Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Where is Our Nation Headed?

The following is a well-written piece penned by our dear friend Pastor Ken Gooch who resides in West Virginia with his sweet wife, Penny.   It will take a little while to read and ponder, but I believe worth the time and effort to do so.  I pray it moves you in heart, mind and soul as much as it has me.   I pray that together we can and will effect a change in our nation for the better and stake out a road leading back to our
Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. 

Please, the hour is at hand.


Dear Friends and Family,

Years ago our family was traumatized by the death of a teacher who was murdered in her car outside of Dozier Middle School where my children attended. Since that time, these type of heinous events have multiplied and the magnitude of their scope also. Some years later, our family was impacted once again by the Virginia Tech shooting as one of our sons high school friends was in the building when the tragic shootings there occurred. All of this grieves me to the very depth of my soul. But no one is looking at the real problem. no one is focusing on the real cause!

Before we have even had time to grasp the scope of this terrible tragedy, the Democrats and the liberal media have begun politicizing this event in order to strip us of another Constitutional right. You see friends, the problem we face that has led once again to such a heinous event, is not the guns... the solution is not banning guns. The problem is in the hands that hold and use the guns. There is no way to predict or to protect from such a random act of violence. No amount of police patrol, security guards or procedures can stop these acts. The Principle at Sandy Hook Elementary School had just installed a new security system and the school doors were locked each day after students arrived. The gunman shot through the locks. So much for security. The media and many foolish leaders are saying that we must remove guns from law abiding citizens so that only law enforcement have them. I can tell you as a former police officer that I never took a legal gun off of any criminal, they were always stolen or unregistered weapons that I recovered. Besides, it took law enforcement 20 minutes to respond to this event. One trained administrator or teacher could have dramatically changed the events of  December the 14th at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Removing guns from the hands of law abiding citizens will guarantee the supremacy of criminals and assure that deranged persons like the man that did this have the upper hand. Rather than removing guns from the hands of law abiding citizens, we should equip and train them with guns, especially those to whom we entrust the care of our most vulnerable citizens, our children and the elderly. We have forgotten what our greatest President George Washington very wisely said, "The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil Interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good.... Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth. G. Washington" Many would not want to consider this truth, but had the principle, assistant principle or school psychologist or someone in the administration, or even the teacher in the first room the gunmen entered been licensed to carry a concealed weapon and trained to use it effectively, though a few may have lost their life that day, the massacre that occurred would have been thwarted!

The REAL problem is that for 25 to 30 years now we have systematically removed God and the Bible, the 10 Commandments and every symbol of true Biblical Christianity and with this, the moral and ethical framework that this provides for every aspect of our culture. Our founders understood that the structures of our government depended strongly on men and women whose lives were shaped by the truths and commands of true Biblical Christianity. But in our day we do not teach this anymore and in fact, do everything we can to hinder these eternal truths and now even proclaim that some of these truths are wrong. We then have the audacity to ask where God was when this kind of tragedy occurs. Even worse, in the height of hypocrisy, the media and many legislators and even our president dare to call on the very God they have disdained by their words, rhetoric and votes, to provide the comfort and relief so desperately needed in times of crisis.

The media is buzzing with their feigned concern and care, pretending to nobly seek answers to this calamity, interviewing clergy (the one I heard is a charlatan) who offer no real help, only some humanistic concoction of pseudo religion and pop psychology. But there is a solution to this problem. There is an answer that will reduce the violence, and every other malady that has gotten so out of proportion but the media and government don't want to hear it. The solution to the problem that we have created by our mass retreat from the Biblical values upon which our founders based our nation, is to reinstate those values! Yes, that is correct!! A return to the Biblical ethic upon which our nation was founded and our laws framed. A return to "One Nation Under God." The fix is not going to be quick because we have spawned an awful crop of wickedness and amoral thinking and a lie that everything is situational and that there is no absolute truth!

Tragically, the liberal media and the democratic party, (whom you may recall didn't even want God in their party platform) are already manipulating public opinion, screaming to remove another constitutional right and this President that America has reelected has promised on National Television to move that agenda forward. What a tragedy, we once again will treat the symptom and not the cause.

I find that it is very difficult for me to ask God to Bless America any more, or to intervene in our affairs. It seems very hypocritical to ask God to bless our nation that has so totally rejected Him, that has so rubbed our willful and despicable sin in His face. I am becoming more convinced that God has honored our request and removed His presence and His power from us as a nation and a people. I believe that Christians in America need to consider the possibility that times of great struggle may well be before us and that we need to learn the lesson of Daniel (Daniel 6), of his three friends
(Daniel 3), of Lazarus (Luke 7) in the gospels or Stephen in Acts 7 and others of God's great servants who brought great glory to God, not through times of ease and comfort, but through the Lion's Den, the Fiery Furnace, death by stoning, death from a difficult illness that provided God the opportunity to glorify His Son Jesus Christ before a mocking world.

As a pastor, I have often been asked, why it is that God allows bad things to happen to "good" people. My first thought when asked this is Christ's statement that "there is none good," but then I take a moment and explain the truth that Lazarus, the brother of Martha and Mary suffered and died, even though the sisters had called for Jesus to come and heal him. Jesus could have easily done that healing from right where he was! Did He not heal the Centurions servant with a word, due to the great faith of this Roman soldier? But in the case of Lazarus (Luke 7) the only reason he had to suffer so and that, to the point of death, was so that the Lord Christ could stand outside of the tomb and call Him back to life, so that there would be no question that Christ had the power to do so! The only reason Lazarus had to suffer and die was in order for Jesus Christ to receive the Glory that He is due! It is only God's servants who can reveal the truth of the presence and power of the one true living God. What we must remember is that whether we live or die, whether we prosper or suffer, God is able to deliver us even if that deliverance is through death as in the case of Stephen.

Perhaps we need to get back to the full council of God and realize the truth that Daniel's three friends understood, that service to God is required no matter the condition. Daniel 3:16-18 NASB Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this matter. (17) "If it be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire; and He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. (18) "But even if He does not, let it be known to you, O king, that we are not going to serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up." There may well come a time here in these United States of America, that we, like Peter and John, like our founders, must stand up and say as we read in Acts 5, "We must obey God rather than men."

Our nation has turned from God and rejected our heritage. I close with words, again from our first and greatest president, George Washington who said, "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible. G. Washington"

My deep Christian concern and my heart-felt prayers (not some foolish "moment of silence" which has no efficacy at all that is designed to appease atheists and once again smacks the God of the Universe in the face) go out to those families whose lives have been so violently torn by the evil that we collectively have spawned through the inaction of Christians and the actions of the liberal and ungodly who have wrested this nation from us. I deeply hope that we will wake up and turn back to God and set this nation back on a course that reintroduces the Biblical moral and ethical values. That reinstitutes Christian prayer, the 10 Commandments and the Christian moral and ethical standards that once made our nation great!
In Christ's Service,
Pastor Ken