The Throw-Away Generation?

by Michael G. Mickey

(10-26-06)

2nd Timothy 3:1-5 reads like a description of humanity today and it's no coincidence as these are, as I continue to document, the last days:

This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,

Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good,

Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God;

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away.

As I prepare to update RaptureAlert.com on a near-daily basis as a form of worship of my God, as well as a testimonial to His Prophetic Truth, I often find myself snagged on a particular train of thought by the Holy Spirit.

Recently, I wrote a commentary on how crime is growing at an alarming pace. As disturbing as that topic is within itself, some of the information that commentary was based on struck a nerve within my soul that I haven't been able to shake. As you read the following excerpts from an AOL story on the surge in crime growth presently underway, I want you to bear the passage of Scripture above in mind:

• In this culture, the report explains, "arguments over seemingly minor issues escalate to the retaliatory murder of additional people." In Trenton, N.J., for instance, an argument between two girls escalated into seven separate shootings over 24 hours. One chief said he's frustrated with homicides in his city, and noted that they seem to be committed without any apparent motive.

  "They occur for no apparent rhyme or reason. They come up over the smallest issue," Richmond, Calif., Police Chief Chris Magnus is quoted as saying.

• Some of the police chiefs blame the exacerbation of crime on a "thug mentality" that has been glamorized in music and movies. The sheriff of Las Vegas blames gangsta rap music and its effects on young people. An Arizona chief said some of our youth has become a "throw-away generation; nobody cares for them."

• "It appears that today there is a lower valuation of human life," Louisville, Ky., Mayor Jerry Abramson told the authors of the report.

What darkness has come upon this generation!

How, for example, can an argument between two girls escalate into not one but seven shootings taking place in the course of a single day? It could be because of the moral decay that's eating away at our society, the result of way too many people being lovers of themselves and pleasures instead of lovers of God! It could be because many today have no respect or even fear of Almighty God, leading them to be fierce in temperament and lacking in self-control!

How can it be that murders are literally taking place with no apparent rhyme or reason and over the smallest of issues? It could be because people are prideful to the point that they're highminded (tuphoo {toof-o'-o}in the original Greek), which essentially means that they're blinded with pride or conceit to the point of stupidity!

What has happened in our world that our children find "thug mentality" an appealing quality for one to possess? In my high school youth, demonstrating one's self to be a thug didn't make you popular! If someone had walked up and down the halls of the school I attended rapping out the violent, hate-filled lyrics that are found in a lot of mainstream music today, I can honestly say that I believe someone of virtue (and I'm not referring to a member of the adult faculty of the school either) would've told them to turn that garbage off! And when I say told them to turn it off, that's just what I mean! Where I come from, we didn't take kindly to thuggish behavior, but that was a different era. Only a few short decades ago, things were so different! It's little wonder when you think about it.

In 1962, due largely to the efforts of atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, prayer was banned from our public schools by the Supreme Court. Recent Supreme Court decisions continue to undermine our children being taught anything other than the lie of evolution as theorized by Charles Darwin, who is, unless he repented of his sins, in the same dark regions that Madalyn Murray O'Hair presently abides in, that, of course, being the case unless she miraculously repented of her sins before being murdered and sawed into pieces so small her body could only be identified by her prosthetic hip and dental records. And then there are the ramifications of 1973's Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, which continues to curse our nation. Within all this we find why "it appears there is a lower valuation of human life" in our world today, as noted in the article by Louisville, Kentucky's Mayor Jerry Abramson.

All of this is what happens when we strip God from our children's consciousness in their formative school years! We create a "throw-away generation" that is so dark in spirit that all manner of wickedness is growing within it! It makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

Teach children that their worthiness to live or die is a matter of choice and not ordained by God and it lessens their self-worth. Teach them they're the product of random chance as opposed to created by a loving God and watch as they collectively begin to see themselves as mere animals, just another member of the food chain! Teach them that God isn't worthy of any serious consideration in school and watch darkness flood into their lives! What is darkness, after all, but an absence of light? Amen?

If the information from the AOL story linked above didn't tear at your heart strings, how about this? An Agape Press story indicates that a recent survey finds that many of our youth today are "alarmingly dishonest." Here are a few facts to consider from that piece, bearing in mind 2nd Timothy 3:1-5:

• 62 percent of high school students admit they have lied to a teacher about something significant within the past 12 months.
• 35 percent admit they have lied to a teacher about something significant two or more times in the past 12 months!
• 30 percent of high school students say they have stolen from a store in the last year.
• Over 80 percent of high school students admit that they have lied to a parent in the last year.
• 23 percent of high school students admit they have stolen something from a parent or other relative in the past 12 months.

Yes, this is what happens when we strip God - and the fear of God - from our children's consciousness in their formative school years! But, to be sure, the moral decay we're seeing in our world today isn't by any means solely the result of God not being educationally instilled in our children's earliest years of life in school! The spiritual "dummification" of our children continues right on into adulthood!

Once our children get out of elementary, middle and high school, where they are not allowed to be taught about God, they head off to college where, according to an American Family Association story, many of today's colleges and universities undermine what Christian parents have tried to teach their children, utilizing programs that are "often characterized by vehement opposition to traditional beliefs and faith-based pro-family values." As bad as that is for Christian parents to consider occurring to their hopefully well-grounded children, imagine how terribly destructive it is for a young person who has had no Christian influences in their life to go through ALL their educational years, even into adulthood, having nothing but a godless, "scientific" explanation for their existence being fed to their young, easily-manipulated minds! And we wonder why the world is in a mess and getting worse all the time? The powers and principalities holding the reins of power in our world today are effectively turning our children into emotional and spiritual zombies by feeding them a steady diet of secularism, moral relativism, political correctness, and tolerance! May God help us as Christians to see the tremendous evil all these things represent and motivate us to work with our young people, both those in our own households and those we encounter in our daily lives, to counter these spawns from hell!

Christian parents, rise up!

As Christian parents, we need to stand boldly against the lie of evolution by telling our children the truth concerning the origins of their existence and the consequences of them not bearing that in mind at all times! There is, after all, a heaven to gain and a hell to shun! May we stand strongly in opposition to moral relativism, political correctness and tolerance as guiding principles in our children's lives, teaching them to cast aside the moral vagueness of our times and to embrace, yes embrace, a healthy fear of God that they might obey His commandments!

I was reading a commentary by Reverend Mark H. Creech recently that I feel I need to include somewhat in this discussion, particularly to emphasize what I mean when I say we need to take a stand as Christian parents where our children are concerned. Creech wrote the following, in part:

Children need to be taught a healthy fear (reverential respect and awe) for God and authority figures in life. No one can better administer these lessons than parents. And sometimes, though it should always be a last resort, there is no better means to get that lesson across than to do what the parent's of yesteryear used to do -- take the youngster for a visit, so to speak, to an "old-fashioned woodshed."

As a child I was taught the Word of God and to respect it. Just as my Daddy took me out to an "old-fashioned woodshed" for a refresher course in obedience, respect and moral uprightness in instances when mere words weren't enough in his opinion to correct a trend he saw in me, we need to have the strength today to exercise proper, not to be confused with excessive, discipline over our children. Too many parents today have become convinced that a swift swat to the behind of a child to discipline them is going to harm them psychologically to use the tactic. To those I offer the following Scriptures:

Proverbs 22:6: Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:15: Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.

Proverbs 23:13-14: Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.

Don't get me wrong here. My Daddy, rest his sweet soul, didn't take me out to the woodshed often. It was a rare thing rather than a regular occurrence. When I was corrected, I needed to be corrected. In fact, more times than not - and this is 100% the truth - I would await my Daddy's arrival from work and confess my wrongdoing to him as soon as he walked up to me. I'd tell him I needed to be punished, why I needed to be, and he would! We'd "get it over with" and into the house we'd go for dinner, the matter behind us. Daddy told stories of those encounters right up to his death in 1997, he and I laughing about it, each of us proud of the other for having taken our responsibilities seriously. Imagine that! We need more of that today! Way more!

Christians, both young and old, rise up for all our children!

While we all know that what we're seeing today, as evidenced in all the linked stories above, is literal fulfillment of Bible prophecy underway, there are lots of young people in this "throw-away generation" that we, as the Body of Christ, can reach! To be sure, it is our absolute duty to do so!

Our mission as Christian parents starts with the children in our home and extends outward to our church itself where we need to take far more than a mild interest in raising our church's children up properly. As a child I was greatly influenced by my pastor and everyone in my congregation. The same is true today, of course!

Many of the youth attending the church I attend, for example, are coming on their own, brought there by young saints of God who are doing their part for God by effectively witnessing Christ to their contemporaries, inviting them to come to church whether their parents come or not!

When these unchurched children cross the threshold of our churches, we need to rise up to meet them in love in an effort to reach them for Christ. When we succeed in doing so, an amazing thing often happens! In many cases, a church that reaches a child and leads them to salvation reaches their parents and extended family as well!

In our church recently, I heard a man testify of how he'd allowed his son to come to our church and soon afterward began to be impacted by his son proudly sharing Bible verses he was learning with him. Through the love shown his son by our church's youth teachers and his own love for his son, of course, a spirit of conviction fell upon him that later led him to come to faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior!

The bottom line? While Satan and his minions have effectively waged a war against God and all that is of God being taught to this present generation in our schools, we shouldn't be willing to allow the darkness of this present world to successfully throw away an entire generation of our children! There are other "institutions of learning" we need to be getting the children of our world into to counter evil. They're called churches and the gates of hell can not prevail against them when utilized properly!

Christians, both young and old, all we need to do is look at 2nd Timothy 3:1-5 to see that these are the last days. Our time to reach as many of the "throw-away generation" as we can on this side of the Rapture of the Church is swiftly running out and the stakes could not be higher! On the line are the souls of many, many young people who Christ died on the cross of Calvary to save just as He did for all of us.

How many of the "throw-aways" can we pull from the darkness back into the light? Today is a great day for us to start answering that question because tomorrow may be too late. Reach out, Christians! REACH OUT!