What is the spiritual condition of America today?
Dr. David Reagan and I recently had the pleasure of asking this question of our old friend Evangelist Don McGee on the show Christ in Prophecy. Don is the founder and director of Crown & Sickle Ministries (Rev. 14:14) based in Amite, Louisiana. Don travels all over the Unites States preaching about the soon return of Jesus Christ and speaking at Bible prophecy conferences.
Dr. Reagan: Judge Robert Bork was a man who was nominated to be on the Supreme Court. It's a tragedy he didn't make it because he was just personally crucified. Judge Bork wrote a powerful analysis of American society in 2003 called, "Slouching Towards Gomorrah," in which he indicated that our nation like the Old Roman Empire was being destroyed by internal moral rot. Would you agree, and what would be your assessment of the spiritual condition of America today?
Don McGee: I think Judge Bork hit it just dead on. If that analysis was written today, it wouldn't be "Slouching Toward Gomorrah," I think it would be "A Headlong Fall Into the Morass of Evil." I believe that things have gotten much worse since he wrote that. We can see today that there are so many things which are contrary to God's nature and what He said about morality that are being put out there for acceptance by the public. We are not longer a God fearing nation.
I'm reminded of something that President Lincoln called for in the dark days of the Civil War. He called for a National Day of Prayer and Repentance. He said a lot of things in that call which you can pull up on the Internet and read what he said. One of the important points he made was that we have allowed our prosperity and our independence to propel us into a position where we think we've got everything. It's like we believe we've got a tiger by the tail on a downhill drag, meaning that we don't need to worry about God anymore. But, that is just not true.
Lincoln made that remarkable statement of his, and it basically attributed the whole Civil War as being due to our rebellion against God. He believed we needed to go to our churches and our synagogues and spend a whole day repenting and praying. I think if a President were to issue such a declaration like that today there would probably be an immediate move to impeach him. That's how far we've moved away. And, in a presidential election, I believe that if a candidate would stand up and say, "A National Day of Prayer and Repentance is what I will institute once I am inaugurated," I think that person would feel heat like no president ever has. I believe that he is going to see heat from different directions, too. He's going to see it from the Hollywood elite. He's going to see it from Wall Street. He's going to see it from Madison Avenue. He's going to see it from the Halls of Congress. But, more importantly, he's going to see it from a lot of so-called Christians.
Dr. Reagan: What are some of the indicators of moral rot in America today?
Don McGee: For one, the perversion of homosexuality being accepted as a normal lifestyle and as something that is genetically normal. Supporters of homosexuality even go as far as saying they're born that way, and that it is genetic and they can't do anything about it.
Dr. Reagan: Did you think you would ever live to see churches endorsing same-sex marriage?
Don McGee: When I was a young man I thought that would never happen. Not only are they endorsing same-sex marriages, but many of their leaders who are also practicing homosexuals and lesbians are being ordained as bishops and priests and preachers in direct opposition to God's Word. They pick a pig-path through the Scripture. They take scissors and they cut out what doesn't agree with them.
Nathan Jones: In cutting out the words of God that they don't agree with, they're acting as if Jesus isn't God and doesn't have anything to say about this sin?
Don McGee: Yes, how can you argue with the plain Word of God? In fact, these people don't even argue with it anymore because their hearts are so calloused. They just flat out reject it.
Then, there's the murdering of babies. No country can escape the wrath of God when they kill millions of little babies every year before they are even born. That is sin like other things are a sin, but to harm the innocent is from what I see in the Old Testament and in the New Testament when Jesus said, "Let the little children come to Me," indicates to me that there is a special place in the great heart of God for the innocent.
Dr. Reagan: What about national debt? I consider that to be an immorality.
Don McGee: Stewardship is something that is taught throughout the Bible. Anytime you spend more then you take in, at least in my house, debt arises.
Dr. Reagan: What we are doing right now with out debt would be the equivalent to me going out and buying a fifty million dollar mansion and signing an agreement to pay for it over the next 200 years, putting that debt on my children, my grandchildren, and even my great-grandchildren. That would not be a moral action.
Nathan Jones: Years ago Japan passed something like an inheritance tax where their people could actually sign a contract like for a loan on a house and then pass that expense onto their grandchildren to pay for it. I remember we as a nation all got up in arms about the injustice of that tax when hearing of it, but now even ten years later we are doing the exact same thing to our children, we just don't point it out this time.
Don McGee: You can't make such debts yourselves at your house because you can't print money, but if you are the government then they can print as much money as they want, though it incurs debt and inflation.
Dr. Reagan: There are just so many signs of moral rot in America today. One of them certainly is vocabulary. I remember that in 1939 the first movie ever to have a curse word in it was Gone with the Wind. It was held up by the censors for several months because it had just one curse word in it right at the end. Today, you go to the average movie put out by Hollywood and the language is just absolutely overwhelming in terms of every horrible word you could possibly think of. We've become desensitized to cursing.
Don McGee: Absolutely! I just concur whole-heartedly. Recently I was in a family restaurant and there was a family of four: mom, dad, two kids. The language that was coming out of that father's mouth in front of his little children was absolutely atrocious, but he felt no problem using it.
Nathan Jones: Just go to the playgrounds. My kids play with other kids who swear like sailors. It sad that they are so young and you know they learned those words from their parents.
Don McGee: When I was a teenager, I didn't think girls burped. That was something they just didn't do, but I certainly knew that girls did not use that kind of language. Today, their mouths are as filthy as any sailor that I have ever heard. So, the weaker sex as it used to be called is no longer immune from that kind of degradation and foul language.
Dr. Reagan: We see a lot of moral decay has come from greed. Greed seems to be the motivating force in America today. No matter how much I've got, I've got to have more. This is certainly an indication of the moral rot of the nation. There are just so many signs of this decay. It's rather like the Old Roman Empire all over again in terms of its internal moral rot.
Don McGee: Another aspect of the decay is gambling. When you talk about gambling, you talk about a god. What you are doing is practical atheism. You are believing that you are in control of your life and that you are going to insure your future. You believe that what God has given you is not sufficient and so you've got to go out and get it some other way. For every one person that wins, a thousand people have to lose.
Dr. Reagan: One of the problems is that professing Christians are involved in all of this sin, too. If professing Christians would stop getting abortions, the abortion mills would have to close. If professing Christians would stop buying lottery tickets, they wouldn't have them. Because 85% of the people in America profess to be Christians, it could be argued that we are part of the problem.
Don McGee: Yes, I think that one of the reasons for this is because people really don't understand what "Christian" means anymore. It's become a cultural thing. They believe that since they were raised in a Christian home and went to church maybe once a year that they are a Christian. Cultural Christians claim that since their dad was a preacher or a deacon and their mom was a Sunday School teacher, then automatically they are a Christian.
Nathan Jones: What's sad about all this immorality, this not having the foundation of the Bible anymore, and I remember seeing it a lot especially during the 90's in songs by Alanis Morissette and others, is that after all this pleasure does not fulfill then apathy sets in. People have filled their lives with so much pleasure that never ever satisfies them that they end up becoming hopeless.
Dr. Reagan: That's a good point, Nathan, because most of our children today don't even know basic Bible stories like Adam and Eve and Moses. They don't even know the basic biblical concepts. They are quite biblically illiterate and so they have no moral basis upon which to make moral decisions. They have to turn to television which teaches you to solve all of your problems with violence.
In the next part of our discussion with Don McGee concerning the end times, we'll ask him why there are so many different end time viewpoints.
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