The recent riots in England were caused by children without fathers and schools without discipline, according to British Prime Minister David Cameron, while Ed Miliband blames bankers and MPs for failing to set a better example for society.
Other comments included criminality, total indifference to right and wrong, people with a twisted moral code, people with a complete absence of self-restraint. Anarchy reigns!
A slow-motion tsunami of moral collapse and a “value crisis” across society, the widespread looting and disorder can be linked to a lack of morality. “It can only be solved by addressing the issues right across our society, from bonuses to benefits,” said Miliband, who blamed greed and immorality for the breakdown in law and order in this “me-first, take-what-you-can culture.
“The bankers who took millions while destroying people’s savings [and] the MPs who fiddled their expenses: greedy, selfish, and immoral.”
The lack of a moral compass does not happen overnight or on the spur of the moment. No, it is a little compromise here, a little change there, a desire to be one of the crowd. No moral backbone to stand up and be counted on the side of good behavior leads to the events like this.
Ellen White, writing more than 100 years ago, prophesied of today with these words, “The spirit of anarchy is permeating all nations, and the outbreaks that from time to time excite the horror of the world are but indications of the pent-up fires of passion and lawlessness that, having once escaped control, will fill the earth with woe and desolation. … Even now, and in professedly Christian lands, there are crimes daily perpetrated, as black and terrible as those for which the old-world sinners were destroyed. Before the flood, God sent Noah to warn the world, that the people might be led to repentance, and thus escape the threatened destruction. … Multitudes have been living in transgression of God’s law, and now He in mercy calls them to obey its sacred precepts. All who will put away their sins by repentance toward God and faith in Christ, are offered pardon.” (Patriarchs and Prophets, page 102)
And what about this statement? “We are living in the midst of an ‘epidemic of crime,’ at which thoughtful, God-fearing men everywhere stand aghast. The corruption that prevails, it is beyond the power of the human pen to describe. Every day brings fresh revelations of political strife, bribery, and fraud. Every day brings its heart-sickening record of violence and lawlessness, of indifference to human suffering, of brutal, fiendish destruction of human life. Every day testifies to the increase of insanity, murder, and suicide. Who can doubt that satanic agencies are at work among men with increasing activity to distract and corrupt the mind, and defile and destroy the body? …
“The world needs … a revelation of Christ. A great work of reform is demanded, and it is only through the grace of Christ that the work of restoration, physical, mental, and spiritual, can be accomplished.” (The Ministry of Healing, pages 142, 143).
The psalmist gives this insight into the reason for today’s problems: “It is time for You to act, O LORD, For they have regarded Your law as void.” (Psalm 119:126-127)
Most have ignored God’s law of love, the Ten Commandments, or have changed it and are unwilling to stand for what God has revealed. They have done their own thing, and as a result, we see the lack of restraint and indifference to law and order that prevails in many places today.
The only answer to today’s ills is to know Jesus as our own personal Saviour. Take the Bible as it reads, trust in God and commit your ways to Him.
Ian Cotton is the pastor of Creston’s Seventh-day Adventist Church.