For the past few years, a common question posed to me is if I believe our country and our civilization will survive.  My answer has always been, “Yes…I’ve lived through moments in history when it appeared that all was so far gone, but we have recovered.”  I’ve cited the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Dr. Martin Luther King; the violent race riots of the early and mid-60’s and the anti-war protests and the mayhem on college campuses in the late 60’s and early 70’s.  I remember the sexual liberation craze of the 60’s and 70’s where commitment and marriage were scoffed at in favor of open sexual promiscuity brought on in part by easy access to birth control pills and abortion.  I watched our cities burned down in riots and lootings.  I remember the 1968 Democrat Convention in Chicago when police and protestors violently clashed, or the May 1970 Kent State killing of 4 students and 9 others wounded by National Guard troops who opened live fire on campus protestors.  I witnessed the scandal and ultimate resignation of a President; the Iranian takeover of an embassy and the taking of 52 American hostages, held for 444 days by radical Muslims.  I’ve seen oil embargoes that caused long lines at gas stations, and saw interest rates for home mortgages climb to 17 and 18% causing economic upheaval.  There have been drug use crises that made it appear that an entire generation would drop out and get doped up. 

But through it all, there were glimpses of hope and we experienced an ebb and flow of history that fluctuated between the worst and the best.  We saw the Civil Rights act passed and a landing on the moon, and major medical breakthroughs that saved lives, and innovations in technology that brought us personal computers and ultimately smart phones and world-wide communications through something called the world-wide-web, commonly known as the internet. 

But when people ask me now if we’re going to be okay, I say soberly, but honestly, “I don’t know.”

The reason is that there are signs of such depravity that is not only occurring but being approved by those who are well-educated and should know better. 

A new Harvard-Harris Poll found that among 18-24-year-old Americans, a majority (51-49%) think Hamas’ slaughter of 1300 innocent Israeli civilians was justified. Overall, Americans disagree by 76-24%, with those over 65 disagreeing by 91-9%.  Which means that while people in my generation are overwhelmingly appalled by the massacre of children, the violent rape of women, and the torturing of elderly, younger Americans actually consider such behavior justified.  And worse, much of that attitude prevails on the campuses of what once were the elite institutions of higher education—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia.  How is it that in places where we ought to find the smartest people, we are instead seeing the most immoral, least aware, spiritually blind, and intellectually ignorant? 

We have people appointed to the Supreme Court who can’t answer the simple question “What is a Woman,” for fear it might offend those who argue that gender is no longer a scientific or biological reality, but it’s whatever we imagine it to be based on nothing more than a whim.  People advocate for the chemical castration and surgical mutilation of children who are as prepared to make such permanent life-altering decisions as they are to be handed loaded firearms or given the choice of eating vegetables or ice cream for dinner. 

But the reason for which I lose my optimism most is that in the past, there was a remnant of sane and moral people who never wavered from believing and advocating for Biblical truth and the Judeo-Christian norms of treating others as one desired to be treated and believing that there was a God, He was involved in our world, and we should follow his laws.  I now see many younger, but very popular pastors who have moral confusion and, in an attempt, to be relevant and loved are embracing sexual immorality as just a personal choice, and who in the name of love, have dismissed sin as anything other than a personal lifestyle choice.  If this trend continues, I can’t imagine the patience of God lasting indefinitely.  There may soon come the time when He either lets us collapse into oblivion, or He finally says, “That’s it.  It’s time for putting this evil generation to rest and call a halt to a people who have destroyed themselves by rebellion.”

I hope I’m wrong.  I pray for reformation.  But I fear for the Apocalypse.