From My Perspective - - -

The times in which we live are already past the challenging stage – they are now desperate. Nations are in turmoil and many are near bankruptcy; people are losing their employment, homes and planned retirement income; riots are once again becoming evident in other nations, as well as our own – and – our response too often is to “whistle while passing the graveyard” (idiomatic for: an attempt to stay cheerful in a dire situation; to proceed with a task, ignoring an upcoming hazard, hoping for a good outcome) or the utterance of – “tch, tch” (a sound made at a moment of frustration).

The column by Peggy Noonan for August 12th, 2011 captures some of sense of the times through which we are living and passing. She writes in a column entitled “Apres le Deluge” (after us, the deluge): “The riots in Britain left some Americans shaken…The British press, left, right and center, was largely united in a refusal to make political excuses for the violence. Almost all agreed on the cause and nature of what happened. The cause was not injustice; this was not a revolt of the downtrodden masses, breaking into stores looking for food. The causes were greed, selfishness, a respect and even lust for violence, and a lack of moral grounding. Conscienceless predators preyed upon the weak. The weak were anyone who happened to be passing by, and those, many of them immigrants, who tried to defend their shops and neighborhoods…The denunciations were swift and fierce. Max Hastings, in the conservative-populist Daily Mail: "The depressing truth is that at the bottom of our society is a layer of young people with no skills, education, values or aspirations…Nobody has ever dared suggest to them that they need feel any allegiance to anything, least of all Britain or their community…Not only do they know nothing of Britain's past, they care nothing for its present…More stinging and resigned was the brief essay by Theodore Dalrymple in the intellectually bracing City Journal. The subject -- the decline of Western society -- has been his for 20 years. He has written what he saw as a doctor working in British prisons. ‘The ferocious criminality exhibited by an uncomfortably large section of the English population’ in the riots did not surprise him. To have spotted it required no great perspicacity (keenness of mental perception and understanding)on my part; rather, it took a peculiar cowardly blindness, one regularly displayed by the British intelligentsia and political class, not to see it and not to realize its significance..."

The phrase – “after us, the deluge” (Apres le Deluge) – is fascinating! It has historic Biblical meaning. In Genesis 6:5-7, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them." The aftermath was the destruction of the world by means of a deluge – a flood. Only Noah and his family were spared because they found refuge in the Ark that the Lord had directed him to build. What does this account of Noah have to do with the current events of our time? Take note of what Jesus Christ spoke in His Olivet Discourse – Matthew 24:37-42, “For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark,and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man…stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” These words need to be taken seriously! We are living in desperate and degenerate times! We would be unwise to be “whistling past the graveyard” and uttering “tch, tch” as though these events were just passing trends and not to be taken too seriously. The words of Jesus – “Stay Awake” – should gain the attention of us all. Use what time remains, to share the Gospel and to live righteously!   Consider these things with me!