Bridge over the Abyss

By William T. James

You and I are privileged to be living at the most exciting time in the history of the human race. Why is this the most exciting time? Is it because people of this generation are witnessing the formation of governmental power spheres precisely configured like those prophesied for the end of the age?

Is this the most exciting time to be alive because socioeconomic, technological, and religious conditions seem to be rearranging in the exact order that God's Word predicts they will be as the climax of history approaches? Or are these the most exciting times because the geophysical and astrophysical worlds around us more and more display dynamic upheaval like those prophesied for the apocalypse (awesome displays such as great earthquakes, violent storms, environment-changing volcanoes, devastating floods, and spectacular stellar cataclysms-for example, comets slamming into planets)?

Fear can be a powerful stimulus upon the process of generating excitement. Since the indicators strongly suggest that we stand at the very precipice of that horrific period that Jesus called the great tribulation, these are fearful signals indeed. Certainly, however, it would be inaccurate to say that it is a privilege to live in times that are exciting based solely on the fearful events we see occurring all around us. To be privileged implies living in conditions that are enjoyable. Fear-engendered excitement produces no enjoyment for rational-thinking people.

Steps Leading into the Abyss

News accounts coming at us in barrage after barrage from the many media outlets around the world report in large measure the most tragic aspects of the human condition. None are more tragic than instances of violence against children. Nothing that man perpetrates against his fellowman tears at our hearts more than the beastly activities engaged in by child pornographers.

A recent account involving child pornography sheds light on this sin-putrefied symptom of our times. The report detailed the indictment of 16 men on charges they participated in an international Internet pedophilia ring in which members once chatted on-line

while a 10-year-old girl was being molested According to the report, the men belonged to a club, a " chat room in which users swapped stories about child sex and conspired to produce and exchange sexually explicit images of girls as young as 5. .. .'

Although we can be thankful that this particular abominable operation was crushed, it was, statistics tell us, only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. The knowledge that even one child is at this very moment being subjected to such horrendous activity is heart-shattering. Yet thousands, perhaps millions, around the world endure this vileness which must regurgitate directly from the mind of Satan himself.

Child pornographers exhibit the fact that they are "without natural affection"-one of the major characteristics that Paul the apostle said would mark the end of the age (2 Timothy 3:3). For who with God-given natural affection can look into the beautiful, bright- eyed faces of little ones and conjure up the absolute abomination of child pornography?

The Homosexuality-Abortion Euthanasia Connection

How Satan hates God's creation called man! The creature God loved so much that He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die for continues to follow in the devil's footprints, which lead to the abyss.

Homosexuality is now termed "gay." The act that God indicts as being an abomination the Satan-controlled minds of men now call bright, happy, and alternate lifestyle. Despite the reality that AIDS and other deadly diseases such as hepatitis are directly attributable to their "gay lifestyle"-thus making it in fact a death- dealing existence-they refuse to cease their life-ending activity. God's Word says that they receive in themselves the recompense of their error which is fitting (Romans 1:27). God, in other words, says that they get what they deserve when they refuse to repent of their abominable activity.

Homosexuality cannot procreate, which further attests that Luciferian hatred is behind it. How better to kill off the human creation?

Abortion in the United States is a highly profitable business that delivers death on demand. Congress, as of this writing, is considering making legal the French-produced RU486 abortion pill.

Reprobate thinking dominates our culture today thinking that calls good evil and evil good, thinking that condones killing for the sake of expediency. As proof that ours is a generation steeped in reprobate thinking-that is, thinking that is convoluted, irrational, and even demented consider the following.

Rational, loving parents would never for a moment think about giving their child a cyanide capsule. Many of these same parents, however, would support legalizing the abortion pill and would themselves take the pills, effectively poisoning their children in the womb. Death on demand is made attractive when it is legitimized and comes nicely merchandized and packaged. Expedience and convenience declare to the reprobate mindset that the unwanted pregnancy equates merely to an upset stomach or a headache that must have a quick fix.

Euthanasia raises its Luciferian head during the last days of societal collapse. Whether considering the ancient Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Mayans, Incas, or Aztecs-or the more recent atrocities inflicted upon those under the Nazi regime, the systematic murdering of sick, disabled, and elderly people marked those cultures in the last stages of their decline and fall. Unwanted people were and continue to be discarded through genocide, such as that currently taking place in China, where girl babies reportedly are drowned by the millions.

Satan's hatred for God's creation called man is easily observable in our own time. "Dr. Death" is the nickname given a medical doctor who routinely involves himself in so-called "assisted suicides." The doctor's own words obviously betray his feelings about the sanctity of life and the Creator who gives it:

During a luncheon before the National Press Club, [Dr. Jack] Kevorkian defended himself and attacked the religious community, boasting: "Had Christ died in my van, with people around him who loved him, [it] would have been far more dignified.

Attempts made to convict him of murder have thus far failed. With each failure of justice comes the desensitizing effects. Ours is a generation quickly becoming anesthetized to the fact that euthanasia is murder. How near we must be to the time when God says, "Enough is enough!"

Homosexuality-abortion-euthanasia are inalterably linked to Satan's ravenous desire to destroy human beings. God's Word says that Satan "as a roaring lion walketh about, seeking whom he may devour" (1 Peter 5:8).

These rampant anti-God activities increasingly find acceptance, even among those who call themselves Christians. But homosexuality, abortion, and euthanasia represent a satanically inspired death wish for all people. Individually and collectively, these hellish practices oppose the one and only Lifegiver.

The Drug Abyss

God's prophetic Word tells us in unequivocal terms about the rebellious, blasphemous generation that will populate planet Earth during the time of the apocalypse, the closing years of this earth age, which Jesus referred to as a period of great tribulation.

"Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts" (Revelation 9:21).

The word "sorcery" is translated from the Greek word pharmakeia. The approximate equivalent is the English word "pharmacy," which means the art of preparing and dispensing drugs.

Drugs will flow through the veins of that endtime generation while those people blaspheme God even though they know His judgment is upon them. The people of apocalypse will refuse to repent and turn from their total immersion in drug addiction and every other imaginable sin even though their very souls hang in the balance.

Our evening newscasts are all we need to validate that we are already waist-deep in a cesspool of illicit drugs. Every crime on the books, it seems, can in one way or another be linked to the mind-altering poisons routinely distributed on the streets of every city in America. We have only to recall our last local news broadcast to remember a reporter saying something like "...police believe this [shooting, murder, robbery, etc.] was probably drug-related."

Gangs with members as young as seven years old willingly become slaves to drugs and the dealers who live luxuriantly on the billions of dollars generated. Governments are demonstrably inadequate to the task of stopping or even curbing drug trafficking. Politicians promise wars on drugs but inevitably prove impotent in fulfilling those promises once the electioneering is over.

A recent news item testifies that politicians and their mouthpieces view the drug problem as nothing to be concerned about, even if their own staff members are alleged to be heavily involved in illicit drug usage.

Barry McCaffrey, national drug control policy director, asked in Washington that all politicians stop trying to make an issue of whether an opponent has used drugs because "no good can come from it," adding, "Drug use was a generational thing, and we should just accept that and move on." Drug infection gushes through the nation's and the world's bloodstream, not only degenerating thought processes, but feeding lust and greed as well. Paul's words ring true today: "The love of money is the root of all evil" (I Timothy 6: 10).

People of the great tribulation era will not repent of their sorceries because, like the addicts and dealers of this present hour, they will be willing to pay any price to continue feeding their insatiable appetites. The tremendous growth we are witnessing in illicit drug trade is a foreshock of the coming Antichrist and his system-a system which will, no doubt, at the outset of Antichrist's reign, promise seemingly brilliant solutions to all problems, including those involving illicit drugs.

The Economic Abyss

Governmental and business institutions grow increasingly concerned about instability within world money markets. Stock market record highs, followed by wild fluctuations, cause worry and sometimes panic for global financial analysts. Despite the chaos, international banking conglomerates continue to merge and meld and network into what surely will soon become a one- world economic order.

The exponential growth in computer technology is without question moving our generation toward the time prophesied in Revelation 13.

Again, Antichrist will offer solutions to unbelievably complex fiscal problems produced when the four horsemen of the Apocalypse ride across the world, bringing war, famine, pestilence, and death. "It's the economy, stupid" might have been a catchy-if somewhat deceptive-political slogan during the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. Such a slogan will not be necessary during that future time of tremendous economic turmoil. Everyone will be agonizingly aware of the abyss in which they will be mired. They will beg the beast and his totalitarian system of computer control to institute world order.

Gods of the Abyss

New Age thought runs throughout government, business, and religion at all levels. Sadly, even evangelical Christianity suffers with New Age infection.

The same serpent who seduced Adam and Eve with the lie promising that they would be as God when they ate from the forbidden tree now whispers in the desensitized ears of this generation the same lie: " You will become gods when you follow the New Age pathways laid out for you by the ascended masters." But they are pathways leading to the endtime abyss of apocalypse.

Lucifer's soothing lie that proposes many ways to God's salvation salves the guilt-ridden conscience of fallen man. It appeals to the supremely arrogant pride that mankind inherited from father Adam when that first man determined to disobey his Creator and instead accept Satan's offer of godhood.

People today by and large think of salvation, of going to heaven when they die, as obtainable through self-effort. If one lives a good life, God will weigh this against the bad and the person will be found worthy based upon his or her personal accomplishments on the side of good. They need no atoning sacrifice by Jesus Christ to save them. Such is a narrow-minded concept they reject, even though the still, small voice convicts them of the truth during those lonely, empty times when their souls yearn for something, for someone to fill the void.

Doug Groothuis, assistant professor at Denver Seminary, and noted researcher and author on the New Age movement, recently pointed out who Jesus Christ is-rather, wasaccording to New Age thinking. He addressed the fact that New Age thought proclaims that there is no need for a Redeemer. Groothuis said:

The emphasis on Christ is not Christ as the unique and final liberator, the saviour of the human race because of what He's done through His [crucifixion and resurrection], but that He is kind of an example, the model for what we can do. Jesus was a man who [tapped into] the Christ energy for the Christ Potential. ... It's not biblical Christianity at all .... I

Groothuis, in further explaining the insidious influence the New Age movement inflicts on this generation, talked about Jean Houston, the New Age guru who spent considerable time with America's First Lady in the White House during the summer of 1996 as part of the now-famous Eleanor Roosevelt contact incident.

Groothuis said: [Jean Houston] is very influential. She leads seminars all over the country and in fact all over the world basically on how to release the divine potential within us all. She has referred to herself as a global midwife. She means by that ... we all have god within us. We all have the fullness of [deity] within us. But that somehow this god within us is stuck and we don't realize it, we don't actualize it so it's up to people like her to tell us we are divine and how to put that energy out into the world .

Groothuis went on to say that New Age theosophy purports that there is a latent, divine energy that makes up the universe. God is that energy. But there is no distinction between the Creator and the creation. Everything is one and we are all part of that great cosmic unity.

Groothuis said that according to Jean Houston and other New Age thinkers: ... the problem of the human race, the reason we have ecological problems, military crises, economic crises, etc., is not because of human sin against a holy God that has affected us all. It's because somehow we are suffering from a kind of divine amnesia. We have forgotten the divinity within ourselves. So her role is to be a catalyst or midwife to bring out the latent divinity inside of all Of US ....

Groothuis said that consulting channelers, mediums, and indulging in other occultic techniques to achieve one's goals instead of going to God in prayer is dangerous. He said, "... in fact, doing this sort of thing can lead to some kind of encounter with the demonic. We have to remember that Paul said Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light.... If [anything] is leading away from Christ and His gospel, then it's not of God."'

Despite such warnings, mankind strives pridefully closer to the abyss and eternal separation from God. One of the New Age movement's most reknowned contemporary leaders sums up the audacious claim that man does not need God because he is God!

The great and growing interest in Eastern philosophy and religion, in reincarnation or the law of rebirth and the power of mind over matter, this is part of a great shift in consciousness which is everywhere taking place and a direct result of our sense that the old molds of thought and feeling are no longer adequate to express our growing awareness of reality, thus revealing a readiness for a new revelation.

There is no doubt of a spiritual awakening which is everywhere taking place, which must eventually lead to an era of world brotherhood. The keynote of the coming Age of Aquarius.

What is happening now is the outcome of inner forces which are affecting great changes in human thinking and consciousness. This will result in the complete reorganization of the world's institutions and social structures which no longer answer man's true need. This will entail the reorganization of our political, economic, and financial systems along more rational and just lines.'

New Agers will achieve their paradigm shift to a society that is the antithesis of what God intended for man. The most vicious dictator ever known will then rule over that darkest period in human history, the black abyss of apocalypse.

The Bridge over the Abyss

People do not need to discover, then nurture, the Christ- consciousness within themselves. No such entity exists. People need Jesus Christ to fulfill the God-shaped void that exists within every man, woman, and child born since Adam brought sin into the world, thus separating himself and his progeny from God.

The Carpenter of Nazareth rebuilt the bridge over the abyss of eternal separation with timber constructed in the shape of the old rugged cross upon which He willingly bled and died for you and me. Christ's atoning sacrifice is God's chosen way to reconcile us to Himself. There is none other.

Foreshocks of the coming Antichrist are everywhere. Those fearful signals that the beast of Revelation 13 could very soon make his appearance upon the world stage should produce for the Christian not excitement based upon fear, but excitement based upon joyful anticipation. We are promised not Antichrist but Jesus Christ! (Read Revelation 3: 10 and John 14.)

No prophecy stands between this generation and the rapture. Christ's return for His church in the air above planet Earth is imminent. You too can be part of those who excitedly anticipate that unimaginably exhilarating microsecond wheniesus shouts "COME UP HITHER!"

Accept Him today and receive God's inward peace which assures that in life or in death, you are His own. So shall we ever be with the Lord.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus.

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