Tigers and Wolves

The Rapture is a prophesied event in Christian theology in which Christians are gathered together to participate in the Second Coming of Christ. Christians who have died are to be resurrected to participate in the coming of Christ along with those who are still living at the time of the event. The rapture is not mentioned in scripture, but Christians rejoice in the knowledge that those who have been redeemed by grace through faith in Jesus Christ will soon be separated from this world of troubles, trials, tribulations, and the pretenders and the protagonists of Satan who have attempted to make our lives miserable as we have claimed the mercies of an all omnipotent creator.

News reports indicate that the greatest problem in the Civil War of Sri Lanka is that the civilians whom have escaped the Tamil Tigers and who flee to one the refugee camps must be carefully screened because the Tigers have tried to infiltrate the refugee camps provided by the government. In speaking with a young Marine recently involved in the war in Iraq, he stressed that the greatest difficulty in this type of warfare is determining the enemy forces from the friendly. He said, “They all wear about the same type of civilian clothing. It is a matter of their weaponry and their groupings.” He lost many friends because of the infiltration of the enemy, trusting people who should not have trusted, and not being careful every minute of every day. This is the first time in our American history that we have fought wars without front lines, enemies without uniforms, and enemies that want to survive.

When you are fighting an enemy who will commit suicide or will send family members, even children, as suicide martyrs, your chances for survival are cut tremendously. As Matthew 7:15 says, “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Infiltrators are nothing new. Even Christ himself had one disciple who betrayed him. I have said to many pastors, “I believe that any preacher of the gospel enjoys presenting the message of God to his congregation, but it must be the most discouraging fact of life to know that there are so many “pretenders” in the congregation when your words just roll off of them like water off of a rock. Dr. R.G. Lee, one of the greatest Southern Baptist preachers to fill a pulpit said before he died at the age of 90, “ I wish that 10% of the people to whom I preached, would be in heaven.”

Instead of the church changing the world, the world has infiltrated and changed the church. So much so, that the church has become ineffective. If every redeemed, born again, Christian lived his faith before the world, the world would have been converted to Christ long ago. Charlton Heston, great actor in 89 movies, portrayed Moses in “The Ten Commandments” said, “I am a good actor because I was always a good pretender.” Jeremiah 2: 11 states, “Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but my people have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.”

Newsweek magazine, April 4, 2009 front cover, talks of the decline of Christianity in America. Those of us, saved, born again Christians, are not surprised when the secular media brings such to our attention. God informed us in his holy word, that this would be the situation before his return. So, we rejoice in the knowledge that the atheistic media has discovered something that we have known all along.

The average church, in my lifetime, has become a “country club” with a steeple. Pagans in the pulpits, pagans in the pews, highest church offices being filled with those elected for the social and financial prominence rather than their commitment to God’s work. Perhaps this is the reason that 75% of all young people, brought up in church, leave the church as soon as they go to college. There is one thing that young people, saved or unsaved, can recognize – hypocrisy. Young people can recognize anger and hypocrisy at home, which is often much different from the attitude in the church. This leads to rebellion. A mother was listening to her small daughter pray one night and she prayed, “God, help mother be as nice at home as she is in church.”

In the military, when examining prisoners at the stockade, I never had one who did not tell me of the abuse he had experienced from religious parents in his home. I never talked with a gay male who had anything good to say about his father. I never talked with a lesbian who had anything good to say about her mother. Parents think they can lead their children into a Christian life through anger and harsh discipline. Certainly, if we have learned nothing else, from prisons, rehabilitation institutions, and military private schools, we have learned that parenting takes much love and long suffering.

I remember one of the worst experiences of my life as it if were yesterday. Going out on an ambulance in an area of the inner city, I heard a father beating his daughter. Like the screams of burn victims in a hospital, I will never forget the screams of that female child as her father lashed her with a belt or stick. On the staff of the Army hospital, at the Woman’s Army Corps (WAC), Senator of the Army in Alabama, I assisted the hospital psychiatrist with many female soldiers who came to the hospital for personal care. If the public knew how much abuse, both sexual and physical, many girls have experienced at the hands of a sadistic father or psychotic mother, they would better understand the high rate of STDs and unwanted pregnancies from girls seeking someone to love them.

My own cousin revealed to me things about her mother she had never revealed to anyone else in her family. She came to me while on a visit to a large city, knowing I was there, and talked to me about a matter which she would never disclose to anyone else. She wanted me to know why she would have nothing to do with her mother’s family. She told me, how, as a child, her mother would force her on her knees in front of her to pray and ask forgiveness, as she beat her with a switch. Like the inmates at the hospital for the insane, (Cherry Hospital, Goldsboro, NC) when I was a child, there with my father who was visiting an employee, with my own eyes, ( I could see at that time) inmates were picking beans in a large field and a supervisor, riding a horse with a large belt, would whip the inmate, if not picking fast enough. Perhaps this type of cruelty is good therapy for children or the mentally challenged. The tigers, the wolves, the dispassionate have invaded and left their marks.