Fifty years ago, an unpretentious meeting took place on the outskirts of Dunn, North Carolina, in the home of Dr. O. Talmadge Spence. This meeting proved to have far-reaching importance for Dr. Spence, his family, and a remnant of individuals. The birth of the “Christian Purities Fellowship” was Dr. Spence’s last major attempt to call his fallen, spiritual mother denomination back to her legacy of the Fundamentals and separatist living.

Back in 1973 my dear father, Dr. O. Talmadge Spence (who went to be with the Lord in July 2000), began a publication entitled Straightway. He took this word from Mark 1:18 that reads, “And straightway they forsook their nets, and followed him.” In this context Mark’s commentary on two of the Lord’s disciples depicts the tonal quality of his book as a part of the harmonious quartet of the Gospels. Mark’s Gospel portrays Christ as “the Mighty Worker,” rather than “the Teacher” as depicted in the book of Matthew. Mark wrote his Gospel to the Romans, a busy people, always in a hurry, working for the cause of the Empire.

We call attention to three words: depths, doubts, and deep. Sin can take a man to the depths of Satan; Wisdom can take a man to the dissolving of doubts; and, the Holy Spirit can reveal to God's people deep things. It should be clearly understood: Satan has deep things; man has deep things; and, God has deep things.

In recent years we have been witnessing what could be termed Fundamenticide, the exterminating of biblical Fundamentals, biblical separation, and the historical identification of the Fundamentalist movement. Certain growing trends and proclivities today are foreshadowing this approaching death. God raised up a remnant of voices, which warned that when certain changes would begin to take place, inevitably a slow killing of Fundamentalism would result. Nevertheless, these voices were often quelled by the powers of ecclesiasticism and religious politics. We have witnessed in the past thirty years the public death of true Christianity in America; we are now witnessing the public death of historic Fundamentalism. Did we see it coming? Will it be part of the end-time apostasy?

Tucked away in the annals of Old Testament history is the sobering story of a syncretistic king and a noble layman—the story of Ahab and Naboth. This historical incident given by infallible record in I Kings 21 brings to the righteous reader a holy anger commingled with lamentation. It is a story not so removed in its nature and spiritual battlement from the late times in which we live. It is a story that must be told again and again to the Lord’s people in every generation in order to preserve their God-given legacy and to remind them of the powers that are ever present to seize and destroy that legacy.

When God made Adam from the “moist dirt” of the earth [Heb., adhama], a multitude of wondrous complexities were a part of that creation. As late as our present time in history, science is still discovering more wonders and mysteries that are part of the complexity of man. How could anyone believe in evolution and its promulgation that the human body came together by “chance,” when the body clearly and boldly announces that a God of law, order, design, purpose, and beauty brought forth this creature through omnipotence and wisdom? The very intricacies of veins, arteries, vessels, and capillaries, along with the seventy-eight organs, truly declare this body a miracle of wonder. Of these organs five are vital for life, but the most vital is the brain.

The powers of existentialism have saturated the global philosophy of Postmodernism. In this generation the reality of life and death seems more difficult to face. Increasingly, mankind has involved itself in the realm of drugs or anything that can bring an ease to the mind in living life and facing the reality of self. The “virtual” world is becoming more and more the “real” world to much of humanity.

The older I get, being an observer of both the age and myself, it seems that the most powerful entity we possess is our mind. The mind is the constant, natural voice that is a controlling factor of what we say and do. As noted in these articles, over a process of time, without the guardianship of God and His Word, the mind potentially can enter into overpowering realms of darkness. Such realms of depression and despair can eventually lead to a world where the “kingdom of darkness” is the lord over our thoughts and imaginations.

History has been defined as “all we know about everything man has ever done, or thought, or hoped or felt.” But if one believes in evolution, that chance is ultimate, and thus that the world has no meaning and life has no direction, then history really has no story to tell. It is merely an amalgamation of disconnected and empty events.

One of the great fallacies of interpreting history is the fragmenting and isolating of one history from another. Perhaps this is a real danger in any study. Collected facts and truths compartmentalized and studied apart from the whole of epistemology can result in distorted conclusions. This is especially true when it comes to history. There are so many history studies to which a person could give his life that he could never view them in the light of the whole of history. However, we must carefully note that history in the sight of God is a singular sight. All aspects of history, even those taking place simultaneously, are interwoven as one reality in God’s plan.

We have wanted to carefully confirm in our hearts the greatness of God in His creation, the preservation of that creation, the creation of time, and then the unfolding of that time. The unfolding of time will thus be called history; but the Bible is clear that God Himself has appointed history and the ages to unfold in history. As He carefully appoints time and the ages, He also is in the great care of what unfolds in those time periods, including men, nations, events, epochs, the turning points in the history, and the transitions of history.

We are moving towards the great climax of history! But when shall this end be? The Bible indicates that when the Gospel of God’s offer of salvation to mankind reaches the ends of the earth, then the end begins drawing to its close

Two powers that have profound influence upon the human spirit are the mind and the thought life. Everything in life prompts thoughts, and these thoughts have a profound influence upon our spirit. Although we can change some circumstances to alter their outcome, there are many circumstances we do not have control of. Such circumstances we must commit to the winds of providence.

One of sin’s greatest side effects from our past is its influence upon the mind. Sin certainly affects the body. Sometimes permanent damage like sclerosis of the liver from heavy alcohol consumption occurs. Heavy use of drugs can bring permanent damage to the brain. Many immoral sins can transmit diseases that leave permanent side effects upon the body. However, all sins bring some damage to the mind and the thought life of an individual. Perhaps this damage is what haunts us the most.

The dark powers of the End Time are vying for our children, seeking to manipulate their young and tender concept of what they are and who they are, especially regarding their gender. Today’s leadership in every facet of our depraved world is maliciously seeking to warp society even in the very fundamentals of human existence to their own demonic insanity. It must be declared that God is the sovereign selector of gender, and He never makes a mistake! When man projects himself into the realm of deity, pretending to have equal powers as God, he desires to alter everything God has made, including its true purpose and the overwhelming side effects that will fall upon generations to come.

The national and global events of our more recent years have clarified that the so-called Deep State is ready to finalize the pursuit of a New World Order. It is seeking a revolution that will destroy everything we have held dear in this country. Part of this revolution has been the aggressive rise of a cancel culture to abolish all speech directed against this New World Order. Cancel culture is a modern form of what was known as ostracism, “a banishment from one’s native country; a being shut out from society, from favor, from privileges, or from association with one’s fellows.” When someone is thrust out of social or professional circles, whether it be online or in person, he is a victim of cancel culture. Those who are subjected to this ostracism are said to have been “canceled.”

Having entered the year 2022, we continue to witness draconian political powers ever escalating in America and throughout the world. Since the entrance into a new millennium, man has politically and ideologically endeavored to willfully leave a world of sanity and logic and enter a newly self-created world of illogical thought. The present growing leadership of America is not only forcefully destroying our nation (birthed and established by sane, sound, sensible, God-fearing men) but also willfully erasing the very memory of those former better days. History is being intentionally rewritten, either by altering historical facts of former days or by completely erasing the memory of that history itself. In turn, the very honorable symbols portraying history are defaced in shame or aggressively torn down in disdain; even the visual and audio remembrances are being wiped away from public society. Truly the New World Order is set to obliterate every known vestige of honor from the past; it is bent on destroying every sacred memory that could become a conscience attacking anything that they are determined to do in the present. In such wreckage of history, we have entered a “post-”era that is now controlling and dominating the earth ideologically, philosophically, politically, economically, religiously—all that comprises humanity.

Since the aftermath of World War II, we have witnessed a number of radical paradigm shifts in various areas of human living. Paralleling a population increase from two billion (1960) to nearly nine billion (2022) have been accelerated advances in science and technology. Deepening powers of sin throughout society have eroded wisdom and morality to the point that man boasts of bridging the infinite gap between fallen humanity and Deity. There has been a paradigm shift not only in the concept of what a human is but also in the philosophical and presuppositional thinking that has welcomed a transhuman imaginary hope.

Preaching the common salvation through the message of the Gospel of Christ is a most important part of an end-time minister’s calling. But two other truths that must be an integral part of his preaching are the warning of the end-time apostasy and the need of revival among God’s remnant. A number of articles presenting the end-time apostasy have been a part of the literary fabric of the Straightway articles over the years; however, this article presents the burden of the need of revival among God’s remnant in the End Time.

In recent years it has become evident that God is calling His elderly saints home—those redeemed lives and voices that have been both salt and light in their generation. Such men and women whom God has used as restraining voices in the earth seem to now be taken away as a prelude judgment upon the earth before the coming Rapture and Tribulation Period. As God withdraws such individuals, fewer in number are taking their place. To the contrary, the prominent voices we are presently hearing with aggressive force are those of Neo-Christianity.