The Great Divide

Good morning everyone! Would you please open your Bibles and turn with me to a very familiar passage, . Would everyone please stand as I read from this passage? (READ FROM BIBLE!) _________THEN OPEN IN NATIONAL DAY OF PRAYER FOR HURRICANE HARVEY (which landed in Texas August 25, 2017)!

Over the last two Wednesday evenings, I have been speaking on some events that have happened and are due to happen in the coming weeks.

I spoke the Wednesday before this last, on the Total Solar Eclipse that took place on August 21, 2017 and then this past Wednesday evening, I spoke mainly about the astronomical anomaly that is due to take place on September 23, 2017.

On each of these amazing events, I mentioned things that are fascinating and that also have Biblical relevance for the church.

I mentioned to those that were here for those teachings, what I am going to, AGAIN, mention right now to all of you who are here, this morning, as well as those who are tuned in and watching this live:

I did NOT make, nor am I making now, any statements or predictions about the rapture, the tribulation and the second coming of Jesus Christ!

I don’t want anyone listening to say or think, “Oh great, there’s one of those “jump on the bandwagon” fanatics who thinks that the end is coming this week!

I only mentioned what I spoke on, because the Bible, in more than one place, both OLD and NEW Testaments, states that the heavenly bodies were placed in the sky as signs and indicators for us to observe.

And that I firmly believe, that although we cannot know exact times and dates, we can observe that the time is drawing close, based upon God’s billboard in the sky! (That the season is very near to its end!)

Also, I find the creation and precision of these astronomical bodies that God placed in the heavens to be extremely fascinating to observe! (Especially when they were predicted to happen some 2,000 years ahead of time!) AMEN?!

Well, this morning, I would like to present something to you that is also a sign that we need to be VERY AWARE of as the church and also, as a nation!

I would like to show you a few slides this morning, if I may, that deal with different types of diseases!

Start slides of former diseases:

Smallpox - Was one of the more famous diseases, which was a disfiguring and potentially fatal disease. (It has been discovered in Egyptian mummies from the 3rd century BC!) There was, at one time, 2 forms of the disease that existed WORLD- WIDE. Some experts believe that over the centuries, smallpox was responsible for more deaths than all other infectious diseases combined!

However, what makes this disease famous now, is that in 1980, the World Health Organization announced that this disease had been ERADICATED by means of a vaccine that began to be administered.

Polio - An infectious disease whose symptoms vary from none to paralysis and death! IT has been traced back almost 6,000 years! The spread of the disease can be prevented through vaccination; so it has almost been eradicated!

Measles - A highly contagious virus that is spread throughout the world and is contagious by breathing in the air that an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks!

According to the WHO, measles is one of the leading causes of death among children around the world.

Measles are now controlled and prevented through vaccinations and mass immunization campaigns around the world!

Yellow Fever - A virus spread through mosquito bites. It is called “yellow fever” because of the damage it does to the liver thus causing a yellowish coloration of the skin (a.k.a. jaundice). It is preventable through a vaccine.

Typhoid Fever - A bacterial infection that is spread through food or beverages. It is now treatable with antibiotics that kill the bacteria and there is a vaccine for it as well for people who are traveling to high risk countries.

Probably the most famous case of this disease was in the early 1900’s with the woman who worked as a cook, nick-named, Typhoid Mary!

Whooping Cough (Pertussis) - Is one of the most HIGHLY contagious diseases there is! It is spread through infected droplets that travel through a person’s breath. It is named from its frightening high pitched whooping sounding cough that the infected person produces. This cough can become so severe that it makes getting a breath difficult and even to the point of cracking ribs and abdominal hernias.

It is controllable through a vaccinations and also booster shots.

Tuberculosis - Or more commonly called “TB”, is a bacterial disease that likes to attack the human lungs! In the early 1900’s, one of every seven people died from TB, in fact, it was once the leading cause of death in the US.

It is now treatable with medication and vaccinations.

Tetanus - Also known as, “lockjaw”, due to its effect of tightening the muscles of the jaw and the neck to the point of them not allowing the mouth to open, or allow for swallowing or eating, is a bacterial disease that is spread most commonly through puncture wounds.

It is preventable with a vaccine and booster shots.

Varicella Virus (Chicken Pox/Shingles) - A virus that is highly contagious through direct contact or through the air. It is more serious in adults who contract chicken pox. Although it used to be the norm to just allow each child to become exposed to the virus and thus develop their immunity to it, they now recommend being vaccinated for it to prevent serious cases in small children!

In adults, when the DORMANT virus re-emerges, it comes back as the ever popular, SHINGLES!

Finally the last disease that I want to show you, which is the oldest and most deadly of them all, this disease is:

HATE - It is a disease that has been around since the fall of man and it is spread through many mediums. It is spread through words, actions, thoughts, beliefs and ignorance!

Hate, like other diseases, has different names and manifestations.

More commonly, within society and as we have seen so much of recently, it manifests in the forms of bigotry and racism.

Probably the most noted outbreak of this virus was in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12, 2017.

I have watched and read so many stories and accounts about this one incident and all of the backlash that it is generating.

The thing is, the disease of hate and its signs and symptoms are not a new subject within the news. It is not something that has just crept into our society here in the United States within the last year or so.

In fact, it is not inherent to or even indigenous to the United States! It is a PANDEMIC, GLOBAL DISEASE!

One that first truly manifested and was recorded all the way back within the Bible in with Cain killing his own brother Abel!

It is one that all people of all races and all sexes and ages are prone to contracting!

In fact, its very biological coding is built into every child that is born, worldwide! (OR MORE SIMPLY PUT, WE ARE ALL BORN WITH A GENETIC PREDISPOSITION FOR THE DISEASE OF HATE!)

As soon as Adam and Eve yielded to temptation and the first sin came about, the spiritual genetic coding for hate was passed down for all times and for all nations that would ever exist!

I have sat and watched numerous news reports and read numerous articles about the atrocity that took place in Charlottesville, VA three weeks ago.

The thing that really jumps out at me and that I wanted to mention this morning, is that there are people that are actually blaming a person, or a group of people, or several groups of peoples for this hideous event!

There are many within the media who are blaming this upon the President of the United States and/or all of the men and women who voted for the President!

I have read articles from different journalists, some of which are writers for Christian publications and magazines, following the Charlottesville incident, that stated that it was the obligation of every preacher within this country, the very next time that they stood behind the pulpit, to denounce and teach against the “white supremacy” groups and their kind and state why they are wrong!

First of all, let me go on the record and say a few things in response to this:

As a preacher, called by GOD HIMSELF to teach and preach and declare the TRUTH of the Word of God and the Gospel Message, my duty and my responsibility, as should be the case for every preacher of the Gospel Message in the entire WORLD, is to do exactly as HE TELLS US to do!

I am not swayed to move or do or say anything unless HE directs me to!

The moment that we, as preachers, begin to use the pulpit to respond to the world as the enemy, the devil, is moving, (and that is exactly what happened in Charlottesville, VA, the devil’s sickness was displayed), then we become pawns of the enemy and not preachers of the Word!

NO, I am not saying that it is wrong to teach against the ploys and the sickness of the enemy, (such as is the case with racial hatred), but I am saying that every called man and woman of God, have the same responsibility to preach and teach and declare the message as the Holy Spirit of God moves within us; NOT AS THE WORLD IS MOVING AROUND US!!!!!!!!!

Yes, most definitely, any group who is moved by hate and bigotry and prejudice of another group is wrong; HATE and the actions of hate filled groups, as we witnessed a few weeks ago is WRONG; they are anti- God and thus they are sin!

But, we, as Christians, are to called to be the LIGHT and the SALT of the earth!

We are to look different and sound different in every way from the world and stand out from its darkness!

If all that we do is start yelling back and posting our thoughts and our judgments of others then we look no different to the world; we blend in!

People are blaming this group and that group and this person and that person for the hate crimes and the bigotry. There are those that are blaming the Christian church in America as part of the reason for what has happened in this country in relation to all of the hate and racial problems.

And I am sure that there are men and women from years ago, just as there are today, who were and are scared to teach the ENTIRE TRUTH of the Word of God so as not to offend and ruffle any feathers and lose any parishioners!

And likewise, there are those who have come under the anonymity of the church and in the name of Jesus and have taught HATE to others.

Does anyone remember a very famous historical figure who was notorious for his HATE of other racial groups, in particular the Jewish people. His name was Adolph Hitler and if you go back and research his rise to power, when he first came on the scene, he would publically say that he was a follower of Jesus Christ!

He often taught virtues from the Bible within his speeches, as he challenged the people to LOVE their neighbor, to care for the poor and the sick and to take a stand against violence!

Hitler himself, said that he believed that he was acting on behalf of the Almighty Creator!

In fact, in many of his early speeches, he invoked the name of God and did so to deceive the masses into believing that he was genuinely a Christian!

The sole reason that Hitler went to these great lengths, was because he wanted to win the favor of the churches and the Christians. He did so because he knew that they would oppose his plans if he didn’t convince them otherwise! HE OPENLY CAME TO THE CHURCH AND DECEIVED IT SO AS TO SPREAD HIS HATE!!

You know, Jesus, Himself, warned us against those who would come in to deceive others in the church and under the covering of HIS NAME. , and 24-25 Jesus says:

“Jesus told them, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. And many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people. For false messiahs and false prophets will rise up and perform great signs and wonders so as to deceive, if possible, even God’s chosen ones. See, I have warned you about this ahead of time.”

And the outcome of this deception that He mentioned within this passage is given to us within the same passage where Jesus says, “And many will turn away from me and betray and HATE each other. Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold.”

That is exactly what we saw three weeks ago and what is happening all across this nation and all around the world every day!

THE LOVE OF MANY IS GROWING COLD!

And I believe that it is IMPERATIVE to state that deception is running rampant within churches all over this nation.

As the body of Christ, we need to remember what warning was given to us in , “In the last times there would be scoffers whose purpose in life is to satisfy their ungodly desires. These people are the ones who are creating divisions among you. They follow their natural instincts because they do not have God’s Spirit in them.”

As followers of Jesus Christ, we have to be exactly as He told His disciples when He was sending out the twelve into the towns to declare the kingdom message. He told them, “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and harmless as doves.”

The shepherd was sending out the sheep into the wolf pack! This was the defenseless coming up against the destroyer!

And how did He instruct them to react against the hate and violence of the world?

Through wisdom and shrewd (prudent) actions when facing the hate of the world, while being governed by a gentle spirit (harmless as doves)!

We are to operated with wise, Godly decisions, Holy Spirit led decisions, founded on the Word of God, NOT OF MEN!

And we are to face hostility and hate and violence, with the gentle/harmless nature of a dove. Or maybe it is better understood that we come against these hostile encounters with the guidance of and enabling of Holy Spirit : “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,   gentleness, and self-control.”

We must engage the HATE of this world through the guidance of Holy Spirit. Even if you and I mean well as Christians and try to answer those who are filled with HATE and hurting, using our own intellect and thoughts, it will not dismantle the HATE and show true love as it would if we had approached them with the wisdom of God! (His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are not our thoughts!)

There is no doubt that there is DIVISION within this country. A poll taken this past year, showed that 77% of Americans perceive or think that our nation is divided!

HATE has become a common dividing word used by many to describe, not only certain groups and individuals, but the church as well!

You see, as long as we stand on the truth of the Word of God and DO NOT change it to appease the world or blend in WITH the world, then the world and its followers will accuse us of being BIGOTS and HATERS!

Remember, that Jesus, Himself, said, “Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace to the earth! I came not to bring peace, but a sword. I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Your enemies will be right in your own household!”

Why did Jesus say this?

Simple, because the truth of the kingdom message will be recieved by some, but rejected by many!

Thus leading to DIVISION and all the while making us as objects of HATE!

Jesus warned us, “If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of the world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.”

Just as I started off by showing you different diseases within the world, let me use that same logic to make a point.

The disease that we recognize as SCURVY, is actually, nothing more than the human body reacting to the absence or loss of vitamin C.

Well, the disease known as HATE, as I have called it here today, is actually nothing more than the human body reacting to the absence or the loss of the LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST!

And we as Christians, YOU AND I, we cannot respond and react to the world when things happen, the same way they do! (WE CAN’T FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE!)

The world responds to acts of hate with hate and does it in the name of love!

However, the true LOVE OF GOD, compels us to respond to acts of hate with only LOVE!

Just as Jesus taught us, we, as Christians, the light of the world, are not to respond to hate with words and acts of aggression.

Think about it, the whole time that Jesus walked this earth, how many times do you read of Him openly reacting to and giving any real acknowledgement to the devil?

I can think of a couple of times that stand out: the wilderness, when He openly confronted satan and whipped him and then when Jesus spoke to the the devil when he was using Peter to try to deter Jesus and Jesus said, “Get away from Satan!”

My point is, everywhere Jesus went, the devil was putting people and situations in His path to deter and try to provoke Jesus into an open confrontation of anger; thus producing a HATE match with the devil.

Yet, Jesus responded with wisdom and love and shut the devil down every time! (SO SHOULD WE!)

He didn’t try to fight Satan using the devil’s strategy, (aggression, anger and pride), but rather, Jesus used the wisdom and love of Holy Spirit to dismantle the attacks of the enemy!

There is one other thing when it comes to how we respond to hostile situations and issues of HATE, that I would like to revisit with you today.

I touched on this a couple of weeks ago, but it truly has been a factor in this whole nationwide division and HATE issue in that we’re talking about today. That thing that I am referring to, is the use of our smartphones and social media!

The use of social media to respond back to violent, aggressive and HATE filled acts, has caused a whirlwind of negativity between people all over this nation!

The ability to quickly post whatever comes to mind and without the inhibitions that would normally come from fact to face interaction. as well as the boldness we gain to say things that would normally be squelched, due to the presence of others, has made social media a playground for the devil!

Listen to this article from TIME MAGAZINE about social media and HATE propagation:

Anger is particularly contagious on social media. Researchers at Beihang University in Beijing mapped four basic emotions in more than 70 million posts and found that anger is more influential than other emotions like sadness and joy--it spreads faster and more broadly. This is as much a physical phenomenon as a mental one. Anger gives us a burst of adrenaline and sparks a fight-or-flight response in our nervous system. That in turn can lead to a spike in cortisol, the stress and anxiety hormone. This leaves us even more triggered the next time. And all that is terrible for our health.

No wonder it feels as if the nation is a little sick. It's as if we all have a virus and some of us are more vulnerable to it than others. That is in fact how some social scientists are describing the spread of rage and division. Violence and violent speech meet the criteria of disease, says Dr. Gary Slutkin, founder of Cure Violence and faculty of the University of Illinois, Chicago. Like a virus, violence makes more of itself. Rage begets more rage. And it spreads because we humans are wired to follow our peers.

We were not given our spiritual freedom as followers of Christ, to take liberty in joining in with the rest of the world and bashing other people through the means of social media, or in any other way, (regardless of whether they are at fault or not)!

This is how so many “Christians” justify their gossip and messages of HATE on social media; they do so as prayer requests! (“I want to ask for prayer for our dear sister Katherine and start a prayer chain for her to EVERYONE that you know and that knows her as well! She is back on the booze again and, bless her heart, she has had a few acts of indiscretion as well! Please forward this to everyone that you know and that knows dear, sweet sister Katherine!”)

I would like to jokingly say that Facebook has become like a church of sorts to some people, but listen to this, “The billionaire boss of Facebook recently said groups on Facebook could give people a sense they are part of “something bigger than ourselves” akin to a religious congregation. He has claimed Facebook is “the new church” and the social network can take on the role that religion once did in giving people a sense of community.

Not only are we getting too attached to these programs as our means of daily social interactions, but they are also affecting many people’s effectiveness in their prayer lives to the Lord.

What I mean is this: say I’m on Facebook and I have 1,000 friends listed (which is not hard to do)and out of those, say 50 of them have said that they or someone very close to them is requesting prayer for something, then what do most people do? They respond with something like, “Prayers going out” and then move on to the next comment.

Now this doesn’t mean that many of us don’t take a quick moment and blurt out a 10 second, “God help them” prayer!

But the thing is, most people can’t keep up with the barrage of names and requests that they come across and many times, guilt and condemnation come with this scenario!

You run into Mr. Smith a month after you and countless others said you would be praying for his sick wife, and then you find out that his wife passed away and you could’t even remember until right at that moment, that you had even said you would pray for them!

We are supposed to be a part of a church family who we go to with our prayers and concerns and lift up one another!

Listen to this I have a story here of a gentleman whose family had a prayer chain started for him and his battle with cancer in 2011. About a month or so, after this prayer chain on Facebook started, his family posted that he had passed away.

Then, 6 years later, this same exact prayer chain for the exact same guy resurfaced and was being passed around again as a prayer chain!

The thing is, there is so much information being passed around about so many people and so many requests and so many needs, we almost become too knowledgeable about others personal lives for our own good and we become bombarded with things that we don’t even know to be true!

I like what one writer said of this, he wrote, “There are some things I really love about social media. I’m not suggesting it’s evil or that it shouldn’t be used. But it has this weird way of granting me semi God-like omniscience without God-like omnipotence. In other words, it makes me aware of much more without enabling me to do anything with my limited knowledge.”

In other words, it makes me aware of much more without enabling me to do anything with my knowledge.

(ASK FOR THOSE WILLING TO DO A 3 DAY FAST FROM THEIR DEVICES!)

Let me close with this thought, in , Jesus said this, “So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”

To love one another was not a new command, BUT to love one another as Jesus loves us was radically new and different!

JUST AS EACH ONE OF THE OPENING DISEASES HAS A VACCINE OR ANTIDOTE, SO IT IS FOR THE DISEASE OF HATE; IT’S ANTIDOTE IS THE LOVE OF JESUS CHRIST!