People often baulk at the thought of God punishing people eternally
for not giving their lives to him while they were alive here on Earth.
The assumption is that most of us have not done anything much worse than telling a few lies
and that it is unimaginable cruelty on the part of God
to inflict so much punishment on anyone other than a few Hitlers or Stalins throughout history.
Now, I personally don't think that God DOES punish anyone eternally, but that is another issue.
In this video I hope to give a better understanding as to why it is that so many of us
deserve SOME kind of fairly harsh punishment for the way that we live our lives.
In particular, I have recently been moved by a revelation of just how unbelievably EVIL we, as humans, are.
It is only further evidence of our evil, that we are so adept at hiding it from ourselves and from those around us
often for our entire life.
In fact, that may be the worst evil of all... our ability to deceive ourselves about just how low we can go.
In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, the architect of Hitler's so-called "final solution" for the Jews in Europe
was finally captured by Jewish Nazi hunters, and put on trial in Jerusalem.
Hannah Arendt, a Jew herself, and a renowned political philosopher, covered the trial for the New Yorker magazine.
Her conclusion was that Eichmann was, in many ways, just one more bureaucrat
doing his job to the best of his ability.
His problem, according to Arendt, was just that he lacked the ability to think.
Oh, he thought about things like, "I will do this, or I will do that,"
but he never allowed himself to think about the morality or the long-term effects of what he was doing
or of what others were experiencing as a result of his decisions.
Hannah Arendt made famous the phrase "the banality of evil"
as she compared what Eichmann did in his job as a government bureaucrat
with what many Jewish leaders themselves did in Germany
where they, too, turned a blind eye to what was happening to fellow Jews
so long as they could be more comfortable themselves.
Evil, according to Hannah Arendt, was not some red-faced fire-breathing monster
but it was indifference, in the hearts of otherwise respectable people all over the world.
And that, I believe, is how God sees each of us.
We do not need to each be forced through circumstances
to make the kind of historical decisions that Adolf Eichmann, or, indeed, Hitler himself, made in their daily routines
for God to know that we would be just as certain to choose selfishly
based on much smaller decisions that we have already made, and that we are continuing to make from day to day.
That is the "banality of evil".
It is just ordinary people making ordinary decisions, without thought for others
for the environment, for the future, for God.
And we make those decisions, over and over again, based on what is most convenient.
If we put up with an inconvenience at all
it is usually for the sake of achieving some more long-term comfort for ourselves or for our families.
What looks like an insignificant error in the placement of a brick down here
over time, and in the right circumstances, will lead to catastrophe somewhere up here.
God does not need to let us live through all the circumstances to know that we would be an Eichmann or a Hitler.
Why allow more suffering for more millions, just to convince US of our own evil-ness?
If we suppress our consciences in such small things now, he knows what we would do with much harder decisions
where the consequences for ourselves would be much greater.
We have, in fact, already revealed ourselves as being desperately and dangerously evil.
But we have buried it under a cloak of righteousness... including religious self-righteousness.
I have struggled for the past two years with this whole issue of covid
and the world's ability to close our eyes against what has been called "inconvenient truths".
The extent of self-deception that exists in the world has poured out in a pandemic of insanely evil proportions.
I keep telling myself that there must be sincere people amongst all those who are still preaching that covid is a hoax
or that vaccines are a conspiracy to wipe out the world's population.
Nevertheless, whether through delusion or paranoia
the world is being exposed as being widely populated by madmen, and exceptions barely exist.
The ability to deceive ourselves does not stop there.
On the other side, you have people who are suffering from the same sort of self-denial
with regard to the millions of babies who are being torn to pieces by abortionists
as governments go so far as to prosecute doctors who refuse to perform the murders
because they have a conscience about such things.
At the moment, abortion advocates, like Joe Biden, continue to enjoy a certain level of respectability
by comparison to the likes of people like Kenneth Copeland and Paula White.
But, over time, I believe there will be a far worse revelation of the awful, awful evil that lurks in the hearts of mankind
and it will come just as easily from the political Left as from the political Right.
You see, the problem on both sides is that they have left Truth out.
Oh they may speak loud and long about having some kind of lesser truths...
but the bigger Truth is that the heart of man is "deceitfully wicked"... like the Bible says.
And that includes those of us who are preaching such things.
You... Me... We both have as much potential for evil as the worst people who have ever appeared on this planet.
And all it takes to reveal that evil is just simple encounters with truths that start to cost us something.
In particular, I think that Jesus Christ has gathered up all of the criteria for a genuine hunger for truth
and laid them on his followers, to keep us forever uncomfortable.
You want an illustration of denial and deception?
The teachings of Jesus provoke the most universal and powerful form of deception in history.
People cover their eyes... stick their fingers in their ears... fill their lives with distractions
and run in terror from everything that Jesus ever said.
And when we do that... when we run from the Truth as he has spoken it
we reveal ourselves for the outright SATANISTS that we really are.
Jesus did not pull punches.
When his most prominent disciple, Peter, suggested to Jesus that there was an easier way than a torturous death on the cross
Jesus addressed him as though Peter was Satan himself.
"Get behind me, Satan!" he shouted, at the one whom he had earlier said was the Rock, on which he would build his church.
But that brings us to the good part.
God CAN do great things, when he finds people who are willing to address the evil that lurks in all of us.
Peter repented of his cowardice, and eventually was crucified himself.
What could be more uncomfortable... more 'inconvenient' than a slow, agonising death while literally nailed to crossed beams?
Jesus calls on genuine Truth-seekers everywhere to take up their crosses and follow him.
Adolf Eichmann did not want to confront his own fear of death, and so he went along with all that his fuhrer said.
He even made suggestions for improving the efficiency of the extermination of the Jews...
suggestions that probably ensured a little more comfort for himself and for his family, in a very dangerous world.
Now, let's talk about something a little more up to date than the 1940s.
Over in Africa, there is a tiny country called French Equatorial Guinea.
They have discovered oil.
So much oil that, within ten years, they could be the richest country in the world per capita...
richer even than the Arab states.
But one man, a dictator named Obiang
is putting almost all of the money for that oil into dozens of personal bank accounts around the world...
many of them with balances in the hundreds of millions of dollars
while people in his own country struggle in abject poverty.
If anyone disagrees with Obiang, they are put in jail, tortured, and executed.
He is being called by some, the most evil man in the world today.
But listen to this 60 Minutes interview with the American oil executive who deals with Obiang
and you will see just how easy it is to become an Adolf Eichmann in today's world.
Do you have any qualms about doing business with him?
It's a matter of you have to.
Is there any depth to which you will not sink?
I mean, would you do business with this man, Obiang, no matter how corrupt he is?
I think, at some point... again, uh, that's a good question.
Is there any level at which any oil company in the world wouldn't, uh, wouldn't do business, where there's that much oil?
Um, I don't know.
Your position is that we shouldn't be taking oil from Equatorial Guinea.
No, Let me tell you about this.
My position is that there should be some morality.
There should be a level, below which you won't sink.
You have sunk to such unbelievable depths, in dealing with such a corrupt and cruel dictator as Obiang.
Well, I don't agree with it.
What? The cruel bit, or the corrupt bit?
Well, certainly, I don't agree that American companies are not following the fair trade and practices act.
You and I... we are not oil executives. We are not heads of state.
We rarely make decisions that will cost the lives of anyone. Or so we think.
But we KNOW about gross injustices all over the world, thanks to the modern media.
We are more aware of atrocities than were the average Germans during World War II.
But what do we do about it?
I don't have the answers to everyone else's problems, and I doubt that you do either.
But Jesus does, and he says that the answer starts with a few individuals declaring war on the ROOT of all evil.
You see, that root of all evil is what keeps each of us from doing what is needed to change the world.
That root of all evil turns each of us into a Hitler, an Eichmann
or an American oil executive in the ordinary business of daily life.
Over and over, we choose what is comfortable and we close our ears to what is not comfortable.
It is the ordinariness of evil that causes even our best friends to walk away if our truth becomes too uncomfortable for them.
And Jesus has promised us that the whole world will walk away if we truly align ourselves with him and all that he taught.
He said, "If they have rejected me, they will reject you."
Apart from my wife and one daughter
I do not have a single relative in the entire world who dares to even have
a serious five-minute conversation with me about the teachings of Jesus.
They have all walked away.
But I have grown accustomed to that.
Let's look closer... at you who are watching this video right now.
How many of YOU are able to open up about your own reactions to the teachings of Jesus?
How many of you even GIVE a damn about the teachings of Jesus?
I won't even try to guess why you come here, but it rarely is because you want to obey Jesus
and be with others who are obeying him.
If that was the case, we would be doing that now...
exchanging emails, visiting each other, forsaking all and traveling together into all the world, to preach the gospel.
I fear that, for most of you, this is just one more source of your so-called "research" on what is wrong with the rest of the world
and not a source of genuine fellowship based around a fervent desire to know the truth.
The teachings of Jesus...
they could be as simple as, "Do not address any man on Earth as Father," and you would immediately react against it.
Why? Well, because there are some men on Earth that it would be uncomfortable to address by their first name.
It is far more convenient to keep calling them Dad, or something similar... maybe Sir, or Doctor, or even Pope.
When we do that, way down here, at the bottom of the pile, one brick shifts a little bit off balance.
And the error is magnified with each new decision.
If you cannot obey Jesus in even the smallest thing
do you really think that you would face torture and execution without denying him?
Most of us will never even come close to facing execution
because we will have turned our back on the Truth long before that time.
We may not become an Adolf Eichmann
but we will be dutifully emptying his waste basket, or selling him bread, or painting his home.
And along the way we will be mumbling about witnessing on the job
or providing for our families, or about anyone who doesn't work is worse than an infidel.
All of the excuses, from Tentmakers to God's grace are just part of the silent conspiracy that causes evil to flourish.
And those are just the churchy excuses.
There are even more in other walks of life.
In a few years, we are going to see Evil Incarnate rip off its mask.
We are moving quickly toward a world government that is even now torturing hundreds of thousands of its own people
and literally ripping organs from their bodies without the use of anesthetics, to be sold to Western transplant tourists.
Nice, respectable people from countries like America and Australia
will be able to live many years longer because a monster in China expresses his hatred for political dissidents in that way.
But he has only been able to do it because a population numbering in billions
has shut their mouths for fear of meeting the same fate.
It's not going to be limited to China.
If you think the mass hysteria of lies that have come out of the American Right over the past few years is shocking
wait until you see what awaits us from the other side of the world.
We are all going to become complicit, if we are not already... just through our silence, if nothing else.
I started this video by saying that people often baulk at talk of God punishing people eternally
for such innocent things as telling a few lies.
Yet those few lies, and a lot of other relatively understandable things that we do to maintain our comforts
are what make up the most horrible evils that could ever be imagined.
It is only the grace of God that has held us BACK from manifesting all that evil up until now.
But we are reaching the end stages of human civilisation
when God will let us see just how terribly evil the human race is without him.
After much very careful thought and prayer
we have come to the conclusion that the only real way to prepare for what is coming
is to start following Jesus the Christ... the Voice of our Creator... NOW.
Stop arguing with everything he has said, and start falling on the Rock of his teachings.
He said, "If you walk in my teachings, then you are real Christians; you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."
Believe it... and do it.
Amen.