Christian Living

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Larry Lilly's Letter Tuesday April 17, 2007

It’s 8:47 pm April 16, year of our Lord 2007, the day of horror in Southwest Virginia as a nut case according to count at this time, killed 32 innocent college students at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. I used to go to the football games there when Don Strock was the quarterback and VPI was moving from Little League football to the big time. One of the games was against Houston, a college that was already in the big time. Not a good day for Tech fans.

And now.

And now.

I am pretty well jaded to what the old preachers called the vicissitudes of life, but Monday April 16, 2007 will burn in my mind like the visions of long remembered Klan torches in the midnights of long ago. No, I am not a former Klansman; my grandmother was whipped by them for teaching black kids to read. But Monday's "vicissitudes" top anything in this old boy's catalog of things I never want to happen again.

From the biblical perspective it is clear that the Holy Spirit exercises restraining power against the totally evil inherent in fallen man. Jesus taught that the primary agent in this restraint is a true, set apart, church which He called "salt." Jesus taught that the church that is serious in its worship and service to Him was powerful in its power to restrain evil and this restraint was not tied to legislative law, but to the supernatural power of God. Jesus made it plain that if the salt were to lose its savor, its power to restrain corruption, it would then be fit only to use in paving roads, and be trampled on by the parade of humanity as it passes by on its winding path to perdition.

So, as Jesus teaches, the church is losing or as some say, has lost its power due to major sin in the camp and thus the pronouncement of Jesus is something to consider in the wave of the reckless mind numbing killing of unarmed innocents on school and college campuses.

I am not the first wacko to suggest that the ebb and flow of history for the last 2000 years has been tied to the spiritual condition of the church. When the church of Jesus is near apostate, the world loses its moorings; it wanders through history as a shooting star. And then, and then, the spirit moves, a Luther, Whitefield, Wesley or some other catalyst comes along and the message of personal righteousness thunders forth and men and women get serious about loving Jesus and the practice of outright slavery bites the dust, child slavery is abolished, immorality is banished from the living room to the sewer where it belongs and the world plods along as history unfolds. And then, the church, posits that God may not be real, that Christ and Mohamed may be the same, the Bible may or may not be true, the salt, the average man and woman listening to the false teaching lose their zeal, their fire, their love for Christ and one another, and boom, out of nowhere ride the monsters of destruction. You do know that Hitler rose in the midst of an apostate church, that Joseph Stalin rose to supremacy during the wane of belief in a supernatural Christ.

The account and rant could continue ad infinitum, but alas, the white space if filled and thus I must close the ramble with the question:

Are you filled the spirit, the love of Christ and savor of fresh mined salt through taking in God's word? This is the primary part that you and I can play in the great scheme of the way things are.

Larry Lilly Copyright © 2007 Use with credit.

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