It is a dark and ignorant world. For however eagerly one may look to the present “successes” of Europe as a society sustained without a general belief in God (particularly a Judeo-Christian God), one must acknowledge that the foundation of that society was built (and preserved) by a God-fearing and Christian people.
The Western World is Judeo-Christian and mankind can only attribute its success to that distinction. Other civilizations with equal resources and greater time have never equaled what the Christian world has accomplished. Europe may now exist, even thrive, as it denies God's very existence and His mores. But like a man held under water, a nation cannot hold its collective “spiritual” breath forever.
The spiritual life breathed into Western Civilization by Christ's religion is now on the wane, even as that religion is being abandoned among its former followers. When that breath is fully and finally exhaled, nothing will then separate or distinguish the Western World from all the barbarism and mayhem that has been characteristic of the ungodly, especially those who have served other gods than Jehovah.
Are all who “know not God” uncommonly evil or destructive? Certainly not. But with which of them would you like to trade your present life, with all the material and spiritual benefits Christian thought, progress, and morality have brought you? Where would you prefer to live under other than the protective umbrella of Christian theology and culture? Would you find comfort and solace in the societies of primitive cultures, with their cannibalism and worship of animal deities? Secular Europe? Pagan Africa? Islamic Arabia? Polytheistic India? Buddhist (or Communist) China? Perhaps the islands of Hawaii (pre-Christian era) would be your chosen utopia, with their paradisiacal environs and liberal sexual mores? (How effective was that culture at resisting European invasion and assimilation?) Like a child, you would inevitably be deflowered of your innocence and care-free existence. So, where in the world would you go to “escape” the “oppressive hand" of “organized religion”? Just how would you enforce this ban on religious influence, without imposing your own brand of thought and worship (or non-worship)?
The Jews of Egypt were a fallen people, “quick to do iniquity, and slow to remember the Lord their God” (Mosiah 13:27-35). They had been rescued miraculously, with power, from the clutches of Pharaoh, delivered from servitude and slavery. But Moses was hardly gone a month before they erected unto themselves a golden calf and reveled again in the idolatry of Pharaoh's court.
What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai was NOT the Ten Commandments, but the Beatitudes, given to him by Jehovah (later taught by Jesus). But Moses destroyed those tablets, recognizing his people were unworthy and unready to receive these teachings, this gospel. He went back up the mount to retrieve what became known as the Mosaic Law. As Paul (a devout Jew himself) explained: “[T]he law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24).The harshness and the strictness of that law was intentional and specific. The law had intrinsic meaning and symbolism, as important to the preservation of Israel as life itself. It was “boot camp" for the uninitiated, if you will.
In horticulture we sever a branch or a limb – even half a tree! – in order to preserve and perfect the fruit. In God's purview, a life lived in error or unfruitfully is a life largely wasted. God wants us to enjoy a fruitful life! The sternness and strictness of the Mosaic Law was to teach Israel with indelible exactness the importance of following God's law: it is life or death. The symbolism of not mixing seeds and fabrics was to enforce the divine directive not to mix their own seed, either through sex or association, with the faithless, pagan religious practices of the peoples surrounding them. To do so, God warned, meant spiritual (and physical) death. And He backed up that warning with exacting enforcement.
To us, that world seems so archaic, so barbaric, so primitive. And it was! But the Mosaic Law was the “lesser” of evils. Other peoples practiced religions far less agreeable to us now. Israel's neighbors offered their living children as burnt sacrifices unto the God Moleck, placing them (alive) in the outstretched, super-heated arms of that pagan, brazen idol (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10).
Of course, now we just “D and C” (dilatation and curettage) our children, and, if that doesn't work, we slice them up and vacuum them out with a suction hose; or we puncture their craniums, vacuum out their brains, and crush their skulls (all while they are busily squirming, trying to take their first breath upon emerging from the womb). Obviously, we are more “civilized” than those Moleck-worshiping cretins who cruelly burned their children alive. Thank God Jesus taught us: “Blessed are the children who are aborted unto me!” (I'm sorry. I couldn't actually find that verse. Maybe it isn't a Christian doctrine, after all.)
Encroaching modern evil aside, we are yet the beneficiaries of Christian “enlightenment”. We peer through the prism of a morality bequeathed to us by a hundred generations of Christians and a book, the Bible, handed down to us by those same Jews who were thus “tutored” by the Mosaic Law via God's prophets. This morality has withstood the test of time. Without it, we would be practicing the paganism and idolatry of India, Africa, or the Middle East (not to mention the strange practices of several organizations in the United States!). Our civilization, like ALL that have gone before, would be swept from the earth by Hun-like hordes who regard neither life nor the fruit of the womb. In the last century alone, the Christian world brought to a halt the advances of godless tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Hirohito, Mao, and Pol-Pot, who together slaughtered over a hundred million in their quest for absolute earthly power and conquest.
Where would the world be today without the Christian faith? It is a bleak and benighted prospect.
The Jews of Egypt were a fallen people, “quick to do iniquity, and slow to remember the Lord their God” (Mosiah 13:27-35). They had been rescued miraculously, with power, from the clutches of Pharaoh, delivered from servitude and slavery. But Moses was hardly gone a month before they erected unto themselves a golden calf and reveled again in the idolatry of Pharaoh's court.
What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai was NOT the Ten Commandments, but the Beatitudes, given to him by Jehovah (later taught by Jesus). But Moses destroyed those tablets, recognizing his people were unworthy and unready to receive these teachings, this gospel. He went back up the mount to retrieve what became known as the Mosaic Law. As Paul (a devout Jew himself) explained: “[T]he law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24).The harshness and the strictness of that law was intentional and specific. The law had intrinsic meaning and symbolism, as important to the preservation of Israel as life itself. It was “boot camp" for the uninitiated, if you will.
In horticulture we sever a branch or a limb – even half a tree! – in order to preserve and perfect the fruit. In God's purview, a life lived in error or unfruitfully is a life largely wasted. God wants us to enjoy a fruitful life! The sternness and strictness of the Mosaic Law was to teach Israel with indelible exactness the importance of following God's law: it is life or death. The symbolism of not mixing seeds and fabrics was to enforce the divine directive not to mix their own seed, either through sex or association, with the faithless, pagan religious practices of the peoples surrounding them. To do so, God warned, meant spiritual (and physical) death. And He backed up that warning with exacting enforcement.
To us, that world seems so archaic, so barbaric, so primitive. And it was! But the Mosaic Law was the “lesser” of evils. Other peoples practiced religions far less agreeable to us now. Israel's neighbors offered their living children as burnt sacrifices unto the God Moleck, placing them (alive) in the outstretched, super-heated arms of that pagan, brazen idol (Lev. 18:21; Deut. 18:10).
Of course, now we just “D and C” (dilatation and curettage) our children, and, if that doesn't work, we slice them up and vacuum them out with a suction hose; or we puncture their craniums, vacuum out their brains, and crush their skulls (all while they are busily squirming, trying to take their first breath upon emerging from the womb). Obviously, we are more “civilized” than those Moleck-worshiping cretins who cruelly burned their children alive. Thank God Jesus taught us: “Blessed are the children who are aborted unto me!” (I'm sorry. I couldn't actually find that verse. Maybe it isn't a Christian doctrine, after all.)
Encroaching modern evil aside, we are yet the beneficiaries of Christian “enlightenment”. We peer through the prism of a morality bequeathed to us by a hundred generations of Christians and a book, the Bible, handed down to us by those same Jews who were thus “tutored” by the Mosaic Law via God's prophets. This morality has withstood the test of time. Without it, we would be practicing the paganism and idolatry of India, Africa, or the Middle East (not to mention the strange practices of several organizations in the United States!). Our civilization, like ALL that have gone before, would be swept from the earth by Hun-like hordes who regard neither life nor the fruit of the womb. In the last century alone, the Christian world brought to a halt the advances of godless tyrants like Hitler, Stalin, Hirohito, Mao, and Pol-Pot, who together slaughtered over a hundred million in their quest for absolute earthly power and conquest.
Where would the world be today without the Christian faith? It is a bleak and benighted prospect.
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