“Seek Yahweh while He may be found. Call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return to Yahweh, and He will have compassion on him. Turn to our Elohim, for He will abundantly pardon.”
Isaiah 55: 6-7
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We Need Yahweh, Not More Gun Laws
The shooting rampages at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT should have taught us at least one thing: Law enforcement people are not prepared for the job we are telling them to do. The Houston, TX shooting rampage at Robb Elementary School is a repeat of the same problem.
The murderer inside Robb Elementary School was eliminated more than an hour after he fired his first shot. The person who should have killed him expeditiously was inside the school, too. He was cowering behind cover while he waited for a battalion of SWAT troops. In a word, he was useless. A phone call to 911 from a secretary in the principal’s office would have been at least as effective as he was.
Even one horrific assault on our children in their schools is too many, but over the past few years, we have seen a rash of them along with violent assaults inside churches, synagogues, mosques, and other public places. Mass shootings in public places where people relax and roam freely attract a lot of attention, especially the attention of crazy people who want to go out in a blaze of glory.
By now, we should know that there are plenty of those people in our midst, and we should know how to deal with them. Obviously, we aren’t fast learners.
“Crazy” is not a clinical term. It’s my term. No one except a crazy person would assume that he will survive after engaging in a shooting spree in a public place. The best he can hope for is life in prison without the chance of parole. Sane people don’t make that kind of decision. Even criminals who are otherwise sane wouldn’t make that kind of choice.
After each shooting spree, legislators start talking about writing laws that will prevent anything like it from happening again. Problem is people who do these kinds of things are not law-abiding citizens. As I said, they are crazy. Laws don’t affect them in any way whatsoever.
Within minutes of the Robb Elementary School shooting, ads started appearing on YouTube featuring parents of children who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. All of them focused on one thing: More restrictive gun laws. The ads were well-produced. As Hollywood types like to say, they were “in the can” waiting for an opportunity to run. That’s why I know that “liberal progressive” Democrats are responsible for them. I wonder if Democrats have other sets of ads for high school shootings and shootings in pedestrian malls and places of worship.
If guns were the problem, more restrictive gun laws might work, but guns are not the problem. Our problem is that our nation has turned away from Yahweh. As a society, we have lost our moral compass. The line between right and wrong has been all but erased. We live in a world where anything goes, and we wonder why so many people cross the line. What line?
This is a generalization, but regrettably, not too much of one. In our country today, most people including religious people who attend church services regularly don’t believe Yahweh exists. Since they don’t believe Yahweh exists, they don’t believe Satan exists, either. They see Yahweh as a mythical character. Faith in Him is out of the question. So is the fear of Him. They see Satan as a mythical character, too. That’s exactly what Satan wants, because it gives him free rein.
Most churches in our country have become little more than social clubs where people go to see and be seen. Sunday morning entertainment has become their primary purpose. Preachers say a few obligatory, pious words about Yahweh, and then they launch into storytelling. The stories they tell are pleasing to the ear, but they don’t often touch on the real problems we face: Things like sodomy, the cold-blooded murder of innocent unborn children, and a long list of other abominations that plague our society. The stories touch on the word of Yahweh tangentially at best. Today’s churches seem to measure their success by their ability to attract a crowd, by the amount of money they raise, and by the size and beauty of the buildings they construct. That’s prima facie evidence that they don’t represent Yahweh.
Many religious people who attend church services regularly will take offense at what I just said, but I stand by it. If they truly believed Yahweh exists and had faith in Him, they would not need to be told about these problems, because they are glaring. If they had the kind of faith that Yahweh wants and expects, whole congregations would stand up in unison and demand change. As it is, most churchgoers are happy to play church for a few minutes each week and go home to resume their normal activities. They are engaging in religious ritual, not faith.
Religion is not a substitute for faith in Yahweh and obedience to the leading of His Spirit. In the early days of our country, churches played an important role in every community. Not everyone was a believer, but most people were and that made a huge difference. People didn’t just talk about their religion. They lived their faith. In The Trilogy, I call what they had “the faith of Abraham”. That’s what’s lacking in our country today.
Why is faith lacking?
Affluence plays a big part. Most churchgoers are satisfied with the lives they lead, and they probably think they don’t need Yahweh. Go along, get along is the order of the day. People who believe in Yahweh and take firm stands based on what He said in His word are ostracized and criticized by the heathens among us. There are many of them, and with each passing year, heathens represent a higher percentage of our population. As things stand now, I think heathens represent a large percentage of churchgoers. I’ve talked personally with proud, longtime churchgoers who don’t even know that “the Lord” died as our atoning sacrifice for our redemption and salvation. There are serious problems in Christendom today, but typical churchgoers can’t see them.
Most churchgoers have their feet in both camps. They try to straddle the fence, as it were. They want to be associated with a church as an insurance policy in case Yahweh does exist, but they don’t want to be a part of an organization that might jeopardize their positions in society and possibly subject them to ridicule or maybe violent attacks. Preachers know their audiences well, and they deliver what their congregations want to hear. That is not Yahweh’s word. Churches and churchgoers have turned their backs on their Creator.
We don’t need more gun laws. We need more people who are willing to take stands on principles that Yahweh presented in the Bible. We need people who live their faith, not people who talk their religion. We need Yahweh.
For starters, we need the death penalty. Justice needs to be swift and sure. People who commit violent crimes should expect to die. Life in prison without the chance of parole penalizes society to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars a year for each incarcerated person. Why should we pay to house, feed, and take care of violent criminals who have committed heinous offenses and deserve to die?
Next, we need to call sin “sin”. Take sodomy, for instance. It’s a sin. Yahweh calls it an abomination, yet churches in our country are welcoming sodomites with open arms. They are telling sodomites that they can’t help being what they are, that Yahweh made them that way. A church near me in Greenville, SC has introduced what they call “queer-led worship”. That sounds like a joke, but it’s not. Pedophiles are waiting in the wings for the acceptance of their sin as normal human behavior. So are animal lovers. Where it will end is anybody’s guess.
What about abortion? Most of the time, abortion is premediated murder. It’s not just murder. It’s butchery. Unborn children are the victims of the crime, and their mothers and doctors are the perpetrators. Premediated murder should carry the death penalty.
I would love to hear one preacher say that in church. If one preacher would say it, I suspect that the people in the pews would be shocked. Many of them would get up and walk out. That’s not what they want to hear, but it is the truth.
I have a hunch that most preachers today have bought into the narrative that we hear from “liberal progressive” women: “My Body, My Choice”. In other words, they have bought into legalized, premediated murder and have become a part of the problem.
Anyone who believes that way of thinking emanates from Yahweh doesn’t know Yahweh.
In our society, taking stands on Yahweh’s principles is swimming against the current, and the current is growing stronger every day. Few preachers and churchgoers are willing to challenge that stream. As a result, things keep getting worse, and things will keep getting worse until Yahweh’s people take a stand.
I think we have passed the point of no return already, and we should prepare for the consequences. That said, Yahweh can work miracles. I don’t rule that out, because He is kind and merciful. There have been great revivals and mighty outpourings of Yahweh’s Spirit before in our country. It can happen again, but I don’t have much confidence that people in our country will turn to Him in faith, repent, and ask Him for forgiveness and help until they are down to their last option. That includes most churchgoers and preachers.
This is my advice: Prepare for the worst, because I think that’s what we are about to get. In fact, I think Yahweh is already turning up the heat a few degrees at a time, but most people hardly notice. Young people in America today don’t realize that things weren’t like this in the not so distant past. The next generation of Americans will look at the depravity and degradation in our country today as normal. To them, these will be the good old days.
I wonder what the people of Sodom and Gomorrah were thinking the day before Yahweh wiped them off the face of the planet. They were probably thinking the same things people in our country today are thinking. I say that knowing that most churchgoers probably think Sodom and Gomorrah is just another Bible story. In their world, if Yahweh doesn’t exist, the stories in the Bible must be fiction, too.
In 2 Thessalonians 2: 1–12, Paul tells us that the apostasy of the church will occur before “the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction”. Then, the Messiah will return. I think we are living during the apostasy of the church. It has been a slow progression, but it’s picking up a head of steam. Yahweh won’t allow it to continue indefinitely. Eventually, He will drop the hammer on us if we don’t repent. Man-made laws can’t bring about that kind of change.
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“I am the good shepherd. I know My sheep and My sheep know Me — just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father — and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also. They too will listen to My voice, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd. The reason My Father loves Me is that I lay down My life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from My Father.”
John 10: 14-18
