By Ni Ming
It says in the Bible: “Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but fornicators and adulterers God will judge” (Hebrews 13:4). From this verse we can see that marriage is something which should be respected by anyone who possesses a conscience and sense. Although everyone may vow to be faithful to their spouses for the rest of their lives at their weddings, with various sorts of evil trends arising, more and more people, regardless of age, regardless of what social class they belong to, are having extra-marital affairs, to the extent that it has become a common occurrence that we can talk about without an ounce of shame, and some even see it as something worth showing off. Seeing how marriage is being trampled is really unsettling: How can we escape God’s righteous punishment when the day of judgment comes?
Tragedies Caused by the Trampling of Marriage Are on the Rise
“Even those who are older than me are playing around with women—I’m not the only one. This is just how things are in this society. As the saying goes, ‘Mistresses are always better than the wife,’ ‘Life is meaningless without gambling and visiting prostitutes.’ How could you not know this? I am very happy now, so why are you crying? …” This is what my classmate’s 60-year-old uncle said to his wife after he cheated on her.
“Is there any man who doesn’t have another woman? If you continue quarreling with me for this, I will never come back.” This is how my colleague’s husband justified himself after being caught keeping a mistress.
A friend also often shared with me stories about rich men and women she knew who unscrupulously engaged in extramarital affairs, and one of them even said shamelessly, “It’s no big deal that I have a mistress. My brother has two, who, by the way, are both under 18. You know, girls all love bad boys….”
Such stories about romantic betrayal are happening around us all the time, resulting in countless family crises which are largely responsible for the high divorce rate these days, and in some cases, people are even driven to murder.
Ms. Feng in Guangdong Province, according to the news report, had maintained an inappropriate relationship with her first boyfriend since July, 2013. When her husband found out, she asked for a divorce yet was rejected. In retaliation, she killed their three children with rat poison and got herself a death sentence in the end.
A report by the Procuratorial Daily said, a woman surnamed Wang, after finding out her husband’s shady relationship with a colleague in the bus company he worked for, threw boiling oil at him in a rage, ending up behind bars.
Seeking for the Root of Degeneracy
I don’t know how to describe what I felt as I was reading these cases and news reports above. Marriage is supposed to be a relationship in which two people respect and love each other, so why are there so many people having extramarital affairs these days, to the point that it has even become a trend? Why is it that we no longer have morals and are becoming more and more degenerate?
One day, I came across these words from God: “One after another, all these trends carry an evil influence that continually degenerates man, causing them to continually lose conscience, humanity and reason, and that lowers their morals and their quality of character more and more, to the extent that we can even say the majority of people now have no integrity, no humanity, neither do they have any conscience, much less any reason. So what are these trends? You cannot see these trends with the naked eye. When the wind of a trend blows through, perhaps only a small number of people will become the trendsetters. They start off doing this kind of thing, accepting this kind of idea or this kind of perspective. The majority of people, however, in the midst of their unawareness, will still be continually infected, assimilated and attracted by this kind of trend, until they all unknowingly and involuntarily accept it, and are all submerged in and controlled by it. For man who is not of sound body and mind, who never knows what is truth, who cannot tell the difference between positive and negative things, these kinds of trends one after another make them all willingly accept these trends, the life view and values that come from Satan. They accept what Satan tells them on how to approach life and the way to live that Satan ‘bestows’ on them. They have not the strength, neither do they have the ability, much less the awareness to resist.”
God’s words reveal the root of why all of mankind has become promiscuous and corrupt and advocates wickedness. Being deceived and corrupted by Satan’s evil trends like “The red flag at home does not fall, the colored flags outside flutter in the breeze,” “Seize the day for pleasure, for life is short,” “Life is meaningless without gambling and visiting prostitutes,” and “Without a mistress, a man has no zest for life; without a lover, a woman is no better than a sow,” our spirits have been corroded and our thinking has become twisted, with the result that we regard extra-marital affair as a positive thing to pursue, mistakenly believing that having a lover is a way to enjoy life and a symbol of being capable. Living under the influence of these evil trends, we become increasingly wicked and corrupt and our consciences become ever more numb, to the point that we have lost hold of proper humanity and the sense of shame and propriety. Just like my classmate’s uncle—despite in his 60s, he still couldn’t resist the temptation of evil trends and didn’t even feel shame at having an affair. My colleague’s husband cheated on his wife, yet he actually shifted the blame on her. Also, in the homicide case caused by an extra-marital affair as mentioned above, Ms. Feng even ruthlessly killed her three children just to satisfy her own fleshly desires, and she herself ended up receiving a death sentence, leaving us a bitter lesson to learn. There are actually countless other cases like this around us. Many people regard having a mistress or supporting a lover as displays of competence and show off everywhere, believing that what everyone reveres is right. Their thinking has become warped and abnormal that they take pleasure in engaging in evil, just as the Bible says, “The whole world lies in wickedness” (1 John 5:19). Obviously, living under the control of Satan’s evil trends, we have been corrupted so much that we cannot discern between positive and negative things and consider the negative things Satan advocates as positive and blindly pursue them without giving any thought to the great harm it would bring to our families. As a result, countless families have been shattered by extra-marital affairs, leaving the children with indelible spiritual wounds, and in some cases, it even caused a tragedy.
Being Degenerate Will Incur Judgment
As more and more people are following evil trends living debased lives, treating marriage as a child’s game and trampling upon it without feeling shame, there arises a concern about the fate of humanity: What direction will such a mankind head in?
Let’s look back to the time of Noah: People were so licentious that God didn’t even bear to look. Seeing that Noah was a righteous man, God asked him to build an ark and spread the gospel, but no one accepted it. In the end, God sent down a flood to destroy the world and left behind only Noah’s family of eight. And there were also cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, where the promiscuity and wickedness had all reached a peak and people even wanted to kill God’s messengers. God then rained down fire from the sky, incinerating them into nothingness. Just as God’s words say: “From a human perspective, Sodom was a city that could fully satisfy man’s desire and man’s evil. Alluring and bewitching, with music and dancing night after night, its prosperity drove men to fascination and madness. Its evil corroded the hearts of people and bewitched them into degeneration. This was a city where unclean spirits and evil spirits ran amok; it brimmed with sin and murder and was filled with a bloody, putrid scent. It was a city that chilled people to the bone, a city that one would shrink back from. No one in this city—neither man nor woman, neither young nor old—sought the true way; no one yearned for the light or longed to walk away from sin. They lived under Satan’s control, corruption and deceit. They had lost their humanity; they had lost their senses, and they had lost man’s original goal of existence. They committed countless sins of resistance against God; they refused His guidance and opposed His will. It was their wicked deeds that carried these people, the city and every living thing inside it, step by step, down the path of destruction.”
From God’s words we can see that God’s essence is holy and He does not permit the filthy to exist, and that those who are dark and evil will be condemned and destroyed by God. The people of Sodom were extremely evil and degenerate that they completely lost humanity and were unbearable for God to witness. In the end, they suffered God’s wrathful punishment—it is their wicked deeds that carried them down the path of destruction. When faced with the evil and corruption of us mankind, however, God will guide us to forsake evil ways and return to the right path and give us a chance to repent. The city of Nineveh is an example: Despite being as evil and corrupt as those of Sodom, the people of Nineveh, from the king to the common people, all confessed and repented in sackcloth and ashes and left their evil ways after they heard from Jonah the news that God would destroy the city in 40 days, and ultimately, they obtained God’s mercy and forgiveness. On the contrary, if they had refused God’s guidance and been relentless in their hostility to God, they would have only brought destruction on themselves. Therefore, as the people of today, we should learn lessons from the past so as to have a better chance of survival. In fact, anyone who has a conscience and reason knows that defiling marriage and engaging in adultery are negative things which violate morals and ethics. Those who are promiscuous and evil to a certain degree are doomed to God’s righteous judgment.
Staying Away From Evil and Walking in the Light
So how can we escape the grip of Satan’s evil trends and be freed from its harm? God’s words tell us: “God has given life to man, given man everything, and bestows on man unconditionally without demanding anything, without any ulterior intention. He uses the truth, uses His words, uses His life to lead and guide man, bringing man away from the harm of Satan, away from Satan’s temptations, away from Satan’s seduction and allowing man to see clearly through Satan’s evil nature and its hideous face.” Our lives come from God, and it’s just because we shun God and live under Satan’s power being deceived and trampled by it that we no longer have the heart that yearns for light and have fallen into a dark, hellish world. God cannot bear watching us continue to be harmed and devoured by Satan, so He expresses the truth to guide and supply us, allowing us to see Satan’s wickedness and ugliness, so that we may be able to tell what is positive and what is negative and ultimately distance ourselves from the harm of Satan and receive the opportunity to attain God’s salvation. The Lord Jesus said, “I am the light of the world: he that follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life” (John 8:12). Therefore, only if we come before God and view things according to His word can we see through Satan’s schemes behind evil trends, no longer be toyed with and injured by it, and live in God’s light.
Source: Daily Devotionals
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