As I read the news, I feel like I am living in a crazy, loony-
tune cartoon-world. Men are deciding they are women, are demanding that we call them “she” and “her,” and teachers are being fired for refusing to deny biological science when they do not do so. Rather than giving these disturbed “transvestites” psychological help, society encourages them in their folly by giving them hormone treatments and even performing genital surgery to make them as much like the sex they prefer as possible.
I just read this morning that one homosexual couple, two men, amazingly succeed in getting pregnant. The pregnant spouse proudly announced their accomplishment of two “men” conceiving a child. The picture in the article showed two men, both with beards, with one obviously some six months pregnant, proudly stating “I am a man and I am pregnant”. His desire to be a man does not change the fact that God Himself decreed that she is a woman because she has a vagina and not a penis. This is an instance of a man and a woman conceiving a child, as conception always is..
This is only one instance of innumerable changes in our society that have made us a different country than we have been in the past. Most, but not all, of these changes have taken us further away from a nation that reflects God’s rule in the short-term, so it is difficult to see that we are, in the long-term, being brought under the rule of King Jesus. As the Father said to Him at His coronation, “Ask of Me, and I will give You The nations for Your inheritance, And the ends of the earth for Your possession” (Psalms 2:8). This ultimate cultural change is not only happening now, but it is God-ordained and inevitable, as God moves us toward His eternal purpose that He “may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).
However, since culture is always downstream of religion, today’s changes in our culture simply reflect who or what our current god has become in the halls of power in America. It is becoming more and more obvious that our god is humanism—Cultural Marxism. Man himself, including the government (corporate man), is deciding for himself what is “right” and “wrong.” from an authority source outside ourselves, and forcing compliance to that decision on the populace. In Humanism there are no unchangeable absolutes other than the power of the state, even one’s sex. God’s decree that “male and female created He them” is a decree we think we can reverse if we don’t like God’s decision for us, biology be damned!
What can we as Christians do? We feel helpless as we watch the slide and the speed of which it seems to be increasing with each passing year. But the promise of God is that He has ‘em right where He wants ‘em. He is laughing at their futile attempts to throw off His rule (Psalm 2:4) and will ultimately crush their resistance.
Once we see this “big picture” with spiritual eyes—Jesus’ ultimate victory through us—we are compelled to respond as did the fired school-teacher (not supporting transgenderism by using its nomenclature), the Christian baker in Oregon (not helping celebrate a homosexual marriage). They did not yield to the ever-changing culture of the day and the pressure exerted to do so. They both were standing firm for kingdom truth where they lived and worked daily. How can we do the same, even though we aren’t in a public place with visibility?
How about where we live every day, in our families? What does living in the kingdom of God look like there, according to the Bible?
What we are going to discuss was common knowledge and universally believed and practiced in our country 100 years ago. However, in the years before WWII Satan’s counterattack began in America in earnest. Cultural Marxism, as distinguished from militant, revolutionary Marxism (practiced in Russia, China, etc.), was introduced by a group of German philosophers who had fled Germany under Hitler and settled at Columbia University. They were called the “Frankfurt School” (after their original home, Frankfurt University in Germany).
They were dissatisfied with both the cultural fruit of Christianity (Western Civilization), and Communism, and were looking for a middle road, sort of a “Marxism without the messy violence.” Our dramatic cultural changes we see today are a result of their thinking.
The basic issue at the heart of all conflicts, personally, nationally and universally, is “Who is in charge?” Satan challenged God’s right to be in charge over him and deceived Adam and Eve into joining him in his rebellion. The Bible teaches that we, as Adam’s descendants, have all followed him in his rebellion against God. We come into the world deciding for ourselves good and evil, right and wrong, and refuse God’s authority over us.
However, there is authority in the kingdom of God (the word “kingdom” itself implies aauthority) and that applies to the family as a part of that kingdom. It flows to the family from Jesus, seated at God’s right hand, down to the father in the family. He is in charge of his family (1 Corinthians 11:3), probably his first opportunity to exercise kingdom rule. He is totally responsible for its well being and all that happens in it. There can be no authority without responsibility and vice versa. So, the responsibility for all problems, difficulties and failures lie at his doorstep. He will be held responsible for everything that occurs in his family. He is in charge.
Can you see why this message is so hated, vilified, ridiculed and attacked by the Humanists? This is the kingdom of God, and it is being expressed in every family, some well and some poorly, but all have the potential to fulfill God’s divine purpose for them: to answer our prayer “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on the earth . . .”
I expect that this message grates on many who are reading this, and I fully understand. Women, as daughters of Eve, naturally don’t want to be ruled over—they want, independently, to decide “good and evil” for themselves. Men naturally don’t want the responsibility of ruling, and we are uncomfortable when faced with doing so. How much easier to defer to “the boss” and retreat to the football game, because “when the wife’s happy, life’s happy.” We are truly sons of Adam, who said, when confronted with Eve’s disobedience at the Tree in the Garden, “Yes, dear, whatever you say, dear.” Just like our forefather, we are responsibility-shirkers all.
Next week we will look specifically at how a father’s godly rule sets a family free to be a powerful force in fulfilling our purpose in life—that the rule of Jesus Christ “cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.” (Habakkuk 2:14)
