Thou shalt surely die – this promise to our fallen parents Adam and Eve has been inherited by every human born since that time. Sin’s entrance into the world brought death upon all; each new life is stained by its indelible mark, in both a physical and spiritual sense. Moreover, this deathly curse, this inherited seed of sin does not just exist inert in its billions of human carriers, but something in the nature of evil causes it to take root, grow, multiply, and prevail like a cancer, reaching and filling every element of the physical creation. We are conceived in sin, born in pain, take our first breath in a tainted atmosphere that influences every mental and physical process, and we grow up with sin’s ruinous mark as much a part of us as our own DNA. It perpetually increases along with the growth and reproduction of our natural cells. From birth to death, we experience pain of varying degrees, yet none so profound as the pain of sin within. We all know sickness, and yet there is no cancer so vicious, no virus so pervasive, no tumour so rapid in its destruction as the sin from which they came. We suffer from the separation that parting or death brings, yet there was never a heart so broken, never a life so shattered by losing a loved one, as by our natural separation from God. Ailments and side effects are without number, all traceable to the hurt of sin.
Could we see this world in spiritual perspective–could we fly up into space and, looking down on our planet, see the effects of thousands of years of accumulated evil; see a projection of the blood, fraud, guilt, and deadly pain; see the souls of our people drowning in turmoil, the rising dust of wars as our brothers fight each other, the grime of a thousand slums where our children cry and hope and starve; could we hear at once the moans of all the sick and hear in them the groaning of creation; hear the wailing of the bereaved mothers, fathers, orphans, and hear in them an echo of the inward shrieks of the distraught and lonely of all time; could we feel on our shoulders the burdens of even ten other mortals and so try to understand the depth of suffering around us; were we to catch a glimpse of the anguish in a million eyes–or could we stand even a glimpse? Just to imagine these realities brings one beyond comprehension. Oh, what immeasurable damage sin has done! Oh, how deep the curse has penetrated! Oh, how awful its encompassing hold on humanity!
Do not write this off as morbid sensationalism, dear reader. Use your physical eyes and look around you. Use your physical ears and listen for the sounds of great trouble lurking at every turn. Look through the thin veneer of merry-making prosperity. Don’t be deluded by the glowing words of the modernists, citing our adroitness with smart devices as proof of our being more intelligent; our having greater and more frequent squabbles in government as proof of our being more democratic; our knowing more of the personal life of a celebrity than of our neighbor as proof of our being more connected and social; our marching in colorful parades behind mercenary floats as proof of our being more loving; our thoughts of directing the elderly and weak-minded to suicide as proof of our being more humane; our ability to mutilate and murder a helpless baby as proof of our progressing health awareness; our ever growing number of mind-altering drugs as proof of our sanity. Do you catch the irony?
Let’s be fair with the scales now. We send more children to school than ever before, but is that such a worthy ambition if we indoctrinate them with the principles of humanism that so clearly corrupt societies? Anyone who struggles for civil liberty deserves commendation and respect, but what can we really hope to accomplish if we leave the root of sin unchallenged? What if our computers are more powerful and intelligent every year–do we want more ways to encourage social media insecurity among children and young people? Will some algorithm tell us how to counter the resulting depression and suicides? Can you really think fewer women are abused when they are slaves to a trend of wearing less and making-up more with each fashion season? And please don’t say that our grand era of love and tolerance is anything but a sham, when hate, bias, and division motivate practically every law, tweet, and headline. Will we live in denial of the discordant and debt-ridden governments; the STD, addiction, and suicide crises; the divorces; the deception; the terror? When will we dare come to terms with our chaotic society?
Worse than having a deadly sickness is to have it and not know. So much more dangerous the disease when the victim unconsciously helps along the destruction of his own body. Friends, this is our state so long as we continue blind to the malicious working of evil in our world. Nothing but a demonic plot could keep mankind madly encouraging, funding, defending his own destruction; we as a people go to unfathomable lengths to convince ourselves and each other that all is well. After considering only the points mentioned above, can one be anything but foolish to say we do not live in a sin-stricken world? And yet there are so many just so foolish who gloss over the deep-seated problems, conceitedly insisting and extolling a collective immunity to evil. Any who mention the problems and question society’s direction are labelled misanthropic or fanatic. This is an alarming, deplorable condition for any person or group of people to be in, and, as such, could not be better suited to the master of deceit.
The devil has never had any good in mind for the world. He is content with nothing short of the utter destruction of every soul and body of all mankind. Any way he can effectively steal, kill, and destroy is the way he will choose. Knowing that the infection of evil in each life will be so much more devastating if the sufferers are unaware, he consistently invents means to achieve that unawareness. His scheme includes creating and elevating leaders among men, leaders trusted by masses of people, leaders whose job it is to appease the cries of the hurting and lull them to relative insensibility. As men long to find reprieve for the vice and calamity around us, the answers given time and again are bogus remedies that do no enduring good for the hurt, healing it maybe slightly, promising peace when there is none.
There are whole disciplines of thinkers and educators who rationalize and whitewash corruption and degeneration in society. The prophet warned of those who would “call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” Oh, damnable deception! Oh, villainous deceivers who strengthen and praise the wicked and promise them life! Even in church buildings–institutions which should point souls towards healing–the devil has his hirelings who mollify the conscience-pangs of the congregation with the opioid of sin-serving “Christianity.”
All of Satan’s physicians are imposters, giving great promise of healing until the sin-sick one has trusted, paid, and taken the prescription. Billions of people, with the symptoms of their vile malady crying out all the while for healing, are promised that they have no illness, that the symptoms really mean good, or that they just have not yet tried the sin that will heal all others.
New politicians come into power, each one declaring that his policy will finally be the right one, yet their terms end with the people disappointed and looking to a different party. Articles and books full of inspirational axioms are released, top the charts, and fade away unsuccessful. There is always a song to listen to, a show to watch, a team to root for, a celebrity to idolize, a fashion to buy, a friend to text, a post to like–always something new to keep them busy while the leprosy eats away in them. Some try yoga, some visit psychologists, some turn to drugs–and none are healed. Oh, how many millions can testify, like the woman in Bible times, that after suffering many things of many physicians, and spending all they have, they are “nothing bettered, but rather [grow] worse.”
In a sense, can we wonder at the sweeping social changes over the last decades? Do we realize why so many are selling out to extreme pagan lifestyles? Do we consider the root cause of the suicides? As a race, we have exhausted our store of solutions and must push the limits of human experience in a desperate struggle to continue our existence without God. Men have been convinced to repeat these humanist cycles so long that their effect is like that of a drug that must be taken more frequently and in stronger doses with the wild hope that something will change.
Sin will never be helped with sin. Evil can never be undone by evil men. Hurt cannot be healed by the diseased. There is no Republican, Democrat, or Independent who can legislate sin away. Not a single policy will reverse its spread, and no agenda can disguise its magnitude. It is likewise vain to try to ease the pain of sin with back-patting, excuse-making, look-the-other-way acquiescence. All this pain has a serious cause–a deep hurt and brokenness of the heart that can only be healed by the Great Physician.
God deliver us from these slight healers–these miserable comforters–who put band-aids on festering wounds and pronounce the sinner healed! Oh, friends, brothers, do not run to these imposters for healing! Their poultices only inflame your leprosy. Do not foolishly think that more of sin’s drug will medicate your pain away. Do not trust those who have destroyed countless souls to heal yours. Professor, politician, psychologist, analyst, journalist, counsellor, broker, mentor, guru, lover, friend–none can hope to mend your broken heart. More hearts will be broken, more dreams dashed, more lives ruined, until we return to the only Healer.
Oh, we know there is a balm in Gilead! Why then is the health of my people not recovered? It is because of the awful trickery of Beelzebub and his quack doctors.
Gen. 2:17; Psa. 51:5; Rom. 5:12; 8:22; Jer. 8:11, 22; Isa. 5:20; Ezk. 13:22; Pro. 28:4; Mk. 5:26; Job 16:2.
Very sensible reasonings are presented here and lest we should leave it out; this non-fictional prose is sobering – very sobering indeed.