Romans 1:18-24. The Unholy City—XV. The Spirit of the City
The City does not advance blindly, despite the blindness of the builders and workers. The City has a ruler, a director who rules with an iron hand. He daily increases his hold over the hearts and spirits of the condemned in the City. Attraction, seduction, addiction, and slavery are the pattern of his rule, and his system creates slaves by the billions.
To recognize that men are in slavery to the easy satisfaction of their appetites and desires is to see that God has abandoned them—as they have abandoned Him. Individuals do slip out of the enemy’s grip when God calls them. But most have believed the whispers of their own desires and the cunning arguments of a culture wise in science and foolish in everything else. (We cannot even be sure how wise we are in science. Wise, compared with what? It is entirely likely that sinful man has made far less scientific progress than would have been possible had sin not darkened men’s minds.) Television is not evil—it has simply become primarily the tool of evil, an evil that constantly spews forth messages of God-denial.
The spirit that is the secret heart of the City has no other purpose than to deceive men to their ruin. The deception that has worked best of all is that they have no sin. Upright, respectable, church-going people are ready to listen to this message with their whole hearts. Repentance is as far from their thoughts as a distant galaxy, and they are as surely entrapped in the enemy’s prison as the meanest criminal, perhaps more so. After all, criminals are sent to institutions that are still called “penitentiaries,” and thus one may suggest that repentance is far closer, far more likely to be within the reach of a criminal so confined than it is to those outside who believe they have no sin.
Like it or not, television and the other media serve the interests of the City, and the City serves the interests of its Ruler. The City, long prophesied in allegorical terms by pious writers, such as, John Bunyan, C. S. Lewis, and G. A. Studdert Kennedy, not to mention its images in Scripture, particularly, Isaiah 19:18, as well as Babel, Babylon, and so on,. is the reality that its Ruler has been waiting and working for. It represents the ability to corrupt the hearts of billions in a mass production way, to oppress mankind with their own consent, and to hide the truth from them to an unprecedented degree. From the point of view of the master strategists in hell, the time is ripe; all the mechanisms are in place; mankind can now be condemned on an assembly-line basis.
God dispersed the people from Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) by confusing their language. In His mercy, He prevented a great sin of pride and folly from being completed. Through sin, the human race seems about to undo His work.
To recognize that men are in slavery to the easy satisfaction of their appetites and desires is to see that God has abandoned them—as they have abandoned Him. Individuals do slip out of the enemy’s grip when God calls them. But most have believed the whispers of their own desires and the cunning arguments of a culture wise in science and foolish in everything else. (We cannot even be sure how wise we are in science. Wise, compared with what? It is entirely likely that sinful man has made far less scientific progress than would have been possible had sin not darkened men’s minds.) Television is not evil—it has simply become primarily the tool of evil, an evil that constantly spews forth messages of God-denial.
The spirit that is the secret heart of the City has no other purpose than to deceive men to their ruin. The deception that has worked best of all is that they have no sin. Upright, respectable, church-going people are ready to listen to this message with their whole hearts. Repentance is as far from their thoughts as a distant galaxy, and they are as surely entrapped in the enemy’s prison as the meanest criminal, perhaps more so. After all, criminals are sent to institutions that are still called “penitentiaries,” and thus one may suggest that repentance is far closer, far more likely to be within the reach of a criminal so confined than it is to those outside who believe they have no sin.
Like it or not, television and the other media serve the interests of the City, and the City serves the interests of its Ruler. The City, long prophesied in allegorical terms by pious writers, such as, John Bunyan, C. S. Lewis, and G. A. Studdert Kennedy, not to mention its images in Scripture, particularly, Isaiah 19:18, as well as Babel, Babylon, and so on,. is the reality that its Ruler has been waiting and working for. It represents the ability to corrupt the hearts of billions in a mass production way, to oppress mankind with their own consent, and to hide the truth from them to an unprecedented degree. From the point of view of the master strategists in hell, the time is ripe; all the mechanisms are in place; mankind can now be condemned on an assembly-line basis.
God dispersed the people from Babel (Gen. 11:1-9) by confusing their language. In His mercy, He prevented a great sin of pride and folly from being completed. Through sin, the human race seems about to undo His work.
posted by Robert McAnally Adams | 8/29/2005 12:18:00 AM
1 Comments:
Thank you. I will share this and pray that God will use it to His glory!
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