Rev D J MacDonald
THE pages of popular newspapers are not normally recommended reading for those who have a true interest in spiritual matters. However, there are times when to glance through some news reports in the light of eternal realities will focus our minds on the sheer godlessness of this generation, a fact which we continue to ignore at our peril.
A recent copy of the Aberdeen Press and Journal carried a brief news item which said, “More than 20 000 people passed through Aberdeen’s Bon Accord Shopping Centre yesterday — the first Sunday opening in the run-up to Christmas”. So at least 20 000 people broke the Fourth Commandment of God’s holy law that day. One wonders sadly how many sinners in Aberdeen heard the gospel preached that day. Only a very small fraction of 20 000, we fear. The sin of 20 000 people was not, alas, confined to themselves. Their desire to go shopping on the Lord’s Day involved others in work which was undoubtedly Sabbath-breaking. To transport them to the shopping centre, bus crews had to work; in addition all the staff of the shops that were open, security staff in the Centre itself, policemen and car
park attendants. All were robbed of their Sabbath rest, perhaps half as many again as the 20 000 shoppers. Worse still, God was robbed of the day which He has claimed for Himself. A timely reminder of the Scripture that says, “Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed Me.”
Of course we need not go to a shopping centre to rob God of His day. We can do so in the privacy of our own homes. Still it is a sad commentary on the spiritual condition of our nation that 20 000 people are enticed into a shopping centre in one of our cities to satisfy the craze of celebrating Christmas, bowing to a variety of idols at the expense of the Sabbath Day.
One wonders how many people envied a certain Mr Pattison of Yorkshire, who won £1.4 million in the National Lottery some two months ago. According to The Daily Telegraph of October 28, his most “compelling pastime is drinking beer” and his “biggest problem is boredom”. In spite of all the obvious evidence that large sums of money cannot buy happiness even in this world, millions of people buy tickets for the National Lottery and watch avidly while the winning numbers are drawn. Surely we are a nation given over to covetousness, the sin that underlies every form of gambling. This is a sin that breaks yet another of God’s commandments: “Thou shalt not covet”, though it is widely practised in all strata of society—from football pools to the newly-introduced scratch cards, from card-playing to casinos. The fact that most people in this country impatiently thrust aside God’s law to “have a flutter” is ample evidence that we “have rejected the word of the Lord” and are proving our lack of wisdom. What dishonour is done to the God who is the giver of all good when our life as a nation is no longer guided by His Word and by respect for His commandments, but revolves round the drawing of “winning” numbers in a lottery which can make instant millionaires! The millions of pounds “won” every week in the National Lottery will never buy happiness for the winners and, whatever material prosperity may come their way, they must leave it all when they are called out of time to eternity to give an account of the deeds done in the body. However much that is forgotten by our generation, it is written, “Every one of us shall give account of himself to God”. That the great majority are ignorant of this truth, or choose to ignore it, is obvious from the way they live year after year.
How godless the thinking of our day has become is clearly shown by a comment in The Times of November 2: “Our late twentieth century pre-occupations are so very different from those in the days before modern medicine, when life could be seen as a preparation for death”. The writer of these words scarcely veils her scorn for this old-fashioned idea that life is a preparation for death. Of course, it should be a preparation for death,
and not only for death but for judgement and eternity. The Bible teaches with transparent clarity that “it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement”. So it is not just religious men and serious-minded men and thinking men that must die. The irreligious, the careless, the indifferent, the scoffer, and the fool who says in his heart, “There is no God”, must all die. If they have not taken this matter seriously they will obviously have made no preparation, so they will not be ready. Yet this lack of preparation will not enable them to escape death or judgement. How sad to see those to whom God in His goodness has given undoubted talents employing them to mock the revelation He has given of Himself in His Word, and to pour scorn on those who seek to live their lives in obedience to Scriptural principles! It is as true today as when spoken by Jesus in this world, “He that loveth Me not keepeth not My sayings”. One of His most momentous sayings was, “If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins”. The passage of centuries of years, and the mocking of millions of unbelievers and infidels cannot change that word or its demands on all men everywhere.
In a talk given on the Radio Four Today programme, Mr John Patten, the former Education Secretary and a Roman Catholic, said that at present four out of every ten marriages in Britain end in divorce and that approximately a quarter of a million children are born every year to parents who go on to divorce. This, says Mr Patten, brings “misery for parents, millions and millions of pounds of expenditure to the taxpayer and a myriad of future problems for our children,” Mr Patten went on to say that new proposed legislation indicated that the lawmakers feel that the marriage certificate is just a piece of paper, and a contract once intended for life is to be turned into a probationary matter from day one. It is comments such as the above that have prompted headlines like We’re the divorce capital of Europe. Such an accurate description of our national disregard for God’s Word indicates our low spiritual and moral condition. Marriage, like the Sabbath, is a Creation ordinance, yet both are being cast aside by a pleasure-loving generation. Instead of trying to stem the tide the present Government is set on bending over backwards to make divorce easier. Divorce, as we have sought to point out, is never an easy option, but is fraught with social, domestic and spiritual problems for more than one generation. What a harvest of misery is yet to be reaped by the nation’s casual attitude to marriage!
Yes, all this and much more is in the papers. Day after day and week after week there are accounts of terrible crimes: old people are attacked in their homes, teenagers are killed by illegal drugs or alcohol or a mixture of both, gangs of children, some as young as ten years of age, terrorise their
neighbourhoods. The list seems endless. The judgement prophesied against Israel and the cause of it come readily to mind: “Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land? . . . And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers . . . and laid hold on other gods and worshipped them and served them; therefore hath He brought all this evil upon them.”
It is time for us to seek that the spirit of repentance would be poured out on ourselves, on our families, on our congregations and on our land so that the cry would go up from this nation of ours, “Come and let us return unto the Lord; for He hath torn and He will heal us; He hath smitten and He will bind us up”. This is the only hope for us, for God has said, “Shall I not visit for these things?. . . and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this?”