16. SERVING DIVERS LUSTS AND PLEASURES
“For we ourselves also were
sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and
pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another.”
(Titus 3:3)
“Lord Jesus Christ, my Creator God, Saviour of all the earth, and
soon-coming Judge. I trust in Thee fully for the purpose
of Thee delivering me from being foolish,
disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living
in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. Please make me fully aware that these evil natures
are most destructive to any human soul. Deliver me
from them all, I plead. Amen.”
My Friend, think most seriously and gravely on how
our degenerate mind naturally gravitates downward to dwell on degenerate
thoughts and how naturally those terrible thoughts come forth in our speech,
and then in our actions. Thus we desperately need God’s salvation
from such.
Adam and Eve’s “fall” produced a fallen, degenerate human race of
people, who naturally congregate to speak evil and to listen to evil
speech (feeding their minds on evil). No doubt but what there was plenty
of evil writings before the invention of the printing press. But when “mass
printing” came about, evil writings and drawings vastly multiplied,
enabling longer hours of indulging one’s mind in sin and evil by reading them.
Then the devil’s world gave us the “still” camera, making unlimited
images and likenesses for the human race to gaze upon, tho
the First of God’s Ten Commandments forbids us to make such images
and likenesses. Then, when the devil gave the human race the movie
camera, moving pictures were much more enticing to gaze
upon transfixed for long periods of time.
Only the Judge of all
the earth knows how many “innocent” people have been murdered by someone acting
out murder they saw in a moving picture. And The Righteous Judge will justly
judge each of us for our disobedience to the First of the Ten Commandments (not
the abbreviated form of it that zealous Christians want to hang everywhere, but
the whole commandment).
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make
unto thee any graven image, or any likeness
of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is
in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt
not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God.” (Exodus 20:3-5)
As the human race continues devouring the knowledge of good and evil (forbidden in Genesis 2:17) we degenerate to a hi tech age where the devil’s digital games that have the goal of killing as many images and likenesses as possible, become astonishingly popular among children and youth. Since the 1980s, those games from the devil have been training people to go out in public and kill as many people as possible. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7) Christians who refrain from acting out violence upon other people still enjoy watching it acted out in moving pictures, serving such divers lusts and pleasures by viewing them for “pleasure”. It is a sin against God to serve such divers lusts and pleasures thus wise.
Beware
that one way God punishes Christians’ sinful love to view “make-believe”
violence is let the “real thing” happen to them or to one of their
family members, thus bringing it down upon their own pate. My
Lord has blessed me ever so richly in that I have no moving
picture machines. I desire to be interceding before God for the human race with
such cries as: “Deliver us from evil. Let the
wickedness of the wicked come to an end. Today, Lord, render absolutely
powerless any wicked child of the devil planning a mass killing.”
“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor…” (Isaiah 59:16a) That word “wondered” means that God “marveled” that there was no intercessor. Instead of praying without ceasing, calling on God to put an end to evil and the destruction of human lives around us, Laodicean church folks spend much time taking pleasure in viewing such violence on a moving picture screen. Our Lord is soon to spue those people out of His Mouth. Read the short book of Lamentations to see precisely what that will entail. It will be unbearable torment.
Back about 2006, I was helping with chores at my
missionary friend’s Christian mountain “retreat center” here in Japan. Once, as
I sat in the dining room there, a young schoolteacher at a nearby table was
deriving much pleasure in “killing” the fast moving images
on his laptop screen. Repeatedly, “KILL” reverberated from the laptop’s
audio. (He was a teacher in a Christian school.) The vast evil
power in that hi tech reverberating sound strongly instills
within the hearer, the desire to act out what he or she hears. Thus,
mass murders abound today.
Once more: “Be not
deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever
a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7)
“Abba Father in Heaven,
please bestow great mercy upon me to save me from all
deception. Save me from mocking my Creator God in any way at all. Cause
me to always seriously bear in mind that, without
fail, I will reap what I sow. Please deliver me from all evil to
the utmost.
Please help me to fully
obey the First of Thy Ten Commandments, tho it now be a laughing matter to
most church members if anyone thinks that command means exactly
what it plainly says. Please completely do away with my desires
to view movie violence and to play hi tech games of violence and killing.
Please open mine eyes to the vast slaughter we are now
reaping because we have taken much pleasure in watching that
destruction of human life acted out in “make-believe”. Have mercy
on all us Christians, I plead, to save us to the utmost from all evil.
Amen.”
Richard Yerby (Matsuida,
Japan) www.Christ-is-all.us