When I first read this recent Hal Lindsey mailing (which follows), my mind immediately went to, what has turned out to be, the timeless song from the mid-sixties by Barry McGuire. It’s been 57 years, and the words ring truer now than then. It’s important to note that what’s happening in our “day and age” is clearly depicted in he Bible, so Barry’s song will continue to apply to a fallen world until our Savior brings the destruction to an abrupt halt. For now, for us, I present “Is This What You Had In Mind?” by Hal Lindsey…
Is this what you had in mind, America? Mass shootings one after another… Government paralyzed, not by disagreements, but by hate… The ongoing loss of constitutional rights… Inflation… Stagnation… Despondency, especially among the young.…Millions caught in a seemingly unbreakable cycle of poverty.
You made the military a giant guinea pig for social experimentation, turned military academies into institutions of wokeness that hate fundamental American values, and you promoted the most politically correct into the highest positions of authority. Even though the rank and file of your military remains the best in the world, your leaders fail them, as in Afghanistan.
Through abortion, you taught the young that human life has no value, and you wonder why suicide is the leading cause of death among people between the ages of 10 and 34 — or why 18-year-olds shoot up schools and supermarkets. In school, you turned sex education into an opportunity to promote sexual perversions of all kinds. And you wonder why one in five Americans is mentally ill. You shred families. You disparage the idea of that children need fathers and mothers, and you can’t figure out why they bully and cheat and turn to violence.
You made your music all about sin and sensuality — degrading rather than uplifting. You made leaders out of the loudest, least thoughtful among us. You made a god out of popularity on social media. You replaced statesmanship with the poison-pal politics of hate. You allowed the media to become your thought shepherds rather than your factfinders.
And what about you, Church? Is this what you had in mind?
Did you plan to become weak and ineffective? When you traded in Bible-infused messages with pop psychology, is this what you had in mind? Is that what you wanted when you made entertaining children the priority over teaching them?
God says, “Look to Me,” but you look instead to political saviors. In fact, you look to man first in all things, leaving God as a last resort. And why not? After all, you teach that the great God, Creator of all things, is nothing more than a friendly little Pal whose primary purpose is to help you feel good about yourself.
Is this what you had in mind, Church, when you chose to embrace the world’s definitions of prosperity and blessing rather than God’s — or chose a saccharine-sweet façade instead of the glorious reality of the omnipotent God? Is this what you had in mind when you chose to embrace evil, rather than to overcome evil with good — or when you chose cheap virtue signaling over faithful evangelism?
When you threw away reverence, did you have this in mind? You tried to make church doctrine all things to all people. You wanted to be liked and not seen as peculiar. But by watering down the Gospel, you laid your own children on Moloch’s altar.
A remnant remains — lit from within by the glowing fires of the Holy Spirit.
But to a stunning extent, the Church is drowning in worldliness. When the people of earth need more than ever for the Church to be distinct, it has emulated the world so long and with such ardor, that people have a hard time telling one from the other.
“Come out from among them, and be ye separate”! (2 Corinthians 6:17, KJV)
