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By Michael
DePrimo | Attorney, AFA Center for Law & Policy
By Michael DePrimo
More than 2,500 years ago, a lonely prophet watched as the nation
of Judah spiraled downward into the depths of spiritual and physical
depravity. His heart broken and his soul wretched, Habakkuk mourned,
Why do you show me iniquity,
And cause me to see trouble?
For plundering and violence are before me,
There is strife, and contention arises.
Therefore the law is powerless,
And justice never goes forth.
For the wicked surround the righteous,
Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.
Habakkuk 1:3-4
On February 12, 2004, during what homosexual activists claimed
as “Freedom to Marry” week, San Francisco Mayor Gavin
Newsom, ordered the city clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex
couples. He did this on the pretense of “justice” and
“equal rights.” Over the next week, more than 3,000 homosexual
couples received marriage licenses, and most of these couples were
immediately “married” by San Francisco city officials.
Like a swarm of locusts descending upon a field, the deluge of these
homosexual “marriages” was remarkable not only because
it was unprecedented in the history of western civilization but
also because of the swiftness with which it occurred.
With one decree, with neither lawful authority nor the consent of
the people, one low-level government official altered forever the
social compact we call the United States of America. Lawsuits were
filed but judges stayed their hands, allowing same-sex “marriage”
to continue. Just as it was in Habakkuk’s day, today in San
Francisco “the law is powerless” and “perverse judgment
proceeds.” The dam has burst, and the floodwaters are rising.
The only thing remaining is to assess the damage and contend with
the consequences that are sure to follow.
President Harry Truman said, “The only thing new is the history
we don’t know.” The rebellion against the natural order
of God’s creation that has gripped America is nothing new.
In 1994, Jim Nelson Black authored a book called, When Nations
Die. The book traced the history of civilizations, and catalogued
the symptoms present in a culture in crisis.
Black said in the past 2,000 years, every empire, even those that
seemed invincible at the height of their glory, collapsed into ruin.
Every one of these empires had three factors in common before they
fell: civil society devalued human life, forsook religious belief,
and celebrated sexual immorality. These three factors took root
in the United States in the early 1960s. And the seeds sown 40 years
ago have ripened into bitter fruit.
The Apostle Paul told us that in the final stages of apostasy men
will be “inventors of evil things” who, “knowing
the righteous judgment of God,” nevertheless “approve
of” those who practice evil (Romans 1: 30, 32). Moreover, “they
will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires,
because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves
teachers, and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and
be turned aside to fables” (2 Tim. 4:3-4). Indeed, today most
of America’s elitist judges and educators echo the words of
Pontius Pilate and cry out, “What is truth?”
Faith,
prayer removed from public arena
Inscribed into an iron gate at the entrance to Harvard University
is the maxim, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free.” But truth cannot be known apart from God’s
word. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge;
the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Prov.
1:7, 9:10). What is the fear of the Lord? “The fear of the
Lord is to hate evil” (Prov. 8:13).
We as a society today do not hate evil. On the contrary, we embrace
it. This is seen not only in the acceptance and celebration of homosexuality,
but also in the country’s acceptance of abortion and pornography.
It is seen, too, in the rejection of the knowledge of God. In the
past 40 years, prayer and Bible study have been removed from public
schools; the truth of Creation has been replaced with the theory
of evolution; the Ten Commandments and nativity scenes have been
banned from the public square; and a federal court of appeals has
stricken the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.
All because men love darkness, and hate light. This is what the
Apostle Paul meant when he said, in the end times, the enemies of
Christ would “glory in their shame” (Phil. 3:19). And
same-sex marriage may be the ultimate shame because it is a blasphemous
counterfeit of the God-ordained institution of heterosexual marriage
which, Paul tells us, is a temporal manifestation of the eternal
mystery of the union of Christ and His Church (Eph. 5:31-32).
Acceptance of same-sex marriage represents a paradigm shift in American
culture, and may well signal the beginning of the end of western
civilization. As AFA Senior Trial Attorney Brian Fahling observed,
re-defining marriage is tampering with our cultural DNA. When DNA
is altered, the result is mutation. A mutating society is one that
has lost, or rather rejected, its moral underpinnings. Proverbs
tells us that, “where there is no revelation, the people perish.”
Put another way, when God’s revealed truth is disdained by
the people and its leaders, the nation dies.
Genesis records God telling Abraham that not he, but his descendants,
would possess the land because “the iniquity of the Amorites
is not yet complete.” And an angel of the Lord told Lot that
Sodom and Gomorrah would be destroyed because the outcry against
the inhabitants had grown great before the Lord. The Bible does
not reveal the source of the outcry, but it may well have been nature
itself wailing against the cities’ acceptance of unnatural
sexual conduct. We do know, however, that “the land vomits
out its inhabitants” when unnatural sexual conduct reaches
a zenith (Lev. 18:25).
Only
God’s people
I am persuaded the only thing that will stay God’s hand of
righteous judgment is the intercession and repentance of the Church.
God’s will is not swayed by political or governmental action.
God’s hand is moved only by the prayers of His people. God
promises us in 2 Chronicles 7:14, “If My people, who are called
by My name, will humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and
turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, forgive
their sin, and heal their land.”
The current state of our nation is the fault of the Church, not
the State. It is the believer, not the unbeliever, who has pushed
America to the brink of destruction. Indeed, “the natural man
does not receive the things of God, for they are foolishness to
him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”
(1 Corinthians 2:14). Unregenerate man is, of course, “dead
in trespasses and sins” (Eph. 2:1). We cannot expect dead men
to do what is right.
The Church is commanded to be salt and light, which means to preserve
virtue and expose sin. Yet we have failed miserably in this task.
Thankfully, the Bible demonstrates that God has always accomplished
His purpose through a faithful remnant. God will heal our land only
in response to the true humility and supplication of this remnant.
Are you one of those faithful few?
Michael DePrimo is an attorney with American Family Association
Center for Law & Policy.
Meet
at City Hall, National Day of Prayer scheduled for May 6
National Day of Prayer (NDP) will have its 53rd annual event May
6. This year's theme is "Let Freedom Ring." In addition
to big events in Washington, D.C. and other cities, small towns
and rural communities across the nation will observe the day with
special meetings to pray for our nation and the world.
Meet at City Hall (MCH) is an AFA-sponsored project that meets
on the same day and supports the NDP programs and principles.
“In 1992, AFA saw a need for someone to encourage small communities
and towns to have a prayer event,” said AFA President Tim
Wildmon. “So we began Meet at City Hall.”
MCH’s trademark local event is so simple it requires very
little time to plan. Concerned citizens simply meet for 20 minutes
during their lunch break to pray for the nation – from their
community on up. The most common time frame is to begin at 12:20
and conclude at 12:40. Most MCH groups gather around a city hall
or county courthouse, include brief remarks from local government
officials and spend most of the short time in prayer.
AFA offers a bulletin insert for churches and other information
to help plan MCH at www.afa.net/mach. If not on the Internet,
check with a church office or public library to help locate the
information. Learn more about NDP at
www.nationaldayofprayer.org.
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