Your Daily Diet of HATE!
Think for a moment! You live in a world of tensions — a world fraught with FEAR — a world of DESPERATE living! It's a time of insatiable desire to ESCAPE for most people — a time when most want to FORGET the frightening realities of our time!
How do they forget?
By drifting off into ready-made fantasies; movieland madness; television terrorism; paper-backed perversity; newspaper nausea!
Whether in Scandinavia, Japan, Europe or South Africa, pleasure seekers gulp their daily diet of intrigue, suspicion, murder, divorce, robbery, rape, perversion, lust, arson, jealousy, violence and hatred!
And remember! When you're relaxed before your television set — or settled down to read your novel you just bought — your guard is down. You want to relax — to escape the realities and complexities of daily life for a time — to ENJOY your moments of make-believe.
The result?
It's all around you.
What the Police Know
H. Samuel Addis, Chief of Police of Pasadena, addressed the students of Ambassador College in Pasadena. The veteran law enforcement officer told our students how police officials are frankly worried about the terrible increase in senseless crimes! (Does ANY crime make sense?) How acts of wanton destruction against persons and property were increasing by leaps and bounds.
He cited instances of "little old ladies" who were brutally BEATEN to the ground by strong, young teenage hoodlums — for the sheer brute "pleasure" of inflicting a BEATING on someone who was helpless before them.
He cited cases of depraved acts of VANDALISM — especially against public buildings and schools. Cases of teenage vandals literally making a SHAMBLES out of new, beautiful, modern classroom facilities — even, believe it or not, using human excrement to defile and ruin.
As if to echo Chief Addis' words, a recent news report told of park officials in the city of Pasadena finding jagged shards of broken bottles carefully placed in the sand, and then lightly covered over, at the bottom of little children's slides in Pasadena public parks!
Are THESE just "laughable" children's "pranks"? Is this just "delinquency"? Or is it an unreasoning, blind, venomous, wanton, willful, depraved, MURDEROUS spirit of wanting to CUT, maim, BUTCHER, TORMENT, KILL?
Do you believe the plain statements of your Creator and your God? Or are you one who will continue to "kid" yourself this rotten world "isn't so bad after all" and go right down WITH it into a cesspool of nightmarish destruction unimagined in your weirdest dreams?
Almighty God will soon send Jesus Christ to PUNISH this world of evildoers! And don't "kid" yourself that sounds "religious!" You'll find little comfort in imagining yourself out of reality when the REALITY is all around you!
Like it or not — these are the FACTS of our HATE-filled society!
But hatred is not confined to the teenage heart. It's a disease of the human mind. It is in your very NATURE to HATE!
HUMAN NATURE — What It Is!
It's HUMAN NATURE to hate.
God made human beings what they are. He created man with a certain nature.
We call it "human nature." And it's still the greatest enigma to philosophers, psychologists, sociologists. MAN, they say is still "the biggest question mark."
One psychiatrist said, before a group of fellow psychiatrists, "We all became interested in psychiatry because we knew we ourselves had some mental problems!"
But GOD, the Inventor of the human heart, REVEALS its true nature. "The heart is deceitful above ALL THINGS, and DESPERATELY wicked: who can know it?" (Jeremiah 17:9)
Yes, the normal, natural, fleshly mind — the mind with which you were BORN — IS DESPERATELY wicked, unless it has been CHANGED by the nature of God!
Paul was inspired to write, "The carnal mind the natural mind of every person) is ENMITY against God: for it Is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be!" (Rom. 8:7)
The normal, natural, CARNAL mind of every man and every woman — yes and of every child — RESENTS the things of God! The natural mind is ALWAYS SUSPICIOUS! It IS ENVIOUS, LUSTFUL, EVIL, RESENTFUL, HATEFUL!
James wrote, "Do you think that the Scripture saith in vain, 'the spirit that dwelleth in us LUSTETH TO ENVY?' " (James 4:5)
Today, if you feel you're basically a "Christian" kind of person — you probably feel Christ really WAS the promised Messiah. You feel, whether or not you are a really zealous Christian — that Jesus Christ probably really WAS genuine. At least, if you're like most people, you couldn't call Christ a guilty EVIL-doer, could you?
But what about those who lived right with Jesus Christ? Who SAW His miracles WITH THEIR OWN EYES?
What about those who lived in Jerusalem during the time of Christ's merciless BEATING — His terrible night of KICKS, CURSES, SPITTING, HATRED, VENOMOUS ACCUSATIONS? What about those who HAD A PART IN IT?
What about the hate-filled MOB that screamed out their animalistic bestiality — "KILL HIM! CRUCIFY HIM! BUTCHER HIM!"?
God tells you NOT to bear them any malice — NOT to HATE THEM — even as Christ Himself said, from His tree of death "Father forgive them — they know not what they do!"
But do you UNDERSTAND the reason they acted as they did?
Do you RECOGNIZE the EXACT, SAME IDENTICAL NATURE IN YOURSELF?
It's THERE — recognized or not.
Many of those same participants in the illegal crucifixion of Christ took their hatred, their firm belief they had rid the world of a TERRIBLE person — to their graves with them.
They somehow convinced themselves they should be terribly, indignantly, "righteously" ANGRY at Christ!
They CQNVINCRD themselves He was a FAKE! They thought they "KNEW" they were uncovering, exposing, and punishing some GREAT EVIL!
Today, YOU KNOW BETTER! But most of them NEVER did!
Christ Says It Will Grow Worse!
And remember — Jesus predicted this evil disease of HATRED would grow worse and worse — heightening in intensity until blind RAGE would characterize our day.
Paul said, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind [a deceitful, hateful, DEGENERATE mind], to do those things which are NOT RIGHT [margin]; being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of ENVY, MURDER, DEBATE, DECEIT, MALIGNITY; whisperers [delighting in SCANDAL — in filth, evil, RUMOR!], backbiters, HATERS of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of EVIL things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers [not true to their word], without natural affection [NEVER willing to give the other fellow the benefit of the doubt], implacable [their minds UNWILLING to change — to admit new light, to see new facts, or accept the truth!], unmerciful: who KNOWING the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of DEATH, not only DO the same, but HAVE PLEASURE in them that do them" (Rom. 1:28-32).
This world is literally FILLED with human beings who fit this very description! And why not? It's a description of HUMAN NATURE in the raw — human nature JUST THE WAY IT IS!
Jesus warned, "In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the, world" (John 16:33). He prayed to His Father, "I have given them [His disciples, and true followers in ANY age] thy word, and the world hath HATED them, because they are not OF the world [they're living DIFFERENT lives — lives that have been CHANGED to conform to the life CHRIST led, And remember, He was snowed of being a WINRRIRDER, and a GLUTTONOUS man] even as I am not of the world" (John 17:14).
He had said earlier, "If the world HATE you, you know that it hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are NOT of the world, but I have chosen you OUT of the world, therefore the world HATETH you!" (John 15:18-19)
Yes — like it or not — admit it or not — the plain facts of your Bible are that HATRED will be the lot of anyone who truly repents, and strives diligently to LIVE the abundant, happy, joyous life Jesus Christ makes possible!
Jesus said, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloche for their sin!" (John 15:22)
The way of life of Christ's true servants makes others ANGRY! Because it's natural to RESENT God, it's also natural to RESENT THE WAY of God — the way of LIFE God reveals in His sacred Word!
And today, as NEVER before, people allow themselves to become consumed with purple-faced, blind, mind-chilling, vicious RAGE against the truth of God, and against His true servants! Many HATE the wonderful laws of God.
It's about time you really SAW human nature — YOUR nature, and recognized it for what it truly is. No amount of "reasoning" and arguing about the "good" ideas and deeds of humans will change the truth of God's Word.
Human nature is rotten!
It's an evil, filthy, DOWNWARD PULL — tending toward violence, destruction — no good thing! Paul was inspired to say, "For I know that in me (that is, IN MY FLESH,) dwelleth NO GOOD THING" (Rom. 7:18).
The human heart is evil — even the human heart that likes to THINK IT IS GOOD!
Human nature is NATURALLY fearful, resentful, self-justifying, egotistic, vanity-filled, hateful, despicable, proud, defiant, rebellious, boastful, obnoxious, annoying, acidic, selfish, self-centered, jealous, lustful, disobedient, stiff-necked, blasphemous, destructive, corrupt, presumptuous and vile!
It really is! That's why God says REPENT! CHANGE human nature by taking in some of the very nature of God (II Pet. 1:4).
Take a look at your own mind and heart. THINK about the lives of others around you. Ask yourself a few personal questions — and be honest with yourself about your own nature!