The death that results from sin is visited upon souls, minds, bodies, individuals, families, clans, tribes, and nations. God turns His face from those who willfully sin. He also turns away from their children when He decides that their fathers’ sins should be visited upon them.
Our sins have caused God to turn His face from us. So, Moslems are taking over the world. “Who has sinned?”, we wonder. “All of us.” is the most accurate reply. We have sinned. We have practiced birth control. Millions are aborted. We have sinned.
Moslems are not as nice, kind, polite, or tolerant as we are taught to be. But, they don’t practice birth control. Abortion is illegal in their lands. As a result, their numbers are growing. Their power is increasing. They are on their way to exterminating us.
Not only has God turned His face from us, but also, our own governments have begun to despise us. Our own governments won’t even defend us from environmentalists who defraud us, let alone protect us from Moslems who want us wiped out. Governments, instead of helping us, are doing everything possible to accelerate the movement of Moslems into the once-Christian nations. God is fed up with what we’re doing.
Still, even as we can see destruction looming, few of us want to be reminded that the wages of sin is death.
The First Death: Sin Kills Our Relationship with God.
God, obviously, cannot die. We can. So can our contact with Him. When we sin, we turn our face from God. When He is no longer alive to us, it is we who die, not Him.
The Second Death: Common Sense, Love, and Truth.
Common sense tells us clearly that abortion is murder. When sin enters, common sense dies. When we ignore our own analytic skills that clearly see that abortion is murder, we embrace a lie. The lie is then exalted. Murder is exalted, and becomes: “the right to choose”. Those who believe, think, and say such things have turned away from God. Love and truth disappear from their hearts and minds. Such spiritual vacuums must be filled, and they are, with hatred and lies.
To Live Fully, We Must Believe Fully.
St. Augustine spent his years as Bishop of Hippo, in North Africa, teaching the sound, basic Catholic doctrine that he’d learned from Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. While serving as Bishop, he was also trying to deal with Donatists. They believed themselves to be superior to Catholics and “holier than the Pope” because they had stood more firmly than others against Roman persecution. Like Protestants of today, they had their own churches and sacraments, but would not obey any Church teachings with which they disagreed. “We can get to Heaven by ourselves.”
Their self-righteousness could not be overcome, even by St. Augustine’s remarkably powerful intellect. The Donatist vanity kept North Africa’s Christians so divided that they could not fight against the Vandal hordes that invaded and overwhelmed them. After the Vandals came, pillaged, and left, the Christians were still divided between Catholic and Donatist.
Moslems saw the weakness caused by such division. They swept across North Africa from the East and easily conquered the divided people. Now, Christians in North Africa are a despised minority, destroyed by those too proud to accept Christ’s decision, “Thou are Peter, and on this rock, I build My Church.”
Christianity is still divided between Catholic and Protestant. All who are truly Catholic believe, as a matter of faith, that abortion is murder. Only some Protestants share that belief. That division is paralyzing. As at Hippo, the Moslem horde looms on the horizon. Once again, the Christians are too divided to mount an effective defense. Those who do not die in the assault will be given choices. They will convert and lose their souls, they will be enslaved, or they will die.
The safest thing for every Christian to do is to become Catholic. Then, we’d all be right with God, and His face would shine upon us. Our enemies would evaporate.
That probably won’t happen. Like the Donatists of old, some would rather lose their lives than their dogmas.
