No thoughtful man can possibly look out upon the world today without observing that we are in the midst of a tremendous emergency. It does seem perfectly clear to thoughtful people, whether they are Christians or not, that humanity is standing over an abyss.—J. Gresham Machen
Those words were written nearly a hundred years ago, and they read as if the person who wrote them was talking about today.
At that time the United States was suffering from unemployment woes, was in the middle of a depression, and had just come out of World War I, with the Russians on the doorstep of imposing its dictatorial policies upon its people and the world.
But Machen had a very different emergency in mind than that which accompanies economic hardship, the dread that comes with battlefield casualties, and unreasonable despots ruling with an iron fist.
It was emergency associated with men’s hearts that inevitably leads to all the miseries that have beset mankind ever since it rebelled against God “in the beginning.”
We, ladies and gentlemen, young and old, rich and poor, have a God problem.
We have forgotten God, or mixed and matched all kinds of heretical ideas about Him with an inkling of the truth.
We have created a state of emergency in our world where we are repeating history with the exception that this time, we just might be successful in totally wrecking everything for ourselves until it is our time to pass into eternity.
You see high gas prices, out of control inflation, and increased violent crime, along with lying, cheating, and stealing to win elections are all theologically related.
How we view God will reflect on how we conduct ourselves in the world with the rest of humanity.
And right now our theological worldview stinks!
A vast majority of human beings have such a warped view of God that we spend most of our time trying to figure out ways to either screw our neighbor over with ridiculous commentary, ungodly decisions, or dictatorial policies.
In fact, people all around the world are literally dying because of the theological decisions made by those who have long-since either ignored or forgotten anything about God.
Yes, the world is standing over a theological abyss.
It leads straight to hell: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, all the nations that forget God” (Ps 9:17).
What, if anything, are we going to do about it?
