Bin-Laden may be foreign enemy number one, but there is a domestic enemy that has invaded the most intimate areas of our lives, destroyed families, abused children and animals, and by alienating men and women from each other, has tripled the homosexual population in just the last decade. History and economics both demand that this industrial complex be ended immediately.
First, let’s set aside the religion aspect of the Bible and view it from a historical perspective. Even among those who reject its inspiration, many will still give at least some weight to its historical value. I ask this question, why were so many governments in the OT judged by how they treated the “high places” and the “sacred poles” or groves? Consider the following texts:
1 Ki. 14:23 For they also built them high places, and images, and groves, on every high hill, and under every green tree. 14:24 And there were also sodomites in the land: [and] they did according to all the abominations of the nations which the LORD cast out before the children of Israel.
2 Ki. 18:3 And he did [that which was] right in the sight of the LORD, according to all that David his father did. 18:4 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses has made. … 21:3 For he built up again the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; and he reared up altars for Baal, and made a grove, as did Ahab king of Israel; and worshipped all the host of heaven, and served them. … 23:19 And all the houses also of the high places that [were] in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke [the LORD] to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel.
2 Chr. 4:3 For he took away the altars of the strange [gods], and the high places, and brake down the images, and cut down the groves: 14:4 And commanded Judah to seek the LORD God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment. 14:5 Also he took away out of all the cities of Judah the high places and the images: and the kingdom was quiet before him. … 19:3 Nevertheless there are good things found in thee, in that thou hast taken away the groves out of the land, and hast prepared thine heart to seek God. … 21:11 Moreover he made high places in the mountains of Judah, and caused the inhabitants of Jerusalem to commit fornication, and compelled Judah [thereto].
Jer. 3:2 Lift up thine eyes unto the high places, and see where thou hast not been lien with. In the ways hast thou sat for them, as the Arabian in the wilderness; and thou hast polluted the land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickedness. … 3:20 Surely [as] a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD. 3:21 A voice was heard upon the high places, weeping [and] supplications of the children of Israel: for they have perverted their way, [and] they have forgotten the LORD their God.
Ezek. 16:16 And of thy garments thou didst take, and deckedst thy high places with divers colours, and playedst the harlot thereupon: [the like things] shall not come, neither shall it be [so]. … 16:24 [That] thou hast also built unto thee an eminent place, and hast made thee an high place in every street. 16:25 Thou hast built thy high place at every head of the way, and hast made thy beauty to be abhorred, and hast opened thy feet to every one that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms. … 43:7 And he said unto me, Son of man, the place of my throne, and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst of the children of Israel for ever, and my holy name, shall the house of Israel no more defile, [neither] they, nor their kings, by their whoredom, nor by the carcases of their kings in their high places.
Rev. 2:20 Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. 2:21 And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. … 14:8 And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.
See also Deut. 16:21, 16:22; Jud. 3:7; 1 Ki. 11:7; 1 Ki. 18:19 ; 2 Ki. 16:2 , 16:4; 2 Ki. 23:5; 2 Ki. 23:15; 2 Chr. 17:6; 2 Chr. 31:1; 2 Chr. 33:2, 3; 2 Chr. 34:3; Psa. 78:58; Pro. 9:13, 14; Jer. 32:35; Jude :7; Rev. 2:14.
This small sampling suggests to me that these “high places” and groves or “sacred poles” were areas of cultic prostitution in the Baal/Asherim fertility rites. Mass prostitution was repeatedly condemned and was connected to national destruction that included war. Elijah fought his battle of Armageddon (Mount of Meggido) against the porn pimps of his day. The word “porn” comes from the Greek word pornei which is translated fornication. In my thirteen years of college course work, much of it which was history, I have come to believe that history repeats itself and that one of the great lessons of history is that we fail to learn from its lessons.
This culture war that we are having is nothing new. Every few generations it rears its ugly head. It was barely a century ago that the U.S. Congress passed the Mann Act which was also known as the “White Slave Trade Act” because of the mass explosion in prostitution. A century before that, the French established a nude “goddess of reason,” made marriage nothing but a civil contract and a Reign of Terror ensued which eventually led to rise of the dictator Napoleon. “France presented also the characteristics which especially distinguished Sodom. During the Revolution there was manifest a state of moral debasement and corruption similar to that which brought destruction upon the cities of the plain. And the historian presents together the atheism and the licentiousness of France, as given in the prophecy: ‘Intimately connected with these laws affecting religion, was that which reduced the union of marriage–the most sacred engagement which human beings can form, and the permanence of which leads most strongly to the consolidation of society–to the state of a mere civil contract of a transitory character, which any two persons might engage in and cast loose at pleasure. . . . If fiends had set themselves to work to discover a mode of most effectually destroying whatever is venerable, graceful, or permanent in domestic life, and of obtaining at the same time an assurance that the mischief which it was their object to create should be perpetuated from one generation to another, they could not have invented a more effectual plan that the degradation of marriage. . . . Sophie Arnoult, an actress famous for the witty things she said, described the republican marriage as “the sacrament of adultery.”‘–Sir Walter Scott, The Life of Napoleon, vol. 1, ch. 17.” {GC 270-1}
Additionally, one history professor has informed me that if one examines the original Latin texts of the middle/dark ages, much of which has not yet been translated into English, one will find that the consensus of political/historical thought about why the Muslims were attacking the west was because societies had fallen into moral decay and that the attacks were judgments. When analyzing an event before the middle/dark ages, historians have also cited social decay as one of the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire.
As we look to our nations, we have recently heard Senator Evan Bayh discuss our national debt in terms of losing our national sovereignty. We have a 7 trillion debt and now over a 500 billion dollar deficit. We do not have the resources to waste on mass court proceedings for divorces, child custody fights, actions to enforce child support, and prisons for children who grew up undisciplined because one parent was overburdened with three jobs and no help. We need strong families that produce productive children who will achieve their maximum potential.
Moreover, healthy families and marriage promote good mental health. If you ever take an abnormal psychology class and study the side effects of the medications that are often given in treatment, one will find that a common side effect is that the drugs diminish the libido. Perhaps many would not be suffering from mental illness if they were involved in a healthy and positive sexual relationship in a marriage.
This mass porn prostitution problem that we have today is the result of judges making it virtually impossible to prosecute and prosecutors who do not have the guts to do it. Is there any logic in prosecuting the $20 crack addicted prostitute on South Michigan Street in South Bend, but not the $1,000 a scene Hollywood prostitute? Believe it or not, prosecutors have told me that the video camera removes the act of sex for money from the prostitution laws. In fact, the reason why the videos are made primarily in California is because the California Supreme Court basically pulled a Clinton “it depends on what the meaning of is is” and said that the legislature did not write the state properly to cover prostitution on video tape.
When I was assigned the task of bringing charges against all four of the adultery book stores in South Bend as its community prosecutor, I gained a real education about this industry. I tapped the brains of what may be the two most experienced federal prosecutors in this field. I was also placed on the grand jury list for a prominent federal investigation and was exposed to the inside nature of the industry. I learned that President George H.W. Bush, when he left office in 1993, had every major distributor under investigation or indictment. Clinton-Reno fired every federal obscenity prosecutor and left one remaining. They ran him around in circles for 5 years and nothing was accomplished. No worse time in history could have been chosen with the explosion of the internet in the 1990s. When George W. Bush took office in 2001, the porn industry freaked and flooded the market with a mass of very, very hard core material in order to protect itself. Now child porn, beastiality, torture and bondage are just a click away. No one should be able to exploit children and what are often the mentally ill sex addicts for filthy lucre.
Now I do not expect everyone to agree with all of my view here. Some will vehemently disagree and will probably sent me hate mail. I only state that these are my views from my limited 33 years of life experience. If John Wesley was on the right path of interpretation for Revelation 9, then the culture war may very well be connected to the war on terror. He said it discussed Islamic attacks on the west. I could do 2 Ph.Ds on the subject and I still probably could not say with 100% confidence whether or not he was right. In any event the last verse is worth noting. Rev. 9:21 Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. Sorceries is pharmakia or “drugs” in Greek and fornication is “porneia.” Can you image what our nation could accomplish if we would give up murder, drugs, porn and stealing? I believe that this porn-prostitution industry is the boll weevil root cause for much of our ills and is taxing us in far more ways than we will ever realize.
“Salacious Novels and Pornography.–Impure pictures have a corrupting influence. Novels are eagerly perused by many, and as the result, their imagination becomes defiled. {1MCP 229.2}
In the cars, photographs of females in a state of nudity are frequently circulated for sale. These disgusting pictures are also found in daguerrean saloons [photographic studios], and are hung upon the walls of those who deal in engravings. This is an age when corruption is teeming everywhere. {1MCP 229.3}
The lust of the eye and corrupt passions are aroused by beholding and by reading. . . . The mind takes pleasure in contemplating scenes which awaken the lower and baser passions. These vile images, seen through defiled imagination, corrupt the morals and prepare the deluded, infatuated beings to give loose rein to lustful passions. Then follow sins and crimes which drag beings formed in the image of God down to a level with the beasts, sinking them at last in perdition. Avoid reading and seeing things which will suggest impure thoughts. Cultivate the moral and intellectual powers.–2T 410 (1870). {1MCP 229.4}” E.G. White