“The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, charity, historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Bible it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.”
On the American coin we read, E PLURIBUS UNIM. The phrase means out of many one. The desire of the founders was that America with all her individuality and diversity would become a people unified. Today we find ourselves in a clash of cultures. We are in a battle over philosophical ideologies. When I look at the words above I am deeply troubled as an American and as a Christian that we as a nation will never be unified again. The paragraph above was written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer while in a Nazi prison. Only the most narrow ideologues would not consider him a hero. Yet Dietrich became an enemy to many people for the sake of God and country.
The great outworking of evil, its design, and purpose is to appear as something good. In Genesis Satan tells Adam and Eve that they will become like God. Anyone who has studied the Scriptures knows that the ultimate purpose of God is for us to be like Him. His desire has always been that we become more like him in every aspect of life. Satan’s purpose was to twist the truth, implying that by doing something evil good would come of it. Betray God, disobey him, reject him, doubt him, and most of all see him as afraid and evil for withholding the best creation has to offer. In one act sin becomes personal. It is against another who is good. It is a lie acted upon. David said, “Against you and you only have I sinned.” Real evil begins its journey against God and all that has been revealed to be true and good.
Evil must reinvent ways of appearing good. Abortion is good, it is a woman’s right to choose. Deny all thoughts of murdering the unborn. Sex education with a political agenda, teach kindergarten children perversion as knowledge. Should not the youngest child understand the mechanics of sex without its morality? Is this not a good thing? Should we not push the aberration of the gay agenda, after all it is equality we are after? Partial-birth abortion is the correct thing to do when we are burdened down with consequences and responsibilities of our actions. We must make all these things appear good.
Let’s begin by rewriting American history. Let’s also begin by overthrowing American history with new forms of social engineering that have failed the world over. Let’s use the ideologies that have murdered millions. Let’s call it equal distribution of wealth. It should be up to each man’s conscience to decide how to help the least fortunate among us. Instead we will force our will and our narrow, immoral, ideology on others and call it American.
While marriage declines for heterosexuals, homosexuals are seeking its sanctity. While we as a nation are becoming more promiscuous, as couples live together, the battle rages over what is traditional marriage. The irony of such a struggle is heartbreaking. The Scriptures reveal this,”If the foundations are destroyed What can the good do.” It is the desire of evil to create anarchy. It is the desire of evil to remove truthful moral foundations and rebuild a world in its own image and likeness.
The simple temptation in Eden was far more insidious than the deceived man and woman could ever have imagined. The battle has never changed. Satan hidden, dark, evil, deceptive, murderous, and a liar, his real agenda, is to remake the world, in his image and likeness. In that beautiful story in Genesis 1 we discover God is the creator of all things. Now science with all of its knowledge tells us the infinite impossibilities against our existing without a creator are possible given enough time. The most wicked regimes in the world must erase God, or twists him into a dictator. Philosophies, ideologies, and religions are now as never before through the power of unlimited communication able to remake the world as Satan had intended in the image and likeness of evil.
Science now finds itself the enemy of religion. Islam finds itself the enemy of science. Two diametric forces that seem to oppose one another but yet are deeply unified, Their enemy, Christ and Christianity. Islam creates a God no one wants or would possibly want to serve. Science replaces God with time and chance. There is a pincer movement presently at work in the battlefield. Islam gathers the religious for a cause. Science erases the knowledge of God. In the end the showdown will come were the two ideologies compromise and kill all who oppose them. The enemy has not changed, it is still Cain and Able replayed again throughout the centuries. The ultimate showdown is where good fights evil. Jesus said, “when I return will I find faith on the earth.”
Hebrews 11:13-16 “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better countryÑa heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”
Heb 11:35-40 “Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreatedÑthe world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised. God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect.”
I tell you this wickedness must have its day, it must come to it’s full fruitfulness. There awaits for all those who believed to have triumphed in their evil to face a day of judgment.
Isaiah 5:20-21 “How horrible it will be for those who call evil good and good evil,Êwho turn darkness into light and light into darkness, who turn what is bitter into something sweet and what is sweet into something bitter. How horrible it will be for those who think they are wise and consider themselves to be clever.”
To call what is good evil, and what is evil good is both the first and last evil. It had its beginnings in Genesis and it will have its end, at God’s appointed time. Dear friend where do you find yourself? Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer I would rather be the friend of God than the friend of those who rebel against God. So dear friend what is our mission? Is it to become like them and hate? No! This is the hour to love them ever more deeply and warn them with all your heart to turn to God and to Jesus Christ who can cleanse us to the very depths of our being from every evil. Jesus said,” I have not come to condemn the world but to save it.” We all need a Savior to deliver us from the evil that so deceives us and controls us. In that day when God cleanses the universe from evil you will have chosen to be saved from evil or to serve it. The choice has always been yours. We cannot make the excuse as we revel in our weakness, when God has supplied the overcoming strength.