Knowing the Difference

By: Bill Johnson

Recently, I was energized and encouraged by the opportunity to speak in Calumet Township, Michigan to a group of people from such communities as Hancock, Houghton, Calumet, Chassell.

Only a few years earlier we had worked with Mary Sears, Calumet Township Christian activist, to help get our friend, Phil Haney (now with the Lord since February 2000) to speak at the UP C-PAC.  Our friends from the Pilots for Christ, Michigan Chapter, flew Phil up to Escanaba for us for this special opportunity back in that day.    Mary and her compatriots are still faithfully standing up for His righteousness in the upper northwest region of Michigan, the land of the embattled mine workers who served our nation so importantly back when copper mining was one of the nation’s most vital and difficult demands as our nation faced growing needs for this vital element.  These words below represent a small part of the heart of my message on Tuesday, June 21, 2023.

Years ago, while at a state director’s meeting in Tupelo, MS with other directors from around the country, I knew in advance that I would be given an opportunity to share a few words.  Knowing the love and admiration that we all felt toward our leader, the Rev. Donald E. Wildmon, founder and then President of American Family Association, I felt compelled to go back through some of Don’s AFA Journal personal notes.  They were prophetic then as they are now. Prophetic and powerful. Here are just a couple of a rather long list (each followed by brief comments):

May/June 1985: “George Gerbner, Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg School of Communications, said recently that in the past religion provided the values by which our moral behavior was determined but that today TV has taken over that role.  ‘TV is the new religion – before children get to be the age at which they go to church, they have already absorbed TV’s moral code.’”

My comment:  That gripped me as a young man in those parenting years.  It impacted Jan and me in the raising of our four children.  Oh, the struggle many of us experienced!  How to both guard them from the growing tide of godlessness, sometimes subtle at other times heavy-handed and blatant?  The challenge was immense!  With great sadness, let me say, most failed miserably to recognize the import.  How to teach them how to discern the difference between the holy and the profane? I believe most adults did NOT spiritually train their children in the slightest degree.    Most importantly with prayerful hearts and sober minds, Lord teach us how to shepherd our little ones and then as teens to love the Lord thy God with all their heart, soul and mind and strength that they would desire to please God by how they lived – which would include that they would love God and what God loves and hate what is detestable to Him.

That challenge is seemingly heightened by the day with new “advances” of the cell phone, the tablet, the Internet and the many applications which titillate and manipulate with images, graphics, bodies, body parts, AI, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook …

A young lady (early 20s), during the Q and A, got my attention by making it clear that pornography that we were leading the fight in back in those days (‘80s, ‘90s and early 2000s) was child’s play compared to what is inundating our youth today. Her passionate detestation of evil and concern for the youth was particularly appreciated.

The problem?   We as a people cannot teach what we do not have!

Ezekiel 44:23. And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the clean and the unclean.

Ezekiel 22:26. Her priests have done violence to my law and have profaned my holy things. They have made no distinction between the holy and the common, neither have they taught the difference between the unclean and the clean, and they have disregarded my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.

From pornography to homosexuality to homosexual marriage to bi-sexuality, to LGBTQ+ to cutting and castrating and puberty blockers to ….

Satan uses many devices to confuse, desensitize, addict, destroy.

In a world filled with dirty words and pictures potentially hitting us from every angle: cell phones, emails, reels, news clips, movies, advertisements here and there, magazines – how does one keep oneself unspotted from the world?

And we can’t even answer the question, “What is a woman?”  [referencing Matt Walsh’s jaw dropping documentary.]

October 1986 (Donald Wildmon):  The very future of not only our society but the whole of Western civilization depends on what those in positions of Christian leadership do or fail to do.  The struggle will not be easy nor be won without great suffering and sacrifice.  The cross is still at the very heart of the Christian faith.  We must never forget that. Our own worst enemy is us.  There is no glory in fighting a war, even a spiritual war. There is only suffering and pain.  Does the Christian community have enough of what it takes to turn this tide, to stop the decay of Western Civilization?  Do we have enough Christians who are willing to pay the price, to make the sacrifices necessary so that they can provide the leadership needed in their pulpits, in their homes, and in their communities?  The answer to that question remains to be seen.  And in the balance hangs the future of Western Civilization.

My comment:  Activism is important. Doing. Fighting. Standing.  Let it start first with self-examination.  Here is a good place to start:    Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.    James 1:26

 

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