Civil War
Why do nations divide and start to fight internal wars? Often wars are started by wealthy and powerful men that wish to become yet more wealthy and more powerful. One often wonders why this is so. Why can’t the rich be satisfied with the great wealth they already have? Why, when they have so much must they so often seek more and yet more?
In America, it was six very wealthy men who pushed the recently liberated nation into a war against itself.[1] Their motives were power and personal profit. The southern farmers could sell their cotton to England at a higher price than they could get from these northern manufacturers. These evil men used the misled anti-slavery sympathy promoted by silly women for their own nefarious purposes. These well-meaning ladies did not understand the real need for temporary slavery in the South. Instead of thinking through and studying the real situation, they reacted emotionally and helped lead the country into a war against itself. Sadly, the combination of six evil men and many foolish women led the country into an unnecessary and highly damaging Civil War, one America would never fully recover from.
What, though, was the underlying cause? It was not slavery. It was greed on the part of a few and biblical ignorance on the part of many. It was also a lack of godliness on the part of all. Our nation cannot survive without faith in God. Much of its earlier faith is already gone. What we need today is a widespread revival of the Christian faith. This is our only hope for a real and true recovery.
In other words, what we need to do is trust God. When we did so there was peace and prosperity. But we lost it. Why did we lose it? We lost our faith because we didn’t continue to obey God. Instead of studying His word as we know we should have done, we neglected that study and thought that church on Sunday would be sufficient; but it really isn’t. We need to study God’s word every day not just on Sunday. When we fail to do so, this is the penalty for our neglect. When we turn our backs to God, He turns His back to us and everything seems to go wrong.
Why do we keep doing this? Why do we keep forgetting God? When will we learn that we can’t go through life without God? We need to put our trust in Him every minute of every day. The disaster that our lives have become in recent years is simply due to our failure to trust God as we once did.
This failure is nothing new, it’s been going on for over a century and has been getting progressively worse for several decades now. it seems that God’s people keep forgetting God. We are emulating the ancient Israelites who repeatedly turned their backs on their God. It is because we are born in sin and never really and truly turn to God. We remember and seek him when we need him and then forget about him once again. How do we break free from this terrible on and off cycle?
The only answer is to stop our reliance on churches. Instead of just church on Sunday, we must return to the modality of the early Christian Ecclesia Communities. These consisted of family groupings of perhaps ten to twelve families that lived close together and communed with each other at different levels daily. The focus and intent of all were to gain an in-depth understanding of God’s word and His Will for us, His grateful servants.