned against God’s natural plan for them and indulged in sex sin with each other. And the men, in stead of having a normal sex r e la t ion sh ip w ith women, burned with lust for each oth er, men doing shameful things with other men and, as a re sult, getting paid within their own souls with the wages they so richly deserved. So it was
association a partner in that mur der? God have mercy on any coun try when its rulers, its Supreme Court, its judges, its police force, and its people stand idly by while Sodomites, homosexuals, peddlers o f pornography, rapists, murder ers, crime syndicates, dope ped dlers, and the movie and liquor industries do their best to destroy its moral fiber! Such a nation needs no external enemy to de stroy it. It is already doomed and damned by the cancer of its own inner immorality. But back to Richard Speck. Tatooed on his arm are the words, “ Born to Raise Hell.” A bit brazen, isn’t it? Yet any man who understands the Biblical teaching of human depravity knows that all men are born to raise hell. The Bible teaches it and history demonstrates it. Hu man depravity is just one of those indisputable facts to which every unclean imagination, thought and desire, every selfish and unright act, every unholy and defiling habit bears testimony. Though war, murder and rape may testify more loudly to the reality of hu man depravity, yet their witness is really no stronger than that of unclean th ou gh ts and deeds which are less overt. Every battlefield of h is to ry tells us that man carries within him that which is depraved and perverted. Every prison cell and penitentiary witness to the same fact. Every broken home and every juvenile hall add their testi mony. Every grave—of the rich, of the poor, of the good ( ? ) , of the bad, of the young, and o f the old —says, “All are sinners.” It is as natural for man to sin as it is for fish to swim. Water is the fish’s habitat; sin is man’s. Of the days before the flood, it was written: “ And God saw that the wickedness o f man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually . . . And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was cor
that when they gave God up and would not even acknowl edge Him, God gave them up to doing everything th e ir evil minds could think of. Their lives became full of every kind of wickedness and sin, of greed and hate, envy, murder, fighting, lying, bitterness, and gossip. They were backbiters, haters of God, insolent, proud braggarts, always thinking of new ways of sinning and con tinually disobedient to th e ir parents. They tried to misun derstand, broke their promises, and were heartless — without pity. They were fully aware of God’s death penalty for these crimes, yet they went right ahead and did them anyway, and encouraged others to do them, too” (Rom. 1:24-32, Liv ing Letters ). Of course, not all people prac tice all the things listed in this expose, but they all possess the potential for doing so. The virus o f every sin is in every man’s heart. Given the proper nurture and environment, it will spring forth. A religious faith, moral surroundings, legal prohibitions, and ethical cultures may sup press some overt acts of evil but will not obliterate the wickedness of man’s heart. One man may lust after a wom an in his heart while another commits fornication. While the latter is worse, if for no other reason than that it involves two people in sin, yet both the lust of the first man and the act of the second testify to the sinfulness of the heart. Yes, every man, woman and child has been “bom to raise hell.” “Bom to raise hell” is in delibly tatooed into all human na ture. But every man can also be bom again, bom not of sinful flesh but of the Holy Spirit. This is God’s answer to the depravity of human nature and this is the only answ er to man’s deepest need. Man can be reborn for the glory of God. Millions have . . . have you? It’s your only hope.
NOVEMBER, 1966
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