Will You Live or Will You Die?

In Genesis 9 and 6, God said to the father of modern humanity an important statement. He said, Whoever sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed. For the image of God, in the image of God, he made man. That is an incredible statement from God that says, I made humans in my image. They are precious to me. I love humans. When I made them, I said, They are good. I love them so much that in the environment in which they live, I spend a lot of time creating some things that they will really, really like. And when we go out and look at flowers and look at plants and look at animals and look at the sky and enjoy the wonderful things that are in our environment, we see a God who really, really likes us as humans. We sometimes get the idea that he really, really doesn't like us and he's against us. But it's quite the opposite. He is very much for us and for all humans, ultimately. We are in his image. We are of his kind, in a sense, in that we are made in his image and in his likeness. He identifies with us. He is all about us. He will never leave or forsake those that are involved in a relationship with him. He is really pulling for humans. And he says here, Don't mess with the things that I like, that I love, that are in my image. Bloodshed falls into several categories in Scripture. One of them is intentional bloodshed. It's dealt with in the law. Another is premeditated bloodshed. There's accidental bloodshed. There's judicial bloodshed. There are categorical types of bloodshed and analogous types of bloodshed. God does not want us hurting other humans with any type of bloodshed, whether real, the real physical, or the theoretical, or the type that's analogous. He does not want us to hurt those whom he loves, whom he's made, who are those in his image. Each one of those is really an ultimate termination of one's efforts of seeking fulfillment, of being, simply being. That is the ultimate removal of one's fulfillment and one's being. However, we find at the same time that in Scripture, in one way or another, each person who has ever lived will be killed. Some are being killed as I speak. Either literally or figuratively. The title of the sermon today is Who is Killing You? And I'd like to take a look at the stakes that we each face regarding our life and our death. Nobody likes to think about death. Nobody wants to think about dying or being killed. It's our ultimate enemy. And yet, humans are actually all about harming other humans. We have this nature that comes from Satan the Devil, and he is one who opposes those God has created, opposes those who God has made in his image. And when people get associated with his mindset, they start opposing one another.

One of the greatest forms of bloodshed is called war. And when wars are declared, the ideas sound noble. They're presented that way. Defense of homeland, defense of culture, you know, write off and clash and war and kill other humans. The actions are defensible. You see it on the news. The other guys are terrible, full of atrocities, and this just must be corrected. They're blowing us up. We must wipe them out. It's genuinely justifiable. It makes sense to the mind. War is where humans go to kill one another, and their personal ideals seem noble. They might say, I'm defending my wife, I'm defending my children, I'm defending my home, I'm defending my culture, I'm defending my freedom, and add in whatever the individual personally feels is the purpose for he or she going to war. But of all the deeds that a human can commit, bloodshed is the gravest thing that you and I can do. Taking the life of another person, erasing the being, the opportunity to be that God gave somebody, is one of the ultimate things, one of two great ultimate things that we as a human being could do. In fact, God has created in you and me a brain, and in the middle part of that brain, God made a power invoking resistance to taking the life of someone of your own species. They find that you can get into all kinds of situations that may create anger, but when you come to the point of seeing another human being, there is a block in the middle of the brain that is to stop you from taking the life of another individual. It's a very powerful, mid-brain mechanism that God placed there.

To go to war, leaders have to overcome this, have to change the way that we would normally think. And from what I've read, one source states that leaders must glorify war using three accentuating positives. You have to take positives and accentuate them higher than they normally would. One is to honor the fallen. The fallen of the past, the fallen of the president make it very, very honorable.

The second is to aggrandize the generals and the principal leaders, to make them larger, bigger, more important. And the third is to develop a loyalty from parents so that they will donate their children. Only then can you have a war. A side effect from glorifying those things, and glorifying war, which is glorifying violence, every time a war is declared within a national population, the domestic murder rate goes up. It's an odd thing that happens, but it's a spike that's large enough to be monitored. Because what has happened is within the population, you're glorifying violence to someone else, and as the population begins to accept that, they are able to carry that out among their own population.

But to actually get in the field and kill another human, the commanders of armies have to condition a soldier to kill one of his or her own kind. It's not something that the brain normally would allow someone to do.

To give you an example, this was found from World War II. The U.S. government had assigned a man, his name was S. Marshall, and he was the official one to assess the fighting in the European theater against the Nazis. And he wrote his conclusions in a book called Men Against Fire. In a careful calculation of the Allied forces against the Nazis in World War II, it was determined that only 15 to 20 percent of the Allied soldiers who were looking at a Nazi soldier could pull the trigger. Eighty to eighty-five percent of the soldiers could not fire once they saw another human being, even though he was the enemy and he was in perspective in the sights. Now, when you think of all the Allied forces landing and moving, you think of all the millions of people out there against an unbelievably powerful source, and only 15 to 20 percent of them were pulling the triggers, could pull the triggers. You see what God has made our minds to normally be like, and that was with advanced training. That was with marksmanship. That was with all of the understanding of what was happening and also the risks for back home. That report developed a firestorm of response, and people could not believe it. And so many researchers began to look at all the wars, the Napoleonic wars, the American Civil War. They studied World War I. They went back in history. They looked all the way up through the Falklands War. And guess what they found? Same thing. In all the wars, a fundamental concept is when a soldier is trained to kill someone else, only 20 percent were able to go through with that when it came to actually firing a weapon, looking at another human being. Even the FBI studied law enforcement to see what happened, and they found that the officers of the 1950s and the 1960s all confirmed Marshall's fundamental conclusion that man is not by nature a killer. God did not put that within us. When he made man and said we were good, that is not a fundamental part of our nature. And even when it's trained to be that way, most could not do it. So where does that come from? It must come from another source. In fact, God created more. If you and I fall under the stress of being attacked, fight or flight, you think of all the adrenaline, all the powers that we must be able to come up with to kill somebody who's trying to kill us, you've just imagined a total fabrication, because that's not what happens when humans are trying to kill one another. In fact, God has created human stress hormones that impede a person's ability to retaliate.

High-level stress activation occurs when confronted with an unanticipated deadly force threat, and the time to respond is minimal. All of a sudden you see it. It's on you. It's you and your buddies, and you're going to die if you don't do something instantly. What happens? Human stress hormones kick in. Under these conditions, the extreme effects of the stress will cause catastrophic failure of your vision, of your cognitive thought, and of your motor skills of your muscles. Catastrophic failure. You're unable to kill the one who's trying to kill you. That's normally what happens. Again, something God made. In one second, the individual who comes under that situation, the heart rate will go from 70 beats a second average to between 200 and 300 beats per second. Or per minute. In one second. Boom. And all of these things will fly in there.

However, learning the lessons from World War II, the military then began to increase its conditioning capabilities. Instead of firing at targets with bullseyes, they fired at targets with people.

And over time, instead of firing at targets with people, the targets with people fell down when they were hit. And they moved and fell down. Now here's what happened. World War II, 20% could fire. Korea, just a few years later, 55% fired. Vietnam, 95% fired. See what happens when we begin to push into thinking and doing things that God did not want us to do. And pushing elements of training where people go into mental situations that are abnormal. And yet they can begin to overcome these mental blocks of the midbrain, overcome the substances that the body naturally secretes, and learn to work against those. I'll give you an example. 1982 was the Falklands War. If you remember that particular battle, it was a no-brainer for the British. Except it wasn't. The British were actually outnumbered 3-1 in that war. The Argentines were on the islands, and they were dug in. They had heavy equipment, and they also had air superiority. And if you remember, they also had Exocet missiles from the French. The British were outmanned 3-1. They were outgunned, and they had no superiority from the skies. And they won that war just like that. Very bloody war. Why was it? 90% firing rate from the British. 15% from the Argentines. And the lesson is, if you don't condition your military to overcome the natural obstacles, you will lose. And so the world gears up, and it trains harder, and it gets more sophisticated. These things, however, have a lasting effect on soldiers, and that effect is related to the experience that they have, the action that they experience, according to psychological effects of combat, year 2000, written by Grossman and Siddil. It says, "...the event changes a person forever due to psychiatric casualties suffered during combat, physiological fear, physiology of close combat, price of killing, and post-traumatic stress disorder." These are just some things that are working in our world. Now, I would say, my wife mentioned, you know, back in the 1950s, society was a little different, too. But, yeah, they weren't showing on television these graphic episodes of violence and the games and the reality things that children grow up with today. Our culture has changed very much since those days. The events are part of this present evil age, whose God is a warrior at heart. In John 8, verse 44, Jesus speaks of the God, the pater, the mentor, as it were, the influencer of this current evil age. And he says, you are of your father, your pater, the devil, and the desires of your pater you want to do. He's influencing you. He's getting you to desire things I never put in you. This is not created by me. You're not capable of this. But something's getting ahold of you here. And you want to do his desires. He was a murderer from the beginning. He got Cain to kill Abel. That wasn't part of God's creation. He does not stand in the truth, just like warfare. It's all about lack of truth, absence of truth, because there's no truth in him. And when he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resource because he is a liar and the father of it. War eventually comes down to savagery, kill or be killed. It includes the art of deception, camouflage, inability to be seen, lying, ambush, hidden explosives, secrets, stealth technology, delayed explosives, traitors, infiltrators, coded messages, IEDs, improvised explosive devices, decoys, etc. And what's the result of all this? When you get into all this, what is the result of it? Well, you have a mind focused on destroying others, reducing an individual's being, reducing that culture, that society, terminating something by any and all means. You're pumped up! The ethics have been altered. No holds barred. Killed or be killed. Survival of the fittest. Me or him.

What kind of mind is that? God hates that mentality. He hates that mentality in you and me. That's the opposite of what we're supposed to be part of. And whether you and I have had to participate in those things in our past before we came into God's Church, we certainly do not want to have anything to do with them now. If we have that mentality as Christians, we will use Satan's tactics, won't we? In fighting with words, in fighting in courts, in destroying one another's honor, reputation. Which is the sum of one's life, one's being, one's efforts, what they've contributed, what they've done, what they've accomplished. If you can't kill them with a gun, you could slay them with the mouth. And you just reduce it. Just remove all the honor. Just remove their reason for being and anything that they accomplished.

And James 4 is an entire chapter, which I'll just read a bit of, but it's dedicated to this concept.

James 4 says, Where do wars and fights come from among you? Well, let's ask the question. Where does war, killing, cutting off at the knees, as it were, reducing, terminating a person's respect, if not their very life, where do these things come from among us? Are they from God? Well, certainly not. No aspect of that would be from God, is it? So it can only come from another source. Verse 2, You lust and do not have. Usually it's something about me. I want something that doesn't belong to me. I want a position, I want respect, I want honor, I want praise, I want recognition, I want some things, some money, some stuff, some possessions. Things that don't belong to me. I didn't earn the honor, I didn't earn the praise, I didn't earn the respect. I don't have the resources to obtain those things, you see? And that's why you lust. You murder and covet and cannot obtain. Cannot obtain because it's not do you, it's just not yours. You fight and war. He says in verse 4, Do you not know that friendship with the society is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the society makes himself an enemy of God. Why? Because this is Satan's society, isn't it? It's his mentality. Now I know I'm preaching to the choir today, I'm not pointing any finger at anybody here. Well, I am, just one person. Two fingers. But I can't fire. You know, we do need to keep in mind some of these spiritual concepts and not slide in with the rest of the world. So it's good that we talk about them. Because this is Satan's mentality. And we war against principalities and powers, not against each other. We have armament, sword, you know, helmet. We've got a shield. We need to be doing battle. But who are we to be killing? We'll talk about that in a minute. A war of words springs from a self-promoting heart, you know, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. And self-promotion is, if that's at the heart, then we're going to be warring. Let's go back to chapter 3 of James in verse 6. The tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, as the margin says. If unrighteousness, a lack of love, which is hate for others, you know, some form of killing is what Jesus said. If you hate your brother, you know, you're a murderer. If that's coming from the heart, then where's the problem? If it's coming from the mouth, where's the problem? It's in the heart, because out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. There's something wrong inside us that needs to be fasted about, needs to be prayed about, needs God's help to overcome. The tongue's a little member, boasts great things, it says in verse 5. The tongue's a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is so set among our members that it defiles the whole body.

It's something that we need to pay attention to, in that it is the barometer or the thermometer of what we're about. Sometimes we hear, wow, did I say that? Oh, what is really inside me? Jeremiah 17, 9, the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, more than anything. Who can know it? Well, the next verse, it says, you, God, know the heart, you know the mind. That's where we go to find out what's in there. Verse 7, every kind of beast and bird of reptile creature the sea is tamed, and has been tamed by mankind, but no man can tame the tongue. It is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. Now poison is for the detriment of others. It's to kill, to harm others. With it we bless our God and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the similitude of God. It's interesting that he brings that up. Just like God said to Noah, don't you be killing people that are made in my image. We are using it to go against and terminate reputations, at least, of people that God made, that God loves.

The victors live through it, but they're changed by it. The losers get maimed for life. Nothing good comes out of it, does it? It's like after a literal battle. You have some people that are dead. They're part of the losers. You have more people that are maimed for life. And you have victors who are scarred for life and sometimes maimed for life. And everybody kind of walks away from this a mess, don't they? It's just a real mess.

He says in verse 14, But if you have bitter envy and self-seeking in your hearts, do not boast and lie against the truth. This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly and sensual and demonic. This is from the mind of Satan. For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion associated with Satan and every evil thing are there associated with Satan. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure and then peaceable, peace-making, harmony-making.

It's gentle. It's willing to yield. It's full of mercy for atrocities done against it. Before the sermon, we sang a song today about merciful, about us extending mercy like God extends mercy to us. You know, mercy is the opposite of retaliation. It's the opposite of warfare, wanting to harm somebody. You only need to extend mercy when somebody has done you wrong, like Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. Said, Father, forgive them. Be merciful to them. Forgive them. It's full of good fruits, it says in verse 17, without partiality, without hypocrisy. I'm not about love, but I want to kill you. I'm not about loving you as much as myself, but I want to ruin your reputation and climb on top of you so I can be a little taller. Now, the fruit of righteousness is sown in harmony by those who make harmony, is one way you could read that, or in peace by those who make peace. It's a mindset that comes from God, from the King of peace, the Prince of peace, the ones who are unity, in John 17 it says, the one who desired to be unified with you and me. You were not created to harm humans. Not their physical lives, not their spiritual lives, not their honor. You were not created to harm another human being. In 1 John 10, 1 John 3, verses 10-12, 1 John 3, beginning in verse 10, it says, In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor he who does not love his brother. Now, we might think of physical lineage brother. No, but we are all brothers and sisters in the human family that God made. Verse 11, for this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. It shouldn't be of Satan, of that mindset. Verse 14, we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren, and he who does not love his brother abides in death. In other words, that's our final destination. If we don't love others, if we love ourselves, but we don't mind seeing others harmed, hurt, reduced, somehow not loved. Verse 15, notice this, whoever hates his brother is a murderer.

Jesus taught us that in Matthew the fifth chapter in the Sermon on the Mount. Whoever doesn't love his brother, whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. And thus that individual will be killed by God. Which begs the question again, like the title says, who is killing me? Who is killing you? Is God going to kill you? Is somebody else killing you? Chances are they are, at least with words. Somebody much more important that ought to be killing you, though. Because don't get me wrong, the Bible is full of different types, you could use the term, of killing. And it's all for one kind. All for one kind. But only that which applies to you and me, personally, not to others. We're not to be out doing others harm. But let's go over, to be very clear here, in Colossians chapter 3 and verse 5 through 15. Colossians chapter 3 and verse 5. Because there is a type of killing that you are to be involved in. You want to classify it that way. Colossians 3, beginning in verse 5, says, Therefore put to death your members which are on earth.

We should be involved in getting rid of some individual, shouldn't we? And who is that individual that we should be getting rid of? Well, it's the old man. It's the old woman. It's the old self. That's the one we should be focused on. It's ourselves. It's that part of us that is somehow aligned with Satan the devil that we need to get rid of. And rather than focus on all these wonderful people that God made and God loves and God supports, we ought to be focused on ourself. And getting rid of and doing ourself in, as it were. I don't mean it in a physical way at all. Don't get me wrong. But as he says here, Put to death your members which are in or on the earth. Fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

Death to the old man, which is self above others and God. And be righteous for godliness.

Verse 8. But now you yourselves are to put off all of these. Now, sometimes humans get all, you know, involved in other people's business. They're just busybodies in other people's business. They've got to sniff out and find out. I've been getting some mail this week. Somebody in Africa, actually somebody in another part of the world, is second-guessing one of our leaders in Africa. And they've got somebody sniffing and hounding and accusing and trying to insinuate. And, you know, this person can't even move without somebody, you know, sniffing or trying to insinuate something.

Right? We have a lot to do if you just read what says here. Put off anger and wrath and malice and blasphemy and filthy language and don't lie to one another since you've put off the old man with his deeds. There's a lot to work on right there. I don't have time for you or somebody else worrying about what you're doing. Remember, and if put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of him who created him, you and I are to be focused on putting this new image of God, this new mentality of our Creator, the one who loves us, replacing the old man with this.

That's a lot of work. Verse 12, There's no room with tender mercies for hard feelings to anyone else, or wanting to harm anyone. And kindness. How can you be kind at the same time slanderous, or cutting, or demeaning? Humility. How can you say, you're worse than me when you're humble, and say, actually, you're better than me? See, there's a reverse there. God is about these things of teachableness and long suffering, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If anyone has a complaint against you, not going back to battle with them, but forgiving the end. If someone has a complaint against you, what does it say? Justify yourself, prove yourself wrong?

Oh, I just think it said, forgiving the person if they have a complaint. That's an interesting twist, isn't it? If they have a complaint, you forgive them. Didn't say to apologize. I mean, you would apologize, but chances are, as a human, you'll say, I'm not guilty. So how should you respond? With forgiveness. They may be killing you with gossip. You may be getting, like Paul says, I die daily. The Romans were after him. Everybody was after him.

You may be being killed as far as your image goes, as far as your reputation goes. But what happens? You forgive others. Even as Christ forgave you. So you also must do. But above all these things, even, put on love. Now, if you have any more time left, and you need something to do, put on love, agape love, which is the bond of perfection. And let the peace, the harmony of God rule in your hearts, to which you were also called in one body. And if that's not enough, be thankful. We've got a lot to do, don't we? I don't need to worry about you.

What you may or may not be doing? You know, it's challenging, though, to see the evil in me. We look through our own eyes, and just something about our human nature. We tend to see good in ourselves. And yet we don't feel confident. None of us really probably came up, grew up with a great amount of self-confidence and just really feel that we're great.

Because we're no different, don't we? Yet our human nature says, well, I feel so small, I'd kind of like to feel better. So all these people around me are better than me. I guess we'll just slice and dice until they're all a little lower than me. Oh, now I feel better. But you see, that's wrong, isn't it? It's hard to see the evil in ourselves, and that's why we need some help. When individuals come for baptism counseling, and before they're baptized, they'll always come to this concept, you know, I'm incapable. First of all, I can't see myself, and so God gives us repentance.

It's a viewpoint from Him that really exposes who we are on the inside. And it's a tough thing to see. You have to have some guts, you know, to really step back and say, okay, God, show me. Really let me see what I'm going to be working on the rest of my life. The second thing we find is once He shows us in our eagerness, we think we'll get that cleaned up right up, get all fixed up, and we find we can't.

Because we don't have God's nature, we have another nature that we've adopted. And consequently, we find ourselves incapable of doing that which we should on our own. And so we cry out to God for help and say, I need help. God will do something else to us. He will baptize us and wash us clean of our past sins, and then give us a bit of His mind, His Spirit, that begins to help us.

It's our helper, it's our tutor, it's our energy, it's a power to begin to root out that old mindset. All of that comes from God. He's ready and willing. Then for the rest of our life, once we have God's Holy Spirit, He goes with us, never leaving us, never taking the Spirit from us, never forsaking us, in any situation, we continue to have His help if we want to use it.

In Romans 6, verses 6 and 11, says Romans 6 and 6, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him. See, you and I need to be killed, but we need to be killing ourselves. We don't need somebody else doing this, and we sure don't need to be doing it to somebody else. We need to get that old man and get him dead. We need to be dying, as it were. A part of us need to be working on killing off the old man, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, buried, done away with, gotten rid of, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.

Verse 11, likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead. Just don't go along and thinking, I've got two lives here, and we're in a contest. Reckon one of those to be dead. Imagine, pretend, determine, get involved, get out the tools necessary, and be working on that. Again, the title, Who is Killing You? It doesn't matter if others are, you need to be forgiving them. But you need to be, and if you're not, God's going to. That's the problem.

But alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. You know, there is a reckoning that's coming from God. We need to come out of her. We need to be separate. We need to be separate from this society, and society is just a tangle of conundrums. I can't even say it. It's just a mess. It is just an unbelievable mess. I think it's curious that some of the most sought-after products in Western culture today were in the last century the military manufacturers of those who were committing some of the greatest atrocities in history.

And we're all okay with that. Names such as BMW, Bavarian Motor Works, Toyota, Daimler Mercedes, Mitsubishi. These are makers of the Nazi and Japanese war machines. But that's okay. We're now in a kinder, gentler world where this last week we saw on the news that the chief torturer of one of the Khmer Rouge prisons, who was responsible for killing over 16,000 individuals, torturing them to death and ensuring that they were killed, went up in a United Nations trial.

These were parts of, or just one part of, 1.7 million Cambodians whose lives were terminated by the Pol Pot regime of what was called the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia that ran from the 70s on up into the 90s. There was a book and even a film called The Killing Fields which documented some of that.

The sentencing of this Khmer Rouge chief jailer took place in July of 2010. The judge's sentence for this individual? Nineteen years behind bars. Nineteen years. You know, that's the kinder, gentler, human rights compliant generation that we seem to be heading in today where countries are more unified.

We're pretty much determining that this past and the atrocities of the past, that was some sort of a warped period of the 20th century, and we're beyond that now. We're heading more towards a unified utopia of a one world government, one world economy. It's now about the environment, etc., etc. Well, don't be deceived. Don't be taken in by such gestures because these noble retaliations, these justified self-defensive things that come up from humanity and these kinder, gentler ways of people getting by are just continuing manifestations of human nature. And what is human nature about? It's about self-axultation. It's about self-gratification.

It's new opportunities for money and power to go to other individuals. And it involves coercing the masses to give up certain things in order that the few can have more. And death, killing, whether verbally, economically, or literally, to the rest, eventually becomes expedient when circumstances demand it. But who is killing you? Who is killing me? Again, we should not be worried about what this world is doing or sucked into it.

We should worry about ourselves and actively targeting me, my old nature, and getting the bride cleaned up so that when Christ returns, we can be part of a government that actually does something meaningful and actually changes the mentality in the world, replacing Satan and his demons, seeing those being bound and away from any kind of influence of society. That's what we should be about. Here's what your only focus of harm should be. Here's what all your life's efforts should be concentrated on. Colossians 3 and 5-15. Colossians 3, verse 5. Therefore put to death your members, which are on the earth. That's what you and I need to focus on. There's going to be a lot of death.

Jesus Christ says that. Why is that? Why is that? I'd say, remember the Alamo. What does the Alamo have to do with anything? Well, remember the Alamo. There's a verse that comes to mind when you say that. Take heed that you stand lest you fall.

And the Alamo, they thought they were going to win, and they didn't. You need to remember the Alamo. The world thinks it's going to succeed, and it's about to fall. The Bible warns you and me, if we think we're going to succeed, take heed lest you fall.

In regards to societal issues, Jesus Christ says in Isaiah 59, verses 3-8, that things are going to go differently than what people are expecting. All of this human nature, self-advancing, working out for me, the few taking advantage of the others, and all going forward into a better utopia for the few, it's not going to work out the way people think.

Isaiah 59, verse 3, it says, For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity. Your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered perversity. Just look in the news today, and you will see all of this. In any civilization, any government, any society, this is the rhetoric of our modern age. Verse 4, no one calls for justice, nor does any plead for truth.

They trust in empty words, so sure that they're empty words, and they speak lies, but they trust in them. They conceive evil and bring forth iniquity. They hatch viper's eggs and weave the spider's web, who eats of their eggs, dies. And from that which is crushed a viper breaks out. Their webs will not become garments, nor will they cover themselves with their works. Their works are works of iniquity, and the act of violence is in their hands.

Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood. Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity, of lawlessness, lack of love. Wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their way. They have made themselves crooked paths. Whoever takes that way shall not know peace. This is where society is going, and this is where they slice and dice in the political elections.

And the various laws and things that take place locally, all the way up through government, internationally. It's just a big web. And Jesus says of this, there's a surprise coming that's going to really take everybody's breath away. Matthew 24 will read verses 21 and 22. Just two verses. He simply says this, For then there will be great tribulation. How great? Such has not been since the beginning of the world.

Now, He created the world. We have Adam and Eve on the earth at the beginning of time. This tribulation, which is coming from our kindler, gentler, unified, utopia world that's saving the planet and everybody's getting along so nicely. This time, from that civilization, which is a satanic-based civilization, is going to be worst than any that's ever been since the beginning of the world till this time, no, nor ever shall be.

It's the worst. Guess what people are going to be doing? Well, next verse. Unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved alive. That's what they're going to be doing. They're going to be killing each other.

It's going to be a really, really rough time. But for the elect's sake, those days will be shortened. Christ will step in at the last minute. He will intervene. He will shake the foundations of this earth and the foundations of the nations. He will step in, and others will assist Him. You and I can be part of that group that will assist, if we have our sort of mind of killing focused in the right area. And that is getting rid of Satan, getting rid of that nature, getting rid of our old man, but loving everyone else, and encouraging and helping them to succeed and have the best possible life they can in the circumstances.

In conclusion, I'd like to read a couple of Scriptures. One is Revelation 21, verses 7 and 8. This is a very important one because, as I alluded to a while ago, if you're not killing yourself, God will kill you. If you're not killing your old human nature and others, if you're not getting rid of that, if you're not focused on rooting out and dying to that old way of life, God's going to kill you and me. Revelation 21, and verse 7 and 8. Now, God loves you very much.

He's not opposed to you. He's for you. He's for all of us. He's for everybody. But here's who He is against. First of all, verse 7, He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and shall be His God, and He shall be my Son. He's really for that. If we win and are victorious in killing off our old nature, He's going to give us everything.

But verse 8, But the cowardly who says, Oh no, I cannot take aim against my perfect, wonderful, marvelous image that's polished up of myself. I am good. I am great. I am better than everybody else. It is about me. I've got the t-shirt. Then, if you don't have the courage to wade in there with God's help and do battle with your old self, and if you're unbelieving in God, in His way, and if you're abominable and murderers, you're about hurting others verbally, mentally.

You're not loving them. You're classified with murders. Sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, that whole concept of deceitfully raising the self and harming others. These shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. It's interesting that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Death itself will ultimately be destroyed, and all forms of death, all forms of killing will cease to be.

The literal humankind will cease to be. The verbal kind will cease to be. All forms of a lack of loving, in other words, harming other individuals, will cease. There'll be no more sorrow, tears, crying, pain. For all eternity, there will be the result of life, of living, the kind of life that Jesus came to bring, that more abundant type of life, of godliness, of encouragement, of help and support.

There will only be good embellishment of individuals forever. Again, the title, Who is Killing You? Who will kill you? Hopefully it'll be you killing off your old man, and not God killing off you. That's the way I look at this. I'm in a struggle here. It doesn't involve anybody else except me, my old man and God.

We need to be obeying the spirit of the law concerning bloodshed of others, as 1 Peter says in 1 Peter 4, verses 15 through 19. 1 Peter 4, we'll look here and begin in verse 15. But let none of you suffer as a murderer. And again, not just pulling out the knife or the gun, but a murderer as one who doesn't love his brother, doesn't love his neighbor.

Don't suffer as a murderer, a thief, an evildoer, or a busybody in other people's manners. The busybody goes right along with looking, sniffing, wanting to reduce an individual. Verse 17, For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God, and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?

Now, if the righteous one is scarcely saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear? You can see where the stakes are now about life and death, about your life and about your killing. Let's be involved in loving one another, not harming one another. And let's get rid of any other mentality that is not love. Let's kill off that mentality, knowing that by loving one another, in God's eyes, we will cover a multitude of sins, because we will be thinking like he thinks, and he will want to have you live forever.