Women are developing a taste for violence in their entertainment. Less and less are women put off by violence in their novels and movies. According to a frontpage article in today's Wall Street Journal, women are increasingly drawn to thriller novels where the hero is an assassin or a revenge killer. Women now make up 60% of the audience for the gory "CSI" television franchise that has three different series. Movie houses are also noticing that women make up an increasing percentage of the viewers at recent horror/terror films. Women are losing their squeamish nature when it comes to violence. One of the signs of the days of Noah was that "the earth was filled with violence" (Genesis 6:11). Jesus told us that "as it was in the days of Noe [Noah], so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man" (Luke 17:26).
Most Christians know that our spiritual opposition comes from three sources: the world, the flesh, and the devil. However, as in most things, we have them in the opposite order from scripture. The world refers to the evil world system. But the world would not be evil except it be filled with fallen men. Men are fallen because their fleshly nature is perverted. Yet, the fall began with the temptation of Eve in the Garden of Eden and it was the work of the devil. So, the devil rebelled against God and brought about the fall of man which resulted in the sinful flesh that is in all men. Then, fallen men with the help of the evil spirits of the devil created the evil world system. The true order is the devil, the flesh, and the world.
One of the results of possession by evil spirits in the maniac of Gadara was self-mutilation. Mark 5:5 describes his actions: "And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones." A recent survey of college students has determined that 20% of women and 14% of men "have cut, burned, carved or harmed themselves in other ways." This refers to behavior which inflicts harm without the intent of suicide. "The most common methods reported by both young men and women were scratching to the point of bleeding, cutting or punching with the intent of causing injury." This is not to say that all of these young people are possessed. However, it does reflect on the satanic influence in our society. In the case of the maniac, when the devils were cast out, he was found "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind" (Luke 8:35). We need to be taking our youth to the feet of Jesus instead of immersing them in the culture of the devil.
Gary North, in "Millennialism and Social Theory" (p.136-137), demonstrates the worldly outlook of the Christian Reconstructionists. He labels those who disagree with his postmillennial doctrine as "pessimillenialists." That is, they are pessimistic because they do not believe that Christians will conquer the world before the physical return of Christ. One of the greatest faults he sees in premillenialists is their conviction that Christians should be looking for the return of Jesus Christ. According to him: "Christians were told to look skyward prior to the fall of Jerusalem... But their deliverance came in history... That one-time deliverance of the early Church is today long behind us. It is surely time for Christians to begin lookingforward, in time and on earth, for their deliverance, not upward." He even scolds an amillennialist for saying, "Come, Lord Jesus, come."
According to an article in Thursday's "Wall Street Journal," earlier this year on the day Muslims celebrate the willingness of Abraham to sacifice his son on Mt. Moriah (a son they claim was Ishmael), 25,000 sheep in Brussels, Belgium, had their heads turned to Mecca and were sacrificially killed by having their throats slit so that they would die from the shedding of their blood. Many of the Muslims will be eating their sheep for lunch that same day. Although home slaughters are illegal in Belguim, Muslims now make up over 15% of the one million people in the city of Brussels.
Mathematics can be quite complex, yet one of the most basic divisions of mathematics is called arithmetic. You may better grasp what I am talking about when I say that the most basic operations of arithmetic are addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. A grasp of these basic operations is a necessity for anyone who desires to grasp any of the more complex divisions of mathematics. Interestingly enough, the same things hold true for the Christian life. It can be quite complex, but at the same time we could break it down to the simplicity of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.
