They Fully Delight in Evil

The onslaught of diabolical darkness is escalating rapidly:

We live in a time where evil is celebrated and promoted while godliness, holiness and goodness are treated with contempt. In times past it seemed that people preferred to do evil, but it was often under cover of darkness. They were not so brazen and open about their sin. But today sin is championed and praised. The Apostle Paul in Romans 1:29-32 aptly describes the sort of folks I am talking about here:

They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them.

That is a pretty bleak commentary on the condition of sinful mankind that rejects God. And Paul has other such lists of evil that he runs with, as the one found in 2 Timothy 3:1-4:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.

I could have a very long article indeed if I simply offered more of these various lists and descriptions as found in both Testaments. But one aspect I want to highlight here is the way evil is being championed and celebrated. Two Old Testament passages (in various versions) certainly speak to this. Consider several versions of Isaiah 3:9:

“The look on their faces testifies against them; they parade their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! They have brought disaster upon themselves.” NIV

“For the look on their faces bears witness against them; they proclaim their sin like Sodom; they do not hide it. Woe to them! For they have brought evil on themselves.” ESV

And Psalm 12:8 is another passage that certainly is clear in describing all this:

“[The wicked] freely strut about when what is vile is honored by the human race.” NIV

“even though the wicked strut about, and evil is praised throughout the land.” NLT

“On every side the wicked prowl, as vileness is exalted among the children of man.” ESV

“The wicked strut about [in pompous self-importance] on every side, As vileness is exalted and baseness is prized among the sons of men.” Amplified Bible

One way that Psalm 12:8 can be rendered is this: ‘The wicked freely parade and prance about while evil is praised throughout the land.’ The essence of these sorts of texts is this: people not only sin and do evil, but they take great pride in doing so, and they like to promote and parade their wickedness.

And that certainly seems to so accurately describe the situation we find ourselves in today. Indeed, as the perfect example of this, simply take any pride march or protest of the secular left, be it a pro-death event, or a pro-sexual immorality march.

It is all about an in-your-face showcasing of debauchery, perversion and evil. They love to spit in God’s face as they celebrate their preferred lifestyles. I could also write a very long article simply sharing some of the things they have said or written on their posters as they march down the streets.

The pro-death crowd provides plenty of examples of this. The picture I feature above is one glaring example. Imagine actually saying “I’d rather be a murderer than a mother”. And saying it with such pride and with a perverse grin on your face. This is a level of sickness that needs more than a natural explanation. There is surely some very real demonic influence going on here.

You always wonder how some people can be so filled with such hatred, bitterness and twistedness. They certainly fully exemplify perfectly what is said in the biblical passages featured above. There would be so many more such examples. Let me repeat just one more here that I wrote about some years ago.

People might think this is so horrific that it must be fake – a photo-shop. But I can assure you that I and hundreds of other people saw this guy and his sign with our own eyes. His poster said this: “The only good baby is a dead baby.” I have pics of that and other gruesome posters here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/05/28/pro-death-ugliness-and-irrationality-on-full-display/

When you get people arrogantly and fiendishly pushing stuff like this, you know we are getting into some really dark and diabolical territory. These folks clearly are those who ‘freely parade and prance about while evil is praised throughout.’ And given all the negative things God’s word says about the proud and the arrogant, these folks are on very shaky ground indeed.

Most of these folks cannot be reasoned with. Most of them are not interested in having a polite discussion with you. Most of them are out to serve as the devil’s shock troopers, spewing hideously evil and vile things as they mock God and hate on his people.

We must pray for them and put on the whole armour of God as we seek to interact with them. Simply trying to be “nice” and smiling a lot will not get us very far. This is full-tilt spiritual warfare. Jesus did not cast out demons by trying to be winsome and nuanced. He knew what he was up against and took steps accordingly to deal with them.

As the days get darker and darker, we can expect more of this sort of evil being displayed all around us. We can expect more such ugly confrontations. We can expect more people to “parade their sin like Sodom”. We can expect more folks to “freely strut about when what is vile is honored by the human race.”

That is the world Scripture has told us to expect. It is no longer time to play games and pursue our trivial pursuits. In an all-out open war such as this, we must gear up for battle. As Martyn Lloyd-Jones put it as he commented on Romans 8: 5-8:

We alone, as Christians, understand what is wrong with the world. We see powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world, behind the visible and seen phenomena, and we see perplexed politicians trying to deal with the problems, and failing. We know they must fail because they do not see what is at the back of it all. We see it as the conflict between heaven and hell.

And as Abraham Kuyper once stated:

If once the curtain were pulled back, and the spiritual world behind it came to view, it would expose to our spiritual vision a struggle so intense, so convulsive, sweeping everything within its range, that the fiercest battle fought on earth would seem, by comparison, a mere game. Not here, but up there – that is where the real conflict is engaged. Our earthly struggle drones in its backlash.

Do we really understand this reality? If so, are we living it out in all that we do and say?

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