(Editor's Note: Today's Guest Writer is Bill Elliff. This blog was posted first on his blog site HERE.)
How Do We Explain the Depraved Thinking in Our Nation?
In bold relief, we are seeing unprecedented mental, spiritual, moral, emotional, and physical depravity in our nation. I have watched this demise over the last seven decades. But we have never encountered this level. How do you explain this?
GOD’S DEFINITION
… of this depth of mental degradation is described in the Scripture with the phrase “a depraved mind.” Paul warns Timothy of people who have fallen to this level in 2 Timothy 3.
… always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of depraved mind, rejected in regard to the faith (2 Timothy 3:7-8).
The Greek word used here is a compound word composed of “kata,” which means “down,” and “phtheiro,” which means to “destroy by corruption.” It means to be utterly and thoroughly corrupted downward. This is a mind that has descended to the worst degrees of degradation. A mind that is destroyed.
In Romans 1, as Paul describes people who consistently reject God and “worship and serve the creature instead of the Creator” there are a series of three judgments that God administers. God “gives them up” to themselves and their sin. He gives them up in three descending ways.
God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity (Romans 1:24).
God gave them over to degrading passions … their women (and men) exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural (Vs. 26-27).
And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind (Vs. 28).
The word “depraved” in Romans 1 is a different Greek word that means a mind that has lost the ability to make moral judgments. Not only do they refuse to see what is right, they cannot. Their minds are so degraded that right really is wrong to them and vice versa. This is why reasonable, wise people cannot understand a depraved person’s thinking. It makes no sense at all. It has lost the ability to do so.
How do we come to the point where we reject God’s distinctive design of men and women? Where we are confused about gender? Where we justify the worst kinds of moral impurity? Where homosexuality, transgenderism, and pedophilia is not only practiced but celebrated on a national scale? Even in our government? Where we are creating laws to promote these behaviors?
THE OUTCOME
.... is seen (with both words describing the same condition) in the lowest forms of moral degradation. When the mind cannot discern what is right, then it will march headlong into what is wrong, feeling completely justified in its direction. And since this line has been crossed, it is happening among us at light speed.
You cannot reason with someone with a depraved mind, for they have lost the ability to understand the truth. They are “without understanding” (Romans 1:31) and “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7).
THE ANTIDOTE
At the end of 2 Timothy 3, Paul reminds his young son in the faith of the only thing that will keep anyone from such a fate.
You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have learned them, and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2 Timothy 3:14-17).
God’s Word is “able to give you” wisdom. It is POWERFUL (“able”), and it is PERSONAL (“give YOU”). It is God-breathed and will give anyone who humbly pursues God through His Word the “teaching, reproof, correction, and training” they need to be “thoroughly equipped for every good work.” If God’s Word is understood, embraced, and followed by the power of the Holy Spirit it will give anyone all they need for life and godliness.
OUR HISTORY
David Barton is one of America's foremost historians, particularly in early America. I heard him speak years ago as he quoted early presidents, signers of the Declaration of Independence, and Supreme Court judges who all deeply believed, taught, and fought for the fact that the Republic of America would only work if the children of America knew the Bible.
I was astounded to hear that in 1844, Congress passed a law that took funding away from any PUBLIC SCHOOL that did not teach the Bible as its primary curriculum! Citing source after source, he showed how these early fathers of our country knew that everything depended on the biblical literacy of our children for the continuance of our nation.
THE ENEMY’S SCHEME
… is to capture the thinking of our children. This is why the battleground is in early education. It has been waged for years, and most parents are only now slowly awakening to the disastrous effect of this destructive agenda.
You must understand the thinking of those among us whose minds are genuinely depraved. And you must not leave the training of your children to others. It is our task as parents to know the truth revealed by God through His Word and faithfully admonish (“put into the mind”) these truths to our children.
