(Article by Terry James. Terry James at Rapture Ready)
(Editors note: I am reminded of the passage in Isaiah 5:20)
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
Early this morning I was listening to a Bible teacher teaching on prophecy and how it looks like America and the world are at the end of the Church Age (Age of Grace). He was talking about U.S. Supreme Court decisions.
The teacher was in the book of Romans and he was in the first chapter. The teacher was Les Feldick presenting his then weekly teaching by way of his Through the Bible television ministry. The year the program was produced was 1995. I was listening to his teaching Friday, June 26, 2015 –20 years later. A Christian TV cable network on our cable outlet is running the series on a daily basis at 5 a.m.
Les, as I understand, is now in his mid 80s and, I’m sure, still teaching somewhere in Oklahoma. I once met him at the Tulsa Mid-America Prophecy Conference held annually in early April. that was 7 or 8 years ago.
Today, a few hours after I listened to him teaching from that video recording back in that year 2 decades earlier, I heard on network television the announcement.
It was Pete Williams of NBC News –who you might remember as the Pentagon spokesperson during the first Gulf War– standing near the wildly cheering crowd. The NBC correspondent –an avowed “gay”– had to clear his throat of emotion before answering the anchor’s question about what had just happened at the Supreme Court.
He enthusiastically gave the requested report, almost shouting to be heard above the jubilant throng screaming their approval of the court’s decision.
The decision was 5 to 4, with the swing vote coming from Justice Kennedy, Williams said. The United States would now require every state to accept same sex marriage as constitutionally validated.
Twenty years earlier, Les Feldick had dealt with what I was now hearing from Pete Williams on Friday, June 26 of this year.
Les said during that early morning program, recorded in 1995, that every time he read through Romans, Chapter 1, he couldn’t help but think of the almost insane decisions that come out of the U.S. Supreme Court. He said that the insanity really began back during the days when Earl Warren, the former governor of California, was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
The Warren court, Les said, had rendered the most destructive decisions in American history. He mentioned the decision to remove prayer and Bible reading from public schools in 1963 and 1964. He talked about Roe v Wade, issued in 1973, opening up the nation to the slaughter of babies in the wombs of America’s mothers.
He compared the Warren Supreme Court’s decision making and the resultant chaos to Paul’s condemning words in his letter to the Romans.
“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” (Rom 1: 18-32)
Les Feldick, in that lesson recorded 2 decades ago, saw the Supreme Court as demonstrating that God’s Word is absolutely True. When man moves away from God, their minds become reprobate –that is upside-down in their thinking. they make foolish, unthinking, unreasonable decisions. And, the Supreme Court, the majority of those 9 men (not all were reprobate in thinking,) seemed to try, like Lucifer himself, to usurp the Throne of God –the Creator of all things.
There were ramifications, in my view, from those earlier Supreme Court decisions. John F. Kennedy was assassinated; Vietnam would eventually take 50,000 American lives; The Great Society began the financial collapse of the U.S. –and the world, for that matter; Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered, as was Robert F. Kennedy; a slide into abject immorality and cultural rot continues today, as a result of those decisions which have exacerbated other aspects of national life.
Friday, June 26, 2015 is another historical, milestone demarcation of man’s foolishness. The decision to, in effect, tell the Creator that the Supreme Court knows what constitutes marriage, so He should just butt out, is the ultimate insult in testing God’s patience. It is an act of rebellion that demonstrates this generation has reached a level of reprobate thinking like that reached by the earth-dwellers of Noah’s pre-flood day and Sodom’s days of Lot.
I’ve received a number of emails stating that such a Supreme Court vote making mandatory that all states allow gay marriage will bring instant retribution from Heaven. This is what we are now to expect. The United States will now reap God’s Judgment and Wrath in short order.
Looking at what happened almost immediately following the 1963 and 1964 decisions by the Warren Court –considering the apparent consequences listed above– it would seem such predictions have credence. I’m not at all sure there is a valid comparison to be made, then to now, however.
That which happened in those earlier years, with those consequences that befell America, I’m of the conviction, involved corrective action –a call by God to this nation, imploring that there be a turning from such rebellion. A question to ponder is: does time remain sufficient enough to even warrant a call in the form of corrective action? I.e., Has the Lord just decided in this obviously late, late hour, to turn America over to a “reprobate mind,” as the Apostle Paul (Rom 1:28) indicates for a rebellious people who have turned their back on Him?
Paul tells God’s Thought about those who treat the Lord with contempt.
“But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God…” (Rom 2: 5)
Despite this warning of God’s Judgment and Wrath accumulating, we get a look into the Lord’s Merciful Patience.
“What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” (Rom 9: 22)
The Apostle Peter explains God’s patience –the reason He hasn’t ended mankind’s rebellion to this point.
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” (2 Pet 3: 9)
All who name the name of Jesus Christ should not be caught up in the cares of this world, in becoming more and more like the world system of materialism. While we must live upon this world of quickly declining morality, we should be aware of what the forces of evil are perpetrating. We should stand against those powers and principalities, both human and supernatural, just as written in Ephesians 6: 12.
The buying, selling, planting, the marrying –heterosexual or otherwise– is a way of life that is going to end in one stupefying microsecond of time. The Christian will stand before his or her Lord and give an account of whether we have been working and watching for Christ, or whether we have been caught up totally in the cares of this world, with callous disregard for being salt and light as we see the end of the age approaching.
“And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares. For as a snare shall it come on all them that dwell on the face of the whole earth.” (Lk 21: 34-35)
The only Court that is going to matter ultimately is that which renders the Supreme’s Decision on how we, individually, have lived within or apart from His Governance.
Make sure you aren’t one whose head is stuck deeply into the proverbial sand of worldliness and apathy.