This is like going around the country, teaching people how to plan the perfect wedding. Do you know what would happen? It would change nothing for the multitudes who get married and then proceed to break every rule of success. Many couples will commit to a good wedding, yet miss foundational commitment that engages the couple in working out rules of successful marriage and family.

For parallel reasons, we also need a shift in focus from a “getting saved” formula, to one that plumbs the depth of human need, and so prepares one to deny himself, and take up the cross to follow Jesus Christ on the narrow way that leads to life. Again, what point is it to enter the Christian life, only to bring reproach to Christ and fellow Christians, refusing the yoke of obedience to the Christ who is Lord and master?

To explore what must happen in the “new birth,” we will observe two laws that define the lives of all people, without the grace of Jesus Christ. These two laws are described in Romans, Chapter 7, as a desperate struggle to do well, yet miserably failing to accomplish our good intent.

A third law, with the actual power of deliverance is described in the beginning of Romans, Chapter 8.

The first of these laws appears in verse 23 of Chapter 7, as the phrase, the law of my mind. If you back up one verse, you find what this law of the mind is like. I delight in the law of God after the inward man. Some will surely say, “Not me. I’m no Christian. I’m not convinced there even is a God.” However, this law does pertain to everyone. Romans 2:15, 16 addresses unbelievers as having the law of God written in their hearts, and that their conscience bears witness to the truth. It happens all the time. Unbelievers appreciate the kindness of the neighbor who brings in their mail, waters the flowers, and reports any suspicious activity while they are away on vacation. This law of the mind also causes them to trust emergency room staff in a strange city when their planned vacation has taken a tragic turn. In fact, it is this law of the mind that still keeps many, many people from being murderers, adulterers, thieves, or rapists. And even among those who sin more grievously, you will still find some admirable traits. This law of the mind serves as a control factor on the side of decency.

However, there is a negative side to this “goodness” of the conscience. It is the notion that this level of goodness should satisfy the justice of God. It goes so far as to question the justice of God for not going along with this man-centered analysis of good. It is a mistake to conclude, as many do, that the degree of goodness displayed makes us good people. It does not.

There is another law present in my members warring against the good intent and the actual good that is accomplished by the law of the mind. It is called the law of sin (Romans 7:23), and it resides in every human body. It has its own opinions, will, and emotions with an exceedingly high threshold of demanding what it wants. Its focus is on immediate pleasure and on shortcuts out of challenging situations. In so doing, it promotes interests absolutely contrary and even deadly to our good. It permeates the mind with wrong, builds the desire for evil, and breaks through the defenses of a mind wanting to do good.

What we would perceive as people who have it all together, such as the good neighbor, or the emergency room staffers, are caught up in the same struggles you face. It is really quite simple. Sin breaks through the facade of goodness and respectability, leaving us struggling, frustrated, and defeated. We find ourselves powerless over this, because the law of sin ultimately dominates and defines who we truly are. (We are not the good person we meant to be.) It reaches the ultimate complication because of the dominant, contaminating nature of evil. The otherwise perfectly good hamburger from your favorite fast-food place is no match for the trace of salmonella. The same holds true for the sin of the “good” person. He that keeps the whole law, yet offends in one point, is guilty of all. Paul says it well in raising the question: Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? The law of sin is not unlike the terrifying prospect of an otherwise respectable man being chained to a decaying body.

In summary then, we have the mind to do well (I witness this repeatedly even among criminals), but are brought to defeat and despair by a sinful nature beyond our power to control.

There is only one sufficient answer, only one course of victory. Thousands of people in the world demonstrate this principle every day. They board jetliners they don’t own. They couldn’t push them a single inch, much less lift them off the ground by flapping their arms. All they need is a boarding pass that entitles them to a seat. They sit back and trust the airlines to fly them from Detroit to Amsterdam, or from New York to Los Angeles, mocking gravity all the way. Every successful flight meets the following conditions: aircraft designed to the laws of aerodynamics, safe flight patterns, mechanical soundness, and sufficient quality and quantity of fuel. Cutting corners is lethal. Why expect shortcuts for either a good marriage or Christian living?

The one sufficient answer to the power of the flesh, is found in Romans 8:2. The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. It is the sufficiency and the enabling power of life in Jesus Christ, who shed His blood and suffered death on the cross for the remission of sins. We who were dead in trespasses and sin may now live for Him who arose from the dead. This holds a standard to which other religions and a compromised version of “being saved” cannot attain.

To substitute a shallow “accepting Christ” for genuine repentance from sin, restitution for wrongdoing, and unreserved faith and loyalty to Jesus Christ, mocks the God who owns the spiritual “airlines” and books passage to victory in Jesus. The scandals that frequently haunt the ranks of the “saved,” block the testimony of the church in society, and discourage some who might otherwise be sincere seekers after God.

For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace (Romans 8:6).

Lester Troyer

Thanklessness toward God sees the role of the Almighty God through a distorted lens. This distortion assumes that the ways of God fall short in meeting the needs of humanity. It is the idea that God needs our help for the best arrangement of our circumstances. It assumes the commandments of God such as love not the world, and lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, and love your neighbor as yourself can be disregarded as relics of an unenlightened past. As a result, material things are trusted, hoarded, and even worshiped, above the Creator who made it all.

However, all the cash in the world is an insufficient keeper of the soul. The love of big bucks inevitably loosens the bands of integrity and destabilizes morality (“the love of money is the root of all evil”). Therefore, the transfer of security in God into the lust for things turns human wisdom into foolishness, and ends up overturning ethical and moral absolutes. This leads to a culture seeking answers to perplexing problems and finding none. Materialism produces an underlying madness that defies solutions. (For a current example of such moral, financial, and social chaos, we need look no further than U.S.A. 2010). A culture like this will someday reconnect with the Almighty — but in a tragic outpouring of God’s wrath and judgment.

The beginning Biblical text could trace various cultural missteps down into the same pit. We will retrace a line that has shifted people’s mentality dramatically over the past 120 years, yet evokes little concern across America, not even in the churches. This is the idea that personal financial means may be rightly supplemented at the expense of others. The tragedy is profound. It transforms people from being cheerful givers who care about the needs of others, and turns them into grabbers and takers. By bleeding prosperity to cover failure, it guarantees that failure survives and that ever greater amounts of money will never be enough.

Recently, I finished a kitchen project I was doing. The respectable customer of many years pointed out that he was writing the check to me personally, rather than to my business. But why? I found that he was suggesting that this was like paying cash so I would not have to report it. “Cash,” he said, as he now quoted someone else, “is the small businessman’s only friend.” Surprised at the suggestion, I assured him that the method of payment made no difference to me. However, all income needs to be reported.

It would be enlightening, I think, to pursue his philosophy to a logical conclusion. Would he tell me at what income level would I no longer qualify to underreport my income? And could a “small” businessman, such as myself, cash in on other advantages as well? For example, not only is Wal-Mart a huge corporation. It is also in much better financial shape than the U.S. government. There are ways of “underreporting” the merchandise going out the door with me. Right? But how big would I need to be to no longer qualify for “free” merchandise from Wal-Mart? In fact, the notion that the genuinely poor are entitled to shoplift, providing the retailer is sufficiently prosperous, was recently suggested openly by a clergyman (to the embarrassment of his denominational leaders). In any case, stolen merchandise and employee theft is a multibillion dollar problem quite apart from what follows.

Let’s peer into the present financial near-meltdown. It is triggered by a not-so-negativesounding term called entitlement. The American dream has long dictated that we are entitled to own our own homes. But in recent years, encouragement to ownership was greatly expanded by suspending sane lending practices in the mortgage market. The rest is history. The attempt to put many more Americans into their own homes has resulted in the exact opposite: the loss of homes and jobs for millions of Americans.

Unfortunately, the entitlement mentality is so entrenched in our society that it was the only lens through which the damage could be viewed, thus dictating recovery attempts. This led to personal stimulus checks; bailouts for selective defunct institutions (too big to fail); cash for clunkers; tax breaks for first-time home buyers; and huge infusions of cash to save or to create jobs. Never mind that the cost of these programs far outstrips any possibility of long-term benefit.

At this writing, instead of careful analysis of where all this is headed, the focus goes to yet another entitlement-affordable health care for everyone. Yet the real tragedy in health care is not that millions of us are uninsured (many of us by personal choice), but the idea that health insurance is a personal necessity, and the only viable option for the average American. It appears that way only because it’s more glamorous to go into debt for McMansions and Lincoln Navigators than for medicines, appendectomies, or other surgical repairs. The drain of medical costs may indeed impede status for a generation that believes life really does consist of the abundance of things possessed. I challenge that notion. When health really is at stake, of what use are the unaffordable toys? Further, the best of health care plans cannot cover for careless or self-destructive habits, neither do they deliver from accidents and terminal illnesses. (Ten out of ten Americans will die.) This I-am-not-responsible-for-my-bills mentality is accompanied by the continued shrinking of the collective American spine. The fixation on entitlements and insurances, along with the search for quick riches through malpractice suits, is the major cause of skyrocketing costs and then attempts to conceal them. We are easy prey to promises of painless ways of doing things. We seemingly never learn that painless (as in insurance and socialist programs), breaks the vital financial link between medical provider and patient. It provides a free zone of irresponsibility that leaves costs unchecked. Finally then, free ends up costing the most, even while robbing us of character.

Up through Grover Cleveland’s presidency, it was understood that the financial support of the people was not the function of government, but that the people supported the necessary expenses of government. He made clear that the plight of poor and needy Americans could be faithfully entrusted to the generosity of their sturdy fellow Americans. (Even modern disaster response proves he was right.) In this, Cleveland was clearly defining the limited role of government. When government is limited to what government needs to do in terms of order, justice, and security, “we the people” do arise to the occasion and find the means to support both the government and the burdens of our fellow citizens.

Wise Mr. Cleveland could have gone on to explain that this truly is the legitimate, permanent separation of powers between the Church and the State. Indeed, it wasn’t long after Cleveland that the state started assuming more and more responsibilities the church should have taken. As it is, both church and state have suffered for the switch. The bankrupting costs to the government of entitlement spending is a tragedy. But so is the timid character of a church relieved of direct responsibility to the poor. Not only are Christians supposedly freed from responsibility to the genuinely poor among us, but the sheep of the church are themselves guilty of overgrazing government pastures. The great tragedy is the mentality that has transformed many churches from being churches of compassion and giving (part of the essential nature of the Gospel) into an “owes me” culture of takers and cheaters. And what can we say of the damage to Christian faith when our substance is diverted into shortsighted pleasures and undisciplined materialism?

If only Christians could grasp the fact that the distraction with things that pass away robs us of joy and gratitude in God for things that last, for example, houses not made with hands, eternal in the heavens (2 Corinthians 5:1).

Why not try this solution:
— Prepare for accountability to God by assuming the responsible role as stewards of earthly things as gifts from God.
— Assume responsibility for total integrity in earning, buying, selling, and giving.
— Reject the notion that I can lay claim to the labors and resources of others.
— Take the long view of sharing and laying up treasure in Heaven.
— Remember: “We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing
out” (1 Timothy 6:7).

–Lester Troyer

This term comes from the German Weltanschauung, literally, “beholding the world.” Everyone has a perception, a basic set of ideas, about life as though looking at the world through a particular pair of glasses. Worldview then translates into the way people respond to surroundings, the goals that they set, and the values they pursue. The outcomes can be radically different. For one example, in our culture, one worldview seeks to destroy the very lives that the other is seeking to save. This also demonstrates how wildly worldview can swing, even in fifty years. Thus, cultural stability and cultural change are dictated by the way in which the energy of the dominant worldview is expended.

We see around us religious worldviews of great diversity. For example, in the Middle East, a young Christian believer and Muslim suicide bomber might live practically side by side. Both believe their own faith is worth dying for. There the similarity ends. Why? Because their views of who God is and what God is like are opposite. As a result, the Christian believer would rather die than deny the faith. His neighbor, though, would die for the promised reward of killing “infidels.”

Religious worldviews are taught. This is so because they include spiritual teachings of unseen realms. This also explains why people of charisma and dynamic personality can quickly gain cult-like followings even when their teachings promote error and deception. In contrast, Biblical truth has a firm connection to the events and people of history, and records God’s interaction with them. We are all sons of Adam and sons of Noah, pointing back to the God of the Bible, a point forgotten in the race to equalize religious worldviews.

On the other hand, a secular worldview may be simply caught, rather than taught. I still remember suggesting to a successful businessman that he had probably carefully established his belief system. He admitted that he had not. In fact, he gave little thought to what he believed. This would indicate a worldview that majored on obvious temporal advantages such as marrying his lovely wife and building his beautiful estate. In this, he would join multitudes of Americans whose basic worldview begins and ends in the pursuit of “the good life,” otherwise known as the American dream. This often dictates a bigger house, new places to which to travel, weekends on the lake with a new boat, plus goals for his offspring to excel in sports and to graduate from college.

This temporal worldview bypasses searching questions such as: Why am I here? To what purpose is my existence? Where am I going? How do I know, or why don’t I know the answers? Will I be accountable for what I do?

Worldviews are changeable. If they were not, there would be better things to do than to write this column.

SO WHAT IS THE BIBLICAL WORLDVIEW?

1. The Biblical worldview must be revealed from God. It can be sought after. It cannot be invented. The notion that people are capable of inventing anything other than phony religion has about the same probability of success as a team of brilliant scientists and surgeons fashioning a living, breathing, fully human from nothing (or even from two hundred pounds of clay). It doesn’t happen because both human life and a relationship with God are acts of God. Both are beyond the pale of human skill and invention.

The fact that the Bible is the revelation of God and from God assures the generational sameness of the message of God to man. After a thousand years, it is still the same. Rather than the message becoming old, it is forever new to all people of all times. But people, even those with a Christian worldview, are still inclined to deviate from the revelation of God. However, the unchanging Word of God assures a return to the centrality of truth to the sincere seeker. Men seek Him and find Him when they search for Him with all their heart.

2. Thus the Biblical worldview is God-centered. It is focused on the Eternal, Almighty One, who made everything that ever was, is, or shall be. This is the One who ordered the events of history, wiped out the world of Noah’s day with a worldwide flood, brought the confusion of tongues into the plans of men at the tower of Babel, and etched divine law into tables of stone in the days of Moses. In due time, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to save sinners. These are things that have happened in history, with the great climax yet to come: “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” This view is forever and unapologetically exclusive. Why? Let me ask you some questions. How many gods created the world? How many gods continue to uphold all things by the word of their power? How many gods have provided the perfect sacrifice for sin? How many gods will judge the world?

3. The Biblical worldview is one of a fallen world because of sin entering into the once-perfect creation, and death through sin, catching up with every person who lives, ever lived, or will live. Thus the Biblical worldview processes the difference between the temporal values of this world which are soon to pass away, and the spiritual things which abide forever. In many ways the world is a wonderful and even beautiful place to live—thanks to the God who created it. It continues to load us with benefits. Yet it is also a dangerous place, where Satan trips people up through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

4. The Biblical worldview defines the truth of the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, whether Jew or Gentile. It defines conversion, morals, and manner of life out of the principles taught in Scripture. Though conversion does not yield automatic perfection, it does deliver here and now from the bondage of sin. A healthy diet of continual feeding on the Word delivers us from being captive to ignorance and sets the believer on the course of righteousness.

One of the greatest needs today is to Biblically define what it is to be a Christian. The Christian walks in the light, embraces the truth, keeps his own word, confesses his sins, loves his brother, blesses his enemy, opens his heart and wallet to the needy. He professes with his mouth the Lord Jesus Christ. He lives in obedience to authority, and lives in fidelity with the wife of his youth. He forgives others and suffers adversity graciously. He becomes like his Master. In short, the life of the Christian is defined in learning the teachings of Scripture, and then doing them, thus fulfilling the will of God.

One of the great tragedies of evangelicals is in switching the focus from what a Christian is, to how to become one. The deceptive result is “Christians” who continue in their sins quite unaware that they face the same condemnation as their non-Christian counterparts. To such Jesus says: “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matthew 7:23).

BENEFITS OF THE CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW

The most important benefit is the personal knowledge of the Truth. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” This is to know God through Jesus Christ, and to be known of Him. This meets the Bible definition of eternal life.

This is not about finding an easy way through life. It is about following the narrow way, which leads to life, with life in the very presence of God to follow.

But the Christian way is also about the way we live in this world. If we Christians will exemplify the grace and the Spirit of Jesus Christ in this world and in our culture, we will be influences (not by force), be lights and examples in a dark place—a good atmosphere for God to work regeneration in the hearts and lives of others. God becomes the line of demarcation. People will either accept or reject His great salvation.

–Lester Troyer

Atheists are putting on their own push with advertising on billboards and buses such as this one:

THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD
NOW STOP WORRYING
AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE

These people must believe that an actual God in the universe is something like a cancer that would keep you from enjoying your life. But if I were trying to shed my faith in God, I wouldn’t find any reassurance in such advertising. Suppose symptoms of cancer are present, but my doctor says I “probably” don’t have cancer. Wouldn’t I want a biopsy, or at least a second opinion?

In fact, these people do not understand the trade-off. God in control of the universe is the system of certainty and security. We have the resources of immutable laws of nature (for example, the assurance of harvest after planting a garden), as the means of supporting life on earth. The same God has given us the Scriptures for direction on how to live, that we might be delivered from wrongdoing that ultimately turns the mercy and loving-kindness of God into wrath and judgment.

So what is the legacy of Darwinism? It is the denial of the principle of certainty. If it were in accord with science, the Darwinist claims of evolution would have been resolved a long time ago. Scientists are good at proving things in accord with nature and finding ways to get things done. They don’t argue that the earth is round, or that the moon revolves around the sun. They simply present the evidence. They don’t speculate that men could go to the moon, or that megabytes of information could be stored in silicon chips. They explore. They engineer. They invent. All this falls within the confines of the certainty of natural law. No intelligence or ingenuity can overcome what the laws of nature cannot support.

Thus, Darwinism is embraced as the Holy Grail of the learned, not as a science, but as a philosophical foundation of a belief system. This is an awkward way of saying it, because, simply put, Darwinism is a belief system that destroys belief systems. It promises release from a moral/ethical standard which comes from God to man, to which all people are accountable. It promotes the notion of doing what you please without consequences. Theoretically, it all comes back to personal choice—doing what you want to do.

This is the lie that goes all the way back to Eden. The theory could be tried with a hundred unsupervised toddlers on a playground. Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” quickly comes into play. Only the bullies “enjoy life.” The rest have plenty to worry about.

But don’t we grow out of that? Absolutely not! In reality, those who write their own rules are forever infringing on the rights of others. That is why we lock up murderers, rapists, thieves, and robbers. Darwinists in America have not learned the lessons of Stalin, Hitler, and others who elevate themselves on the corpses of their own people. Thus, what we didn’t see coming was the sophisticated in-your-face lawlessness and scandal now permeating our whole culture, and threatening our very existence. It has found its way into the highest levels of financial and political power. Honor has given way to dishonor and scandal. Policy and power is increasingly vested in the few who make our choices for us.

Thus, the cultural landscape is morphing into something that could not have been imagined even fifty years ago. True freedom of choice and godlessness are mutually exclusive, a lesson our world has yet to learn.

Christian teachings and Christian moral principles long dominated Western thought. People got married, stayed married, and carried their babies to term. They worked hard to pay their bills and their taxes, spanked their children when they misbehaved, and taught them a vocation. They ran the schools without counselors, policemen, or metal detectors, prayed and read the Bible in the home (and school), and took the whole family to church. Why did they do this? Because they believed in the certainty principle. They believed that God made Heaven and earth in six days, that He made people in His image, that honor and integrity trump pleasure, that punishment of wrong in homes and courts was but a prelude to hellfire for those who ultimately wouldn’t settle their accounts with God.

Within those bounds of personal responsibility and morality, people did enjoy freedom—freedom of press, freedom of speech, and freedom of conscience. But with Darwinist uncertainty going mainstream, and conscience not informed with God-defined morality, we thought that wasn’t freedom enough. We didn’t want limits on sexual passions. This led to the rush into hedonism, and stars such as the Beatles, Elvis Presley, and Michael Jackson becoming gods to us.

We altered freedom of press and of speech, to make vulgarity acceptable, and pornography indefinable. And we had to redefine even the right to life to exclude millions of inconvenient babies, thus adding murder to an acceptable lifestyle package.

Yet, any culture that lives for kicks and thrills must, of necessity, increase the dosage and the damage. Licentiousness prevails at the expense of marriage and home and a solid upbringing for children. Sexual wickedness runs itself aground and has no place to turn, but to feed on itself, male with male, and female with female. The Bible describes such cultural reversal as being “against nature,” and transpiring in the context of “evil men and seducers waxing worse and worse,” and also as a people who “treasure up wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.”

Thus the battle lines are newly drawn. The degrading elements of human passion that we were once expected to curb, we are now compelled to embrace. This turns to haunt us in ways we did not expect.

The goal of Darwinism was to escape moral judgment. The effect though, is the loss of all sound judgment. The only thing left in the unbeliever’s toolbox is man-made dogma. “Truth” becomes whatever world leaders and men in power make it to be, along with coercive regulation to enforce it. It is an awful thing to cut the reins of singular truth from the Almighty, then to vest those powers in demigods.

For example, communism has no power to engage the masses with production, prosperity, and plenty. It could finally offer only deprivation. Regulation is the only tool communism has, and regulation ultimately controls to the death.

Yet we pin our hopes on such. Even science takes the backseat to the ideas on fixing the economy, climate change, or even health care. Apparently, major, costly policy can be implemented on less research, development, and engineering agreement, than goes into a single new automobile model. There are reasons for this, of course. The world quickly rejects the problems with something on four wheels with a motor. Not so, with deeply flawed social or economic policies.

Besides Darwinism, we have raised a second barrier against returning to God. We take to the notion that all belief systems are equal and acceptable—excluding the one of moral certainty—once inscribed in stone. The exclusive righteousness of Biblical Christianity is repackaged to fit as an equal player with the other major religions of the world. We now see religious diversity as a thing to celebrate. The casualty here is truth itself, the loss of the line between good and evil. Professing Christians have been among the chief offenders, living contrary to truth, reducing faith from the responsible way to live into a bogus ticket to Heaven.

Thus like Israel of old, we reject the “fountains of living waters,” only to hew “out cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Yet, ultimately, certainty does prevail—the certainty of sore troubles, and of the judgment of God.

Lester Troyer

But God is not mocked. Heaven is reserved not for those who merely profess Jesus as Lord, but for those who do the will of the Father in Heaven. Salvation results in single-minded devotion to God, producing a separation from the world and the powers of darkness. Separation is the principle whereby Christians live “in the world without being of the world.” Separation serves as a divinely prescribed respirator, sparing every godly person from the toxic effects of sin that dooms the multitudes on the broad way to destruction. Rather than adopting the destructive ways and values of the world, children of God receive their orders from God, through careful and faithful application to Biblical commands and teaching.

Separation has both a long history and an eternal future. In the beginning of creation, God separated natural light from natural darkness, a major factor in making the world habitable.

Spiritually, He applies principles of light versus darkness as the litmus test of any people who claim a relationship with Him. “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 John 1:6).

In the beginning, God, in six days, created everything by the power of His own Word. He filled the universe, like a giant canvas, in a mind-boggling, breathtaking display of His infinite power, His wisdom, His glory, and His majesty. Even though this is now a fallen world, all nature obeys Him still, for God upholds it all by the same Word of His power. Yet even before the Fall, in a still perfect universe, God separated one tree in the middle of Eden with the command, “Thou shalt not eat.”

Without exception, the lifestyle choices of godly men of history were regulated by command of God. Adam failed the test. But Noah, moved with fear, built the ark to exact divine specifications, and separated himself and his family from the plight of the ungodly. Abraham (designated spiritual father of all the faithful), at the command of God, deserted the idolatrous city of his ancestors. He left the love of the world to dwell in tents, but gained the eternal city of God. Moses made the early choice to reject worldly pleasure to embrace the hardships of the godly. Probably the greatest leader of all time, Moses regularly and specifically received the ordered ways of God for his people. Sacrifice, worship, dietary instruction, wardrobe, giving, sanitation, principles of marriage and of justice-no details escaped the notice of God. This obedience would set Israel apart as a wise and understanding people in a pronounced separation from nations who had long departed from the ways of God, who were slated for judgment and destruction.

And yes, separation does have an eternal future. In the Day of the Lord, all who ever lived and breathed will stand before God in judgment. All will be judged, not by profession of Christianity, not by miracles or prophecies, nor by brownie points of accumulating good deeds (some of the biggest givers of our day do not know God), but according as we have done the will of the Father in Heaven. In that day, the sheep will be forever separated from the goats. The righteous will inherit the kingdom prepared for them. The wicked will be turned into Hell, and all the nations that forget God.

The contrast could hardly be more striking. The pursuit of worldliness is temporal and meets a horrific end, for the friend of the world has made himself an enemy of God. Separation unto God is good for the present life and for eternity. It is the only permanence available within a temporal system. For the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Strange, isn’t it, that we should be so enamored with “forbidden fruit” of this world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, which all are to pass away, and mark its adherents for judgment? Equally strange, isn’t it, that questionable things, and even the deeds of darkness of the world should be preferred to the glorious light of the commandments of God?

Billy Graham made a striking point in a message at a missions conference in Urbana, Illinois, in 1987. His language appeared wistful as he addressed 18,000 people (mostly college students) and recalls a message by one Donald Grey Barnhouse, a message Graham had heard in a similar conference in 1948. Even after those thirty-nine years, Billy said, “I’ll never forget his message on separation from the world.”

Now quoting Graham again: “We have gotten away from that. We have moved in with the world and allowed the world to penetrate the way we live. So things we used to call sin are no longer sin. Things that we would have abhorred a few years ago, we accept as matter of fact today, not realizing that they offend a holy God.”

Earlier in that same message, Graham referred to TV: “It’s almost embarrassing to turn on the television set. We do not realize how this offends a holy and righteous God. We act as if it doesn’t really matter how we live or what we think or say because God will forgive us anyway.”

Thus, Billy Graham exposed the heart of the matter. But has Christianity made any kind of a turnaround? The indicators of acceptable Christian culture and practice indicate that we have not. We are no longer afraid not to do the will of God. We seem bent more than ever to reject the redeeming commands of our Creator/Saviour, preferring to blindly copy the degrading cultural practices of the world. Thus the signals come, not from God, but from deniers and haters of God. He who would be the friend of the world is the enemy of God.

Typical Mr. and Mrs. Christian (and their offspring) are mere imitators of ungodly culture. Yet they would be shocked at the idea of being enemies of God. The result is what we have repeatedly reflected upon in this column. Many people in the churches reflect the same failure of basic standards-the loss of integrity and truthfulness, personal shamelessness and immodesty (marked by exposure of the body), music that banishes the echoes of tender conscience by glorifying lawlessness and sexual immorality, church youth groups give over to fornication, adulterous elders, and broken homes. In this way, the “church” is in affinity with a world at enmity against God, aligning with the multitudes of those who treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, and the day of perdition of ungodly men, and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God.

But what does the Bible say? “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers . . .: and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? For ye are the temple of the living God . . . . Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Corinthians 6:14-18).

-by Lester Troyer