In this issue of Straightway we continue our burden concerning the Mystery of God’s Will for this dispensation of God’s workings amidst this End Time of the last days. The Christian must find God’s will for his generation in the light of the “mystery” of God, or His Word.
The Days of Noah
There are seasons in Bible history where we read that God “repented” of His dealings with the nation of Israel or with mankind. The first mention of this is in Genesis 6:6: “It repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” This repentance of God’s heart is not a change of purpose but a change of feeling, out of which develops a new course of action. This repentance is the proper divine reaction to man’s sin. Here in Genesis 6:6 the Hebrew for “it grieved Him at His heart” is even stronger: it grieved Him “into” His heart. Out of this grief, God declares, “I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth.”
In this passage we also note that God’s Spirit now changes towards man. God at one time had been instructing, reproving, and judging man through his conscience. This manner of God’s workings had continued in the earth, aiming to check and correct the strong propensity of man towards evil during the days of progressive moral and spiritual degeneration. Yet, in spite of all the Spirit’s efforts, mankind had persisted in abandoning the way of truth and life. Finally, men no longer cared about having homes as centers of godly instruction where divine truth prevailed, taught by father and by mother. They now chose any woman who at a moment moved their fancy. Because man had so degenerated, God determined that He would no longer appoint His Spirit to do His work of reproving and restraining. Man was no longer simply sinful as he had been since the Fall; the race of man now had practically sunk to the level of being “flesh,” fully abandoned to a life of sin. Genesis 6:3 states of man “that he also is flesh.” Here “also” refers to something in addition to what had previously been in evidence, beyond the ordinary sinful state. They had degenerated to the point of being mere flesh.
Jesus Christ in the Olivet Discourse referenced specifically this generation noting that as in the days of Noah, so shall it also be in the days of the coming of the Son of Man. We must make some simple observations in regard to the spiritual, moral, and political climate of Noah’s time. When Cain left his parents and other siblings, he went into a different country and began his civilization different from that of his father Adam. The seeds were separated, the godly from the ungodly. For hundreds of years this separation was clearly marked.
The godly line from Seth climaxed in the generation of Enoch (Gen. 5:21–23). Nevertheless, we read in Jude 14 that Enoch’s preaching was a lifetime of witnessing to the ungodly line of Cain. In Enoch’s day the godly and the ungodly were at least geographically close enough to each other to observe one another. As Enoch observed their ungodly character and deeds, he spoke of a coming judgment upon them. Whereas they were once separated geographically, the godly and ungodly now lived in sight of each other. Although Enoch was raptured, it is evident the godly and ungodly seeds were now being thrown together more and more.
By Genesis 6, the sons of God not only were seeing the daughters of men (the ungodly line) but also were marrying them in a polygamous fashion. The godly line fast diminished and spirituality died. Amid these conditions, we read of only one man who rises within this fleshly age truly living for God; his name was Noah. The transition from Enoch’s to Noah’s generations parallels the transition from the Philadelphian to the Laodicean Church age. In Enoch’s day we see a man walking with God; in Noah’s day we see God repenting that He has even made man. We will not say that during the 120 years from Enoch to Noah no one was spiritually saved. Methuselah, the son of Enoch, had known the Lord in a manner as his father; however, he died the year of the Flood. Nevertheless, in the preaching days of Noah the only souls to make it into the Ark were Noah and his family.
The Genesis 6 account reveals a change in God’s economy toward mankind; His manner with men changed in the light of the way men were living. The world had become filled with violence. “Men of renown” began ruling the earth; the Hebrew reads, “men of a name.” In reaction against and in contrast to Jehovah, the ungodly line followed after these “men of renown” and adopted their “name.”
Along with this powerful rise of the ungodly, there was also a merging of the spiritual with the fleshly. There was a dialectic principle of a spiritual mixing taking place in the earth paralleling the natural intermarriage taking place. This mixture profoundly affected the imagination, thoughts, and manner of living. Drastic changes came in the living of men in this merging of seeds. The perspectives of life began to radically change, and a whole new realm of wicked living arose on a global proportion. Truly the days in which we live are like unto the days of Noah.
Contemporary Changes of Perspective
As Noah faced a generation whose global perspective of truth had radically changed, so we today face a radical global change of human perspective toward truth and absolutes. This subtle but radical change can be evidenced throughout Western civilization’s history of popular comic book heroes. Following World War II Jack Kirby catapulted Marvel Comics into greater popularity with his fictional world called Marvel Universe. His Marvel Universe was made up of a confederation of superheroes that allied themselves against common enemies; the superheroes he created for this universe eventually developed into a tapestry of powerful mythic forces.
Leading up to Kirby’s day, the most popular comics of the WW II era had developed very simple themes concerning the conquering of evil (rather than of judging evil). DC Comic’s hero Superman had a red and blue uniform symbolizing American patriotism, even though he was both an immigrant (from the planet Krypton) and a member of the media (The Daily Planet). He could be counted on to defend and protect America’s flag as if it were his own.
Following Superman’s popularity, a different hero arose named Batman. Batman was a baby boomer struggling to do the right thing. His stories often revealed his own inward battle with the inconsistencies of his dualistic world. After witnessing the murder of his parents, he inherited millions of dollars from them. As Bruce Wayne he dressed in his upper-crust society clothes during the day and his bat cape for nightly expeditions throughout the dark streets of Gotham City. Superman and Batman paved the way for other superhero characters to arise such as Green Lantern, Spider Man, and Wonder Woman. They were individuals (with secret identities) struggling against evil on the planet.
Jack Kirby’s crowning achievement came in his fictional mini-universe created for the series called The Eternals (1970s). This work was directed toward a new young generation known as “screenagers” who pursued their entertainment through the television and theater screens rather than comic books. The presentation of The Eternals indicated that the chaotic system of evil was now changing and another form was emerging: dualities in life were portrayed as false, and evolution was now seen as the driving force of nature. The Eternals, according to the background story, were the fully evolved humans responsible for planting DNA into pre-civilized man. In the story they return to judge mankind’s evolutionary progress. If mankind had succeeded in reaching the next phase of evolution, then mankind would join the Eternals as cosmic beings.
Arising throughout the story are those working against the efforts of this evolutionary process; they are a race of primitive humans known as the Deviants whose unstable DNA led them to a rather uncivilized practice of killing any of their evolutionarily-mutated progeny. The Eternals, on the other hand, remain linked together through a kind of collective consciousness called the Uni-mind. This Uni-mind is a living group organism; this new hero is an evolution-based colonial organism. This unusual and complicated presentation provided society’s youth a way out of dualities in life. The Eternals suggested that change com-ing out of chaos should be embraced.
Alongside the evolutionary principles of the Eternals are placed Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek and George Lucas’s Star Wars. In turn, these were followed by Robotech, the Transformers, and the Power Rangers, all taking the place of real soldiers as part of the growing future life of technology. These new perspectives of global life were continued in series such as Lost in Space, Jupiter 2, and Star Trek: the Next Generation.
All throughout these fictional stories one can trace a mutation of philosophical thought. Although Star Trek was more aggressive in battles with hand-to-hand confrontations, Star Trek: the Next Generation gave us a new kind of leader. At the helm of this Enterprise was a “bald-is-beautiful” diplomatic captain, Jean-Luc Piccard. Kinder and gentler, he negotiated his way through crises with the help of his lovely “telepathic” counselor/psychologist. The Next Generation’s treatment of using youth on the Enterprise showed the increased awareness of the role children would play in our cyber-spiritual future.
All of the Star Trek series kept the Enterprise under the authority of the Federation. These series were followed by the galactic program Deep Space Nine whose crew goes beyond the reach of Federation command in the space ship Voyager. This introduced to Western society’s consciousness new concepts of the existence of more distant creatures and worlds with which man could hope to be unified.
Contemporary Holism
All of these screen presentations have subtly contributed to radically changing modern society’s perspectives on life. These have psychologically pressed us to dismiss as myth the needed distinction of good and evil; in its place they have suggested forming a new generation based entirely on “holism.”
Holism is the theory that the tendency in nature is to produce whole organisms from small units; it is the belief that the whole of a culture or people is greater than its parts. In 1994, amid the above mentioned developments (from a world of good vs. evil to a new world of intergalactic, holistic tolerance and acceptance), Paramount Pictures released the film setting of Winston Groom’s 1986 novel Forrest Gump. Through flashback scenes, the movie reviews the life of a half-wit as he is involved in pivotal late twentieth-century global events. The audience relives the most irreconcilably disjointed moments in baby-boomer history. Modern cinematic technology used special effects to smooth over any ambiguity. Gump is pasted into famous footage and scenes of recent American history; the audience is permitted to reevaluate the troublesome aspects of the last few decades from a simpleton’s point of view. Gump’s lack of awareness allows him to fall, by sheer luck, into good fortune at every turn. He becomes a war hero and a multimillionaire by blindly stumbling through life with nothing more than the good morals his mom taught him, while the people around him who seemed more aware of their circumstances drop like flies from war wounds, AIDS, and other disasters. We are left to infer that if they had lived like Gump these things would not have happened to them. The unpredictability of life is reinterpreted as a box of chocolates—“You never know what you’re gonna get.”
The movie urges us to stay in the box; just stay in the box, and you will be guaranteed a sweet, continuous, and linear experience of life. Just train yourself to be as unconscious as Gump. It is telling us, “Don’t think, don’t reconsider or question anything. If you live with awareness it will only disconnect you from the random benefits of coincidental grace.”
The opening sequence of the movie tells it all: in one continuous special-effects shot, a feather floats on the wind, effortlessly wandering over the rooftops of a small, perfect town, and lands at Gump’s feet, either coincidentally or by divine will. What does Gump do with the feather? He puts it in a box with his other collected trinkets. Gump’s answer is to collect them all together in order to tell the story you want to hear. As long as you play stupid, this is the way it will work out. Gump is ever the child of his mother, whose platitudes ring on long after her death. He remains true to his childhood programming, with his character and actions predetermined.
The contemporary concept of holism seeks to unite the entire earth, all of mankind, and even the universe through carefully controlled ecumenicity in order to bring all to a single thought-life amidst our individualities. To achieve this there is an elite class of powerful leaders (like the Eternals) directing and manipulating a gullible simpleton class (like Forrest Gump) to follow a singular global ambition. Don’t think, and don’t react; just get in harmony with, just stay within your box. The contemporary media has destroyed a good-versus-evil perspective and embraced holistic harmonization of yin and yang, forcing all to submit to this mixture.
Other Changes in Global Perspectives
The rise of Animism reflect yet another perspective of global life that has changed. When man fell away from the belief in God in Western civilization, there were other theories of nature’s existence that came into his philosophical thinking. For many centuries man through his reasoning believed in the theory of “Mechanism.” This is the theory that all phenomena are the result of matter in motion and that such phenomena may be explained according to the laws of physics, or laws working within the elements of the universe. These are laws governing the realities of existence. But this perspective of global life has radically fallen away to the belief of Animism. This is the theory that all things, whether animate or inanimate, possess souls or spirits, and there is the ability to control nature through these spirits. From the vampire movies to Harry Potter, and even to the cartoons of Disney, we are now in a generation that believes in the spirit world of animism “animating” all that exists. The cartoon movie Pocahontas was a classic presentation of this change of perspective to animism.
Still another perspective of global life that has changed is society’s view concerning the sheer reality of living life. In the complexity of modern civilization many have preferred to escape and deny life’s responsibilities rather than face them. We must face life, we must discern life, we must deal realistically with life, and we must discern when situations and individuals try to deceive us. We must acknowledge the reality of the right and wrong, the reality between what is true and what is error, what is the good and what is the evil. Rather than take responsibility, a new generation now is content, yea, willing to believe a lie and embrace an open deception in order to pursue a life of comfort and non-confrontation. By adopting a self-deception, they hope to free themselves from facing the global deception all around them.
The perspective of reality has given way to virtual reality in games, in life, in politics, in education, and in every aspect of human existence. The child today, the teenager, and even the adult cannot face life as it is. This is why marriages are collapsing, and responsibilities and accountabilities cannot be handled. To many, suicide has become the hopeful alternative to facing life. Even Christians do not want to face their problems; they do not want to repent and face the fact that they must change. Our proclivity in life is to “pretend” we are not that way; the husband is not willing to face his failures and correct them; the wife is not willing to change. We tend to want everyone to pretend our problems do not exist.
This perspective of life has also profoundly affected the Church age; it does not want to believe they are wretched, miserable, spiritually poor and blind, and have no cloak for their sins. False men like Joseph Prince and Joel Osteen have created a “virtual reality” in which contemporary Christianity can live without facing their sins, wretchedness, and abominations before God. Yes, the perspective of the Christian life has radically changed over the decades; no matter what we do, we believe our virtual reality keeps us “eternally secure.”
Conclusion
The world has gone so far away from God! The whole world lieth in the Wicked One! All of his presentations by the world are orchestrated to carefully manipulate us all into his captivity. Dear Reader, we are at a moment in history where humanity is being “reborn” through its denial of God. There never has been a generation such as this, and it is leading to the coming of global life controlled by the Devil through a man, the soon-coming Antichrist. Like a fetus embarking on the journey toward birth, humanity is on the verge of globally birthing a new self-consciousness. Whatever comforts society had in the past, those days in the womb are over; the life that lies ahead is on a collision course with the Man of Sin and the Tribulation Period. The world will force us to take on its life and its philosophy. Perhaps we have been oblivious to the changes because we have procrastinated truly seeking God with all our heart.
The world is past linear thinking, duality, mechanism, and God Himself; we live today within a holistic, animistic, God-denying culture. Chaos is becoming our natural environment. The world is numb in this emerging global reality. Nevertheless, the child of God must find the mystery of God’s will for this economy of God that we will face should the Lord tarry in His coming.
We must have wisdom and prudence for this hour, as we face the final radical changes ahead in global government, in the church institution, in the work force, in global economics, and in the sciences. As in the days of Zechariah, God may be sitting on a horse, standing down in the bottom land, as if there is no stirring coming from Him (Zech. 1). According to the soliloquy of Psalm 22, Christ observed the following while on the Cross:
Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee, and were delivered: they trusted in thee, and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people.
Also note His words of Revelation 13:7–9:
And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. If any man have an ear, let him hear.
Yes, whether we want to acknowledge it or not, these days are fast coming upon us!
Still God will keep and preserve us through this last generation before the coming of Antichrist! The mystery of His Word will get us through this dispensation of His appointment for the End Time. Let us pray for God to get us off the planet just before the final sword of God’s economy falls upon this earth in global judgment. “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”