What is This World Coming To? Part 1

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Scripture references are from the King James Version Bible.
(This message is also included in the hardback book, The Best of J. Vernon McGee, Volume 1,
Copyright 1988 by J. Vernon McGee.)

What is This World
Coming To?

Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel. Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him. (Psalm 2)

I like to think of the second psalm as a television program. Several years ago, in fact, when television was in its infancy, we had a program in southern California. Since we were inexperienced with this new medium of communication, we asked a couple of Christian friends who were professionals in the field to advise us. They met with us and gave us some valuable advice.

One of the things they recommended was to use not just one camera but two cameras, because we couldn‟t have a smooth program with only one. Well, television has come a long way since those days. I notice some of the programs today have as many as five to seven cameras. But it was new then. We turned that over in our minds, especially after we found that the extra camera would cost $250 for thirty minutes each week. I‟m Scottish, and I want to tell you, I thought that one over a long time before I decided to do it. But we found that it was very much worthwhile because you do need more than one camera.

When we come to the second psalm, we find that the Spirit of God used two cameras in a dramatic way beyond the imagination of man. One camera is in heaven, and the other camera is on earth. First the camera on earth comes on, and when it does, we hear the voices of the masses. We hear little man speaking his little piece and playing his part – as Shakespeare puts it, "A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage" of life. Little man. Then the camera on earth goes off, the camera in heaven comes on, and we hear God the Father speak. After He speaks, the camera shifts to His right hand, and God the Son speaks and has His part. Then the camera in heaven goes off, the camera on earth comes on again, and God the Holy Spirit has the last word.

Camera Focus: Mankind

Now let‟s watch this presentation. First the camera on earth comes on, and we see mankind. They are put before us here in the first verse with this question: "Why do the heathen [Gentiles] rage, and the people [Jews] imagine a vain thing?"

The word vain here means "empty." It means that this which has so enraged the Gentiles and which has brought together mankind in a great mass movement, a great protest movement, will never be fulfilled, will never be accomplished. It is an empty, futile thing that has brought mankind together. Well, what is it? "The kings of the earth set themselves [these are the political rulers], and the rulers take counsel together [these are the religious rulers]." Not only do you have the masses of mankind in this protest movement, but also the establishment has joined in with it. Here are the rulers, both religious and political, joining together.

Now what is it they are protesting? Whom are they against? "Against the LORD, and against his anointed." The word anointed here means "Messiah." That is what it is in Hebrew. When the word is brought over in the Greek New Testament, it is Christos, and in English Christ. Here is a great worldwide movement that is against God and against Christ.

Now what is it they are protesting? Whom are they against? "Against the LORD, and against his anointed." The word anointed here means "Messiah." That is what it is in Hebrew. When the word is brought over in the Greek New Testament, it is Christos, and in English Christ. Here is a great worldwide movement that is against God and against Christ.

We need to pause here just a moment because this is one of the things the church is not sure about today: "Lord, thou art God." Many people are not sure He is God. They wonder. The early church here in the book of Acts had no misgivings or questions. Listen to them pray:

Lord, thou art God, which hast made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is: who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things? (Acts 4:24, 25)

As you can see, they are quoting Psalm 2. "The kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord, and against his Christ." Now this is the Holy Spirit‟s interpretation: "For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together" (Acts 4:24, 26, 27).

Here is this movement beginning, we are told by the Holy Spirit, back yonder when Pilate joined with the religious rulers and Herod in order to put Jesus to death. This is a movement against God and Christ that has been snowballing as it has come down through the centuries, and it will break out finally in a worldwide revolution against God and against Christ.

Now somebody says to me, "You really don‟t think the world is moving in that direction, do you?" May I say to you, I think it is. Someone comes to me and asks, "Dr. McGee, do you think the world is getting better?" I say, "Yes, I do." Somebody else comes and says, "Dr. McGee, don‟t you think the world is getting worse?" I say, "Yes, I do." "Well," you may say, "what in the world are you trying to do? Go with both crowds?" No. Both are true. That is the same thing the Lord Jesus said in His parable of the tares (see Matthew 13:24-39). The Lord Jesus said that He Himself is the sower and that He is sowing seed in the world. Then He said an enemy came in and sowed tares. The servants wanted to go in and pull up the tares.

When I entered the ministry that is what I wanted to do. I was the best puller-upper of tares you‟ve seen. But I soon found out that we‟re not called to pull up tares. (I sure found that out the hard way!) That is the reason I don‟t try to straighten out anybody else. I‟m having enough trouble with Vernon McGee, so I don‟t worry about the others. That is God‟s business. But what He said was that the wheat is growing, the tares are growing, they are both growing together; and He will do the separating. He will take care of that.

Today the good is growing. Did you know that there is more Bible teaching going out today than in any period in the history of the world? We brag about the radio stations that carry our Bible study, but others have been giving out the Word lots longer than we have. Across the world are many radio stations that are dedicated to the ministry of broadcasting the Word of God. The Word is going out today through many more avenues than it has ever gone out before.

The wheat is growing. But I want to tell you, brother, the tares are growing also. Evil is growing. There is an opposition against God and Christ today that is unbelievable. I could give you many incidents of the enmity that I‟ve encountered. For example, I spoke at the funeral service of Audie Murphy. His wife, Pam, is a marvelous, wonderful Christian. She sent word to me before the funeral service to encourage me. She said, "You will be in enemy territory today." Believe me, I was. That Hollywood crowd resisted. Oh, how they hated it. They did not want to hear it. There is an enmity against the Word of God today.

Somebody says, "I just can‟t quite buy that. I believe that over there on the other side of the Iron Curtain atheism is growing, but not on this side." Well, it is growing on the other side, and it is rather amazing. Did you know that you and I have seen in our lifetime (those of you who are as old as I am) a nation appear whose basic philosophy, basic political economy, is atheism? There has been nothing like that in the past. No nation of the ancient world, that great pagan world of the past, was atheistic. Not one.

Somebody says, "I just can‟t quite buy that. I believe that over there on the other side of the Iron Curtain atheism is growing, but not on this side." Well, it is growing on the other side, and it is rather amazing. Did you know that you and I have seen in our lifetime (those of you who are as old as I am) a nation appear whose basic philosophy, basic political economy, is atheism? There has been nothing like that in the past. No nation of the ancient world, that great pagan world of the past, was atheistic. Not one.

Somebody says, "I thought they were." No, they were the opposite. They were polytheistic. They worshipped many gods. None was atheistic. You see, they were too close to the mooring mast of revelation. Noah knew a man who knew Adam. When you are that close to it, you do not deny God. In Noah‟s day the world was filled with violence, but there wasn‟t an atheist in the crowd. When God gave the Ten Commandments He didn‟t give any one of them against atheism. He gave two against polytheism:

Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. (Exodus 20:3, 4)

He gave these two commandments against polytheism, none against atheism. Why? There were no atheists.

Now when you get to the time of David, you meet atheists, and there were a great many atheists by that time. David labels them, though. He says, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God (Psalm 14:1). The word fool in the Hebrew means insane. The insane, the nutty individual, is the one who is the atheist. Of course, he may be a Ph.D. in a university, but he‟s a nutty individual. The Bible says he is insane. It is insane for a man to say there is no God. A friend of mine had a marvelous ministry with atheists. He was in a crowd one day where a big-mouthed fellow was saying, I do not believe there is a God. I think that when man dies, he‟s just like a dog. He dies and that‟s it. This friend of mine, a very courteous man, said, Did I understand you to say that you don‟t believe there is a God?

"Yes."
"Are you an atheist?"
"Yes."

Well, I have a question to ask you. The Bible says that the fool, the insane, is the one who says there is no God. Now either you were insincere when you made the statement, you didn‟t really mean it, or else you‟re insane. Would you tell me which way it is? It has to be one way or the other when a man says there is no God. But, you see, we‟ve come a long way since David‟s day!

There is, I believe, as much opposition to Jesus Christ on this side of the Iron Curtain as there is on the other side of the Iron Curtain today. I believe that with all my heart. There is opposition against Jesus Christ. Somebody says, "Wait a minute. I hear many talk about Jesus and how wonderful Jesus is." Have you ever stopped to think that the Jesus of liberalism, the Jesus the world thinks of, actually never lived? The Jesus of the Bible and the Jesus of liberalism are two different individuals. And the Jesus of liberalism never lived at all.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. For many years when I was a pastor in downtown Los Angeles the leading liberal in this country pastored a church nearby. Actually I had great respect for him because he was one liberal who was honest. For instance, he would just come out flatfooted and say he did not believe in the virgin birth. And if you don‟t believe it, I‟d like for you to say it and not beat around the bush. He had a question and answer program on radio; I had a question and answer program on radio. And listeners would feed questions to both of us to set us in opposition. Every year we went through that same little ritual during the Christmas season. I always enjoyed it. So one time we both were invited to a banquet, and (I think it was done purposely) we were seated together. I got there first and sat down. I saw his name there. In a minute he came in. I felt somebody put his arm around me and say, "You know, Brother McGee, you and I ought to be much closer together. We preach the same Jesus," and he sat down. I said to him, "Are you sure we preach the same Jesus?"

"Oh, don‟t we?"
"I don‟t think so. Let me ask you some questions. Was the Jesus you preach virgin born?"
"Of course not."
"Well, the one I preach is virgin born. The Jesus you preach – did He perform miracles?"
"I do not believe in miracles."
"Well, the Jesus I preach performed miracles. The Jesus you preach – did He die on a cross for the sins of the world?"
"Of course He died on a cross, but not for the sins of the world."
"The Jesus I preach died a substitutionary, vicarious death for the sins of man. Do you believe that Jesus rose bodily?"
"Oh, no, of course not."

"Obvious then, you and I are not preaching about the same Jesus. Now I want to ask you a question." You see, these liberal men have called some of us fundamentalists "intellectual obscurantists." (Now whatever that is, it‟s terrible!) So I said to him, "Look, what are the documents or where are the documents for the Jesus you preach?" He laughed, just laughed and passed it off.

"Of course we don‟t have any."
"Now isn‟t that interesting. We have documents for the Jesus we preach, and you don‟t – yet you call us intellectual obscurantists. I‟d like to know who is an intellectual obscurantist!"

May I say to you, my friend, the Jesus that the world believes in today doesn‟t even exist. He never lived. The Jesus we preach is the Jesus of the Bible, and that is the One against whom there is opposition in the world. There is a tremendous build-up, a mighty crescendo of opposition against God and against Christ in this day in which we live.

Now how does it manifest itself? Exactly as He said it would. Notice again the second psalm. Hear what the heathen are saying: "Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." What are some of the bands God has put on the human family? Marriage is one. God has made marriage for the welfare of mankind. Whether you are a Christian or not, God has given marriage to mankind. Today they not only want to get rid of it, they are getting rid of it.

I was rather shocked several years ago. I‟m a square. I‟m not really keeping up with it today, so I don‟t follow along in the way they are going in this modern thinking relative to God, relative to man, and relative to the Word of God. So I was startled at a young people‟s conference when the sweetest little girl got up in our question and answer period and said, Dr. McGee, why does a young couple have to get married if they love each other? Why can‟t they just start living together? God gave marriage, and God intends for it to be followed. But they say, Let‟s break their bands asunder.

Also, "Let‟s cast away their cords from us." The Ten Commandments are cords. When somebody accuses me of saying that we don‟t need the Ten Commandments, they are wrong. We are not saved by keeping them – I tried it, and it won‟t work – but I‟ll say this: God gave them, and He gave them to protect mankind. They are thrown out the door today, and right now we are experiencing lawlessness in this country because of the fact that crime is not being punished.

There has been a terrible toll of lives that would not have been sacrificed had laws been enforced. You see, we are living in a day when the prevailing philosophy is, "Let us break their bands asunder, let‟s cast away their cords from us. We want to be free and do as we please." God says we can‟t make it that way. It won‟t work. We‟ve got old evil natures that need to be restrained. But mankind is moving toward getting rid of all restraints today.

It is disturbing as we look at this world in which we are living. In the political world there is confusion. In the moral realm there is corruption. In the spiritual sphere there is compromise and indifference. And in the social sphere there is comfort. This affluent society never had it so easy, and the goal is to make it more easy. We are living in that kind of a day. It is disturbing, and I‟ll be honest with you, I do worry about it a little.

Next Part 2.