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IT’S
TIME TO WAKE UP!
By
Dr. Michael L. Brown
October
4, 2006
On
Friday night, September 22, the eve of the Feast of Trumpets, I
spoke at a meeting in Moravian Falls, North Carolina, urging those
in attendance to hear the trumpet call, to wake up to reality, to
recognize that we are in a life and death struggle, to understand
that we cannot reduce a concept like “revolution” to
a popular religious cliche. We really are in a war!
That
Friday night service marked the beginning of a solemn, ten day season
on the biblical calendar, beginning with the Feast of Trumpets (called
Rosh HaShanah, the New Year, in Judaism) and ending at sunset, Monday,
October 2, with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Jewish tradition
calls these ten days the “days of awe,” a time of repentance
and awakening and soul-searching, a time in which God is judging
the world. It is a time to stir ourselves and to wake up. It is
a sacred, holy season.
Little
did any of us know that during the next ten days there would be
three tragic school shootings – the most heinous and horrific
of all being the slaughter of the five Amish girls on the Day of
Atonement – not to mention news of the gay sex scandal involving
Representative Mark Foley and some of his male pages.
All
four cases involved minors, and three of the four cases involved
the sexual molestation of children, including the claim by Congressman
Foley that he himself had been abused by a clergyman when he was
a teenager in addition to the report that the murderer of the Amish
girls had molested minors in his family twenty years earlier when
he was only twelve.
What
has happened to our society? Has the world gone completely mad?
The answer is absolutely yes, the world has gone completely mad
– but this is hardly a recent development. As painful and
shocking as these recent events are, the Scriptures state plainly:
“We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world
is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). This
is where we have allowed ourselves to be deceived, where we have
failed to grasp reality. We live in a battle between two kingdoms,
and we can never be totally at home in this world.
And
yet there’s more. To whatever extent America was a “Christian
nation” in the past, it has long since taken a terrible moral
plunge. We went over the deep end years ago, and the slaughter of
the Amish children did not mark the end of innocence in our nation.
The end of innocence came decades ago – in fact, it came long
before the Columbine massacre in 1999 and well before the legalizing
of abortion in 1973 – but we have failed to grasp the urgency
of the hour. Reality makes us uncomfortable, and we would rather
continue to sleep on in comfort than wake up. But we cannot afford
to slumber any longer. The trumpet is sounding a loud and clear
note. It is time to wake up!
We
need to face the facts: Our nation is saturated with violence –
from TV to the movies to video games to the Internet to sports –
and is drowning in sexual addictions. And no one has been more attacked
than the children, from abortion on demand to the decimation of
the family, and from sexual predators (we have roughly 400,000 registered
sex offenders in our land) to godless educational curricula. The
cold-blooded, execution-style killing of little children in a one-room
school house only underscores the moral depravity of our society.
It is but a symptom of our long-standing sickness.
In
1969 Dr. Bill Bright wrote, “We live in the most revolutionary
period of human history. . . . Social band-aids and reform antiseptics
give little hope for a cure or even an improvement. A revolution
is needed.” How much more can this be said today? It is revolution
or we die, revolution or it’s over, revolution or it’s
too late. And the only way we can have a true Jesus Revolution in
our nation – a non-violent revolution based on purity, compassion,
and sacrifice rather than one based on anger, intimidation, rebellion,
and force – is to have a sweeping revival in our churches.
We need a massive, repentance-based, Spirit-empowered movement that
awakens us from our stupor and calls us to battle. We have no other
choice!
It
is true that, as Americans, we have the responsibility to be involved
in the political process, doing what we can to elect righteous officials
and to call our elected officials to stand for what is right. Yet
we must be realistic: There is no political solution for our nation’s
illness, nor will a new Christian teaching or an exciting new seminar
get the job done. We need a spiritual, moral, and cultural revolution.
In
1999, the call for a Jesus revolution began to be sounded by many
leaders throughout America and around the world. Seven years later,
that call is louder and clearer than ever. Can we count you in?
The
Coalition of Conscience is a network of Christian leaders and believers,
currently based in the greater Charlotte, North Carolina area, who
are working together for moral and cultural change through the gospel.
Dr.
Michael L. Brown is the Director of the Coalition and serves
as its voice to the local and national community.
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