Recently, I saw the wreckage of a truck which had been hit by a fast train. It reminded me that GOD'S PROGRAM OF DESTINY is like an express train, running exactly on schedule: we can't expect it to wait while we hold a picnic on the tracks with God's enemies. Yet we persistently do wrong, for the sake of so-called "expediency", until the judgment of des�tiny flings us in wreckage from the tracks.
When God led His people out of Egypt and was organizing them into a nation, while He had Moses up in Mount Sinai for instructions, Moses' brother Aaron was left in charge of the people. Now Aaron was a "man of peace"---there was nothing "controversial" about him: he wouldn't quar�rel with anyone about anything so trifling as a vital principle of good or evil. So he found it "expedient" to go along with the popular demand to return to idolatry, and he made them the golden calf. Inevitably, came the penalty: 3,000 people died as the price of this "expediency. (Exodus 32)
Then when God told His people to enter their new homes in Palestine, they lacked the courage to obey Him. The leading "liberal" columnists and commentators of the day called Him a "warmonger"; they said it was a reactionary policy, it would surely lead to war with Russ --- pardon me, with the Canaanites---so we must do anything to avoid the danger of war. You know what the penalty was: 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, until all the cowards were dead. Only those with the courage to follow their God could enter the Promised Land.
After the 40 years wandering was past, Giod again--told His people to
occupy the good land He had given them and He would drive out their enemies
before them; and He solemnly warned them not to make any treat ies with the
treacherous, pagan Canaanite nations, for the Canaanites regarded treaties
only as a way to deceive their enemies. God said: "Take heed to thyself,
lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land whither thou goest,
lest it be fox, a snare in the midst of thee." Exodus 34:12
But the foolish
people would not obey God. Didn't their Secre�tary of State say, "The
way to get confidence is to give it" and "We must treat everybody
alike --- we must never discriminate --- not even be�tween good and evil . So
they defied their God for the sake of politi�cal "expediency", and
made a peace treaty with the Gibeonites. Again they had to learn the terrible
lesson that, in the long run, expediency is never expedient. The record of it
is brief and bitter:
And an
angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said, 'I made you to go
out of Egypt, and have brought you unto the land which I swore unto your
fathers; and I said I will never break My covenant with you. And ye shall make
no league with the inhabitants of this land; ye shall throw down their altars:
but ye have not obeyed My voice. Why have ye done this? Wherefore I also said,
I will not drive them out before you; but they shall be as thorns in your
sides, and their gods shall be a snare unto you."' Judges 2:1-3
For centuries, in
one dreadful war after another, they paid the bitter penalty with the lives of
their sons---wars which no enemy would have dared to start if our ancestors
had obeyed their God.
But down through
the next 3,300 years, each generation has had to learn anew the awful lesson
that the price of expediency is high, and the only coin with which we can pay
is the blood of our sons. Great Britain and ourselves are already seated in
the classroom where we must learn that, when we sell our brothers of Europe
into slavery just to win an election, we shall yet redeem them on the
battlefield --- and pay a frightful rate of interest for the delay.
Today the
situation is taking on a new character: it is God's judg�ment upon the
satanic world order. The fruits of that order have ripened: we suffer the
consequences of living under the conditions which we have tolerated. Are you
worried about the danger of atomic attack by China?
People today deceive themselves about God's judgments. They think of
them as only the anger of hurt pride, and they say, "So what if we have
defied Him, as lon� as we thought it was all right? He is too kind to do
anything about it. instead, JUDGMENT IS THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE OF
VIOLATING NATURAL LAW. Moral laws are as much natural laws --- and as
self-enforcing --- as the Law of Gravity. All history is the record of the
consequences of national cowardice and dishonesty.
"Be not
deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man
"For they
have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirl-wind." Hosea 8:7
Now,
God's Train of Destiny is thundering down the track, right on schedule, and we
must either get out of the way or get hit. Noah had to build the ark in time,
else he would have drowned with the others; Lot had to get out of Sodom, else
he would have perished in its destruction. We also have much to change---and
very soon.
OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM HAS TURNED ITS BACK ON GOD. We thought it
smart" and "intellectual" to doubt and sneer at everything
good. Now Communism is taught in many schools under the guise of "social
adjust�ment", and Christianity is ridiculed and denounced as
"bigotry." Juve�nile delinquency is the natural result of our lack
of standards and the mixing together of all kinds and classes of youth in the
sacred name of "democracy"---the tolerated presence of evil always
corrupts: one rotten apple spoils the barrel. Now we have even found instances
of teachers teaching our children the worst kind of promiscuous immorality ---
and brazenly defending their teaching as part of their "academic
freedom." But what have YOU done about your schools?
IS THE GOVERNMENT
OF YOUR CITY CORRUPT? Don't complain to me: how much campaigning for better
candidates did YOU do, last election? ARE YOUR TAXES RUINOUSLY HIGH? When did
YOU ever notify any politician that your vote would go to the man who would
reduce taxes by one-third?
You have been many times betrayed by politicians who have brazenly and
openly sold you out --- you, the great majority --- in a corrupt play for the
support of some "Minority group". But didn't you vote for those same
politicians at the next election?
All the conditions you find so appalling
are the result of your own toleration of evil. We get a million words a year of
propaganda for "tolerance"---but haven't you ever wondered why it
always asks you to tolerate somethin� bad? Why it never asks anyone to tolerate
the good things which are controversial" because the evil groups are always
at�tacking them? When will we learn that you cannot tolerate a cancer? Today,
we face the beginning of the last great conflict, from which either good or evil
will survive, but not both: there can be no "co�existence". We must
pay for our cowardice and hypocricy and "expediency" in blood, as
always---blood we could have saved if we had stamped out the organized,
international evil of Communism, put out the fire when it was small.
Even now, we can still avoid much of it, if we will clean up our national
house and get back to the laws of God, while there is yet time.