Copyright © 2024 Michael A. Brown
Whether it is the evil of modern slavery,
increasing knife crime, terrorism, the open repudiation of what were until
recent decades societal norms in regard to sexual morality, or the
decriminalization of the possession of hard drugs (such as heroin, as in the US
state of Oregon in November 2020), the increase of liberal lawlessness and
wickedness in this present generation is undeniable. Open rebellion and wilful defiance against
God’s authority with the consequent rejection of biblical teaching; the rise of
anti-Christian sentiments and contempt for long-held Judeo-Christian values,
and the widespread embracing of self-centred moral relativism, have all but
dismantled the moral foundation and long-accepted boundaries upon which Western
society has been built historically, and, in their place, have exalted and
celebrated alternative values which individuals and lobby groups have
campaigned for or simply set up for themselves.
Apposite to this are the words of the
apostle Paul which speak of the general breakdown in the relational
cohesiveness of society in the last days.
Society will become more and more self-centred as lawlessness increases
and abounds. And as people become
increasingly self-centred and wilfully reject the revelation of God, the
natural affection of people for one another will grow cold:
‘But
mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers
of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful,
unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal,
not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather
than lovers of God – having a form of godliness but denying its power.…’ (2 Tim. 3:1-5)
‘And
because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.’ (Matt. 24:12 AV)
Observation of the political sphere
in recent decades has shown that the liberal left invariably moves the
goalposts once they have gained a particular objective, in order to then take
things further and gain another objective, and then yet another, and so
on… The so-called ‘slippery slope’
really is very slippery, and it always spirals downwards. And furthermore, once a major Western country
has legalized a particular issue, then the rest simply fall in line and follow
suit, and these changes then take place throughout the westernized world.
The biggest cultural shift in Western life
in the last sixty years or so has undoubtedly been in the area of sexual
morality and the related one of family.
For several decades now, we have been witnessing the deconstruction of
the traditional concepts of heterosexual marriage and the nuclear/extended
family in the West, which have been the foundation and cornerstone of human
civilization worldwide for millennia.
These traditional concepts now find themselves as being only one of
several legally acceptable forms of marriage and family.
Consensual sexual relationships outside
the covenant commitment of marriage, and often short-lived ones at that, have
now become the norm, if not the expectation.
Furthermore, once the objective of civil partnerships had been attained,
the call then went out for the legalisation of gay marriage with full equality
in terms of taxation and adoption rights.
Almost immediately, the goalposts were then moved again, and the
transgender rights movement kicked off big time. Now that transgender people are increasingly
gaining their rights, the concept of gender itself has come to be looked upon
as a fluid, changeable state. For
children who suffer from gender dysphoria, puberty blockers can be used to
prevent the normal developmental changes from taking place in their body, while
surgery and hormone procedures can be used to irreversibly change their
physical bodies, so as to make their physical make-up conform to their
psychological dysphoria. Yet statistics
suggest that many transgender people are just as confused or suicidal after
these procedures as they were before.
Prepubescent children in primary schools are now being taught from a
young age about this whole spectrum of human sexuality, and they can receive
age-appropriate guidance when questioning or doubting their own birth
gender. No doubt the goalposts will soon
move again, and the cry will go out for the rights of polyamorous family units
(more than one man ‘married’ in a single social unit with more than one woman),
‘minor attracted persons’ (commonly known as paedophiles), consensual
consanguineous sexual relationships (consensual incest), and even zoophiles
(those who engage in bestiality). Some
people and groups are already lobbying for these… [1],[2],[3],[4]
As another example, take euthanasia. The cry for the ‘right to die with dignity’
for adults who are suffering from terminal conditions, have less than six
months to live, and are able to make an informed decision about assisted dying,
and have the agreement of two medical doctors, is now being applied to other
groups of people.
Having gained the ‘right to die’ in some
US states and other countries, the goalposts have changed to now include
younger people and terminally ill children who want to end their life. In the Netherlands, even people who are
simply ‘tired of life’ can now apply to be euthanised,[5] and, in October
2020, this same country introduced a law for euthanasia to apply to children
under the age of twelve.
Observers of the development of euthanasia law in Belgium have warned of ‘a slippery slope of ever wider interpretation and a “banalisation” of euthanasia.’ Belgium’s laws on euthanasia have come under scrutiny after the right to die was granted to deaf twin brothers who were about to turn blind, and to a transgender person who suffered from depression after an unsuccessful sex change operation.[6] Recently, in 2021, Spain embraced euthanasia in law, and her neighbour Portugal is also currently considering plans to legalise it. In Austria, a new law allowing assisted suicide came into effect on January 1st 2022, and different parts of the UK are now actively dealing with proposed legislation that will make assisted suicide legal for the terminally ill.
Canada’s ‘medical assistance in dying’
laws (MAiD) are coming under increasing international scrutiny. Since 2016, these laws have allowed for the
euthanising of those who are terminally ill.
However, it is now being proposed that people who are mentally ill and
‘mature minors’ as young as twelve years old can also be eligible for
MAiD. It is also proposed that people
who develop dementia could make advance requests for euthanasia. Around 10,000 people were euthanised in
Canada in 2021 alone, accounting for over 3% of all deaths in that year. There are disturbing reports of some people
being offered euthanasia as a solution for homelessness or because they are
unable to afford the specialised housing or home alterations necessary for
adequate care. Death by euthanasia seems
to have become an acceptable solution to social issues that previously seemed intractable! [7],[8]
The cry for the right to assisted dying
now goes hand-in-hand with the right to assisted suicide. The New Zealand government held a national
referendum in mid-2020 on euthanasia (for both assisted dying and assisted
suicide). It was approved by around 65%
of the voting populace, and it entered into law in autumn 2021. The fact that there was such a high
percentage in favour, shows that this was not simply the agenda of a liberal
political governing party or lobby group, but signifies a major cultural
shift of a population in favour of both forms of euthanasia.
Furthermore, the New Zealand
government also voted in 2020 in favour of third-trimester abortions, following
the example of several of the states in USA.
No doubt, advocates of this would seek to ensure us that it would only
be used for certain medical conditions or for extreme foetal abnormalities etc.
etc., but, if the goalposts are moved again, more ground will be demanded and
then no doubt given. So the days of
third-trimester abortion-on-demand are perhaps not far away, and neither are
those of the infanticide of foetuses who are born alive after an attempted
abortion has been carried out on them. With
these changes in the areas of abortion and euthanasia, it seems very much that
westernized societies are pursuing a culture of death, rather than one of life. Any society which encourages abortion up to
birth (and even the infanticide of living newborn babies which survive an
attempted abortion), and which also encourages euthanasia, ultimately
will have no qualms about taking away the life of people at any other stage of
their life either.
As it was in the days of Noah and of Lot
A superficial reading of Luke
17:26-28 would seem to indicate simply that people’s daily lives will be going
on pretty much as normal when the Lord returns for his bride. They are said to be eating and drinking, building
and planting, marrying and being given in marriage, etc. So it appears to be very much ‘business as
usual,’ with people simply getting on with their daily routines, while living
in spiritual blindness towards the things of God whom they consider to have no
relevance at all to their life. However,
in the cases of both Noah and Lot, when we look a little deeper into this,
there would seem to be other factors at work which resulted in the deluge in
Noah’s time and the destruction of the cities of the plain in Lot’s time.
In the case of the days of Noah, we know
that the earth had become corrupt, wicked and filled with violence, and that
the thoughts of people’s hearts were only evil all the time (Gen.
6:5-6,11-12). However, extra-biblical
Jewish literature suggests that two of the reasons why God brought the
judgement of the Flood was the emergence of a genetically mixed hybrid race of
Nephilim giants (cf. Gen. 6:4), and the transgenic crossbreeding of different
animal species to produce chimera. The
first of these would no doubt have facilitated the rise of the widespread evil
that was prevalent upon the earth, and the second was a fruit of the
first. There are several sources which
confirm these two factors, even though, apart from the passage in Genesis 6:4
and other supporting references in the Old Testament to the existence of such
giants, the word of God seems to be silent about them.
However, whatever we make of this, what is
becoming abundantly clear in our own day is the emergence of new genetic tools
which are making germ-line engineering, transgenics and synthetic biology into
everyday scientific facts in our own generation. Simple research on the internet will confirm
this. Add into this equation such
factors as the desire of the transhumanist movement to make people into cyborgs
by linking their physical bodies and brains up to scientific paraphernalia and
artificial intelligence; transgenic experimentation with animals and chimera
which is going on in secret laboratories around the world (even with
human-animal chimera!);[9]
the call by some for directed evolution through the insertion of particular
animal genes into the human genome to advance the physical capabilities of
human beings;[10]
the increasing use of RFID chip inserts into people’s physical bodies for a
multitude of different purposes (including making ‘enhanced soldiers’ for
military purposes); the use of CRISPR technology to edit individual genes in
genome sequences to eliminate ‘undesirable’ or faulty genes, and the developing
field of epigenetics,[11]
and it seems that the world of science is now rushing headlong into a brave new
world in which people will become ‘augmented humans,’ and in which in some
scenarios they may no longer be truly and fully human. What was once merely the free imagination of
science fiction writers is now becoming daily reality! Indeed, Elon Musk of Tesla went so far as to
say in 2017 that humans must merge with machines (so becoming cyborgs), or risk
becoming irrelevant in this age of artificial intelligence![12],[13] Some have suggested that the prospect of
achieving self-learning artificial superintelligence capabilities means that
the age of ‘normal’ humans will soon be surpassed.
This is the end-times parallel which
the extra-biblical accounts of the days of Noah point to in our own day. Could it be that one of the reasons why God
will pour out his wrath in judgement on this world in the tribulation period
will be to deal with the evil of a sinful world in which we are ‘playing God’
with our own bodies, and altering humans so that they are no longer fully
human?
In the case of the days of Lot,
things are much clearer, of course: judgement came upon Sodom and the other
cities of the plain because of their rampant immorality which knew no bounds
(Gen. ch.19, Jude v.7, and cf. Ezek. 16:49).
Sexual immorality was also rampant in the Canaanite nations in the time
of Moses and Joshua, and this was a direct cause of their own eventual
judgement (Gen. 15:16, Lev. ch.18). This
is clearly paralleled in our own day by the widespread rise of what have become
legalized forms of sexual behaviour and so-called marital unions which only one
generation ago would have been considered ‘beyond the pale.’ The book of Revelation tells us clearly that
sexual immorality will be a characteristic sin of the end-times and,
furthermore, that people will wilfully resist God’s call to repent from it
(Rev. 9:21; 16:9,11).
Copyright
Notice
THE
HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011
by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture
quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized
Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s
patentee, Cambridge University Press.
[1] See https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160623-polyamorous-relationships-may-be-the-future-of-love, accessed
20.03.2023.
[2] See https://www.mapcommunity.org/, accessed
20.03.2023. Seeking legitimacy and
acceptance for their ‘rights,’ paedophiles now seem to be rebranding themselves
as ‘minor attracted persons.’
[3] See https://www.albawaba.com/node/protesters-call-decriminalize-sex-animals-germany-1488169. Accessed 20.03.2023. Demonstrators in a Zoophilia Pride march in
Germany called for the decriminalization of sexual relationships with animals. Furthermore, the Spanish parliament has
recently passed controversial legislation in their Animal Welfare Bill which
legalises sexual acts with animals, as long as it does not cause injury to the
animal. This legislation is now awaiting
approval in the Senate. See https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/mercosur/colombia/colombian-minister-proposes-decriminalizing-incest-in-the-country/, accessed
20.03.2023.
[4] A government
minister in Colombia recently called for the decriminalization of incest
between consenting first-degree relatives.
See https://www.riotimesonline.com/brazil-news/mercosur/colombia/colombian-minister-proposes-decriminalizing-incest-in-the-country/, accessed
20.03.2023.
[5] See https://www.nationalreview.com/2016/04/euthanasia-belgium-netherlands-slippery-slope/, accessed
09.12.2020.
[6] See https://in.reuters.com/article/uk-belgium-euthanasia/belgium-set-to-extend-right-to-die-to-terminally-ill-children-idUKBREA1C0UD20140213, accessed
09.12.2020.
[7] As of February
2024, the Canadian government has delayed the introduction of euthanasia for
the mentally ill until 2027. See www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68120380, accessed
07.02.2024.
[8] See https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/canadas-assisted-dying-catastrophe-is-a-warning-to-britain/, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/12/10/canada-assisted-suicide-mentally-children-12/, and https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/03/opinion/canada-euthanasia.html, each accessed on
13.12.2022, and https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-maid-eligibility-should-expand-to-minors-patients-with-mental-illness/, accessed on
18.02.2023.
[9] See https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/first-humanmonkey-chimeras-developed-in-china--66231, accessed
25.11.2021. Elon Musk announced the
first Neuralink wireless brain chip implant in January 2024. See https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-68137046, accessed
30.01.2024.
[10] In this regard,
in July 2021 the WHO Expert Advisory Committee published a position paper
entitled ‘Human Genome Editing: A Framework for Governance.’ This deals with the need for the development
of global standards for the governance and oversight of current, potential and
speculative aspects of human genome editing.
One section of this deals with the transhumanist agenda of the addition
of non-human traits into the human genome: ‘To introduce single or multiple
genes not present in any human genome (e.g. non-human or synthetic genes), with
the following purposes: to amuse/entertain (e.g. green fluorescent protein); to
improve sensory systems (e.g. to ultraviolet or infrared light, or
electromagnetic fields); to obtain nutritional benefit from parts of plants,
plastics and other materials that humans cannot currently digest); to increase
tolerance to drought, heat or cold; and, to provide resistance to pollutants or
other environmental agents such as radiation.’
[11] Epigenetics is
the study of changes in living organisms caused by modification of the
expression of their genes, rather than alteration of the genetic code itself.
[12] See www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/15/elon-musk-cyborgs-robots-artificial-intelligence-is-he-right, accessed
05.01.2021.
[13] See also https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/brain-cloud-interface-nanobots-global-superbrain?fbclid=IwAR1oh05HRGG8y62yywVaWOzP6r3es5H_YEAvy0-ZwMShdD3NJDPXOf9MT08, accessed
08.03.2021, where it says that ‘An international team of scientists led by
members of UC Berkeley and the US Institute for Molecular Manufacturing
predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, artificial
intelligence (AI) and computation will lead this century to the development of
a human “brain-cloud interface” (B-CI).
Writing in Frontiers
in Neuroscience,
the team said that a B-CI would connect neurons and synapses in the brain to
vast cloud computing networks in real time.’
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