It happened again. The senseless, evil school shooting that took 17 lives last month in Florida. Since the shocking shootout at Columbine High School’s massacre of 15 teens in Colorado almost 19 years ago, such slaughter has become an all-too-familiar scene in American schools.
Immediately, there was an outcry for stricter gun laws. No matter what side of the gun debate you are on, the underlying basis for these murderous massacres is clear: America has spawned a generation of youth who do not value life, including their own. Because they have no understanding of eternal consequences, as taught in the Bible, death is an innocuous exit from their perceived troubles. After all, if there is no God, no Heaven or Hell, what does it matter?
Once God was kicked out of America’s schools, a decline into deadly debauchery was inevitable. Taking prayer out of schools in 1962-63 gave way to the belief that there is no God to call upon, or to whom we are answerable. “Thou shalt not murder” along with the other commandments were stripped from view. Forbidding Scripture reading in morning exercises removed another instrument by which a conscience could be pricked. But this was necessary in order to propagate the unproven theory of evolution. You cannot read from Psalm 100, “Know that the Lord he is God: it is he that has made us, and not we ourselves…” at the opening of the school day, and teach that we randomly evolved from lower primates in the afternoon. There was no room for a Creator who designed us in His image. God simply had to go.
When this ruling was handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States, I still had the benefit of Sunday school and regular church services with my minister parents. I had been marvelously blessed with a godly grandmother who nurtured me in spiritual things as well. But as Americans prospered, becoming more materialistic, church attendance dropped precipitously with each decade. Sundays are spent gardening, washing cars, shopping, and pursuing sports and amusements. Children are growing up with ample social activities, pleasures, and “things,” but the spiritual training that was once the backbone of the family has nosedived.
A mere decade after prayer and Bible reading were removed from our schools, SCOTUS upheld Roe v. Wade, signing the death certificate for millions of babies to be slaughtered in their mothers’ wombs. The message to our children? Life can be easily eliminated when it is inconvenient for others.
If God did not design us, then we have no real purpose anyway. We are just a blob of tissue, the creation of sexual gratification. Therefore, to terminate life is no big deal. When a youth is going through the ups and downs of life, often falling into depression, it is easy to rationalize that his/her life is of no value to anyone. Things like parents divorcing, financial losses, struggles in school, rejection by peers, can push a teen to self-destruction. And the catalyst for many of these contributing ills is the rejection of God’s moral laws.
What Happened to Pac-Man?
The vacuum created by the loss of spirituality would not remain empty. With the advance of computers and all things technological, came videogame entertainment. The addiction of our children for these devices was instant and constant. Before long, Pac-Man gave way to more sinister games of death and demons. Violence covered screens with splattered blood and dead bodies. With the reflex of a thumb on a remote, people dropped to their deaths like falling leaves in autumn, and it was a lot of fun to pull the trigger! The gratuitous violence escalated with every update as new ways to kill were invented and death—killing—was glorified. Yes, they were just games—just blips on the screen, but the desensitization to death was being steadily downloaded into the minds and senses of the young with still developing consciences.
TV shows have become increasingly violent. Many opening scenes are murders of the grossest kind. Threaded throughout the unfolding drama is the idea that it really isn’t the perpetrators’ fault. They grew up in a dysfunctional family; were bullied, rejected, deprived, depressed, and so on. The responsibility for such behavior is shifted away from the perpetrator and onto society, because it’s really not their fault. Not only has life been devalued, but so has sin. Sin is not what it used to be, because the Bible is no longer relevant to a godless society.
This has allowed Satan to walk through one open door after another, bringing lies, deception, and death. Jesus said he is “The thief who has come to steal, and to kill, and to destroy” (John 10:10). He is fulfilling this MO with little resistance, because death is become a celebrity to many youth. For some, killing may be an exciting way to make a name for themselves, to bask in the imagined glory of notoriety as a mass murderer. For others, severe depression, despair, and hopelessness lead them to conclude their lives are worthless, and by extension, so are their peers’. They lack the Bible’s spiritual guidance that would bring them understanding and hope. And they lack the fear of God that would warn them of eternal damnation.
Hell is a non-reality, so there’s no worry about ending up there in eternal torment. Satan has done an excellent job of convincing people that it is a figment of the Christian imagination. But Jesus clearly stated that Satan’s intentions go beyond killing—ending physical life on earth. He has also come “to destroy.” How can you destroy someone who’s already dead? Jesus was alluding to eternal destruction. Satan has cleverly devalued life, desensitized death, and deceived desperate youth into believing their actions only have temporary consequences, and when you’re dead, you’re dead, so what is there to lose?
Who Knew?
Whoever thought the day would come when people call good evil and evil good? When Satan is in and God is out? When a four-year-old boy can say he’s really a girl and receive life-altering hormones? When homosexuals can marry? When “a man” can have a baby? When bakers and florists can be fined for refusing to participate in same-sex marriages? When drag queens can read library books to kindergartners? When little girls are forced to share bathrooms with dirty old men? When schools can teach the pillars of Islam, but students can be expelled for choosing to write about Jesus Christ as their personal hero? When crosses on war memorials are torn down as offensive? When a sitting President declares that America is not a Christian nation?
Satan.
He knew the day was coming when they kicked God out. All he needed was a little time to sow his subtle seeds of doctrines of demons, evolutionary lies, sexual perversion, guiltless sin, godless entertainment, and anti-Christian hatred.
Not because he has greater power than his Christian enemy. But he has distracted many in the Church with carnal pleasures, rendering them neutralized. Others he has convinced there is nothing they can do about it, removing them as a threat to his agenda. Christians too have been desensitized—to the subtle infiltration of worldly beliefs and importation of foreign gods—demons in disguise, who not only challenge the authenticity of the God of the Bible and the authority of His laws, but are filling the land with violence, terrorism, and death.
Many are lamenting and decrying that ample warning signs of this latest school shooter were missed or ignored by authorities, including the FBI. This illustrates exactly what is happening in the spiritual realm. Many Christians will sound the alarm when it’s too late.
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