“You shall not murder.
Hello friends! This has been a difficult week in the history of the United States. We had another mass shooting in our country. In Orlando, Florida, a city known for happiness, for joy, and for the fun times that we would show our children, it has now been turned to a city of sadness with the murder of almost 50 people. I picked up the USA Today on Friday, and the headlines on this paper are “Our Hearts Are Broken.” There is a picture on the front page of President Obama and Vice President Joseph Biden placing flowers at a temporary memorial for the victims of that shooting. It is indeed a sad time. On the other side of the page there was another horrific crime in England of the murder of Jo Cox. She was a lady who had been a parliamentarian for only a year in the English Parliament.
There is a lot of violence and a lot of hatred on this planet. It is a sad time because innocent people and people who should just be going about their daily lives can be slaughtered in an instant.
We are now in the throes of the predictable arguments that follow an episode like that in Orlando. There are arguments about assault weapons and whether they should be banned or not banned. Also there are arguments about gun owner’s rights, about the Second Amendment, about background checks, and about all of these issues. They talk about whether it’s large magazines that hold a lot of bullets or what. These are good arguments and good discussions to have, but it is sad that we must have them with such regularity and after such horrific events as we just witnessed this past week. People are alarmed. They should be discussing what is going on.
Mass murder, terrorism, and violence are striking with ever more frequent regularity. It seems as if we are building to bigger and bigger episodes each time. The shootings in Orlando are now classified as the largest mass killing in the United States history! It is way too frequent and far too deadly.
The question really should be, why are we at this place? Why are we having violence of such magnitude and such regularity? Guns, as they say, do not shoot themselves. It takes people. It takes people with hatred in their heart and no conscience or feeling for their fellow human beings to perpetrate such crimes. The question we should be asking is, how did we get to this place, and what are we going to do about it?
We are responsible. Our country, our people, our citizenry are responsible for the situation we find ourselves in. We got us here! For the last generation or two, we have been choosing to go down a road that would lead us exactly to this place. Sadly, as we will see as we go through this discourse, we knew it. We just didn’t care!
WE CHOSE LAWLESSNESS
We chose a course that in God’s eyes would be called “lawlessness.” We have now a rendezvous with destiny, a destiny of our own making. We are living in our own nightmare, so to speak! We rejected God’s Ten Commandments. We decided to go our own way. We decided we would take our own course, decide what’s right and what’s wrong, and we are reaping what we sow.
Today we are going to be discussing the Sixth Commandment. The King James Version says, “thou shalt not kill.” The New King James Version says, “You shalt not murder,” which is corresponding more to the way Christ intended that commandment to read. Let’s turn to Matthew chapter 5, because Christ commented on the Sixth Commandment in Matthew chapter 5. After discussing The Beatitudes at the beginning of the chapter and how we are to be a light to the world and bringing that light involves obeying the Ten Commandments, Christ went on to broaden the Ten Commandments beyond the letter of the law. He talked about the spiritual intent of the commandments. Here is what He had to say about thou shalt not murder.
I am beginning in Matthew chapter 5, verse 21: “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder, and whoever murders will be in danger of the judgement.’ But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgement. And whoever says to his brother, ‘Raca!’[which means you fool] shall be in danger of the council. But whoever says, ‘You fool!’ shall be in danger of hell fire. Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
Christ says, this commandment is so important to get it right in the spiritual intent of it, don’t even bring Me an offering or pray to Me if you know you have hurt your brother or if you have hatred in your heart for your brother. That’s all of mankind. We are the family of man.
Dropping down to verse 43 of Matthew chapter 5 Christ goes on to say: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you?”
He said true love for our neighbor—our fellow man—goes beyond just those who are nice to us. It goes to those who we don’t like and even hate. He says don’t have that kind of hatred in your heart because hate is a form of killing, it harms.
Christ broadened the commandments. He went through several other commandments and did the same thing to show us the spiritual intent behind the Ten Commandments.
We have turned our backs on the commandments, both the letter and the spirit. I want to discuss three ways that we can measure the condition of our collective soul because we have turned against the Sixth Commandment. There are three ways we can measure ourselves.
MEASURE OURSELVES ON ENTERTAINMENT
The first way we can measure ourselves is how we spend our leisure time. What do we do to entertain ourselves? In the United States and many of the developed countries of the world, we entertain ourselves with violence, vileness, and with evil. Our TV programs, our movies, and our video games are full of violence. The sporting events we go to are more and more violent. Boxing is too tame. Now it’s mixed martial arts and cage fighting. These are fast-growing sports. It shows you that we have a sick society, and it’s getting sicker because what we do with our leisure time, we show God what we want to do. It’s not work. It’s not something we have to do. It is something we choose to do, and too many of us are choosing to be entertained by horrific violence.
Matthew chapter 6, one chapter over from where we just read, Christ explains something about letting evil into our minds. I am in verse 22 of Matthew 6: “The lamp of the body is the eye. If therefore your eye is good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”
Light is what comes into our eyes and makes an impact on our brain, on our mind, on our heart, our attitudes. God said if the light that comes in is dark, how dark are minds can become. They can become full of darkness. The light that comes from video games that are violent or horrific or movies or TV programs that depict violence, I term that “black light.” There is such a thing as black light. It is black light, and it turns our soul dark and sick. God says, we can’t do that without impact on our very souls, on our very lives.
It is interesting because it is also that way with our other senses. For our hearing, if we let evil sounds, evil lyrics in music, and discordant sounds enter our mind, we also become agitated. Putting the two together, sight and sound, can have a horrific impact on our minds, really darkening our souls and damaging our consciences.
It is a fascinating time to live in, but it’s a bit scary. This very newspaper that showed President Obama and Vice President Biden putting the flowers at the makeshift memorial for the victims also had some interesting things on the inside on the business page. I am going to turn to the Business Section. We will pull it right out of the paper here. There was a small block article right here. It has a depiction of someone with virtual reality lenses on. It reads this way.
It says, “Virtual reality, a reality for some. Thirty-eight percent of consumers plan to purchase any VR [that’s any virtual reality hardware] over the next 24 months.” Thirty-eight percent want to own virtual reality lenses. Is that evil in itself? No. But there is another article just a couple of pages into the Business Section, and it goes this way.
“Horror Finds Dark Twisted Home in Virtual Reality.” This article goes on to explain that these virtual reality goggles or lenses, whatever you want to call them, are perfect for putting us and immersing us into horror movies and horror situations that will be virtually real! You will hardly be able to distinguish whether you are part of the crime as a victim or a witness to a horrible violent tragic event. That’s scary! That’s scary because 38% are going to buy these. The fastest growing form of entertainment is the violent movies. The things that we enjoy now on television and at the movie theaters will be right at our face, pushing that into our minds with a tremendous impact. It has a tremendous impact. If you think we have problems now, we are headed for much worse very soon, as we will see as we go through this discussion today.
Why is this in the Business Section? I will tell you why it’s in the Business Section. We can go back to Matthew 6 to see. I want to go back to Matthew chapter 6, nearly where we left off. I am in verse 24. Right after Christ talked about the lamp of the body being the eye, He went on to say this.
Matthew 6, verse 24: “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
That is money. Why they have virtual reality and horror apps or movies or whatever in the Business Section is because it is a good investment to make money. People make money off producing, writing, and distributing horror and violence.
Shakespeare said something interesting, and I want to quote him. “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman.” Today we could say the prince of darkness could be wearing a business suit. Satan influences the mind, but that’s all he can do. He cannot produce evil for us. He cannot get us to kill each other, or to make horror movies or violent movies, or make TV programs and games. We do it. It is the investors who make it possible and the people who purchase those items that give them their money which are their profits.
People buy tickets to horror movies. People buy virtual reality and download the apps or whatever you want to call it that put this evil into their mind. When you pay for those things, you are supporting the people that produce more and more of it—those of us with money. There are people with lots of money who are billionaires or hedge fund operators or whatever. They invest in the latest movie or a producer who can put forth this stuff to infect our children with violence and evil images. It puts it into their mind, and it takes money to do that. That’s why it is in the Business Section.
We know better than that. We should not be settling for those things. We should not help to produce evil. It starts with investors. It starts with money. It takes money to make movies and to pay software writers for games. It takes money to invest in actors and actresses who make a lot of income working and acting in these kinds of programs and films. It takes money to pay the producers to build the sets. We have to deny the money if we are going to stop this flow of evil. That’s where you and I come in.
If we refuse to support or purchase, this will dry up. Satan loses his power to influence. As Shakespeare said, the prince of darkness is a gentleman, and maybe we will have some true gentlemen. They will be people who care about their society.
I can only spend a few minutes on each of these three ways to measure our collective souls, so you can go on to research it yourself or look at more of our literature and booklets to see a vast expanded array of ways of looking at God’s Ten Commandments. You will see how they can help us. You will see ways that the word of God—the Bible—can heal our soul and help us to be a happy nation. We can get ready for the beautiful time that Christ says will come, but it is preceded by a dark time. We are doing it to ourselves!
MEASURE OURSELVES ON ABORTION
The second way we bring this darkness on—the second way I want to measure the condition of our soul is by looking at abortion—murder of the innocent. There is lots of talk about self-defense. We have had a lot of shootings in the last 10 or 12 years. After one of these shootings takes place like in Orlando, there is always a big discussion. You have one side saying we have a right to defend ourselves. The others say we must control these violent weapons. There is some truth to both sides. When you look at the case for abortion, how can a baby who isn’t even totally born yet defend itself? How can it shoot back? How can it take care of itself? It needs us to defend it. It needs us to protect it, so it can have life.
Life is a beautiful thing. It is a precious thing in the eyes of God. Every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. It is up to us to give that life an opportunity to live, to grow, to produce, and be a member of society.
It is interesting because that front page of the USA Today said our hearts are broken and showed our political leaders laying flowers for these victims. But we also have a lot of political leaders in our country who support the right to partial-birth abortion. That is a baby that is literally born! It is almost all the way into this world, and it is killed! Yes, our leaders, many of them, support that. I believe our president supports that.
How can God bless a nation that kills its children made in the image and likeness of God? It is a nation that does not give them the opportunity to draw that first breath of life. God can’t bless a nation that does that, so we reap what we sow.
There are a lot of other interesting things that come to mind when I think about abortion. They say that since Roe vs. Wade in the United States 58 million babies have been aborted. Isn’t it ironic that we look at our Social Security and our Medicare system and say they are going broke because there are not enough workers to support the system any more. Ironic isn’t it? It would be a lot different if there were 58 million more workers in our country. Then with the children that would be their progeny maybe we would be up to 75 or 80 million more workers right now, and we wouldn’t have the fiscal problems that we have. Interesting! You can’t get away from the effects. When you break God’s laws, there are things that will happen. There are consequences. One of them is God certainly cannot bless us. The other is actual physical consequences.
MEASURE OURSELVES ON CHARACTER
The third way that I want to measure our national soul is character development and the teaching of character. We have taken the Ten Commandments out of our schools and out of our public buildings. There are calls to remove them from our money—the fact that we say “In God We Trust.” People want to take God out of the picture. When we do that, proper character development goes right out the window as well. The blessings for following God’s laws aren’t there if we are not following God’s laws.
Education has become more of a social experiment than it is true education—how to be a good citizen and how to be able to function in society. Yes, we have lost our moral foundation, and we are paying the price. Through the aforementioned ways through our entertainment and what we do with our leisure time we have infected our children, and we have robbed them of the ability to learn how to fight the temptation to do evil. When we took character development out of society and out of our schools, we have robbed the children of the ability to even fight back. That’s what has happened. This has led to a lot of things.
Our lack of character development has led to the break down of the family. We talked about that in the segment on the Fifth Commandment—honor your father and mother. The break down of the family through divorce, out-of-wedlock births, and sexual promiscuity has led to a burgeoning poor class—poverty-stricken people without a father and a mother. With the break down of the family and without enough solid families, our nation is going down a rat hole, and we are doing it to ourselves. We are doing it to ourselves, and we knew better.
We knew better, and I will prove it to you. We knew this was going to happen, and we did it anyway. We did it to spite God or whatever to show that we are independent and we can do our own thinking for ourselves. No one needs to teach us anything. I don’t know what the reason was, but we have done it. We are reaping the rewards for having done it.
I remember back in middle school, and perhaps even earlier in grade school, we studied the Roman Empire and why it fell. We learned that it was a break down of the family and evil entertainment—think Roman colosseum. That rotted the empire from within and weakened it so that the barbarians could take over.
CHILDREN WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE
Many years ago when our children were young I read two books that had an impact upon me. I have kept those books to this day. They affected how my wife and I raised our children. The two books are High Risk: Children Without a Conscience. It is by Dr. Ken Magid and Carole McKelvey. This book was written in 1987, 29 years ago. A second book I would like to show you is Why Johnny Can’t Tell right From Wrong by Dr. Kilpatrick. This book was written in 1992, 24 years ago.
I want to quote from each of these books so that you can see that indeed we knew we were going to end up at this place, so therefore we are responsible for it. We need to do something to fix it or it is going to get worse, guaranteed!
I want to start in the preface of High Risk: Children Without a Conscience. High Risk: Children Without a Conscience is a fascinating book. There is a lot of information about various studies that I want to read to you from the preface.
The purpose for writing this book by the author: “High Risk Children Without a Conscience is about America’s future.” This is the future now. They were speaking almost 30 years ago. “It is about babies, parenting, genetics, and crime and how they are vitally connected.
“This book has been written for a large and diverse audience, including parents, therapists, psychologists, and educators. What you are going to read may at first shock you. Based on extensive scientific data, the prognosis for the future includes the high probability that greater numbers of psychopathic individuals are headed our way. Wherever these people go a wake of misery and fear usually follows. Unknowingly we may be creating a society in which more and more people without conscience will victimize the innocent. The deviants run the gamut from child molesters, to abusers, to crooked entrepreneurs…to murderers.”
That is the opening of this book. Notice there were many scientific studies to bear what was talked about in this book. They were predicting what the future would be, and we are living it now. We generated through that time millions of children without a conscience, and we are paying the price now. We are going to have tens of millions more in the future if we don’t change course.
They knew it was going to happen. They said they wrote this for therapists, psychologists, educators, and governing officials. This book was well known 30 years ago. We ignored it, most likely for profit. Too many politicians did not want to annoy or offend Hollywood. Too many investors did not want to lose money, so we continued to pour forth filth and put it into the minds of unsuspecting innocence, searing their conscience. That’s why it is called children without a conscience. They have no remorse. They have no feelings for other human beings.
Forget just radical Islam or this ideology or that. If a person has no feelings for another human being, they can get radicalized. They can commit murder. We first have to deal with the soul with the mind and the heart if we are going to solve the physical problem of murder of the innocence.
Turning to page 27 in the same book, the little saying at the top of chapter 2 on page 27 is this: “The Time to Teach Obedience is in the Play Pen, Not in the State Pen.” Too many of our young people are ending up in jail and the penitentiary because of violent crimes because we did not teach them when they were young.
Then the chapter goes on to say, and the title of this chapter is, “Kids Who Kill.” I am not going to read you the case studies and the actual events. They were horrific enough 30 years ago, and they are getting worse. They were horrific enough then, and we should have known we needed to do something. They were voices telling us just that. We ignored them.
“Psychiatrists don’t officially label children as psychopaths. But the consequences of some childhood actions are just as deadly as those of an adult murderer. At an alarming rate in this country more and more children are becoming hard-hearted killers.
“Records show that nationally 1,311 people under age 18 were charged with murder in 1986.” Can you imagine that? That’s 1986! “These statistics reflect only the cases in which formal charges were filed. More often, children are not charged in such crimes, especially if they are below the age of 7. In those cases the child is often just referred for treatment. Children, however, are increasingly committing crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.
“‘Ten years ago, it was a shock to see a 7-, 8-, or 9-year-old come into the system, now it’s not.’ says Danny Dawson, Chief of the Orange-Osceola County State Attorney’s Juvenile Division. ‘It is a trend.’” That is interesting. That is probably speaking of right near where this last shooting took place.
We have known where this was headed. We have known it for years, and we did nothing to stop it. We did nothing to prevent the evil from growing and becoming worse, so we are reaping what we sow. It is our fault.
In the same book on page 33 it says something about television. They knew about television back then too. Let’s go to page 33. I am going to read from this, and then we will go to the other book. Quoting from the book: “There are, of course, many theories on the source of violence in childhood. The belief that television is a factor is still being explored. Ronald Slaby, an associate professor of education at Harvard University, has done extensive research on causes of aggressive behavior in children. He says the notion that television violence plays a supporting role is backed by studies demonstrating that children who watch a great deal of TV violence are more apt to behave aggressively than those who don’t.”
They knew it 30 years ago. That’s before video games and before virtual reality! It is only going to get worse. If you think it is bad now, we had better start doing something, or it is going to get a lot darker out in our society and a lot worse.
TELL RIGHT FROM WRONG
Now let’s go to Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong. I want to go to pages 172 and 173, and we will quote a little bit here about music and how long ago music was known to be effective either for good or for evil. You may be surprised just how long this has been known. I am in chapter 10: “Music and Reality.” I am starting at the beginning of the chapter.
“No, this chapter is not about the latest dirty lyrics in the latest rap group’s latest album (though some are included). Nor does it deal with rumors that the members of such and such a rock group are devil worshipers (though they might be). Rather, it attempts to get at an effect of music that is more basic than the lyrics or the singer’s persona. We can start our discussion of this effect with the common observation that we tend to learn something more easily and indelibly if it’s set to a rhyme or song. Advertisers know this and use it so effectively that we sometimes have difficulty getting their jingles out of our heads.” How true that is. “But there are more positive educational uses. Most of us learned the alphabet this way and some of our history as well (“Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Concord Hymn”). Recently some foreign language courses have been developed which employ rhyme and song as the central teaching method.
“This raises an interesting possibility. If Johnny can be taught to read through rhyme and song, might he also begin to learn right and wrong in the same way? It seems that something like this did happen in the distant past. As I noted earlier, the Iliad and the Odyssey played a vital role in the formation of Greek youth.” Those are ancient writings. “But the ability of the Homeric bards to memorize these vast epics was due in large part to the rhythmic meter and repetitive structure of the poems. In turn, these epics were often sung to the audience to the accompaniment of a stringed instrument. In short, the foundational cultural messages of the Greeks were conveyed by sung stories. ‘Education in such cultures,’ writes Kieran Egan of Simon Fraser University, ‘is largely a matter of constantly immersing the young into the enchanting patterns of sound until they resound to the patterns, until they become “musically” in tune with, harmonious with, the institutions of their culture.’”
That was known by the ancient Greeks. Then it goes on here in the book to discuss another book called The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom in which he discussed how music can affect the individual. Then this author goes on to comment on that book saying:
“Bloom’s comments are based on several passages from Plato, who was much concerned with the moral effects of music—so much so that in the ideal society he describes, many kinds of music would be censored. According to Bloom, these observations in [the book written by Plato] The Republic stir up today’s generation of students as nothing else in Plato can. They take music very seriously—as did Plato. Plato’s argument is that certain kinds of music can foster a spirit of lawlessness which can creep in unnoticed, ‘since it’s considered to be a kind of play,’ and therefore harmless. Despite the innocent appearance, however, some kinds of music are capable of subverting the social order.”
When you put sight and sound together, you can really subvert the social order, and we are seeing it on a regular basis in our country. We have done it to ourselves. We knew it was going to happen if we didn’t change our behavior 30 years ago. It is high time we recognize the facts and stop fooling around with these issues. Keep God’s Ten Commandments. Get back on the track that He knew was good for us.
I want to turn back now to page 97 in this book. That spoke about Plato. I am on page 97. Here you will see another very famous person mentioned from ancient antiquity.
“From a traditional point of view, the chief way to counter our lack of will and determination is through the development of good habits. An effective moral education would be devoted to encouraging habits of honesty, helpfulness, and self-control until such behaviors become second nature. The idea is that we could then respond to tempting situations in an automatic way, much as an expert tennis player responds automatically to a hard serve. If we become persons of a certain kind, we won’t need to debate our course of action, we will know ‘instinctively’ how to act.”
There is an old Spanish proverb that I have used in the past that said this. “Habits are at first cobwebs, then they are cables.” They could be good cables or they could be bad cables.
Going back to the book and quoting from Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong: “This is how the ancient Greeks and Romans understood moral education, except that instead of talking about ‘habits,’ they used the word ‘virtues.’ In its original sense, the word meant something like our word ‘strength.’ If you had a virtue such as courage, you not only had an idea about what constitutes courageous behavior, you also had the strength to act accordingly. And like muscular strength, you could lose it if you didn’t keep in practice. Aristotle said that a man becomes virtuous by performing virtuous acts; he becomes kind by doing kind acts; he becomes brave by doing brave acts.”
We see Aristotle and Plato, who were ancient people of wisdom, knew the importance of character development, teaching virtues, and teaching good habits. It is something we have known for a long time. With God giving us the Ten Commandments, He gave us the perfect habits to develop. When Jesus Christ walked the earth, He expanded them so we would learn to love our neighbor and to love God.
The last little quote I want to read from the book Why Johnny Can’t Tell Right From Wrong is this: “This discussion of choices and habits may also help to explain a curious irony in American culture. For a society that babbles incessantly about choices, ours seems to be able to exercise precious little freedom when it comes to making them. Judging by statistics, this may be the most compulsive and addictive society ever to have stepped onto the stage of history. The list of addictions not only includes alcohol, tobacco, and drugs but extends to gambling, eating, shopping, and sex.”
That is because we never taught enough self-control, enough character, and good habits. Our Founding Fathers knew the value of those.
The last quote from page 99 is as follows: “It was also an indispensable concept for those living in a democracy. John Adams wrote that our form of government was only meant for a virtuous people, and Jefferson, Madison, and Washington concurred. A government of the people would work only as long as the people were good people. Schools did their part by explicit instruction in the importance of honesty, hard work, altruism, and patriotism, but also by presenting stories of virtue to children. The McGuffey Reader, which by 1919 had the largest circulation of any book except the Bible, contained readings from Aesop, Shakespeare, and the Bible as well as stories about Lafayette, Washington, and Wilberforce (the Englishman who almost single-handedly brought an end to the slave trade).”
We knew better, and we let it happen to ourselves. We are continuing down that road, but we can change course if enough of us decide we are not going to support those who produce this garbage. We are not going to let it into our children. We are not going to let it into our minds. We are not going to invest in it with our 401k’s and our IRA’s. We are not going to do it if we care about the next generation.
If we are saddened enough about the killings that have taken place, we will do something about this. It should be a no-brainer. It should be something we want to do.
ASK GOD’S HELP TO CHANGE
I want to conclude with a few Scriptures, the first being Psalm 119. In verse 37 the Psalmist says here: “Turn away my eyes from looking at worthless things, and revive me in Your way.”
Why don’t we ask God to help us do that. Ask Him to help us turn our eyes away from this worthless nonsense and to revive our nation. Ask Him to revive our souls so that we have a heart—compassion, and so we teach our children how to have compassion and souls and how to be kind to their neighbors.
The next Scripture I want to read is Isaiah 33, beginning in verse 14. It goes this way: “The sinners in Zion are afraid; fearfulness has seized the hypocrites…”
We could put in there the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The hypocrites are fearful because we produce this garbage, and we are getting the result. We did it with hypocrisy. We had our business suits on. We invested. We profited. We brought it about.
Going on here in verse 14 of Isaiah 33: “…who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire? Who among us shall dwell with everlasting burnings?”
It is speaking of the fire of the Holy Spirit. Who will dwell with the Holy Spirit and let Him in into our lives.
It goes on to answer the question in verse 15: “He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly, he who despises the gain of oppressions, who gestures with his hands, refusing bribes, who stops his ears from hearing of bloodshed, and shuts his eyes from seeing evil: he will dwell on high; his place of defense will be the fortress of rocks; bread will be given him, his water will be sure.”
Personal and national blessings will flow from God if we follow these admonitions. Keep the Ten Commandments and do not support the production of evil and vile entertainment and policies that are leading our nations down the wrong road. It is only going to get worse if we don’t do something.
TEACH THE COMMANDMENTS
We need to develop character in our children, and we need to base it on the Ten Commandments and not be afraid to do so. We can’t be afraid to tell people. Jesus Christ said in Matthew 5, we need to teach others His law. We have been discussing that on this whole series on the Ten Commandments.
We do not have to go along with the ways of the world. We can reject the violent tendencies, the entertainment, and the policies that go down this dark path. We can reject that by our way of life by rejecting the pastimes that lead to people of no conscience. In that same newspaper it talked about the gentleman who did the shooting in Orlando. They said he was a troubled child who had trouble in school and who would not obey. He was violent. He was at odds with authority. Over and over again he was disciplined. They tried to correct him with all kinds of ways, but I am sure they never tried to teach him the Ten Commandments. He was a troubled youth, and that is what led him to become a radical Islamist. That’s what leads people like in Columbine through games to learn how to kill people and go to their school and kill their friends. That’s what led a young man in Connecticut to kill little children. They filled their minds with violence and became inured to violence. They became children without a conscience.
If we continue down this road with modern technology giving us ever more powerful ways to affect the mind, it is going to get worse. We can do something about this, and we need to. We need to focus on the Ten Commandments and teach them to the young children to avert future disasters.
In conclusion I want to say this: if we want the killing to stop, we have to stop raising killers. We have to raise people of conscience and people of good character. We need to raise people who respect God’s laws, the Ten Commandments. I am very confident that if we do these, things will turn around. I know that at the end of the Bible we are told at the end of the age there is an innumerable multitude who wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb. That means they are converted. They have learned their lesson. The sooner enough of us learn this lesson, the less often we are going to have to bury innocent victims from cruel and violent people without a conscience. We can do this. God will help us. In your efforts I ask that God will bless you and help us to turn our nations around and look forward to a much brighter future.