by signs o f this new decadent way o f thinking. Every one is living for himself. Everyone is trying to get ahead in the world at the expense of the other fellow. Man has said in his heart, “ I’m going to build a mountain! I’m going to build it high. I don’t know how I’ll build it, but I’ll build it some way. I’m going to build m y own heaven and then I’ll make it a little hell.” The Bible tells us that “ to be carnally-minded is death; but to be spiritually-minded is life and peace” (Rom. 8 :6 ). The carnal mind of man would like to see this world through the eyes of this new morality. The truth is that this new morality is im-morality. Satan is behind the whole idea for it has brought with it sin and death. W e see in the wake o f the new morality lawlessness, riots, wildcat strikes, delin quency, a steady rise in crime and drug addiction. There is a sexual explosion, a letting down o f the bars, an increase in premarital intercourse, unfaithfulness in marriage, a rise in venereal disease and a tremen dous increase in homosexuality. Television; the comic strips and movies advertise the god o f sex. Rock ’n’ roll offers its suggestive bodily movements and lyrics. Laziness and indifference abound with de mands for shorter work-weeks and more coffee breaks. People do not want to do their jobs, but show a shiftlessness on the job, wasting time, stealing from their employers. Everywhere men are complaining about something or trying to sponge on the govern ment, sitting back and expecting to be provided for by government agencies and doles. W e are becoming a nation under mob rule; any time man is not pleased with something, he refuses to do anything, or bands together to make up a corps o f pickets to protest imagined injustices, lying down in the streets, block ing doorways, falling in front of steam-rollers, chain ing pickets together to obstruct work. If the worker doesn’t like his wages, he simply walks off the job. If people want a street light on a certain comer, they just push a baby carriage in front of a Mack truck. Lawlessness is rampant today. W e are rapidly resembling ancient Rome. Gibbon says in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, that Rome fell under mob rule. Romans would yell in the streets about the palace o f Rome, “ More bread and more circuses!” And the government would give them more bread to fill their stomachs and put on
another circus in the arena to satisfy their lusts. Today, man wants more bread to fill his belly and belly-dances to fill his lust. In ancient Rome, as well as in Babylon before it, men had sex orgies and feasts. They would gorge themselves with food, then go out on the balcony, stick their fingers down their throats until they would vomit up the food, and go back to the dining room for more. Ugly? Cer tainly! But this is virtually a picture of our own, over-fed America. And, while we are eating, we are dying — digging our own graves with a knife and fork. In the so-called new moral outlook it is possible to see the look o f death, the look of lust, the look of selfishness, pride, perversion, fear, loneliness, the wild look, the foolish look, the carnal look. The car nal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. Men want answers to their problems but they do not want God. They w ill not have Him ruling over them because they want no other king but Caesar. And yet, while man reluctantly w ill render to Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, he w ill not render any thing to God. He has even tried to put God out o f the churches, for he does not want his children to hear the message of God. Long ago, God said through the prophet Amos, “ Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I w ill send a famine in the land, not a famine o f bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord: and they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east, they shall ran to and fro to seek the word o f the Lord, and shall not find it. In that day shall the fair virgins and young men faint for thirst” (Amos 8:11-13). What men really need is the W ord of the Lord, something substantial to fill their souls. Yet, they will not listen to God’s W ord; w ill not hear it. They are trying to fill their souls through their bodies, trying to get away from themselves, trying to identify them selves through someone else or something else. But this cannot be done. Man can only identify himself through Jesus Christ, by acknowledging himself a sinner and then identifying himself with the cross of Christ where the Saviour died for sinners. The Bible says that in the last days “men shall be lovers o f their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trace-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness [this is modem theology] but denying the power thereof . . . ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:2-7). Christ calls His own to forsake the New Morality, to have nothing to do with it. The holy standards of Christian morality and purity stand unchanged as a personal challenge to every child o f God. The carnal world knows no better; it is already under the sway of the evil one and eagerly delights in any new pre sentation of his deviltry. But God’s people must obey a higher call to a morality which honors Jesus Christ. For those who name the name of Christ, it is still of the highest importance that we be holy as the Lord our God is holy.
Rev. W ormsley is be lieved to be the only Negro Gospel Magi cian in the United States. F o r m e r l y a night-club entertain er in the field of magic, Mr. Worms ley now devotes his talents to serving the Lord. H e also fre quently fills pulpits for a Bible-teacrung and preaching minis try.
9
JANUARY, 1965
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