Which Side Is Up?

Sometimes things get hectic.  Maybe it would be more accurate to say that hectic is the norm with a few moments of calm interspersed in the hectic.  We look at the world around us and think, “Can it get any worse?”  The world we grew up in gone.  Everything is upside down.

Gay marriage is not only acceptable but promoted and encouraged in our schools.  Prior to and through most of the 20^th century, homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder.  It was not until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association declassified it as a mental disorder.  Male homosexualty is still illegal in 78 countries across the world.  Most of the these countries are Muslim.  BUT it is legal in every country in Europe and North America.  The so called Christian countries encourage homosexuality and Muslim countries outlaw it.

Our Declaration of Independence states:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.

But today It is illegal to teach creation in the public schools of this country.  Evolution is taught as scientific fact rather than just a theory.  If you repeat something long enough, people will accept is as truth. 

SO, what is the answer my friends?

Will the next election turn things around?  Will things get better?  Nope! It’s going to get worse.  Read the back of The Book. 

Although this may be disconcerting to us, none of this catches God off guard!  We may not have seen these things coming, He did!  We may not have been prepared, but He was!  We may be frustrated, but He is not!  We may be discouraged, but He is not!  We may be worried, but He is not!

The apostle Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit discribes the continuity and repetitiveness man’s depraved downward spiral in Romans 1:

¹⁹But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is!  By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. ²¹What happened was this: People knew God perfectly well, but when they didn’t treat him like God, refusing to worship him, they trivialized themselves into silliness and confusion so that there was neither sense nor direction left in their lives. ²²They pretended to know it all, but were illiterate regarding life. ²³They traded the glory of God who holds the whole world in his hands for cheap figurines you can buy at any roadside stand.

²⁴So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. ²⁵And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!

 (Evolution =”worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator”, KJV)

²⁶Worse followed. Refusing to know God, they soon didn’t know how to be human either—women didn’t know how to be women, men didn’t know how to be men.

²⁷Sexually confused, they abused and defiled one another, women with women, men with men—all lust, no love. And then they paid for it, oh, how they paid for it—emptied of God and love, godless and loveless wretches. ²⁸Since they didn’t bother to acknowledge God, God quit bothering them and let them run loose.

²⁹And then all hell broke loose: rampant evil, grabbing and grasping, vicious backstabbing. They made life hell on earth with their envy, wanton killing, bickering, and cheating. Look at them: mean-spirited, venomous, ³⁰fork-tongued God-bashers. Bullies, swaggerers, insufferable windbags! They keep inventing new ways of wrecking lives. They ditch their parents when they get in the way. ³¹Stupid, slimy, cruel, cold-blooded. ³²And it’s not as if they don’t know better. They know perfectly well they’re spitting in God’s face. And they don’t care—worse, they hand out prizes to those who do the worst things best!  THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language

Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, prophesized 800 years before, speaking to God’s chosen people the same message:

Doom to you who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness in place of light and light in place of darkness, who substitute bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!  Doom to you who think you’re so smart, who hold such a high opinion of yourselves!  Is 5:20-21

Abraham goes back almost 4000 years to conflict between Isaac and Ishmael. Ironically the first mention homosexuality also goes back to the days of Abraham when his nephew Lot settled in Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham pleaded with God to spare Sodom and Gomorrah.   However, the answer to all these problems was promised about 2000 years earlier right after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. (Gen. 3: 15).  Interesting also, but not when you see things from God’s perspective,  Adam and Eve looked to the created things (the created fruit and the created angel who fell) , lusting after the created things rather than the creator.  BUT none of this caught God by surprise.  He had provided the solution before they even sinned.  (Revelation 13:8b –the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world)

The answer was, is, and always will be JESUS CHRIST, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.  He is the UPSIDE of all of yesterdays’, today’s, and tomorrows’ problems, and any problems that ever will be.