This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
The Northampton, Massachusetts church that claims the legacy of the great revival preacher Jonathan Edwards defiles his memory and his mission by flying the Gay/Trans Pride flag (Photo/Scott Lively)
Kyle Reece: Listen, and understand. That Terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. (The Terminator, 1984)
The thing that Hollywood portrays most accurately is the relentlessness of evil. That’s ironic, because Hollywood is so often a tool of evil, but to paraphrase what we conservatives like to say in defense of guns, "Hollywood doesn’t kill righteousness, people do," and the film industry can be just as powerful a force for good as it is for evil. Its so-often accurate portrayal of evil is a case in point in that Hollywood has infused our popular culture with many unforgettable iconic scenes and images of evil (e.g., "The Borg," "Alien," the "Body Snatchers") that rival even the stories of the Bible as "cautionary tales." These are genuine warning signs about what evil really looks like – especially the implacable relentlessness of evil.
Whether people heed those warnings often comes down to the effectiveness of the church in contrasting that evil with the goodness of God – something that is almost never depicted by Hollywood (but increasingly is depicted accurately by a rising tide of independent film companies).
I happen to be in Springfield, Massachusetts this week where my ministry is still officially based, although I live in the Memphis area now. One of my favorite places here is just north of Springfield: the huge, forested dog park on the grounds of the former Northampton State Hospital, bordered on one side by a picturesque small river across from which is the grounds of the ultra-ultra leftist Smith College, where years ago a speech by my former Board Member Ryan Sorba on his book "The Born-Gay Hoax" was shut down by rabid, screaming protestors who broke a window to get in.
I went to the dog park for my early morning walk Monday to meditate on the theme of the relentlessness of evil as represented in the phenomenon of Cultural Marxism. I composed the first paragraph of this article in my head on that walk. However, I was again reminded that God has a sense of humor in that as soon as I entered the forest I was besieged by literally hundreds of mosquitos. As someone who tries to avoid putting bug spray on my skin, I’ve gotten pretty good at fending off the flying pests with a small leafy branch (a "cow-tail" if you will) but in this case there were so many and they were so relentless that I was forced to abandon my walk after a quarter mile or so and retreat to my car – swishing my cow-tail like a Jedi Knight in a hail of laser blasts.
So I drove a mile and continued my walk on the main street of Northampton proper. I am no stranger to Northampton – sometimes called "the lesbian capital of the world," where my own sister (now deceased) had once lived as a lesbian before repenting through the power of Christ, and where my mentally ill father (long deceased) had been institutionalized at the State Mental Hospital for the last dozen years of his life.
Even so, it was disturbing to be reminded of how far a city that had once been a powerhouse of Christendom can fall. On my city walk I passed three historic churches that had once advanced Christian culture and values, including the Edwards Church, named after Northampton’s most famous son, Jonathan Edwards, the man whose sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” is virtually synonymous with the First Great Awakening in America. All three churches were flying the Gay/Trans Pride flag, and (undoubtedly with no sense of irony whatsoever) the reader board at the Edwards Church advertised the message for this coming Sunday as "The Wheat and the Weeds."
I have long believed that Cultural Marxism is designed to be the "terminator" of the Church – the end times cultural/spiritual "religion" whose mission is the total destruction of Judeo-Christian civilization and establishment of the Antichrist Kingdom. I’ve also recognized that its battle strategy is to defile humanity so thoroughly through enslavement to sexual perversion and child killing (the ancient core practices of the Canaanites that justified their genocide per Leviticus 18) that we destroy civilization with our own hands, and ultimately bring God’s wrath upon ourselves. That belief is strongly bolstered in the example of Northampton, but all of America is quickly falling into the same Marxquito-infested moral swamp.
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" – a proclamation that doubles as a roadmap of our path to victory through the swamp of lies and death. Speaking life-saving truth is our primary duty: not just the truth of the Gospel, the Good News of the free gift of salvation in Christ Jesus available to all who will accept it. But also the bad news about the consequence of sin. His Word tells us in Ephesians 5:11 to "Have no fellowship with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them," but also adds a warning in Ezekiel 3:17-19: "If I say to the wicked man, 'You will surely die,' but you do not warn him or speak out to warn him from his wicked way to save his life, that wicked man will die in his iniquity, and I will hold you responsible for his blood. But if you warn a wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness and his wicked way, he will die in his iniquity, but you will have saved yourself."
Like the "gay" hoards of Sodom, so intent on raping God’s two witnesses that they continued to claw and scrape at Lot's door even after being struck blind by God, America's bloodsucking Marxquitos are utterly relentless. They can’t be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever, until God Himself stops them – with the end-times version of fire and brimstone.
Like Lot, however, if we deny reality and try to placate the wicked by offering our children (or passively letting them be indoctrinated with Marxist theology), we lose both their virtue and our own moral authority. There is no consequence-free Hollywood ending to the real-life cautionary tale we’re living. There is only the division of saved and lost, determined by spiritual alignment with the Messiah or captivity to the godless Marxquitos – a choice heavily influenced by how well we Christians speak truth to life while there is still time.
