Last week we discussed how the evil kingdoms are built on unrighteousness and injustice, but in the beginning they may appear even more righteous and just than God’s kingdom. Without question, God’s standards of righteousness and justice are pure, true, and right. They extend to the heavens and to eternity. They are the very definition and standard of these, and always will be. Even so, the devil usually sets the stage for his unrighteousness and injustice by at first seeming to be even more righteous and just than God. That is how he actually brought about the fall of man in the Garden.
In the movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, there was a very insightful discourse between Frodo and Strider, who was later revealed to be Aragon, when they first met. Frodo said of the disguised evil one that he had met, “He seemed fair but felt foul.” Then he said of Strider, “You seem foul but feel fair.” Frodo’s discernment was of course right. The first was trying to kill him, and Strider was trying to save him. Only the truly discerning will not be taken in this same way by what is to come. It will seem more fair than anything at first, but the discerning will feel the evil behind it.
The Lord Himself often comes across as harsh and far too demanding, but He is the most merciful and just of all. As stated, the evil one will come pandering to our wounds and hurts with great sympathy, but he will have no sympathy when he kills you.
When the serpent tempted the first man and woman saing, “Did God say that?” This could have been phrased, “Is that all that God told you?” He wanted Adam and Eve to think that God was withholding something from them, and that he, the devil, would not withhold anything from them. He basically sowed into their hearts idealism, which is the basis of humanism. This is really the ultimate presumption that man’s wisdom and goodness is greater than God’s. This is also the basis of the deepest darkness and depravity of soul. As this happens, even the most evil acts can begin to seem just. Let me give you an example from Nazi Germany.
Right behind the opera house in Berlin, Germany, there is a large plaque on the sidewalk that thousands of people must walk over each week, but I have never seen anyone stop to read it. It is a memorial to the first two hundred thousand people killed by the Nazis. These first two hundred thousand people killed were basically as overlooked as their memorial seems to be. They were not Jews, Christians, or political prisoners. In fact, they were Germans. They were called “the useless eaters.” They were the aged, the weak, and the ill—those who had been deemed a burden to society. They could not produce any more, but only consumed. So these people were all killed, not by executioners, but by their doctors.
At the time this seemed both wise and just to the German people. By this time they had already been brainwashed by the Nazi spirit of National Socialism. Why should anyone be allowed to live if they could not produce for the people, but only consumed what rightly should be going to the ones who were productive? Does not even the Bible say, “If anyone will not work, neither let him eat” (II Thessalonians 3:10). Why had no one thought of this before?
Of course, what the apostle meant when he wrote the verse quoted above was that if an able bodied man did not work, let him not eat for a while and he would get hungry enough to work. Paul was not implying that if someone refused to work they should be starved to death. However, this is how the rigid and unyielding Nazis interpreted this because to them the meaning of life had nothing to do with worshiping God, but rather producing, for them.
When they killed all of the “useless eaters,” they had established that those who were not producing were not worthy to live. It was then easy to take this one step further and begin killing the Jews, who also, according to the propaganda, were not producing for Germany, but rather becoming rich and consuming what the German’s produced. Then it was easy to put the intellectuals into the same category. It was then easy to slip political opponents and other undesirables into the group of those who did not deserve to live. By then, the minds of the people believed the Nazis wanted what was best for Germany, and what was best for the Nazis was best for Germany. Soon it was easy to start looking outside of Germany. Certainly, the rest of the world should be producing for the master race....
It was said to be scrawled on a concentration camp wall, “When they came for the old and infirm, I was not one of these, so I said nothing. When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew, so I said nothing. When they came for the communists, I was not a communist so I said nothing. When they came for the Gypsies, I was not a Gypsy, so I said nothing. When they came for the Catholics I was not a Catholic, so I said nothing. When they came for the Protestants...”
I have always marveled at crabs when they are boiled for eating. They must be cooked alive to be safe. Because the water starts at room temperature, the crabs seldom try to escape even though they are usually cooked in a pan in which they could easily escape. If one tries to escape, the others will reach up and pull it back down. Then the water is gradually heated until they are dead and do not even seem to realize what happened to them. Sometimes that is the same picture I get of people when studying history. That is the way the Germans were taken over. The water began feeling pretty good, and was warmed up so gradually that they were lulled into complacency until it was too late.
How many have noticed the continual meltdown in morality and integrity in the West? Not many. Things that were too appalling to even mention in good company just a generation ago are now flaunted on the streets, and applauded by the media and politicians. In the name of “freedom” it is like they are saying that they have a right to stay in this water until it boils and with them to pull anyone down into it who tries to escape.
Has anyone noticed that the homosexual community, which is demanding the most tolerance from everyone else, is the most intolerant group of all? The perverted demand the right to teach their perversion to our children as acceptable forms of behavior, filling textbooks that have nothing to do with sex but with this perversion, all in the name of “freedom.” Yet they want your child expelled if they even mention God. They demand their freedom of speech so that they will be able to say anything they want about their perversion. They want such things as the paragraph that you are reading declared a “hate crime” so that I can be imprisoned for saying something so politically incorrect.
The Nazis basically said, “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you.” Perverted, idealistic, humanistic “freedom” means that you are free to believe anything as long as it is exactly what they tell you to believe. We are headed there fast. The water is getting hotter by the minute. The end result of the kind of freedom that is now being promoted is the ultimate tyranny, and if we do not get out of this water soon, we are going to wake up dead!
