I took a quick look at my text and at first glance, I was in certain denial. Surely not, I thought. Taking a closer look at the thread I saw the words three souls and my heart started to sink. “Active shooter at a Nashville school, please pray.”
I stopped working went downstairs and turned on the TV, and every station was covering the shooting in my hometown of Nashville, TN. Words don’t describe the sickening feeling as I come to grips with losing three innocent schoolchildren. My heart immediately went out to their parents who were about to suffer the most imaginable nightmare possible, as they learn that their baby wasn’t coming home from school that day. I pray to God to comfort them but admit my faith is small because how can a parent possibly be comforted in such a situation? I think about my own elementary school grandchildren and how I could even continue breathing if this happened to one of them. I pray I never find out.
The talking heads were already conversing about what has brought us to this place where our children aren’t even safe in their schools any longer. They continue with the same story that we hear over and over again every time we endure one of these hideous tragedies. “We just need to get rid of all the guns in America and then this violence would stop.” Others say that it’s not the guns at all, but rather the people behind them whose hearts have become so evil that they do the unthinkable and shoot to kill innocent children.
How did we get here?
There is some truth on both sides of the argument. No sane person wants innocent children gunned down in their classroom. When our founding fathers put the right to bear arms in our constitution, it was so that people would be able to protect themselves from evil people and/or a tyrannical government should that need arise. The fact that guns would be used to kill innocent children was so unthinkable, it wasn’t even on their radar.
But there was one thing very different about America in that day. America was a moral nation filled with people that loved God. As Tucker Carlson put it, not “People who think they are God.” It was founded on the premise of religious freedom, and to share the beauty of Christianity with those already living here. These people wanted a land where they could worship God as they pleased and raise their children in a land that honored Him.
No longer a moral nation
But things have changed. America is no longer a moral nation and only a moral people can be a free people.
Evil has always been around and will continue until Jesus comes, but being in my seventh decade on this earth, I’ve witnessed firsthand the influx of increasing evil and the decrease of morality that has engulfed our country along with the subsequent continual loss of freedoms.
I grew up in rural America where everyone had a gun, yet school shootings were never heard of or even thought about. No one shot anything except, rabbits, squirrels, and deer. We had a gun rack hanging on the wall with rifles that my dad used for hunting and it wasn’t even locked! Yet, I never thought about even touching those guns because my dad told me not to. In that day, children were raised to obey their parents. We didn’t even lock our doors when we left the house because people just didn’t break in and steal other people’s possessions.
But that was rural America. I’m sure there was more crime in the big cities. Yet, when I was in elementary school, I visited my cousin in Detroit, Michigan who was the same age as I and we would ride the city bus to a local mall, shop all day and then ride it back home – by ourselves! We also walked alone to an amusement park several blocks down the street, rode the rides all day, and then walked home by ourselves. I doubt that anyone does either of those things now.
Back then the crime was mostly limited to shooting in bars. Places you were warned not to go.”Nothing good happens after midnight” we were warned. As long as you stayed in safe places, you were safe.
Not so any more. Now we can’t attend school, go to a movie theatre, concert, or even attend church without putting our lives on the line. Sadly, we’ve watched this rapid moral decline and done very little. I’m talking about us, the Church, the Christians, the Religious, the Conservatives, those who just want to live in peace and raise our children in a properous, safe nation.
Morality is dwindling fast in the Land of the Free as we continue to bow to the Satanic forces by simply saying nothing and doing nothing.
In Retrospect
I wonder how things would be different if we had allowed prayer and bible-reading to continue in our public schools as it had been for centuries until 1960. Would we be seeing children murdered in our schools today?
I wonder if we truly believed in the “right to life” in America and never allowed over 63 million innocent children to be attacked and slaughtered in their mother’s wombs how America be different today? As my friend Rachel Cruze says, “More is caught than taught,” Legalized abortion only teaches the next generation that life is cheap and can be discarded if it’s inconvenient or gets in the way of our own personal goals and desires.
I wonder what would have happened if we never had a sexual revolution and sex was saved for the marriage between a man and a woman as God designed it. “If it feels good, do it.” They said… and we did. Sin is progressive and our “feeling good” has led to the abortive deaths of 63 million Americans. After all, we had to do something with all those inconvenient babies created by our uncontrolled sexual appetite. Then came the pressure to accept homosexuality as normal behavior and same-sex marriage as a legitimate right. The saga continues until today people are so confused and their minds so reprobate that they don’t even know what sex they are.
Even as they refused to have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not fitting.
Romans 1:28
Now they are going after our precious children to try and confuse and vilify them, often behind parents’ backs. Please know that Satan will never be satisfied and this horror will continue unless we stop it. If we don’t, we can be sure that we will lose our nation. One thing that history shows us is that God has never spared a nation that exalts such evil.
How do we stop it?
Do we need stricter gun laws? Unfortunately yes, because America is no longer mature enough to handle guns. We’ve become like little toddlers always wanting what we want when we want it, with no regard for what God wants from us.
Still, we can lock the doors, but the intruder just shoots through them. What’s next? Bars on the school windows like a jail? We can continue to increase every security measure possible, but evil intent on doing harm will always find a way to intrude. If they can’t get a gun, they’ll just make a bomb.
The more immoral we become, the more evil will reign and the fewer freedoms we will have. Unless we pivot, they will eventually have to take away all our guns, leaving us defenseless to the criminals who don’t care what the law says, and eventually, with no way to defend ourselves, a tyrannical government will then move in and take away every last freedom. America will become a police state. That is not the future any of us want for our children and grandchildren.
We can change
But we don’t have to continue down this road. We still have some time to change the course of this nation. While, we can’t change the fact that they removed God from the classroom in the sixties, as parents, we can demand that children once again be taught the Bible in our public schools or at least be given the choice to attend a school that allows it. Our children must once again be taught a knowledge of God and His truths from a young age. That’s the only way to preserve future generations.
Instead of distributing birth control to our teens we can start teaching them the truth about sexual immorality, that it is a sin that will bring only bad things to their life. Companies can stop pushing the evil ideologies of the LGBTQ down our throats through movies, TV shows, and even commercials, and we can stop patronizing companies that continue to do so. Instead of a national awards program that worships Satan on center stage, why not lobby for one that glorifies God instead!
We can start to vote Godly people into our school boards, city councils, congress, and president instead of choosing the one who lies the best by promising us everything on a silver platter, looks the best, has the most charisma, or is the color or gender we like.
The Antidote
My heart breaks for our country and for every parent who has senselessly lost a child or grandchild since Columbine. The least we can do for them is to work hard to change this nation so that other parents don’t have to suffer the same loss.
Many great people and organizations are working hard on the front lines to preserve the dignity of our nation. Family Research Council and American Center for Law and Justice are a couple of worthy organizations striving to make a positive difference in our world. We all need to get behind organizations such as this and support them with our finances and our prayers. We should be pouring money into them!
In Psalm 139, the psalmist prays to God, “If only you, God, would slay the wicked!” I have to admit that is my prayer also. I hate this evil, and so often pray to God to do away with it. But then as we read further on, the psalmist cries, “See if there is any offensive way in me.” The truth hits. We are all offensive to God on some level and thus we’re each to blame for the evil going on in our land.
I’m reminded of Dr. Martin Luther King’s ” I Have a Dream” speech. His dream was one day for little black and little white schoolchildren to be able to hold hands as brothers and sisters. Today, my dream is that all schoolchildren to be able to once again attend school without the fear of being gunned down in their classroom.
American parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, everyone that loves our children — we have a choice. We can choose to help transform this nation into a moral, God-fearing nation once again and preserve freedom and liberty for our children and grandchildren, or we can continue down this dark, sinful path, and witness the increasing violence against those we love most; while seeing our freedoms stripped away one by one.
It’s up to us.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psam 139:23-24
Duking Out Life 