The thought that pervaded last evening's sermon [The Handwriting Is on the Wall (2002)] was intended to be a lead-in to this morning's message. It focused on a very clearly perceived enemy both within and without our shores. This enemy I spoke of there is obviously different from us in virtually every area of our culture. What we're going to look at today is more complex. It is more subtle and a little bit more difficult to discern. We're going to take a look at another enemy that is both within and without, but focus on that which is within our nation's borders - Israel's borders - because that is where the damage is really taking place. This enemy is far more dangerous than the one focused on last night, because they fall very close to the poignant Pogo cliché that goes, We have seen the enemy, and they is us!
The enemy began to appear more publicly in the United States about 100 years ago and has been growing steadily in strength mostly through subtle and crafty maneuvering, away from the public spotlight. Over the past 40 years it has grown steadily more vocal, and today it is quite demanding.
It is highly unlikely though, that even had the public known, it would have been an alarmed few, because most would not perceive them as being dangerous to their liberty. Even though they are today right out in front about doing their maneuvering, most Americans are still apathetic, don't recognize the danger, or feel powerless to do anything about it. In fact, a large percentage of Americans approve.
These people that I'm speaking of have been insinuating themselves into every area critical to the well-being of this culture. They are most definitely in government - from the smallest municipality to the highest branches of government. They are in both political parties, but the Democratic Party especially has an overwhelming abundance of them. It is these people who authored the infamous Immigration Act signed by President Johnson in 1965, and it is these people who maneuvered it through Congress and enabled it to be signed into law of the land.
These people are undoubtedly sincere in their belief, and if they were your neighbors, I think that you would welcome them as being part of your neighborhood. They believe what they are believing in, and they feel that they are doing this for the overall good of the world especially, and of the United States secondarily, but these people are most definitely revolutionaries.
Most people wrongly assume that revolutions are fomented in the mean streets of city ghettos, but that most assuredly is wrong. Revolutionaries are most frequently brought to birth in universities. These people with more specialized education then tend to become the leaders in society regardless of their field. The unfortunates in the ghettos merely become the cannon fodder to be used to carry out the better educated's plans to alter, in any manner they can, the inequities that they perceive to be working in their nation. And if persuasion does not work, force is eventually the alternative.
Their better education is why these people, who are the subject of the beginning of this sermon, are spread throughout the entire culture. They lead churches of virtually every denomination, businesses of all kinds, and educational institutions all the way from kindergarten up through elementary, middle, high school, and university. It is in the universities and churches that they have been most effective. But because virtually everybody is educated in the government's elementary and high schools before they go on to university, everybody who goes into the work place has been effectively propagandized to some degree.
Many have noticed that they were able to direct their children along the straight and the narrow until they went to university, but their children came out profoundly changed. Later the changes began taking place in high school as these people spread throughout the culture. Now the … . . .
The nations were angry is reminiscent of Psalm 2. We will go back there for a moment. We sing this on occasion in our hymnal.
...which sounds a lot like, The Lord and His Christ. Remember back there in Revelation 11:15, where it says the kingdom of this world has become the Kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ. Notice what it says in Psalm 2: ...against the Lord, and against His Anointed. That is the word Messiah, which in Greek is Christ. So, that ties these two together nicely.
