What is Happening in America is Nothing New

“History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.”
I love the way the New Living Translation words this verse in Ecclesiastes.

Any translation you read basically says – there is nothing new under the sun.

I remember years ago feeling like all of a sudden so many younger people were dying.
And then I realized that it wasn’t that more people were dying, it was just that because of the push of social media, I was all of a sudden hearing about it more.

What is happening in America now is nothing new.
We are witnessing what has been going on for all of mankind.
The enemy is a father of lies, he is a master deceiver, he can disguise as an angel of light, he is an accuser of the brethren and he is a poor loser.
He wants us to fall into his traps, and he will stop at nothing.
Here are a few of the ways the enemy is deceiving us the way he has always been deceiving.

1. He wants us to play the blame game.

Bible Times:

Genesis 3. Eve sees the fruit and eats it, then Adam eats it, even though God has been extremely clear on the rule to not eat the fruit.
They get caught.
God confronts Adam. Adam blames Eve (and actually God, himself).
Then God confronts Eve. Eve blames the serpent.
They both made the choice to sin. But they both blamed someone else for their actions.

Today:
We make the choice to sin. We blame our country, our president, our race, the system, our parents, ANYONE but ourselves. We see this over and over.
We choose to blame others over things that are a result of our own poor choices.
And not only do we do that for ourselves, but we make excuses for others!
We give them excuses for their poor choices.
We act like putting victim mentality on them is a badge of honor.
It is not.
It is a weight that they do not need to carry.

2. He wants us to think that we determine how bad a sin really is.

Bible Times:
2 Samuel 12. King David committed the sin of adultery and murder.
When the prophet Nathan came to call him out on it, he tells him a story.
In a nutshell, A man would not give a traveler a sheep although he had a huge number of sheep and instead made his neighbor who only had one sheep, give him his.
When David heard this story, he raged. He commanded that the man who had done this be killed!!
KILLED!
David had just committed adultery and then killed the husband!!
Yet he was burning with anger and wanted a man to be killed just because he took someone else’s sheep!
David was rating sins. He was deciding what was the bad sin, and what was the acceptable sin.
His sin? Not so bad.
The man who took a sheep? Worthy of death.

Today:
We watch sin going on all around us. We rate the sin based on what we think it should be rated as.
Is it justified in our mind? Is it as bad as my sin? Is it as bad as someone else’s sin?
And we start rating sins based on our view of how acceptable that sin is.
We can slander this president, but how dare anyone else slander the past or the future president.
We make ourselves the judge when it is just not our place to EVER be.
The sinful protests all summer? Not so bad.
The sinful protests this week? Worthy of death.

3. He always wants us to doubt and replace the truth.

Bible: Genesis: Eve knew the command from God was to not eat the fruit of that one tree in the garden.
The enemy questioned by asking – Did God really say you could not eat from any tree in the garden?
(He had not said that) and then when she repeated back God’s command, she actually added to it.
He wanted her to doubt what God had said, and then he wanted her to replace it with lies. And it worked.

Today: Oprah: “Your truth is the most powerful truth”.
Audience: applauds.
We have taken systems, ideas, thought processes, other people’s opinions and “expert advice”…and made them our starting truths.
We listen to the lies, we add to what we think God said and we doubt what God actually did say.
We replace God’s truths with world views and opinions.
We listen to so many other voices, that the one voice we are supposed to be hearing the loudest becomes the quietest.

What is happening in America is not new.
We are seeing things more.
We are hearing things more.
This is not new, it is not worse, it is not surprising.

But here is the thing.
What is happening in America should be a warning sign to us.
It should make us wonder what we are doing.
It should make us start to question ourselves if we see that our passions are the same passions as the world’s.

Followers of Jesus. I am talking to you right now.
The time has come.
The time has come for us to stop everything.
To turn everything off.
To get alone and open our Bible.
To cry out to Jesus.
To humble ourselves and realize that our minds could be led astray from sincere and pure devotion to Christ as a result of the enemy’s subtlety.
Your mind.
My mind…it’s possible that we could be deceived.
And listen…it is possible that the Christian leaders we have respected for so long are also being deceived.
None of us are immune to it.

Friends. It is not the time for blindly following people that are the loudest.
It is not the time for playing around.
It is not the time to sit back.
It is not the time.

Now is the time to stand up.
It is the time to look inside and humble ourselves.
It is the time to look up to Jesus.
And then it is time for us to look around and be aware of where the enemy might be lurking.
Are we blaming others?
Are we judging what is sinful and what is excusable?
Are we doubting and replacing God’s Truth?

We will not be fooled.
We will not be silenced.
We are an army.
An army of believers.
We need leaders to be bold enough to stand up with the truth even when it’s not popular.
We need warriors who will be courageous enough to fight for that truth no matter the cost.

What is happening in America is not new.
So don’t let it scare you.
But don’t let it stop you from joining together and fighting for what is right.
My team is forming. Who is with me?