William Terry James

Characteristics of End-Time Man
by William T James

There was a time, early in this century, when reports of children being sold to makers of pornographic movies and magazines would have been met with disbelief by the reader or hearer of such allegations. News of gang rape, mass killings, of genocide on an unfathomable scale would have - among civilized people at least - been considered as acts of barbarism predating the Renaissance, or as happening only in earth's most primitive cultures. Almost certainly, such acts in early twentieth century life would have been catalogued as aberrations or isolated incidents of insanity.
World War I brought news of chemical warfare - of mustard gas searing the lungs of men at war.
The 1920s and 1930s were ablaze with gangland killings. Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger all are names infamous for their bloody trails of violence across the face of naive America. Naive because many people, enamored with Hollywood and all the glitter emanating from the silver screens, viewed these brutal murderers as modem day Robin Hoods getting even on behalf of middle Americans.
These criminals were seen as outwitting the banking tyrants, the law, and lawmen with clever maneuvering. For many the outlaws were, for the most part, merely misunderstood rather than truly evil men and women. They were people forced into their nefarious molds by sour, vindictive injustice.
Globally, the strategists in geopolitical affairs tried to hammer out a League of Nations, but the world, despite coming together in war, would not come together in peace. The league failed, other than to lay groundwork for a uniting of a bloc of nations that would come at a later, more amenable date.
In the United States crime and violence - the ugly side of life - while festering within the nation, remained isolated from the mainstream of society for the most part. The nation forged ahead, producing labor- saving machinery and creating a more leisurely way of life for the middle class.
But clouds of war were boiling in Europe. Anger over terms forced on Germany at Versailles at the end of World War I inflamed passions and the political thought processes of those who would have their revenge. Adolph Hitler wrote and dictated to Rudolph Hess from his jail cell where he had been gingerly exiled for rabble-rousing. The genocidal blueprint for avenging Germany's humiliation, by the world he would one day come close to conquering, emerged from his twisted mind. The resultant holocaust and aftermath, with six million Jews mass-murdered, forever wiped away the naivete and head-in-the-sand innocence of America and the world.
From that shocking moment in history when the corpses of the Jewish holocaust victims were filmed and shown to a gasping world, man brutalizing man has taken on new dimensions, and humanity now seems desensitized to the point of being almost shockproof.
Worse and Worse
In 2 Timothy 3:13 the apostle Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, prophesied: "But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse......
From the daily news accounts, the accuracy of this prophecy cannot be denied. The front pages of our newspapers do not provide adequate space to contain the number of stories flowing from the news services across America and the world.
Reports of man's degenerate acts spill over into and fill other pages from front to back. The rare exception in today's world is the story of people doing something beneficial to others; the norm is bad news.
Throughout the centuries there have been the Jack-the-Rippers, the Bluebeards, the Attilas, the Rue Morgue-type horror stories. Never, however, have these grisly accounts come in such profusion as now. We are bombarded hourly by accounts that bear witness to the fact that despite our professed civility, we are in a period as barbarous and perverse as any in human history.
It can truly be said that we live in a world in the process perhaps in the final stages - of going mad. Jesus himself told us in the Scriptures that there would come a time at the end of the age when, if God did not physically intervene, no flesh would be saved. Man would, collectively, commit suicide.
Since that sunlit mid-day of November 22,1963, in Dallas, Texas, when Americans watched the murder of the president of the United States, the floodgates of evil seem to have opened wide, and it appears that no one and nothing can stem the flow of violence.
The Scriptures tell us that the end will come like a flood. All the signs given by God's prophetic Word will be gushing through the generation that is alive at the time Jesus Christ returns to put an end to man's insanity. While the Apocalypse looms and Armageddon sucks all of fallen mankind into its vortex, the time will resemble the days of Noah and the days of Lot.
God's holy righteousness demanded that the generation alive in Noah's time be destroyed. The contamination that sin wrought had finally so corrupted mankind physically, mentally, and spiritually that the earth had to be cleansed. Noah and his family were the only people perfect in their generation. They were not sinless because God's grace saved them just as it saves all who believe in Him. Noah and his family were saved from the flood because they chose to remain free of the genetic and spiritual contamination that ran rampant over all the earth of that pre-flood era.
Sodom and Gomorrah, of Lot's day, were similarly affected and infected. The thoughts of the people, according to God's Word, were only on evil continually. Homosexual activity was not an alternate lifestyle, it was the predominate lifestyle. Society festered as well with all other manner of reprobate human interaction. Man had reached the point of incorrigibility that demanded a just and righteous God destroy them in order for cleansing to take place.
Jesus said in Luke 17:26: "And as it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man." In verse 28, Jesus said it will be "as it was in the days of Lot" when He returns to set right this wayward planet.
The Final Diagnosis
Exactly how, then, will things be in the period just before Christ returns? According to God's Word, how will man be conducting human affairs at the time of the end?
Let us attempt to find answers to this question by exam - the only truth there is - God's truth, His holy, inerrant Word.
The apostle Paul delineated the precise societal symptoms of mans last gasp of living death. God, who loves man and wants to give him the life and freedom that is in His Son Jesus Christ, must in the final analysis give God-rejecting man up to his vile affections. The symptoms are clear, unmistakable in their presentation, as the Apostle minces no words in outlining them. We will look at these one at a time to see if any or all fit the generation in which we five.
Jesus said in Luke 21:28: "And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
Jesus was speaking to His disciples of every generation, but particularly to His disciples, or followers, who would be alive at the end of the age. There has never been a generation in which all signs prophesied for the last days have come as a flood until this generation. In this passage the Lord was telling His disciples who would be living during the end-time period to be watchful and expectant. He promised He will come for them when the signs given in prophecy begin to manifest themselves. Let us consider how near that time must be.
The major symptoms of fallen humanity's end-time societal disorder are given by Paul's prophecy in 2 Timothy. We will look at recent and current issues and events and dissect these matters one at a time, filtering them through the light of God's prophetic Word.
This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away (2 Tim. 3:1-5).
Symptom #1: Lovers of Self
Today we are told by sociologists and by psychologists that, at the root of practically every personality problem, is lack of self-esteem. Criminals, deprived of equality in society as children, thus grow up feeling left at the bottom of the heap and become angry at the system that rejected them. They rationalize that it is street justice to compensate for what society has done to hurt them and, therefore, society is fair game.
Psychologists say people should be taught to acquire higher self-esteem; then they will become useful, productive citizens. Self-esteem is another expression for self-love, and God's Word says that this inward-turned philosophy is the problem - not the cure. When people think first and foremost of themselves, others whose lives they affect inevitably suffer from their self-indulgence.
One of the most blatant forms of self-love, and one of the greatest detrimental effects of egocentricity is found in the problem of teen-age sex and the havoc it wreaks upon individuals, families, and society at large. Young people are shown by example that it is a natural thing to indulge in sexual activity apart from the bonds of marital commitment. The body is to be enjoyed, they are told by example. They see in movies, TV sitcoms, and their adulterous parents the "If it feels good, do it" philosophy.
Teens are now told by public school systems that sex is a natural act to be enjoyed, just as eating is to be enjoyed. After all, we are but a higher form of animal life, according to public education's adoptive religion, the Theory of Evolution. The only thing to be concerned about, according to a growing number of educators across America, seems to be that teens engage in "safe sex."
A young man, whose glands are inflamed with lust after having been issued a condom by a school-based clinician, impregnates a girl, who is pressured to give in to the boy's egocentric drive. He feels no obligation other than, perhaps, to advise aborting the baby. The girl is harmed physically, socially, psychologically, and spiritually. A baby dies. This tragic reality is played out thousands upon thousands of times each year.
The social engineers tell us the secret to ultimately producing a healthy cultural environment is high self-esteem. A sense of self- worth will make man live up to his own great expectations.
Rather than love of self, however, God's Word tells us to love others, to esteem others more than ourselves, to humble ourselves before God. This generation is obviously doing none of these.
Symptom #2- Coveters
Keeping up with the Joneses is more than a joke in America today, it is symptomatic of a society gone mad with compulsion to acquire not merely as much as one's neighbor, but much more than one's neighbor. Commercials have for years told us that we "deserve the best" and have urged us to "'go for the gusto." We continue to have our senses assaulted by advertising slogans that appeal to our human pride - to our love of self.
This materialistic drive has individually, nationally and globally tumbled man into an economic abyss from which he will not be extricated, apart from the unprecedented (and ultimately diabolical) geopolitical and socioeconomic rearrangement prophesied in Revelation 13. Rock star Madonna's hit song, "Material Girl," says precisely what this generation is becoming.
For the United States, the quicksand of opulence began tugging the first time a general store owner granted a customer the privilege of purchasing merchandise on credit. The credit monster awakened, and the next step was no doubt to bring it to its feet by granting larger loans and expanding the debtor base. Commercial lending thus began in a big way, and usury exploded as did inflation.
The spirit of covetousness is thriving in every facet of life. From young children who desire to out-dress their peers to their parents who overextend to make an impression. From there it moves to governments whose members complain of massive, unmanageable deficits yet vote themselves huge salary increases and other perks, while demanding that the taxpayer tighten his belt and shell out more for congressmen's pork-barrel projects. The greed monster grows!
Coups, revolts, rebellions, and wars have at their sin blackened centers, Paul's end-time term for greed. Our generation is unparalleled in its covetousness.
Symptoms #3 & 4: Boasters, Proud
Following closely on the heels of covetousness - actually an outgrowth of it - are the dual vanities within the heart of end-time man. These people are boasters; they are extremely proud.
Jesus said, "Blessed are the meek [humble] for they shall inherit the earth [the millennial earth]."
The father of those whose characters exhibit the antithesis of humility is Satan. Lucifer was the greatest boaster of them all. "I shall put my star above the throne of the most high," he said in his supremely prideful arrogance. He seduced Eve in the Garden of Eden with the same prideful boast and promise. "Ye shall be as God," he told her. When Adam yielded, all humankind became genetic heirs to the great pride that first welled in Lucifer's heart.
Again, we see the boasting and the pride in our children. We can remember our own childhood experiences. We made claims, each having to be bigger and better or farther or faster than the boast that went before.
Politicians are living, breathing proof of boastfulness and pride, while they vie for a chance to "serve" us. How quickly the boasts turn bitter and ring hollow when they become inaccessible and self-willed after election time. They become little lords; we become revenue producers for the wastefulness of bureaucracy. The rhetoric of the campaign stump, whether on the courthouse lawn, door to door, or in media propaganda is a strange alchemy of prideful boasting and humble exhortation.
Yet we who are victimized time after time have no room to complain; it is the American political process in action. It is the process we have allowed to stray far from the noble designs of the founding fathers, a process we perpetuate through our acquiescence. This is not cynicism - it is fact.
Such pride has given the Supreme Court a de facto authority. They execute, legislate, and adjudicate such marvelously innovative things as: 1) the forbidding of prayer in public schools; 2) abortion on demand; 3) in effect, evolution as a religion; 4) the softening of the legal system to the extent that criminals now feel they have a green light to plunder, rape, and murder; 5) in some instances, interpreting homosexuality as deserving moral and legal status equivalent to that given heterosexual marriages; 6) made a mockery of the First Amendment by pampering pornographers at every juncture, while at the same time banning Bible reading and all mention of the true, living God from classrooms in public schools.
Like Satan himself, our judiciary over the past three decades has ascended to such heights that it serves as documented proof that we have little to be prideful or boastful about as a people who have allowed it to happen.
In all fairness, there are occasional times of sanity. One such instance involves the 1991 Supreme Court decision regarding abortion and foreign aid to Third World nations. An Associated Press release dated June 4, 1991, states:
The Supreme Court on Monday let stand a Bush administration rule aimed at making sure U.S. supported family planning programs in Third World countries do not promote abortion.
The court, without comment, rejected a Planned Parenthood challenge to the government ban on federal contributions to health care organizations abroad unless they promise not to use money from any source to "actively promote abortion as a method of family planning."
Those who would save "Mother Earth" by engineering birth, death, and all facets of life in between those two events, for the entire world, lost one round. They continue, however, to win many others in their drive to set up their version of Utopia. But such an entity would be a global order based on infanticide and would be totally devoid of God Almighty.
Symptom #5: Blasphemy
God's name has been all but officially removed from public education in America - in itself a blasphemous thing. But His name is at the same time in practically every theater in America. Jesus Christ is unmentionable in public forums because His holy name represents a narrow-minded viewpoint and would offend. Religion, if it is to be mentioned, must represent an eclectic view - must encompass an ecumenical theological viewpoint.
In almost every film above the rating of "'G," the name of Jesus Christ is repeated frequently. It seems, as a matter of fact, as if screen writers are required to use His holy name blasphemously at least a minimum number of times per scene. Always, the name of God, the name of Jesus, is used in one of two ways: 1) as an expression of frustration, exasperation, or anger; or 2) to portray the fanaticism of one religious zealot or another, usually a character who is dangerously insane.
Is it any wonder that a blasphemous generation of young people reject discipline and self-control, when adults have spent decades producing an anti-God language? Even Christian parents have slowly become desensitized, thereby giving into this blasphemous language's insidious, venomous effects.
Movies such as The Last Temptation Of Christ, in which Jesus, man's only hope for redemption, is portrayed as succumbing to sexual immorality, are treated as art form under Supreme Court interpretation. Mention of Christ as the eternal God incarnate in front of a class of public school children, however, has been viewed by that same body as unacceptable. A so-called artist can represent the blessed Saviour by a crucifix submerged in a bottle of urine and receive federal dollars for his blasphemous work! Madonna is looked upon with amusement when she blasphemes, in the most gross fashion, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! A large audience of Americans pay her millions of dollars for the privilege of watching her do so!
It is perhaps ludicrous to even ask the question: Are we living in a time of blasphemous deportment such as described by the apostle Paul?
A more subtle yet, at the same time, more dangerous indicator of the blasphemous times in which we live is the New Age movement's philosophy that has infiltrated almost every segment of American life. At the heart of the movement is Eastern mysticism and ancient occultism.
New Agers claim the devotee of the movement's methods and agenda has within himself the "Christ consciousness" and can ascend to the apex of God-likeness with meditational effort. All mankind is collectively God, they proclaim. Once laughed at, or shrugged off as merely a weird cult, the New Age is blossoming with unbelievable speed, pervading every part of our lives, including the true body of believers in Jesus Christ.
To claim to be Christ and/or God is blatant blasphemy, and this generation is swallowing the New Age lie that we are all Christs - as they say - hook, line, and sinker.
Symptom #6: Disobedience to Parents
As in the case of blasphemy, we should not be shocked at the rebelliousness of our young when they have watched their parents consume themselves with self-love to a point where the children suffer incalculable damage. There has been for years now a degeneration of respect for anything and everything that smacks of order and discipline.
Children watch adults fly in the face of authority in every aspect of life. In sports, adults curse and all but physically attack referees, umpires, and judges, from the primary level of midget league sports and little girl beauty pageants to the big league competitions. Policemen are almost always unjust, unfair, "stupid cops" when tickets are handed out. Remember a case in 1990 when actress Zsa Zsa Gabor slapped a policeman and flaunted her disdain for law enforcement before the nation?
Teachers are constantly "picking on" the children of parents who refuse to accept responsibility for raising their young in the right way. To these people, schools should be babysitters who never drag them in on their children's problems. When parents are called in to deal with the situations, the school is at fault, no matter what the circumstances.
Likewise, when the children then refuse to follow the laws that govern society, the parents blame "the system" for being unjust and geared only to placate the wealthy and the elite. The parents refuse to accept responsibility - the children follow suit. Each generation thus exceeds the bounds of restraint to an extent greater than the previous generation.
God's Word says there will come a time in human history when children will betray parents. This has already come to pass in one instance. The Hitler youth movement, dissatisfied with the perceived weakness of German parents, removed the children and trained them in Nazi ways for the purpose of properly educating them. The children became tools of the state for spying out those who resisted the regime. When parents refuse to accept responsibility, government, ostensibly to preserve the order of things and promote the general welfare, will.
During the soon-to-come Tribulation, Antichrist and associates will no doubt use the same tactics as Hitler did. It will be relatively easy to institute such a system because uncaring or too-busy parents will have paved the way by handing the most horrendous dictatorship in history a generation of children ripe for the picking.
Jesus said in Luke 18:16: "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not ......
Sunday schoolrooms remain more than half-empty while parents selfishly seek other things to do on Sundays. By so doing, they forbid children from coming to the One who can make them truly productive people. A primary command to parents by God is given by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:4: "provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord."
Parents who refuse these commands of the living God risk reaping a bitter harvest of disobedience. We can look around us today and see the terrible consequences of rebellion taking their toll on this generation of young people.
Symptoms #7 & 8: Unthankful, Unholy
President Abraham Lincoln officially proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday in 1863. Thanksgiving, as a concept of thanks for blessings in the land in which we now live, however, was first celebrated in the autumn of 1621, when William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony, called for a day of thanksgiving and prayer after the harvest. Other New England colonies gradually adopted the practice.
These godly people, regardless of what revisionist writers of today's accounts of American history claim, escaped England first and foremost for the privilege to worship the one, true God. They knew to whom they were indebted for all blessings they received. Thankfulness and holiness were inseparable in the minds and hearts of our forefathers. They were thankful to the one and only God of heaven because they sought to be holy and righteous in His omniscient eyes.
How far we have come as a nation and as a world from that 1621 autumn Thanksgiving! People are proud of the things they accumulate, accomplish, attain; they are grateful in some instances to other people and to institutions. For the most part, however, they use the word thankful interchangeably with the words happy and pleased, not in the sense of thankfulness to God.
To be truly thankful to God one must be holy, that is, a believer that God is the provider of all things good. This is a generation of unthankful unholy people. They know neither the God of the Bible nor seek to know Him. The only way to know the Father is to know the Son, Jesus Christ, who said as recorded in John 14:6: "1 am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
The world today views the biblical truth that Jesus Christ is the only way to God as a "narrow" or "close-minded" concept that cannot and will not be tolerated by an enlightened people of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
A holy, thankful people in the eyes of God must desire to worship and serve Him. In Joshua 24:15, God commands: ""choose you this day whom ye will serve." This subsequent passage records God's command for not only the children of Israel, but for all mankind: "fear the Lord [reverence, worship Him], and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away [all other gods]" Gosh-24:14).
One quick glance around us tells the story. Man is Obsessed with many things other dim the God of the Bible. These are the gods of a truly unholy, unthankful generation.
Symptom #9: Without Natural Affection
we all read with disbelieving eyes accounts of family members killing each other, of babies being sold or discarded by their mothers, of fathers engaging in incestuous relationships with daughters from childhood, until in some cases, the daughter either kills her father or reports the despicable matter to family and authorities.
In Russellville, Arkansas, in 1987, asocial miscreant named R. Gene Simmons, killed all his family members whom he had invited for Christmas, including the daughter he had sexually abused since her childhood. It was the worst murderous rampage involving one family member killing other family members in United States' history, and apparently stemmed from the fact a local woman had refused Simmons' romantic advances.
This tragedy punctuated the point that our supposedly civilized nation has reached with regard to familial breakdowns. This was the outer limits of atrocity to be sure, but the numbers of incidents coming to light daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, attest to the fact that such activity is accelerating.
Accounts involving what can only be described as abhorrent behavior that is "without natural affection" stream in from around the nation and world. From Livingston, Montana, a news report of June 26, 1991, reads in part: Authorities say a woman, unable to have more children, arranged a rape by her live-in boyfriend of her 11-year-old daughter because she wanted another baby.
The 30-year-old mother of three ... said that she couldn't have children and she asked the daughter to sleep with the boyfriend. ... The girl is pregnant. "It's one of those things that when you end your shift and you go home, you don't sleep so well that night," said Acting Police Chief Steve McCann.
Abortion
But perhaps no one issue in American society today so fulfills Paul's prophetic end-time characteristic "without natural affection" as does that of abortion. In the great majority of cases in which unborn babies are deliberately exterminated, those doing the killing and those consenting to the murder consider the matter to be no more than medical procedures to solve medical problems.
In most cases, those involved in the abortion process seem to feel no guilt or experience any sorrow over the taking of an unborn child's life. The multiple thousands of victims each year cannot give their views in protest of their impending murders, so they are considered by the abortionists as nothing more than fetal tissue, refuse with which to be done away.
The proposition now has been raised that in some cases the dead fetus be used in the treatment of maladies such as Parkinson's Disease. In that procedure the brain cells of a fetus are transplanted into the brain of a Parkinson's Disease victim. This raises the probability that genetic engineers will some day raise fetuses for the specific purpose of maintaining a bank of tissue for treating humanity's medical problems.
If this seems far-fetched, consider a recent case that has raised moral and ethical questions. A couple conceived a baby specifically so that the baby could donate bone-marrow to another member of the family in order to treat a disease. The couple, of course, claim to love the baby as much as their other children and undoubtedly do so. The point to be made is that such thinking is at the root of what is becoming symptomatic of a generation "without natural affection."
This casual attitude about human life - considering the unborn as non- entities, as nuisances to be eliminated, or as tissue to be utilized - is also precisely the mind set that God's Word says will pervade the generation alive in the era immediately preceding the Apocalypse, Armageddon, and the return of Jesus Christ to earth.
People have been convinced by humanists - the social engineers who claim to want to save planet earth through human effort, apart totally from God Almighty - that these little ones are not people, that the unborn are not yet human. But the God - whom the humanists in their critical thinking, values clarifying, no-moral-absolutes philosophizing consider to be dead - says something diametrically different.
God told Jeremiah the prophet, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou cameth forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations" (Jer. 1:5).
The Psalmist wrote under God's inspiration, "For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust" (Ps. 103:14). God's Word records in Luke 1:41-44 that the child within the womb is indeed fully a person. Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist, said upon greeting Mary, the mother of Jesus, while both were pregnant with those babies: "For, lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy" (Luke 1:44).
God himself tells us that the embryo, the fetus, the unborn child, is every bit as much a living human being as the child who has taken breath.
Paul the apostle says that the last generation before Christ's return will be marked by the trait "without natural affection" - or - without love for the most basic kind of relationship such as the mother for her baby still in the womb. People of that generation will, God's Word says, prefer convenience to responsibility.
Hundreds of thousands of abortions, the vast majority of them nothing less than contraception after the fact, have marked the last several decades as the era of greatest infanticide in recorded times.
Children who are born are likewise subjected to atrocity bordering on holocaust. This, the humanist philosophers tell us, is but another reason "unwanted" babies should not be brought into the world. The old bromide, "two wrongs do not a right make," applies. It is analogous to one saying that statistics on cancer project that one out of four people will develop cancer in their lifetime, therefore, we should eliminate one out of four people before they have a chance to develop the dread disease. Only God in His omniscience has the right to decide such things.
Homosexuality
"Without natural affection" means also unnatural affection. Homosexuality is rampant; sexual deviation and perversion of every sort is looked upon now as private matters between consenting adults.
One most recent case starkly makes the point. Convicted mass- murderer, Jeffrey L. Dahmer, was confronted by Milwaukee policemen prior to his apartment being found days later to contain body parts from many dismembered corpses. The police, in that first encounter, were called by neighbors who said Dahmer was chasing a nude, bleeding man. The police determined that it was a lovers' quarrel between the two men, and so they did nothing. Later, the bleeding "man" was found to have been a fourteen-year-old boy whose body parts were reportedly found in Dahmer's apartment.
Such perverse activity is more and more becoming private and non- private abominations between adults and children, and even between people and animals. No moral absolutes in the twisted rationale of humanist, critical thinking and values clarification means "anything goes."
Symptom #10: Trucebreakers
A report in the Encyclopedia Britannica 1990 Book Of the Year titled "Arms Control and Disarmament" states:
The most important arms control event of 1989 was Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze's historic admission that the Krasnoyarsk radar installation in the USSR was a violation of the 1972 ABM treaty. This was the first admission by the Soviet Union that they had violated an arms control agreement; it resolved a long- standing U.S. debate in favor of those who had argued that the Krasnoyarsk was one of several Soviet violations. This argument had been made on successive reports on Soviet noncompliance with arms control agreements by U.S. President Ronald Reagan and had been bitterly criticized by much of the arms control community as being incorrect. However, the Reagan administration charge was now acknowledged as true by the Soviets.
In actuality, the report grossly understates both the extent of Communist treaty infractions and the extent of protestation of those who knew and know the Communist way of doing business. It also exposes the woolly-mindedness of those who then saw the Soviet Communist leadership and now see the Commonwealth of Independent States leadership as trustworthy citizens of a soon to be New World order.
Communism of the Soviet and Chinese kind, as well as every other variety, presents in microcosm and typifies the last days' characteristics termed by the apostle Paul as trucebreakers. The number of incidents of Communists lying and going back on their word is legendary, though the liberal-minded of the West just don't seem to get it. Perestroika, glasnost, and the USSR under a new name will, in the final analysis, have altered nothing.
But there is an epidemic of trucebreaking in arenas other than geopolitics. It is estimated by some sociologists that as many as one out of two marriages in the United States - that is, people now being married, not necessarily including marriages made in past decades - end in divorce. The most basic truce, treaty, or pact is that made between man and woman to be husband and wife. God ordained marriage to be monogamous and to last a lifetime.
Hollywood has represented the contemporary marriage as a contract to be broken at any time or one to be ignored whenever expediency demands a one-night stand or weekend getaway with someone other than one's husband or wife. Young people now have what seems almost a legitimate excuse to avoid marriage or to at least have an experimental live-in relationship before marriage. "Why have marriage" they can ask, "when the commitment of the marriage vow is so lightly treated in practice?"
Truly, we live in a time when trucebreaking is a way of life for a growing number of people.
Symptom #11: False Accusers
If one wishes to look to a single area within American life where false accusation runs unchecked, it is best exemplified by the political process at all levels. False accusations and false accusers are generally accepted as normal in today's society as a whole, but in politics - as is said of love and war - all is fair.
False accusation is nothing more or less than lying in order to seek and to gain advantage for one's self - to the denigration of the one being accused. Lies, then, are at the heart of that described in 1 Timothy 3 by Paul.
Lying to avoid punishment or to gain advantage has always been the human thing to do. Corporations and kingdoms have been built on deception of every sort. The trait of lying - of falsely accusing for personal gains - the Scripture says, is a heart problem. "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked . . ." (Jer. 17:9).
It would no doubt be possible for the reader here to recall, in his or her own life, instances when people took advantage of others through deceit, lies, or false accusations. For the purpose of looking at a single event in America that symbolizes or captures the very essence of false dealings, think for a moment on the Watergate affair that brought a president down and very nearly this nation's governmental stability along with him. Most every adult in the United States remembers the series of one revelation upon another - many of which, even at this late date, still serve only to puzzle and confuse.
Politicians in the 1990s still look into cameras and deny wrongdoing even after having the proof of their guilt documented for all to see. Party affiliation makes no difference. Scandals on all sides and at all levels are epidemic.
False accusers, too, are a big part of the political process in America. The very fact that so many public officials are caught red-handed in one ignoble act or another makes the other honest, hard-working public servants vulnerable to innuendo and out-right lies no matter the purity of their record.
Much of the American public can be held responsible for the real and growing evil of false accusation and false accusers. Tabloids thrive on such garbage because their readerships have insatiable appetites for it. We indeed five in an era of false accusers.
Symptom #12: Incontinent
Webster's Third Dictionary defines "incontinent" as: "marked by lacking control, unrestrained evil appetites; inability, disinclination to resist impulse [as in alcoholism]."
Every major civilization in recorded history has ultimately come to a time when the symptoms wrapped up in tile term "incontinent" overwhelmed society. Perhaps Edward Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the most complete account of such a deterioration. The apostle Paul tells us that the last generation of human history will also come to be predominantly incontinent, not only in conduct but in its very character.
A lack of self-discipline and self-control is a growing monster straining at the tethers of law, order, and common sense. These restraints are themselves perpetually under the abrasive, corrosive attacks of Luciferic agencies that seek to replace all traces of godly influence with humanism.
An Associated Press report from Washington, DC, in June, 1991, clearly illustrates this unrelenting strain modem man puts on the leash of morality.
The National Park Service is "seriously" considering a proposal that would sanction nude sunbathing at one of its facilities in Hawaii, an Interior Department official said Saturday.
... (spokesman) Steve Goldstein said three factors the department would consider in making its decision would be local and state laws and normal customs governing "clothing optional" beaches as well as citizen reaction ....
... He said there has been nude sunbathing at other park service facilities and "there is no federal law governing whether someone can nude sunbathe." But it has never been officially sanctioned by the government, he said.
So even the human governing entities of our nation and world are confused by the author of confusion, Satan. How can we expect our young people to be less confused or more disciplined than the adults to whom they are supposed to look for leadership and example?
A Knight News Service report, by Lee Ban, dramatically makes the saddening point that ours is an age of unparalleled incontinence:
U.S. teenagers are turning increasingly to booze to relieve stress and boredom, and many may well be on their way to becoming alcoholics, according to a national report released Thursday. "It's an alarming trend," said Surgeon General Antonia Navello.
More than half, 10.6 million, of the nation's junior and senior high school students are drinkers. Of those who drink, 8 million consume alcohol on a weekly basis, 5.4 million have gone on a binge on occasion, and nearly half a million on a weekly binge, guzzling five or more drinks in a row.
Some drink as many as 33 beers a week, a dozen wine coolers, 24 glasses of wine or 24 shots of liquor, the study said.
... The survey, conducted by the inspector general's office of the Department of Health and Human Services found that teen-age students annually consume 35 percent of all wine coolers sold in the United States, about 31 million gallons and 1.1 billion cans of beer, or about 102 million gallons.
Navello termed the findings "shocking" and said they raise questions about alcohol marketing, advertising standards and enforcement of underage drinking laws.
The 1991 survey showed that more than half of the 20.7 million U.S. students in grades seven through twelve who drink alcoholic beverages are, or will become, alcoholics.
The study showed that the highest percentage of drinkers - 54 percent - are among the thirteen to fifteen age group. Imagine! If the percentage holds or increases, in just a few years more than half of all American high school graduates will be users of alcohol. Many will be alcoholics! In some European nations the percentages are even higher. Cultures in several nations are built around wine consumption.
Sexual self-discipline - rather, the lack thereof - is easily observable and able to be documented for anyone caring to open his eyes to facts. We have already addressed this tragedy to some extent. We have seen that lack of control in sexuality has resulted in a significant proportion of this generation of young people emulating adult lascivious and miscreant behavior; teen-age pregnancies and raging diseases continue to follow in the wake of the tidal wave of immorality.
God's Word declares prophetic truth in the 1 Timothy account characterizing end-time man. We live at a time of unbridled behavior. News accounts, such as the case of a former heavyweight boxing champion's rape of a teenage beauty contestant and his subsequent conviction, give vivid testimony of that truth of incontinence.
Symptoms 13 & 14: Fierce, Despisers of Those That Are Good
An incident in 1990, familiar to most Americans, is the report of one teenager dowsing another teenager with gasoline and igniting it simply because the young victim, reportedly a Christian and a well-liked, well-behaved citizen, would not take a drug as the other boy demanded. The teenager who committed the atrocity is allegedly a drug user and small - -time dealer.
People of the end time will be fierce, despisers of those that are good. A newspaper report out of Atlantic Beach, New York, in June, 1991, reads: A black teenager was on life-support systems Thursday after being hit by four bat-wielding white men, apparently because he was talking to a white girl.
A June, 1991, AP release from Rome, Italy, reported: City councils in 21 towns where officials are suspected of having close ties with the Mafia are slated to be dissolved, reports said Saturday.
Among the towns in Calabria, a southern region, was Taurianova, site of one of the most gruesome slayings blamed on founding clans of the Indrangheta, the Calabrian crime organization likened to the Sicilian Mafia.
A few weeks ago, after shooting to death two merchants who were brothers, gunmen in the main square of Taurianova. lopped off the head of one of the victims and tossed it in the air for target practice as dozens of horrified townspeople watched.
A minor traffic incident in Little Rock, Arkansas, incited one of the men involved in the fender-bender to shoot the other man four times at point blank range while the man sat behind his steering wheel. We expect to read and hear of beastly, murderous individuals like Saddam Hussehi, who reportedly once had a member of his body guards killed, then cut to pieces, and the body parts delivered to the front door of the mans widow. But no longer are unbelievably cruel acts done by strange, megalomaniacal individuals in faraway places. Such atrocities are now daffy fodder for local news writers. What's more, society is increasingly paralyzed in dealing with perpetrators of these horrible crimes.
The rape of the Central Park jogger is a case well in point in considering the fierceness of modem man. Four young men raped, sodomized, and bludgeoned almost to death a young woman in New York's Central Park. They were on a rampage supposedly akin to a sport they concocted, which they termed " wilding." One of the attackers said in court that another of the men involved had expressed delight during the attack over the force and volume of blood spurting from the woman's cut body. At this writing, the legal system has failed to deal with the accused in a way sufficient to the heinous nature of the brutal attack. Rather than concern for the victim, some lobbyist-like groups seem intent on claiming racial bias against the alleged rapists. These groups apparently see these alleged, would-be murderers as the victims in the matter.
The tide of murderous rampaging seems to have taken a quantum leap during the summer of 1991. It seems as if each serial murderer is bent on breaking records of killers gone before them. As mentioned before, Jeffrey L. Dahmer is alleged to have murdered as many as seventeen people throughout the nation. Body parts of eleven people were found in his Milwaukee apartment.
A confessed killer now is feared to have murdered more than sixty people around the country. An Associated Press report from Guffport, Mississippi, dated August 16,1991, reads in part:
Federal and state lawmen, reeling under a barrage of inquiries from 20 states, said Thursday that they will proceed deliberately in investigating claims by a self-professed serial killer that he murdered more than 60 people.
... So far, only three of the killings Donald Leroy Evans claims to have committed have been confirmed, his court-appointed lawyer said. Mass and serial murders are only at the tip of the mountainous heap of murder cases - solved and unsolved - piling up within society today. Law enforcement must specialize in such areas as mass murders and serial murders, developing expertise in investigating specific types of what were once aberrant crimes but now have become almost standard police work.
There is a pernicious movement among despisers of those that are good today. Texe Marrs gives a masterful, informational presentation in a later essay on this diabolical consortium.
In Luke 18:19, Jesus Christ says "none is good, save one, that is, God." Those who despise good despise God himself, despise Jesus Christ, who was and is God. All people who are redeemed through acceptance of and belief in the fact that Jesus is the One and only way to salvation are good only because they are in Christ Jesus. Only Jesus can change the inner-evil of the fierce and the despisers of those that are good. Only Christ can replace that heart of hatred with wonderful inner peace.
Symptoms 14,15,16, & 17: Traitors, Heady, High-minded, Lovers of Pleasures More Than Lovers of God
Reports of military personnel selling secrets or bartering intelligence for sexual favors have become more prevalent in recent years. In some cases we have learned of espionage that involved sabotage for the sake of personal gain. Recently, an FBI agent, and later a CIA agent, were caught in incidents of traitorous activity. These incidents were only the most publicized of the hundreds going on throughout the world.
On the level of industrial and corporate subterfuge, the symptoms point to a plague of betrayal. Fortunes are made and lost yearly, monthly, and weekly by those who step on, or are stepped on, while on the ladder leading to success and/or failure.
This self-uplifting, while ascending on the misfortune of others, is symptomatic of headiness or high-mindedness. Satan was and is the most high-minded of all. He sought and still has the audacity to believe he can lift himself to a position above the one, true, eternal God. Those who reject the truth of Jesus Christ are, through omission, heirs to the fallen one's - Lucifer's great high-mindedness.
All who seek, through their great intellect, their desire, or their superiority in the realm of power-brokerage, to put themselves upon the pinnacle of god-likeness in the world they have chosen to conquer are inheritors of Satan's pridefulness. They are exhilarated by the cut-throat struggle to vanquish all obstacles, all foes.
The high-minded intellectuals of academia, of the sciences, or of the liberal clergy seek more than at any time in history to erase all mention of God the Almighty, even at the temporary expedient of tolerating many religions and allowing those religions their many various ways to godhood.
With the intellectual exercise of plotting the planet's physical and social salvation, they are sacrificing their eternal souls on the altar of "Evolutional Theory." God's Word tells that the last generation will be as was the generation that perished in the flood of Noahs day. Of that people God says:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things (Rom. 1:21-23).
What is this, if not a description of modem intellectual man and his attempts to rationalize away all vestiges of the true God? It perfectly describes the writings of Charles Darwin and those who have reworked, reformulated and totally fallen for, in one form or another, the Evolution lie. These, like the antediluvians, "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. . ." (Rom. 1:25). These foolish, soul-darkened "intellects" join forces with those they would once have termed superstitious idiots, the occultists, and New Age adherents, to deify Mother Earth for the sake of ecological purity.
Man seeks to create his own Utopias totally apart from God's moral restraints. Man will go to any lengths that his own intellectual capabilities will permit to satisfy his lustful, ephemeral desires. He seeks, like Satan promised and Eve desired, knowledge, power, and wealth because these things bring temporal pleasures.
Second Peter issues a terrifying indictment and judgment on the heady, high-minded, God despising, pleasure seekers of the last days' generation.
The Lord knoweth how ... to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished: But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed, speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterly perish in their own corruption (2 Pet. 2:9-10,12).
We live in days such as delineated in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. The evidence is astoundingly abundant to anyone not wishing to be a foolish, deceived, brute beast but rather desiring to seek to be wise unto salvation.
God's desire for you is given a few verses later in 2 Peter 3:9: "The Lord is ... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.,,

All who seek, through their great intellect, their desire, ortheir superiority in the realm of power-brokerage, to putthemselves upon the pinnacle of god-likeness in the worldthey have chosen to conquer are inheritors of Satan'spridefulness. They are exhilarated by the cut-throat struggle tovanquish all obstacles, all foes.
The high-minded intellectuals of academia, of the sciences, orof the liberal clergy seek more than at any time in history toerase all mention of God the Almighty, even at the temporaryexpedient of tolerating many religions and allowing thosereligions their many various ways to godhood.
With the intellectual exercise of plotting the planet's physicaland social salvation, they are sacrificing their eternal souls onthe altar of "Evolutional Theory." God's Word tells that thelast generation will be as was the generation that perished inthe flood of Noahs day. Of that people God says:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, Andchanged the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image madelike to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts,and creeping things (Rom. 1:21-23).
What is this, if not a description of modem intellectual man andhis attempts to rationalize away all vestiges of the true God? Itperfectly describes the writings of Charles Darwin and thosewho have reworked, reformulated and totally fallen for, in oneform or another, the Evolution lie. These, like theantediluvians, "changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator. . ." (Rom.1:25). These foolish, soul-darkened "intellects" join forces with thosethey would once have termed superstitious idiots, the occultists, andNew Age adherents, to deify Mother Earth for the sake of ecologicalpurity.
Man seeks to create his own Utopias totally apart from God's moralrestraints. Man will go to any lengths that his own intellectualcapabilities will permit to satisfy his lustful, ephemeral desires. Heseeks, like Satan promised and Eve desired, knowledge, power, andwealth because these things bring temporal pleasures.
Second Peter issues a terrifying indictment and judgment on theheady, high-minded, God despising, pleasure seekers of the last days'generation.
The Lord knoweth how ... to reserve the unjust unto the day ofjudgment to be punished: But chiefly them that walk after the flesh inthe lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous arethey, self-willed, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.
But these, as natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed,speak evil of the things that they understand not; and shall utterlyperish in their own corruption (2 Pet. 2:9-10,12).
We live in days such as delineated in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. The evidenceis astoundingly abundant to anyone not wishing to be a foolish,deceived, brute beast but rather desiring to seek to be wise untosalvation.
God's desire for you is given a few verses later in 2 Peter 3:9: "TheLord is ... not willing that any should perish, but that all should cometo repentance.,,