The descent into darkness described in the first chapter of Romans is primarily a description of mankind as a whole, or individual countries or cultures, because the slide into paganism happens corporately. Nations or peoples do it together, and that is a major reason that it has such power when it gains control. It starts with a knowledge of God. Man did not start out as pagan, he started out fellowshipping with God in the Garden of Eden. Then when Noah got off the ark, everyone who was alive on the earth was very familiar with God and his ways. Something happened since then, and this message is about the slide into paganism, and the fact that we are witnessing it in this generation.

The issue that drives everything on earth is the battle between good and evil. To fail to understand that there really only two sides engaged in this spiritual battle always leads to being deceived by the evil. The battle waged by evil is to confuse, compromise, mix the two up together, and eventually change places so that good is called evil, and evil is called good. All gods except Almighty God are devils, not just imaginations of men. All gods except the God who created all things are unholy, unclean, murderous, and destroyers. The Bible tells us clearly that they are all devils. So it is either love and serve God in truth, or you are submitting yourself to the devil.

There are really only two forms of religion in this world: the worship of the true and only God, or paganism. There is faith in Almighty God, who created the heavens and the earth and all that is therein, who has revealed himself to man through the written Word of God, and his only begotten Son, who came to earth and died for the sins of mankind and rose from the dead, and also by the Creation that we all can observe. The only other option for man is superstition based upon fear and the unknown. Satan is the master of that system, and it includes all other religions and philosophies of life. Not believing in any God or gods is not an option. Every man will be influenced by spiritual powers, and if he is not submitted to Almighty God he will be guided by evil spiritual beings, whether he is aware of it or not.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer, my savior. He is the theme of my life and my everything. When all is said and done, God is all there is. David gave God the honor, the glory, the credit for everything he ever accomplished, and every blessing he ever enjoyed. When we learn to live with God as the biggest thing in our life, our soul, our mind, and our heart, we will know what victory is like.

Sin divides a man against himself. He has violated his conscience and lost his innocence, and sees himself different than he ever did before. An inner conflict is set up from that moment on; there is an internal struggle with himself, good against evil. It is that enmity in Ephesians 2 that can only be abolished when we are born again and reconciled to God. The old man is crucified with Christ. The war between our members and the law of our mind is ended. The inner conflict is over and there is inner peace now in its place; the peace of God which passeth all understanding.

To be weary is to be exhausted physically, and/or mentally. It is when you think and say things like, "I am sick of this." "I have had it with this." "I'm tired of this." It can also be the result of being, or feeling defeated. It happens to all us, over and over through life; as long as we are living we will feel weary often, because life is a struggle. God does not tell us not to be weary, but not to be weary in well-doing; that is, doing what is right. Rest is the cure for physical and mental weariness, while faith and patience are the cure for weariness in well-doing.

Love is the diminishing of self. Love does not exist until we value someone else more than we do ourselves. Until we desire their good more than we desire our own. Until we count their life more important than our own. This is not just a higher type of love, this IS the Bible definition of what love is. This love is the very evidence of being born again, and the lack of it is the evidence of being unregenerate. 1 John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

I never envisioned a world like this, and I do not know anyone who did. We knew that "evil men and seducers would wax worse and worse" but we never imagined that it would be like this. We expected more of the same kind of sin we were seeing 40 years ago, and we expected it to be more and more widespread and common, but we did not expect the insanity and the madness that we are seeing now. We should have seen it coming, though. If we had been more knowledgeable of human history and the Word of God, we could have known this was coming. Moral degeneration and depravity always follow the same path and end up in the same place, and it is plain to see from all the examples that happened in times past that we are nearing the end. The hour is late, sin has become exceeding sinful, and a holy God will soon judge this wickedness, as He has always done before.

God views man and his history forward and backward by generations, not by the present only. We have a strong tendency to only look at the present; at our own generation, and our own experience. This makes our view, and therefore, our comprehension of everything that matters very small and narrow. Judging and discerning truth by our little life and our few short years of experience on this earth is certain to cause us to err from the truth. This generation of know-it-alls in the world and in the churches needs to hear this.

There are certainly times when people who leave a church have been done wrong. Offenses are a part of life in any kind of social setting, including church. There are an abundance of Scriptures that instruct us and command us concerning the issue of being offended, and how we are to deal with it Biblically and righteously before God. But it is also clear to me after over 40 years of preaching and being a part of churches, that most people who leave a church offended do it because of a manufactured offense, not a real one. Their number one charge against the church when they leave is that the church is a bunch of hypocrites. But there is a common pattern with all who leave a church with this attitude. They slowly switch sides and take the side of evil, and call it good, then proceed to call evil what they used to think of as good. They are the real hypocrites, not the people who remain faithful and continue in ways of God without redefining everything.