Shortly after the Bible mentions that Noah was born of Lamech (Genesis 5:29), the condition of the earth became extremely wicked. It is recorded that"...God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually" (Genesis 6:5). A few evenings ago, my wife and I were watching one of her favorite movies, "Sleepless in Seattle." It is a good movie, and is one of the cleaner ones. However, on the channel that was playing it, during every commercial break it was advertising some of their new programs. The ads described masturbation, and other sex acts in much detail, and it caused us to turn the channel to another one just to escape the explicit sexual language. Even those who claim to be "Christians" either condone or participate in all kinds of wicked activities. Since the Supreme Court, by judicial fiat, ruled that same sex marriage was legal, it seems that it opened the floodgate for every sort of perversion one could think of. In Noah's day we read that God was so disgusted with mankind, that He gave them 120 years to repent (Genesis 6:3) and then He destroyed all except Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives (1 Peter 3:20-21). People today must be stench in God's nostrils!
The horror of sin is seen in our culture every day on television. From the many murders each weekend in Chicago, to the dismemberment of tiny babies, some of whom are alive when they are aborted and their body parts sold off for profit. We have seen pictures of Muslim terrorists saw heads off, execute them with a bullet in the head or hang their victims on spits and barbeque them as we would a pig or steer. Even as we are writing this, a young man in Oregon has killed a number of persons at a community college there. Reportedly, he asked their religion, if they replied that they were Christian, he shot them in the head. If they did not reply or said some religion other than Christian, he shot them in the leg. When folks turn away from God and embrace sin, there is no stopping place.
Those in America today, for the most part, do not seem to have any concept of right and wrong. Sin is to most, a word that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever! God has destroyed entire nations and even all the world other than Noah's family because of sin. An entire religion (Islam), encourages its followers to kill those who do not accept the teachings of a man who was a pedophile, a polygamist and destroyer of those who did not agree with him! We seem not be concerned here in America that so many have declared open war on some of the greatest, most sacrificial people, our police and law-enforcement officers. The enormity of sin, is understood when one realizes that it is addictive and will control one and take one further and further away from righteousness into the depths of depravity! The apostle Paul wrote, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (Romans 6:12-13). Sin will enslave one, and those who lived in Noah's day paid the penalty, just as those who live in sin today will pay the penalty too (Acts 17:30-31).
Ed Rodgers, Forney, TX
