(Queensland, Australia) — God’s wrath is not a subject that is on the lips of many people today, even in the church. Unfortunately, as the church has stopped preaching it, the unrepentant have stopped fearing it. Consequently, the majority of people are completely ignorant of it. Yet, God’s wrath is clearly brought into view in Romans 1:18-19: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.”
Our generation is not the only generation to suppress the truth of God and His Word. Since the Garden of Eden, people have been unrighteous and have refused to see the truth of God both in His Word and in the world He created. As Romans 1:20 proclaims: For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.
You see, mankind’s problem is not that truth is unknowable, but that it chooses to suppress the truth by opposing the will of God. For instance, most people are able to look in a mirror and see the truth of Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Because of the willful blindness of mankind, the resulting consequences are very serious:-
· People’s knowledge of God becomes clouded;
· Their thinking becomes darkened;
· They lose touch with reality; and
· They miss the purpose of mankind’s existence.
Many wrongly assume that because fire and brimstone is not falling from the sky, God must not be angry. However, beginning in verse 24 of Romans 1, we get a picture of how God’s wrath is currently being manifested throughout the world today. When you read Romans 1 and then pick up a newspaper, turn on a television, open a social media page or even walk around your city, you will clearly see that everything written in Romans 1 is being manifested in nearly every community. Romans 1:28 is very telling: “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting.”
The word debased is the Greek word adokimos. This word means that the object is unfit for a particular purpose. So, in the context of the passage, because God is referring to a debased mind, we see that it is the mind of those who are under the wrath of God that becomes unfit for purpose. Adokimos was commonly used of metals that were rejected by refiners because of impurities. The impure metals were discarded and adokimos therefore came to include the ideas of worthlessness and uselessness. Therefore, anybody who rejects God and therefore comes under the wrath of God has a mind which becomes spiritually depraved, worthless and useless.
The word adokimos was also used to describe a cowardly soldier who failed the test in the hour of battle. It also described a candidate for office who the citizens regarded as useless. It is also said that if a stone was rejected by builders because of a flaw which made it unfit for construction, the rejected stone was marked with a capital “A” (for adokimos) on its surface. If true, how interesting that is in light of Peter’s statement to the Sanhedrin about Jesus in Acts 4:11: “This is the ‘stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.’ Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”
Any building contractor will tell you that useless materials invite disaster. If the foundation of my home was built with flawed stone which should have been rejected, I will bear the responsibility of my home crumbling before my eyes. So, because nations the world over have rejected “the chief cornerstone” (Jesus) and instead elected those with a debased mind to local councils, school boards, state and federal governments, we have exchanged a solid foundation for a worthless foundation. And so, the result that we are witnessing today is that society is crumbling because the foundations are useless.
Because mankind worships the creature, not the Creator, it continues to place its trust in the systems and the philosophies of mankind, all the while rejecting God. This will reach its climax in the Tribulation Period as people worship and place their trust in the Antichrist. But for now, those who have a giant “A” (for adokimos) stamped on their mind and on their heart are, according to the definition, an untrustworthy guide for moral choices. Yet, they are directing domestic and foreign policy and we are all paying the price for their immoral, untrustworthy and unwise decisions.
The latest example of politicians acting from a debased mind comes from Queensland, Australia. Like most nations, Australia is also in the grips of “the gender agenda”. Sadly, there are very few (even in the church) who stand opposed to it. The latest laws enacted by Queensland Parliament allow people to change their sex on their birth certificate without undergoing sexual reassignment surgery. The laws will also allow children aged 12 to 16 to apply to the courts to change the sex on their birth certificate when they do not have the support of their parents. As an apparent safeguard, the child must first undertake an assessment by a developmentally informed practitioner who has an established professional relationship with them prior to any change. However, as the Scriptures plainly say in the context of spiritual blindness, when the blind lead the blind, both will fall into a pit.
Despite the fact people commonly believe the gender agenda is unique to our times, Emperor Nero infamously performed what is perhaps one of the earliest sex reassignment surgeries. After he allegedly kicked his second wife Sabina to death in 65AD, he met a slave boy named Sporus who looked like her. So, Nero, a self-proclaimed demigod, had the boy castrated and married him as a replacement for his lost love. It is claimed that he also frequently referred to Sporus as “Sabina”. To maintain the façade, Nero had the boy shrouded in a woman’s stola and veils and announced to the world that his lover was now a woman. Some claim that this action was intended to demonstrate a symbolic defeat over a rival. Before her death, Sabina had convinced Nero that she was in fact illegitimately descended from Tiberius, a former emperor, therefore giving her a strong imperial claim. If Sporus bore such a strong resemblance to the dead empress, it might signify that they were genetically related, thereby giving Sporus a claim to imperial rule. In such a case, castration would have been a simple way for Nero to neutralize his potential competitor. After all, a sexually humiliated boy treated like a woman at the foot of the emperor would never be taken seriously as a rival to the throne.
It would appear the same is true today. As mankind is made in the image of God, Satan believes he has won a symbolic victory over God by encouraging the defacement of that image. Therefore, being defaced, mankind would not feel worthy enough to get anywhere near the throne of God where healing grace and forgiveness could be sought. Furthermore, as church-age believers are promised a future where we rule and reign with Christ, Satan wants to blind mankind to the fact that during the Millennial Kingdom, we will reign while he is bound to a chain.
How sad that the father of lies has convinced mankind to favour man’s DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) over the Imago Dei – the image of God.