This Biblical Prophecy is Terrifying by Charles Lawson

TUESDAY, MAY 9, 2023 

CHRISTIANITY / PREACHING / JUDGEMENT

It's been a long while since I've heard a good, solid "fire and brimstone" sermon, and this one is a work of art.   This is old school Baptist teaching at it's finest.   His understanding of facts and information is amazing.   

This sermon is not a "prophecy" in the sense of prediction, this is prophecy in form of God's judgment.   

Watch until the end as the speaker, Charles Lawson, talks about how an unclean spirit returns, especially in the United States of America and how God gave them over to reprobate minds within these last days, according to this Biblical passage.

Matthew 12: 43 - 45 | When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. Then he takes seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first. So shall it also be with this wicked generation.” 

SPIRITUAL AND MATERIAL POVERTY

Sunday, April 2, 2023 

CHRISTIANITY / SALVATION

Is taking care of the poor an important part of our salvation?  Charles J. Chaput argues that it is.  

From the book "Strangers in a Strange Land" by Charles J. Chaput:

In our own time we tend to distinguish between spiritual and material poverty.  But in the Bible, these concepts are tightly linked!  The rich have wealth, but they become overly proud and ignore or oppress others.  They use their money to buy influence and exploit the needy.  They forget their dependence on God.  The poor man, by contrast, is always reminded of his dependence.  He will be humble and trust in the Lord.  

We see this clearly in Jesus' parable of Lazarus and the rich man.  The rich man had elegant clothes and ate sumptuously.  But he ignored Lazarus, who sat right at this gate, covered in sores that the dogs licked.  Every time he entered or left his house the rich man would pass Lazarus, yet he did nothing to ease his needs.  When the rich man died, he ended up in Hades.  Now he suffered, while Lazarus sat in the bosom of Abraham.  

The story underscores a simple fact: If we don't love the poor, we will go to hell.  If we let our possessions blind us to our dependence on God, we will go to hell.   If we let food and clothes and all the other distractions of modern life keep us from seeing the needs of our neighbors, we will go to hell.  

We might assume that Scripture condemns the wealthy.  But that's not the case.  As the early Church Fathers noted, the Lazarus parable is really a tale of two rich men: an unnamed callous one, and the patriarch Abraham.  Abraham was a rich man who never forgot his dependence on God.  Whereas the wealthy sinner let Lazarus wallow in squalor, Abraham welcome the three strangers with rich food.  Abraham was generous and shared his abundance, always remembering that everything he owned was a gift from God.  The lesson is obvious: Possession is really about service.  When it's not, we become slaves to our goods instead of living in a culture of interior freedom."

Strangers in a Strange Land
by Charles J. Chaput
published by St. Martin's Griffin
ISBN: 978-1-250-15962-5 (trade paperback)
pg 170-171

PEOPLE OF THE LIE

Truth, in all of its forms, must be the primary goal of a person's life.  The pursuit of truth often ends up being the pursuit of God.   But when people prefer lying to the truth, things go downhill quickly.   

From the book "Strangers in a Strange Land" by Charles J. Chaput:

Over the course of decades, Dr. Peck met patients who didn't fit a standard diagnosis but thad certain recurring traits.   These persons showed chronic disregard for the good of others to the point of causing grave psychological harm.  They were subtly but pervasively self-centered.  Their symptoms were broader than narcissistic personality disorder, but they weren't sociopaths.   They knew right from wrong.   

But their main shared trait was the habit of lying.  They al lied constantly and effortlessly about everything--especially about themselves, to themselves.   As such, they were opaque even to highly trained therapists.  More important, they were opaque to themselves.  For Peck, the "layer upon layer of self-deception" that "people of the lie" build up insulates them so thoroughly from truth that they no longer recognize it. Their own irreproachability is their only truth.  

Peck didn't mince words.  He calls such persons evil.  While he fleshes out his use of that word in his book, he never backs away from it.  Peck's "evil" people erect so many defenses against self-examination and repentance that these become almost impossible without a miracle of grace.

"People of the lie" embody Aristotle's teaching on the formation of character.  They don't wake up one morning and decide to be cruel.  Rather, they accumulate years of decisions to ignore the true good in favor of their own apparent good, until they fully identify their own will with what's genuinely good.  

As Peck notes, this reveals itself as a preoccupation with appearances.   "While they seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good.  Their 'goodness' is all on a level of pretense.  It is, in effect, a lie".  The evasion of truth soon makes their entire lives little more than an intricate ruse.  

For these morally crippled creatures, the pretense of goodness salves the scares of conscience that do exist, but have been routinely ignored and abused.  "The central defect of the evil [person] is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it."  We all sin, of course, but the unwillingness to take any responsibility for our sins implies a more deeply damaged spirit.  And so the evil person doubles down on his or her lies by cultivating false appearances and scapegoating the innocent.

As Peck puts it, "We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves.  The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as part of [the] cover-up process.  Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it." 


Strangers in a Strange Land

"Living the Catholic Faith in a Post-Christian World"

by Charles J. Chaput

Published by St. Martin's Griffin

ISBN: 978-1-250-15962-5 (trade paperback)

pg. 113-114