The End is Coming! The End is Coming!

What does a Little League baseball game on Sunday, a pregnant “man,” and Oprah Winfrey have in common? They are signs of the times. First, the baseball game. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I love a good baseball game. I enjoy the opportunities I have to watch our church boys and girls play. But this one was going on at 8:15 a.m. on Sunday morning. I’m sure it was because of a tournament or a rainout or a combination of the two. But it is a sign of the times. When our girls were growing up, they played T-ball and fast pitch softball. Both the coaches and our girls knew, however, that nothing about the game would ever interfere with church. I’m sure that there were times when because of that stance they were overlooked for all-stars, and that is okay. We taught our girls that we lived this way not because I am the pastor but because we are Christians, and the day is more important than any game. Nowadays, Sundays and Wednesdays are only two more days to schedule programs, practices, and games. And do you want to know why? Because Christian parents and pastors have compromised and made excuses so that little by little it has become acceptable. We don’t want our children’s self-esteem to be affected because we won’t let them play when everyone else is playing. And so, once again, God takes second place in our lives.
Then there is the story all over the news about the pregnant “man.” Just in case you haven’t heard this, it isn’t a man really. It is a woman who decided that she wanted to be a man so she took hormone shots, grew a beard, and started living like a man, even taking on a “significant other.” Finding that her girlfriend couldn’t become pregnant, the she-man, having kept her female reproductive organs, has decided to carry the child. And so the news media has paraded this little darling around with pictures of her half-naked, pregnant body and bearded face. And so, once again, man has left his natural desire for woman, and literally shakes her fist in God’s face.
And finally, Oprah Winfrey has declared that Jesus Christ is only one of many ways to “heaven” and is teaching 2 million people a week that they need to open their minds and embrace the same philosophy that the serpent passed off on Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden: you can be like God because you are god. (http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=JW4LLwkgmqA) Once again, people have flocked to the teachers that tell them what they want to hear instead of the truth. The truth is that we are not God and never will be. There is only one way of salvation and that is through Jesus Christ. The only consolation in all of this is that the Bible tells us that it will be this way just before Christ Jesus returns in power and glory, and so I join with both Paul and John saying, “Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly!”