Dear Editor,

It’s 1861 and Abraham Lincoln is giving his Inaugural speech. His words float over an angry landscape seeing that his beloved union may end up a divided nation. He mentions one small phrase at the end of his acceptance as President of a nation on the verge of civil war. “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Lincoln hoped that passion would give way to reason, and that the Union would restore its luster in the eyes of a divided nation.

His dream of a United States is almost gone now. I believe the second civil war is coming. But this war won’t be about state rights and slavery. It will be much deeper and will be of a more visceral nature. Hatred abounds. But this division just hasn’t suddenly happened. There was no spontaneous combustion. No this hatred was planned and shaped on Satan’s potter’s wheel of greed, power, deception and denial of our true Savior. It was hatred shaped in the classrooms of prestigious universities in the 1960s and now has flowered into the death of Judeo-Christian western civilization.

In Hosea 4:6 we find the truth of the matter: “because thou hast rejected knowledge (Word of God), I will also reject thee, that thou shalt be no priest to me: seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, I will also forget (thy children.”)

Day after day, I see our youth become unrecognizable because the fathers and mothers rejected the real truth of God. Christian in name only dominates most churches. We searched for happiness instead of His steadfast joy and never really contemplated the reality of happiness’s fleeting gift. We pay the piper for that now.

We fell like pagan nations into the worship of false gods. We looked into the mirror daily and silently proclaimed that we would throw off Jesus Christ, the 10 commandments and publicly disown the scriptures. We would worship self and indulgence. “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain the kings of the earth rise up and the rulers band together against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, ‘Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles.’ The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them. He rebukes them in his anger and terrifies them in his wrath, saying, “I have installed my king on Zion, my holy mountain.” Psalms 2:1-6

Did we not learn anything from history? Our children chase those we are to bless, according to Genesis 12:3, into buildings and scream epithets of hatred and death. Anyone who denies the blessings and curses of the Old and New Testament will not inherit heaven, nor will that nation be powerful or survive..

The world may soon be on fire. It may not come in a day, or a week, or a month … but it is surely coming. It’s time to put away the foolish things of life. It’s time to stop worshiping the government, justice system, economics, education, media, military, and self. The false gods are being stripped away. It’s time to repent and rely on the only hope we have. Come Lord Jesus. It is only through Him, that we can become, “the better angels of our nature.”

Randy Marple

Shadyside