The Pendulum
Is the world suspended as a pendulum? Does liberty swing from one extreme to the other, from slavery to freedom and back to slavery? When freedom is total, sinful selfishness abounds and government is needed and demanded to prevent the strong from dominating the weak. Subsequently, government grows without limit and eventually becomes so oppressive that freedom is lost. Man rebels against the now oppressive government and freedom is restored, but only to be lost once again as this cycle repeats itself. The world without God is forever on an irresistible pendulum that swings from freedom to slavery and back again.
This decades-long, repetitive up-down cycle is what a world without God is like. The only way of escape from this transitory existence is through faith in God and obedience to God’s Ten Commandments. When man obeys God, he does not compete with other men but rather helps them. All God’s people gladly share their wealth with those that have need. In a truly Godly society. prosperity abounds and poverty is unheard of.
Clearly the latter world is far more desirable than the former. Why then do we keep repeating this undesirable cycle? It is because mankind is born in sin and is governed by Satan, the author of sin. Only those that have been born-again, born of the Holy Spirit, are able to see the kingdom of God. Only they are able to take this step of faith and gain freedom from Satan’s evil influence.
The ability to decide to choose God and life, though, is itself a gift from God:
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
Our original parents, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God and chose to take Satan’s advice. Since then we have all been under Satan’s dominion and utterly unable to choose God and life by ourselves. As we see here, any faith we have is indeed a gift. It is a free gift God gives to all that ask for it in true sincerity.
God’s people need to get off this pendulum. How can they? you may ask. Very simply, just by obeying God as He commanded His first disciples so long ago:
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. (Matthew 28:18-20)
Here Jesus gives all His true disciples then and now their marching orders. They are told here to teach (meaning make disciples[1]) of all that believe. We are told to make, not just believers but disciples that will go out, make more disciples, and very rapidly make this world a Christian world.
The original disciples and those that followed them for a century or more obeyed these commandments. The world of their day, the Western World, was converted to the Christian faith. In 330 AD, Emperor, Constantine declared Rome to be a Christian Empire. The Christian faith had conquered the world of that day! The faith grew, spreading throughout Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. This, the Western World came to be known, throughout the centuries that followed, as Christendom.
Where is that faith today? How has the faith that grew to cover the earth become so weakened as it is today? It waned gradually in the centuries that followed, sinking finally into Catholicism in which it was mired for over a thousand years.
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries came the printing press and with it The Reformation. It began with God’s Word becoming available in the common languages that anyone could read. The revival it initiated, though, was short-lived. Thirty years of war between the opposing forces of the old Catholicism and the new Protestantism was all the world could stand. A truce was formed and the great revival died in its infancy. It left the two camps, Catholic and Protestant in an ungodly compromised form of peace.
This situation prevailed for centuries to follow until the Darby-Scofield duo assisted by the Dallas Theological Seminary published tne Scofield Bible, a book straight from the pit of Hell. It was a King James Bible with Scofield’s poisonous notes incorporated adjacent to the text.
This so-called bible swayed a large number of relatively weak Christians tp believe things that the Bible doesn’t teach. It taught that God has changed His mind and decided to end the world sooner than He originally planned. What kind of God is this that changes his mind and lets most of the world go to Hell? It’s the god of Scofield, not the God of the Bible.
Jesus will return one day but only to a world that believes in Him. He will not return to the mostly pagan world we have today but to a world that has been transformed. It will be a world in which the entire population consists of born-again believers.
Wake up Christian; we are not in the last days. Jesus will not return to an unbelieving world. His people have much work to do. They have believed Satan’s lies and have disobeyed God. While God’s people sit and wait for a rapture that will not be realized, the world grows more and more wicked. It is now almost entirely in the hands of Satan’s people instead of God’s people.
The God that created and governs all things has placed this world in the hands of His people, the people He sent His Son to die for. He has not and will never change His mind. He will wait as long as is necessary for an obedient generation to arise and obey Him.
Dear reader, are you a true child of God? Do you expect to see Him one day? How will you answer Him when He asks why you did little or nothing toward making this world a Christian world? Will you tell Him you didn’t know, that you were deceived by Satan because you failed to study the Word He provided? It is not too late to correct this mistake. God understands us better than we understand ourselves and will forgive all that genuinely, from the heart, repent.
[1] The Greek word (here translated teach) is mathetusate which carries a richer meaning is better translated “make disciples”).