As I write this it is the tenth anniversary of the day I started working where I now work. This week is also the tenth year I have lived in the northeast of this nation.
I use to love to work at the place I am employed at. Now, not so much so.
The reason for it is the same. The people.
My informative years were spent all over the mid-west and the west, but the majority of my life I lived in the south. I have seen this nation. I have been to forty-two of the lower forty-eight states. I have seen the beauties of this nation, the wonders, and I have been exposed to a large portion of the people of this nation.
Of all the people, those in the northeast are the most self-absorbed, self-severing, self-centered people I have ever in my life encountered.
It explains to a degree why I came so close to losing my salvation living here.
Yet God still has a purpose for me and even though he placed me through a year of Job to get my head on straight once again. I have learned much living here. I see a cancer that is spreading throughout this nation. A cancer known as lukewarmness.
People go about thinking they are one with God, yet they have no real concept of what is required to honor and give praise to the Creator of the universe.
They have no concept of what is even written within the Bible, for most have never even bothered to read it.
The cancer has it core in this region of the United States because this is the old part of this nation. It all started here two and forty years ago.
I saw some of the symptom elsewhere in the U.S. However here it is the most pronounced I have ever seen. The most visible. The most unashamed to show their lack of caring or understanding. Not only for others but for God.
In my year of Job it was driven home that materialism is something that is taking the place of God all over this once proud nation. People seek to gain their earthly rewards not realizing they are surrendering eternal rewards in the process.
In my ten years I have lived in this culture to selfishness and self-serving it has been a struggle to maintain a grip upon the reality that most have never come to understand or realize. Many mouth their belief in God and His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, yet nothing of any substance comes from most. There are those that show an understanding of God, the Bible and even to a degree of the saving grace of Jesus Christ.
Now I know without a question that our sinfulness is a struggle that strives to defeat our faith in God. I know our souls are locked in a corrupt body. However that does not permit or condone the open and unending acceptance of sin within one’s life. It is something I know we all struggle with first hand, but I also believe as long as we with honest effort strive to overcome sin we are still heading toward Christ.
That being said, we cannot have our cake and eat it too. We cannot live in continued and unrepentant sin. This is made clear many times within the Word of God. Yet most about me do just that and have this true belief that they are going to enter into heaven.
It is saddening to see this. When I can, I try to correct what I can, but if they are not receptive what can be done? Nothing, but continue when able to try.
In this last ten years I have seen this nation go down a road I never thought possible, but it is and again I am saddened.
In this last ten years I have come to a point of understanding that when the Rapture does occur, far fewer than I ever imagined will be caught up into heaven. I once imagined millions of Americans vanishing in the blink of an eye. Now I have a hard time seeing that number actually reaching a million. Every day I have doubts I will even make it, but still I strive to accomplish that goal if I am still even alive when that event that signals the beginning of great horrors that are about to befall all of the humanity that is left upon this planet; set off to the side of one of the spirals in the galaxy of the Milky Way which resides nearly by itself in the super cluster called Laniakea.
All I can continue to do is try to honor my Savior and Creator and pray it will be enough, for I seek after that wondrous and glorious reward that lies in the billions of years of eternal life that is yet to be. Praise you Lord God, Praise you Jesus, Amen.