Troubulation: The title is not an accidental misspell.
The etymological relationship between Tribulation and Trouble is apparent.
The trouble with the word TRIBULATION is that (even most and sober) believers are often inclined to see Tribulation only as a period of time. TROUBLE however has daily, even conversational qualities about it. Whether or not a student of scripture is recognizing the times in which we live as the early stages of the SEASON of tribulation, or not, is between you and the Lord. I have my opinions. Peruse the www.ez3728.com blog site if you like. There’s both word and theme search facilities.
Regardless of opinion re this being “just seasonal” or “the season” of trouble, most everyone on earth can see there’s lots of trouble happening around us, on all fronts. And the tendency, even for saints, is to address the symptoms as opposed to addressing the root cause(s) – the “disease”, if you will.
God meanwhile, in crafting a world far more glorious and more complexly wired than we might recognize, tells us, in varying places in His word, how things are put together. Even with such revelation, we would do well to understand His ways are not our ways. There are things people do or participate in on earth, unaware of resultant effects or consequences that might manifest in the heavenly as well as natural realms.
The Wiring Mystery and Complexity of God – imagine something like this – except make-believe-change some of the labels from Limit Switch, Diode, Solenoid or Battery to Rebellion and Abortion and Ungodliness and Pornography and even Divorce (Mal 2:16). Add some labels like Wickedness and Violence, and Disunity and War. Of course all of God’s creation is not about the negative. Other parts of the Divine wiring diagram would be labeled Kindness, Friendship, Love, Healing, Restoration, etc. God’s creation is a GOOD plan. He’s done a great work. We’re the ones who have cut, twisted, and even attempted to redesign and rewire His great work. The point to the metaphorical illustration is: we impact things, for the negative or the positive. And this writing happens to be about the troubles we are experiencing in our nation right now. As I write, flags are at half-staff.
Horrific outbursts of violence in our society often generate responses and conditions, most all of which might be well-intended efforts (from varying perspectives) to address and terminate Symptoms. Yet the Disease continues.
Meanwhile, called to be shining lights in a darkening world (Isa 60:1) as believers we are invited and called and charged to dig deeper, study soberly, pray in alignment with the word of God, understand the ramifications of compliance and defiance to His word, and to speak the truth in love to all around us.
Scriptural-Wiring Truth:
Psalms 12:8
8 The wicked prowl on every side,
When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.
There’s correlations between situations and sins and sufferings, between lifestyle choices and how things go socially, between covenant relationship (personal, marital, national) and blessing or accountability.
The cause and effect of unholy national living is chillingly played out throughout scripture, and is currently chillingly playing out in the streets of America. At the risk of offending some: It is not about gun violence. Guns happen to be a tool of choice. Removing the tool will not remove the violence. Of course careful monitoring of gun-accessibility is a good thing, but most violent criminals don’t shop for legal guns in hunting stores. Meanwhile, were we to magically eliminate guns (I won’t even begin to address governments that illegalized guns prior to becoming military dictatorships), violence would take on other forms. Man-“kind” killed mankind thousands of years before the invention of gunpowder.
The issue is a deepening and intensifying worldwide sin climate. We are where we are in the prophetic biblical timeframe. Read the whole book. A defiant world has sown rebellion to God for millenniums. The crop of trouble has been watered by everything from counterfeit religions to greed to perversion to spineless and impotent churchianity. The God-intended “salt of the earth” church has for the most part modeled a tasteless and powerless and boring God to a starving and dying world, and the world has understandably looked elsewhere.
2 Timothy 3:1-2
1 But know this, that in the last days perilous times will come: 2 For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, ……
AGAIN: Psalms 12:8
8 The wicked prowl on every side,
When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.
Vileness exalted has opened a floodgate for acts of wickedness, just as God’s wiring diagram of creation has intended. (Isa 1:19-20).
Our covenant nation, has sadly brought it upon ourselves.
The fix is not REbuild, or REstructure, or REvision of laws. Nor is it about REpublican or Democrat. The issue is REpentance.
Here’s more eternal truth, with a promise:
2 Chronicles 7:14
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, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.
Defining “vileness” is reasonably clear. Investigation into what God loves and calls us to walk in, and comparing that to what God hates and particularly what God cites as abomination, paints a reasonably clear picture.
Repentance goes beyond sorry. There’s a “turning-away” component to repentance. A purposeful change as to how things are done, handled, embraced, ignored.
The Psalm 12:8 citation of “wickedness” is about a spirit, not an act. The wicked acts are the symptoms/ Wickedness is a spirit that is unleashed and in fact fueled, by vileness.
Pornography, abortion, intentional crime, same-sex marriage, happen to be abominations to the Lord.
A covenant nation, in particular, is responsible for its actions.
The result is violence.
Jeremiah 40:3
3 Now the Lord has brought it, and has done just as He said. Because you people have sinned against the Lord, and not obeyed His voice, therefore this thing has come upon you.
We’re shown, from the past, that unchecked, it can drive things to a terrible condition.
Isaiah 1:15
15 When you spread out your hands,
I will hide My eyes from you;
Even though you make many prayers,
I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.
Deuteronomy 32:16-17
16 They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods;
With abominations they provoked Him to anger.
17 They sacrificed to demons, not to God,
To gods they did not know,
To new gods, new arrivals
That your fathers did not fear.
Psalms 106:37-38
37 They even sacrificed their sons
And their daughters to demons,
38 And shed innocent blood,
The blood of their sons and daughters,
Whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan;
And the land was polluted with blood.
“Ah but wait! Those verses are Old Testament! We’re under the blood of the cross.”
Indeed we are. So was Paul – the converted murderer that God redeemed and called to speak into the great true grace of God that would be upon us who believe. He wrote the book of Romans.
That blossoming church – and all who would read the New Testament in subsequent years, are presented with these eternal truths:
Romans 1:16-32
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.
17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “The just shall live by faith.”
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
24 Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves,
25 who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature.
27 Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;
29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers,
30 backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents,
31 undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful;
32 who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.
I am of the personal opinion that the teaching and preaching (and writing) of the above verses will shortly be cited as a hate crime, an insensitivity to alternative lifestyles, groups, trends, and “progressive” movements of society. That too is foretold to us in scripture.
It’s all in the book that few want to read, and at which even fewer choose to tremble.
Meanwhile, the troubling work is by our merciful God who is:
A. Not willing that any should perish but that all might come to repentance; AND
B. Has called His saints out of darkness and expressly admonished and even warned us not to partake in the sins of this life; AND
C. In love, to warn every man.
QUES TO US ALL: Before criticizing the unsaved, who are accountable though they may not know any better, are we, with the added accountability of knowledge, in any manner contributing to vileness being exalted, that in turn opens the wider door for wickedness?
Would anyone care to own the fact that in any way supporting or contributing to pornographic activity contributed to a spiritual climate that fostered mass shootings? That X-rated movie one might watch, or market, or participate in, in part unleashes wickedness. Refer back to the wiring diagram example, sort of. We don’t know what our own sin fertilizes.
In denying the God our forefathers covenanted to serve, in provoking Him to action by legislation of laws and policies that contradict holy principles, we are collectively bringing a curse upon our nation. That curse is violence.
SOME STATS TO CONSIDER:
SUICIDE – Suicides per day in the U.S.: 123
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_the_United_States
ABORTION: U.S. abortions per year: approx. 650,000
From 1970 through 2015, a PRO-CHOICE organization, the Guttmacher Institute estimates there have been 45,789,558 abortions in America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_statistics_in_the_United_States
DIVORCE AND BROKEN FAMILY:
The American Psychological Association estimates 50% of all marriages end in divorce, and although there has been a slight drop in that rate it is because younger adults are not marrying until later in life – many are living with each other outside of marriage.
https://www.apa.org/topics/divorce/
PORNOGRAPHY
https://www.webroot.com/us/en/resources/tips-articles/internet-pornography-by-the-numbers
Every Second:
28,258 users are watching pornography on the internet.
$3,075.64 is being spent on pornography on the internet.
372 people are typing the word “adult” into a search engine.
Every Day:
37 pornographic videos are created in the United States.
2.5 billion emails containing porn are sent or received.
68 million search queries related to pornography- 25% of total searches- are generated.
116,000 queries related to child pornography are received.
FAIR QUES: Are any of us opening the door to vileness further?
Isaiah 66:1-2
1 Thus says the Lord: “Heaven is My throne,
And earth is My footstool.
Where is the house that you will build Me?
And where is the place of My rest?
2 For all those things My hand has made,
And all those things exist,”
Says the Lord.
“But on this one will I look:
On him who is poor and of a contrite spirit,
And who trembles at My word.
Our great and loving and merciful and patient God loves mankind so much that He sent His Son to carry all of the sins of anyone who would repent. How spectacular is THAT?
Back to Psalm 12, in its fullness there’s an assurance for the saint in the distinction between the wicked and righteous:
Psalms 12
1 Help, Lord, for the godly man ceases!
For the faithful disappear from among the sons of men.
2 They speak idly everyone with his neighbor;
With flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3 May the Lord cut off all flattering lips,
And the tongue that speaks proud things,
4 Who have said,
“With our tongue we will prevail;
Our lips are our own;
Who is lord over us?”
5 “For the oppression of the poor, for the sighing of the needy,
Now I will arise,” says the Lord;
“I will set him in the safety for which he yearns.”
6 The words of the Lord are pure words,
Like silver tried in a furnace of earth,
Purified seven times.
7 You shall keep them, O Lord,
You shall preserve them from this generation forever.
8 The wicked prowl on every side,
When vileness is exalted among the sons of men.
(scripture: NKJV)
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