Take it from me…it pays to pre-order books because sometimes you will get the book even before the national release date! Yesterday, I received Dr. David Jeremiah’s latest book:
People Are Asking: Is This The End?
I read the introduction and the first few pages of Chapter 1 – “The Age of Anything Goes.” For an excerpt of the first chapter, scroll down the page at the following link and read Overview of Chapter 1: The Age of Anything Goes.
That excerpt is sobering, but now that I have delved into the entire chapter, the evil and depravity that is going on in the world today is so very discouraging, damaging and frightening!
I truly am saddened that the country that I grew up in from the mid-nineteen fifties through graduating college in 1977 has disappeared and been replaced with the “normalization” of the most egregious sinful secular-leftist and atheistic (even devil-worshipping!) kinds of immorality and death-cult beliefs that it is absolutely astonishing!
There was a time when Christian parents could shield their children from all of this, but no more. The so-called “smartphones” that adults and children hold in their hands today are just a click away from pornography websites.
Excerpt from Chapter One:
Depravity in Our Minds
In January 2016, the Internet’s largest online pornography site released its annual statistics. On just this one website in just one year – 2015 – consumers watched 4,392,486,580 hours of pornography. Convert those hours into years, and it means those people collectively spent more than 500,000 years watching porn.
On this particular site in 2015 alone, people watched 87,849,731, 608 X-rated videos. Over 87 billion! That’s twelve videos for every man, woman, boy and girl on the planet.
The rate at which sexual depravity is being “normalized” is causing havoc upon many freedoms that Christians have enjoyed in the past. Now, deeply held religious beliefs, freedom of speech, freedom to practice our faith in the public domain, freedom of association to reject the immoral cesspool around us, and most of all, the freedom to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ is actively being punished by “the powers that be” in government! This scenario is especially egregious in the liberal courts dominated by anti-Christian “judges” who decide to allow sexual immoralities described in God’s Word to trump the First Amendment rights of Christian believers.
I could go on and on…but most readers get the picture.
The saving grace in all of this is the fact that Christians know Who wins and triumphs at the end of days. There will come a time when God’s mercy and grace will run out and the judgments will fall upon those who rejected God’s provision for salvation – the Cross of Jesus Christ!
This is probably the biggest reason why this blog exists. To warn people about the schemes of Satan that are there to grab our minds, entice our flesh, and spiral us down into the cesspool of depravity through active sin; in order to keep our minds, hearts, bodies, souls and spirits away from God.
God the Father, who loves us so deeply that He sent His One and Only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place and free us once and for all from the penalty that we all deserve for our rebellion and sin; gives us the kind of hope that can never be achieved on our own.
What will YOU do (and decide about God’s provision through Jesus Christ) on this side of eternity?
Dr. Jeremiah masterfully shares the truth that for many people, their source of hope is sadly misplaced. He states that “the question you must address is not whether America and the world will regain their footing, but how you will respond whether they do or not.”
“That is what this book is all about!”
Dr. Jeremiah explains the four common responses to the growing fears about the future. Three are wrong, and one is right.
Wrong:
- Denial – Living in the illusion that nothing will change, refusing to heed the clouds gathering on the horizon.
- Despair – Collapse is inevitable, all is hopeless, nothing can be done and we are doomed.
- “Eat, drink, and be merry.” As Solomon (see Ecclesiastes 8:15) warned us, all the pleasure we can get because there is “nothing new under the sun” is not productive. It doesn’t give us hope. In fact, it is “all vanity and grasping after the wind.” (see Ecclesiastes 1:14).
Ecc 1:14
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and indeed, all is vanity and grasping for the wind.
Right:
The one right response is to look beyond the gathering storm to the one solid and certain source of hope–to God Himself. Hope in the future of America and the stability of the world is little more than wishful thinking. It is not reliable. The hope God offers is the only realistic, absolute hope that carries the promise of a certain outcome.
The next three paragraphs in the Introduction are very powerful!
We do not know whether America will soon fall. We do not know when the Lord will return. But we do know that whatever our circumstances, God’s desire for us is to live without anxiety and with hope. He offers you “thoughts of peace and not of evil.” and He wants “to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).
In this book I will show you how to find that hope. It is a hope that is not dependent on whether America falls or recovers or whether world order stabilizes or disintegrates. It is a hope that rises above trouble and chaos, enabling you to keep your focus on your future reward and endure whatever comes, whether good or evil, with grace and equanimity.
Had to look that last word up in the dictionary!
equanimity:
1.
mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain; calmness; equilibrium.
The added benefit of this hope is that those who exercise it before others set an example that may just make a difference in the outcome. Enough Christians exhibiting faith in God just might be the salt that saves America.
— Dr. David Jeremiah
San Diego, California
June 2016
Hat tip: David Jeremiah.org – “People Are Asking: Is This The End?”
Hat tips to all links.
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