The Third Great Awakening...

Billy Graham just released an open letter to America expressing his heartache over our moral decline.  In it he says this:

Some years ago, my wife, Ruth, was reading the draft of a book I was writing. When she finished a section describing the terrible downward spiral of our nation’s moral standards and the idolatry of worshiping false gods such as technology and sex, she startled me by exclaiming, “If God doesn’t punish America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

She was probably thinking of a passage in Ezekiel where God tells why He brought those cities to ruin. “Now this was the sin of ... Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen” (Ezekiel 16:49–50, NIV).

I wonder what Ruth would think of America if she were alive today. In the years since she made that remark, millions of babies have been aborted and our nation seems largely unconcerned. Self-centered indulgence, pride, and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.

Dr. Graham goes on to say,

Yet the farther we get from God, the more the world spirals out of control.

My heart aches for America and its deceived people. The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance. In Jonah’s day, Nineveh was the lone world superpower—wealthy, unconcerned, and self-centered. When the Prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s warning, people heard and repented.

I believe the same thing can happen once again, this time in our nation.

 The saddest aspect of this letter is found in his statement, "The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance." You may wonder how can this be the saddest portion of the letter?  Doesn't it seem that this is the portion of our greatest hope?

It is so terribly sad to me because the American people WILL NOT repent, and God has seen this.  We are so wealthy and unconcerned that, like Sodom and Gomorrah, we won't repent either and God will have to act justly against us bringing us to a  place of nothingness.  It will be His greatest act of mercy in actuality because left in our present state there can be no salvation without repentance.  He will cause us to see Him and to turn from our wickedness and this will be our ultimate salvation.

Joel C. Rosenberg's book "Implosion" documents the declining morality of America.  Our society is riddled daily with scandal after scandal, and violence after violence.  They keep coming in greater and greater proportions; one larger and more sickly grandiose than the scandal previous.  Most of our practiced and accepted immorality is no longer on our radar as being reprehensible.  It has become the accepted. It has, sadly, become the American way.

The fact that America won't repent, however doesn't mean that you can't.  It is entirely possible and needed that you and I repent, walk holy and upright before our Lord despite the status quo of our nation.  In every judgment that God has been forced to extend, He has always reserved for Himself a people who are carrying on His way and purpose and who have His heart.

In the instance of Noah, he preserved all who would heed His call to repentance as Noah built the ark of salvation from the impending judgment.  This resulted in only Noah's family being rescued while the world mocked him.  When Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for the reasons listed above, he rescued Lot's family only from the flames, despite the promise that if Abraham could find just 10 righteous men the cities would be preserved.  In Jeremiah's day, he promised to rebuild Israel after 70 years of captivity in Babylon all the while Jeremiah contended with lying prophets who said, "this judgment can't happen to us."  The same will be for us.  Neither will we change our lifestyles to repent and turn to the Lord.  We are secure in our comforts, sinfulness and unconcern.

Even though America will be judged severely to bring us to a place where we'll return to God, He will preserve His people.  Our hearts need to be inclined to Him now.  Our spirits must be prepared for that which is to come, whenever it is to come and however it is to come.  We can't quite know the when and where, but the Lord's Spirit is speaking and stressing to those that will hear Him that judgment is inevitable and will come.  Call out on the Lord and we will be saved!

The Third Great Awakening that both Billy Graham and Joel Rosenberg are calling for will happen, but sadly, it seems, it won't come until after we've been humbled.  If we'll now humble ourselves, and judge ourselves, He won't have to do it when He pours out His justice on the rest of a rebellious, godless nation. We can be the preserved people, if we'll turn to Him now and repent of our ways and call on His Name, Jesus.

Don't be ashamed of the gospel and let's preach it wherever there is an ear to hear.  To God be all glory. May He help us all now and in the times to come.

CNBC Artilce "How Close Are We to a New Great Depression?"

I'm posting this news article just as it appears on the CNBC website.  It's a very important read to instill and reaffirm in our minds that the coming economic collapse isn't just doomsday rhetoric being spouted by zealous religious "eschamaniacs" (phrase coined for those obsessed with end time prophesies, who get out of hand with their predictions and guessing on what things mean).

Real economist really believe, not only that economic collapse is probable in the next few years, but the collapse is inevitable.  The goal is not to be an alarmist claiming the "sky is falling" when in fact it is not, but to help us be aware and to spiritually prepare for when it does happen.  God is calling us to be a strong, stable church, grounded in Him and depending on Him for times of crisis that are coming upon us in this nation. Be spiritually ready.  Rely on Christ always and above all.  -Jeremy Hitt

The risk of a new depression — a sustained, severe recession — has struck fear into the heart of markets and driven monetary policy in developed economies since the current financial crisis began.

“We’re in a very unfortunate position to be here,” Richard Duncan, author of The New Depression, warned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Monday.

“When we broke the link between money and gold, this removed all constraints on credit creation. This explosion of credit created the world we live in, but it now seems that credit cannot expand any further because the private sector is incapable of repaying the debt it has already, and if credit begins to contract, there’s a very real danger that we will collapse into a new Great Depression,” he argued.

“If this credit bubble pops, the depression could be so severe that I don’t think our civilization could survive it.”

The explosion in cheap credit has been widely blamed for the global financial crisis, but the debate about how to fix the problem continues.

In the past few years, central banks including the U.S. Federal Reserve , the European Central Bank and the Bank of England have pumped liquidity into their financial systems through a number of ways, including quantitative easing and the ECB’s long-term refinancing operation (LTRO).

“We could keep deferring the depression, but that could just encourage the bad guys. If you do this, you possibly do more harm than good,” Roger Nightingale, economist and strategist at RND Associates, told CNBC Monday.

“You can defer, but not prevent.”

Nightingale argued that previous credit booms, for example in Japan in the 1980s, have led to sustained recessions.

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“When you throw money into the system at a rate much in excess of the requirements of the real economy, you’re trying to get people to borrow and spend, but the good guys out there won’t because they’re too cautious. It’s the bad guys who come in, the malefactors,” he said.

“When the central banks realize what is going on and raise interest rates, it flings the world economy into depression.”

The ideas of Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who argued that monetary policy should constantly expand, informed some of the Fed’s response to the crisis.

“Policymakers really believe that if we allow credit to contract, we will reach a new Depression,” Duncan said.

“The increase in government debt is making total debt grow, otherwise we would already have collapsed in to a debt-deflation death spiral. This creates great perils, but also tremendous opportunities.”

Duncan argues that governments in the developed world should borrow “massive” amounts of money at the current low interest rates to invest in new technologies like renewable energy and genetic engineering.

“Even if this is wasted, at least we could enjoy this civilization for another ten years before it collapses,” he said.

His views counter those of economists who believe that governments should focus on cutting their debt, particularly where repayments on that debt are threatening to reach unsustainable levels, like in Greece.

© 2012 CNBC.com

"There's A Monster Under My Bed... Jerry Sandusky"

As a father, I go to great lengths to dispel the fear of monsters from the mind of my five year old daughter Madilyn.  Of our four children, she, being the youngest, is the last in need of her daddy to defeat the monsters that lurk in the shadows of her bedroom.

It's a great trophy of victory that I have won to have convinced my other three children that monsters don't exist, and it's all because their daddy, who can not be defeated -- after all I am stronger than all other daddies -- has single-handily chased them forever away from our abode. The older three go to sleep soundly each night knowing that monsters don't play Chutes and Ladders in their room once their eyelids have closed tightly.  My job as a father... complete (well, nearly).

Sadly, we've recently learned, again and again albeit, that monsters do exist.  And after having convinced my children that monsters don't exist, I'll have to teach them again how to protect themselves from these supposedly non-existent entities that, actually, in fact do exist.

Jerry Sandusky, former assistant coach for Penn St, proved this recently to us.  He reassured us again that monsters exist.

Many young, innocent boys learned this tragic tale first hand at Jerry Sandusky's home and on the campus of Penn State.  They, however, had no one present to protect them and ward off their monster.  Their monster took the most tragic form: caregiver and father figure.  This disguise dehumanized these children to the point that their ability to ever live sane, normal lives has been greatly diminished.  How will they ever fully trust again?

I'm sure they will question their self worth until the day they die, if not for the restoring help of our Loving Father -- to which the title itself will be the greatest of hurdles.  Their only knowledge of a "loving father" proved to be a grotesque, manipulating monster hiding in the most twisted, unassuming disguise... a father figure.

Society though did, exactly what I've done throughout this blog.  I labeled Jerry Sandusky.  We needed too.  If he's a monster, atypical of humanity, then we can rest assured knowing that what Jerry Sandusky has done is the exception to our race and not the norm.  We need him to carry a label other than human so that we can sleep soundly at night and ward off fictitious monsters that pose no real threat.  We don't, however, want to deal with the monster that is ourselves:

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9

 The acts he committed are so heinous, and 99.9% of the people reading this article have never ever considered doing something so heinous, at least I hope this to be true.  What he did repulses us. But naturally speaking this is humanity's true nature peeking its monstrous head up through the thin crust of supposed civility brandishing our truest hues of gray scaled colors.  Sandusky won't be cured by 500 years in prison.  The punishment here, in my opinion, doesn't fit the crime because of the devastation to these, now, young men can never be calculated.  It just proves to show us that humanity is desperately wicked.  It further proves that mankind needs saving.  Humanity needs resurrection from the sin and death we bath in daily.  We're entirely saturated in it.  Even the best among us has a human heart, and that if its inner most secrets were known publicly we'd be very embarrassed by its contents.

"All of us have become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
    and like the wind our sins sweep us away."  Isaiah 64:6

Let us learn from this despite having too many teachers already, that the only hope for humanity DOES NOT exist within us.  Our only hope of salvation comes from above.  The only hope we have from our desperately wicked ways is the fact that there's a Loving Father who knows no sin, and doesn't have a human heart.  He desperately wants to save us from the monsters lurking in the shadows of our own rooms... that is, our hearts.  In Christ is true salvation, perfect love where we need not be afraid any longer of who we are and the vast potential for wicked that lies silent at times but explodes to the surface in lucid moments of exposure.  When the pleasantries have all been exhausted and the thin veil of niceness has been worn thin, humanity shows itself truly and no amount of self help or self actualization can ever save us.  Our salvation is not further conformation to this world, but true and ultimate transformation where we become new creatures -- something that didn't exist before -- in Christ (I Corinthians 5:17).

God help humanity.  Help us because we're broken...

To understand our sinfulness is to see our need for salvation.  Jesus sees it.  He did something about it.  He didn't just label us "monsters" then went on His divinely merry way.  No.  He redeemed us from the curse of sin and death by becoming just like us... human.  Yet He conquered the monster of sin, because He knew we could not.

This is what we need to learn from this tragic scandal... that we are in need of saving.  We ignore this too often.  And no matter how many times humanity rears its ugly head, we keep ignoring it.  We dissolve the problem down and isolate the problem to the label "criminally insane" and ignore the reality that evil does in fact exist and it is immediate in our common humanity.  This is the great deception, that evil doesn't exist and is only an ideology of the theologically minded.  This attitude continues in the statement, "Who can believe those religious, Jesus believing nut jobs anyway?"  The world can agree with it or not, but we nut jobs corner the market on understanding evil.  In order for us to come into the hallowed ranks of "nut-job-ed-ness", we have to first admit our wickedness.  Christ promises us that if we confess our transgressions -- which is church speak for admit we are evil -- that He'll just as quickly as we can ask forgive us and place His own heart within us.

Before you quickly dismiss the Jerry Sandusky scandal as just another sick-o exposed and behind bars, let the reality sink in a bit that we share his human DNA.  We may not share his same evil proclivity, and would never even think to, but we share the same evil that keeps us separated from our Loving Father.  So, tonight, as we tuck ourselves into bed, and we turn out the lights to go to sleep, let us go to bed knowing that we have a perfect, loving, heavenly Father who courageously wants to ward off and rid our hearts from the monster that lurks within our own humanity.  He has chased them all from under our beds and we can rest soundly in Him, if we will believe.

Digging in the Garbage Bin... At Panama City Beach

We were gassing up the rental vans and about to head home from our youth trip to beautiful Panama City Beach, Florida.  We had been there four days and by now I think we were all at our whits end.  Nonstop sand, surf, sun, late nights and early mornings, going all day long relentlessly pursuing beach fun, while intoxicating as it was, it has a way of becoming so wearing on our bodies that our dreams turn from hammocks on the beach to home.

I walk into the station to prepay for gas and hand the clerk a bajillion dollar bill in hopes to convince him to turn on the pumps and I see a dude rummaging through the huge garbage bin out behind the station. As I walk out, and begin filling up, I look to see if he's looking for cans or for food.  He leans out of the garbage bin with a Styrofoam take out plate, opens it up, sees no food and tosses it back into the bin.  One of our teens peeks her head out of the van and says to me with a tone of desperation in her eyes, "He's looking for food, Jeremy." I replied, "I know."

As I open the back of the van to our snack stash, another teen rescues a Wal Mart sack that seemed to be helplessly swirling in the cyclone of teen garbage from within our own rolling 15 passenger garbage bin.  We begin filling the bag with all kinds of crackers, chips, snacks, water bottles and can drinks. I head over to the man, a tall slender gentleman in his fifties. His long, unkept, dark hair was already drenched in sweat at about 9:45am from pursuant digging.  The warm, savory sea air switched quickly to the stale stench of hot, wet garbage.  I asked him if he can use the snacks and he says in a northern accent that reminded me of Michigan, "Brother, I tell you they won't go to waste."  He smiled at me a smile of relief.  He then offered to tell me in a somewhat sincere tone that he just can't find any work.

I wanted to say something to him... probably something religious, but I felt it disingenuous to preach at him coming from a position of priviledge.  Here I was in nice clothes, driving expensive air conditioned rental vans with a crew of well dressed teenagers shackled to iPhones, iPods and iPads.  The best thing I thought to say was just simply and honestly ask him, "You know God loves you don't you?"  His reply, "He must. He keeps sending me people like you."

I turn to walk away and he just points his finger straight to heaven as if to say, "You never fail me."

We drove off with the sea to our backs as salty tears begin to sting my sun burnt cheeks.  The thought racing through my head was, "God, you never meant for you children to live like that."  He whispered back to me, "Yeah, but I did mean for them to love like that."  Then His faithful words rang in my heart, "A bag of snacks offered in my name won't be forgotten in my kingdom."

I don't tell this story to pat myself or our youth on the backs.  We really didn't do much. I do, however, want to encourage us -- we who live in the lap of luxury and plenty -- to love like Christ. 

The guy refused to shake my hand because of the garbage on his hands.  I wish now I would have grabbed him anyway and hugged Him.  This is the image I see when I read in the scriptures how Jesus hugged the lepers He met in Panama City Beach.