The Silent Epidemic of Apathy: Confronting Spiritual and Societal Decline

Hello friend and welcome to the Chaplin's Cornernet. This is Chaplin Terry Warner. I'm going to stop the music for a few moments so you can grab a pen and some paper for your foundation scriptures. If you can't get onto a computer because you are driving or at work, when you can get online, you will find my podcast and articles at the Chaplin's Cornernet. Starting at the beginning of the podcast, I will give you the season number and episode number. Thank you so much for listening. My podcasts come out every Monday morning. And now let's get going, hello friend, chaplin Terry Warner here. The title of this podcast is Apathy, season 4, episode number 7. It will be published on February 12, 2024. Your foundation scripture is Revelation 3.16. I'm going to quote a couple of quotes here. Evil thrives on apathy and cannot survive without it, Hannah Arndt. The faith of Christ offers no buttons to push for quick service. AW." Tozer. The average Christian has learned to satisfy himself with idleness, recreation, electronic games and all kinds of earthly activities. We have almost lost all of our ability to function because of holding our smartphones in one hand while trying and functioning our daily duties with only using the other hand. I remember back in my school days where the major school problem of the time was chewing gum and talking in class. Girls were required to wear dresses and boys wore slacks. Jeans were not allowed or tolerated. Teachers, coaches, principals were allowed to paddle or swat a certain number of times for misbehaving. Fighting would get you expelled immediately. On a positive note, we were allowed to bring our firearms to school, as long as we left them in the car or pick up. They were never loaded, nor was any kind of play shooting tolerated. We could show them to friends, the principals, the teachers, and admire and imagine out hunting deer and quail and things like that. When I reached the age of 12, I was allowed by my parents to carry a pocket knife. I could not recall a single time of firearms being misused or putting anyone in danger. Good behavior and discipline were administered by the teachers, with serious corrections by the principal and the office staff or a coach. We were finally starting to see why God told us not to eat at the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not because we would become like God, but because man was never able to handle the information and insight. While in a fallen state we could handle it under God, we cannot handle it ourselves. I can remember when I was in my early teens that I started hearing about gangs, violence in the big cities and remember people having to start locking their houses and protecting their valuables. In the late 50s and early 60s we started to see civil unrest, race rise and the introduction of psychedelic drugs. We entered into a war in Southeast Asia and turned the war effort into a political mess instead of a military victory. That actually started with Korea after World War II, but it really manifested itself with Vietnam. We took prayer out of our schools, then we took God out of the schools, then we took God out of our culture and started tearing down what God and the Judeo-Christian rules and regulations meant, and we began our downward spiral. In Jewish tradition, the tree of knowledge and the eating of its fruit represents the beginning of the mixture of good and evil together. Before that time, the two were separate and evil had only a nebulous existence and potential. As we all know, Eve was deceived and ate the fruit and then turned and gave it to Adam who, in full knowledge, ate the fruit. In my opinion, I think the fruit was actually the fig, because Israel represents the fig tree or the fig tree represents Israel, but Adam ate the fruit with full knowledge of what he was doing, probably so that he would not lose Eve, but nevertheless, sin ended the world. Through Adam, the history of man started and continues to our present day. Let me sort of correct that the serpent, satan, the devil, is the one that brought sin around. Adam is the one to ate the fruit and invited it into himself. The day he ate that fruit is the day he died, not physically, but spiritually. That's what God meant when he said the day you eat this fruit, you will surely die. He died spiritually, and so the history of fallen man started and continues to present day. However, our church body has turned into a large group of apathetic Christians that Revelation 3:15-16 should make every Christian tremble. I'm talking about the church at Laodicea. That is Lukewarm and Christ spits them amount of his mouth. We were told to love everyone and in doing so we accepted into our lifestyles and culture the acceptance of evil and bad behavior in the name of tolerance and unity. I could remember being told that a little sin was actually fun, that God was going out of style and would soon be replaced by science. I should have known better, but even I was having fun of leading a life without restraint from old fashioned teaching and fables. The power was not in the Church, or let me say that the power was not being seen through the Church, except maybe for a few small denominations. This was the new and exciting era, the age of Aquarius, and the new dawning of the age of enlightenment. Anything was permissible as long as it didn't hurt others. The truth was it was hurting and destroying everything that we, as Judeo-Christian nation, had built. It seemed like overnight that God became obsolete and with the introduction of electronic media and entertainment we could produce our pleasure and wants by ourselves. We became essential in the physical world of debauchery. That pushed us farther away from God and his safeguards. We didn't slip into worldly decay, we ran headlong into it with the demonic abandonment. Now we find ourselves in a world governed by and manipulated by evil men that want to destroy God's creation in every aspect. In my opinion, we Christians have become lazy in our commitment and actions, ineffective in our Christian walk due to the inactive and following the world, instead of following the Word of God. We don't even know enough of the Word of God to understand what is happening to us and consequently we continue to decline. We were told to go and make disciples of the nations Matthew 28:19-20. In not doing this, we left out our government, our schools, our arts, our media and other mountains of influence that infiltrated with non-faring, apathetic and ignorant and non-believers. Not only have we grown slack in doing this, we are in a terrible situation of having to educate ourselves in our Christian walk before we can help anyone else. Now we are beginning to see the degeneration of vanishing of our dominion that we once had established. We are seeing our infrastructure crumble, our laws becoming ineffective and obsolete, our prisons overflowing with idle inmates that use their time to establish more corrupt behavior. Our education system is quit believing in God and thereby building a school of random chance and perversion. We are in a most troublesome and crumbling social culture. Well, chaplain Terry, is there any good news? Yes, absolutely. It is not all lost just yet. With God, it is never too late. The solution Stop being apathetic and turn to God in sorrow and repentance and humble yourselves to the God of the Universe and seek His forgiveness. Give your heart to Jesus Christ and, in doing so, make your salvation secure so that when you face death, you can face it as a promotion to heaven instead of an eternal hell. Start studying the Word, start reading the Word, start getting into the Word and showing others the light that has come on in your soul when you were born again. This time we turn ourselves back to God so that we can turn this nation back to God. Otherwise, we are looking for His soon and eminent return that will terminate the end of the age. Are you ready? If Jesus should come for you tonight, do you have any guarantee that your next breath will not be an eternal punishment or eternal salvation? The choice is yours, but it has got to be made before you depart this life. You have a blessed day and turn your heart in repentance and give your life to Jesus Christ and let Him rebuild, re-furnish, reborn you Not good English, but let Him be you be born again into a life of Godliness worth value and love. You have a blessed day. In Jesus' name, amen. This has been Chaplain Terry Warner. My podcasts come out every Monday morning. When you go to my podcast website, there will be a drop down menu for my website. It signs up for my newsletter. You will be able to privately email me with your questions and comments. You will be lifted up in prayer every day. Your information will never be sold or given out. Please like, share and follow me on social media. Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace In Jesus' name, amen.