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My God and My Neighbor is a “Bible talk show” that looks at religious issues, Christian living and world events in light of the Word of God to give hope. This podcast is a ministry of Tennessee Bible College. TBC offers a bachelor's in Bible studies, a master of theology, and a doctorate of theology in apologetics and Christian evidences. TBC also provides Christian books, audio recordings on the Bible, and free Bible courses in English and Spanish. Tune in to My God and My Neighbor to experience the educational content that TBC has been delivering for nearly five decades!
Kerry Duke: Hi, I'm Kerry Duke, host of My God and My Neighbor podcast from Tennessee Bible College, where we see the Bible as not just another book, but the Book. Join us in a study of the inspired Word to strengthen your faith and to share what you've learned with others.
To begin our look at the decade of the 1990s, let's go back in our Bible to the book of Acts chapter 17. In Acts chapter 17, verse 21, the Bible says, “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or to hear some new thing.”
This verse is not about ordinary gossip. It is about philosophical ideas and theories. Athens had been the birthplace of Western philosophy some five centuries before Paul arrived there in Acts chapter 17. This city had been the home of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It was eventually the schoolroom for one Epicurus and philosophers of other camps like the Stoics.
The adherents of these schools of thought were still in Athens when Paul went there to preach the gospel, and this encounter is interesting for a number of reasons. And it's very relevant to what to what is taking place in America at this time.
In the first place, this city was full of idols. Verse 16 says, “Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols.” Now you might think that 500 years of intellectual activity with some of the greatest minds in the world might have resulted in progress, but human philosophy cannot achieve this.
In fact, it produces just the opposite. It is the very thing that Paul described in Romans 1, verses 20 through 25 where he described what happens when men turn away from God. The more they pride themselves in human philosophy and wisdom, the more diverse they become, relativistic and contradictory, their opinions become.
The city was full of idols, the Bible says. They had so many concepts of God that they had built a monument to what the Bible calls “the unknown God.” When men deny the God of the Bible, they invent their own gods. This was the Greek world in Paul's day. Now, fast forward 2, 000 years to America. Before the 1990s, surveys in America revealed that the majority of people believed in God. What began to emerge in the 1990s, and especially down to this day, is number one, the number of atheists and agnostics was and is growing. And number two, when Americans said that they believed in God, it was becoming clear that the God they believed in was not necessarily the God of Christianity, the Judeo Christian concept of God.
The word God had begun to mean different things to different people, just like it did in Athens. We can't leave idolatry out of the present situation either. There may not be cities full of idols like the ones in Athens, but we have plenty of idolatry. People worship nature. They idolize movie stars and famous athletes.
They serve the God of money, like Jesus said in Matthew 6, verse 24, and like Paul mentioned in Ephesians when he said that a covetous man is an idolater. Money and things are his gods. We also find something about immorality in the situation in Athens, because the philosophical speculation of ancient Greece did not make people better morally. It made them worse.
A group known as the Sophists back in Plato's time said that everything was relative. Homosexuality was rampant in Greek culture, and the Epicureans, who are mentioned in verse 18, said that pleasure was the highest good in life. And the Stoics, on the other hand, tried to be indifferent to pleasure and pain in their vain imagination.
So, Greek philosophers may have had a high IQ in our thinking, but they had low morals. Now again, what do we see today? This has been the theme of our study. When men reject God, they plunge into moral depravity. This is what Paul described in Romans 1, and this is what we see happening in America today.
Where is this human philosophy being taught? This kind of thinking that turns people away from the Creator and teaches them to act like animals, oftentimes it comes from public schools where evolution and moral relativism are taught, and especially it is found in universities where every kind of anti-God, anti-spiritual, anti-moral, anti-Bible view under the sun is drilled into the minds of young people.
We also see something in this account and that is that Greek philosophy was based on pride and it made men proud, unlike belief in God that makes men humble. Notice verse 18 again, “Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him; and some said, ‘What does this babbler want to say?’” The word babbler—a word used to refer to someone who was like a poor beggar who picked up scraps at the marketplace just to get by.
Art and Gingrich say that he made his living by picking up scraps. He was a rag picker. Thayer says that this person “lounged about the marketplace and picked up his subsistence by whatever might chance to fall from the loads of merchandise.” This is how these brilliant thinkers looked at Paul's teaching.
They said he has just picked up some scraps of knowledge here and there like a bird picks up seeds. Paul was shallow and simplistic, unlike their deep, intricate systems of thought. Still, his teaching was foreign to them and they were curious. Others said in verse 18, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore, we want to know what these things mean.” So out of mere curiosity, not respect, they give Paul a hearing.
Now, is this not the same kind of arrogance that we find in American education? The idea of God and the idea of right and wrong coming from Him is beneath many educated people today. What have these prideful people given to the world to replace Judeo-Christian ethics? Have they come up with a better moral code? Look at society around you. Look at the way that people treat each other. Look at their behavior. What caused this kind of moral chaos? A world full of lying and stealing and murder and disrespect and danger. It began in the heart. Romans 1:21 says, “Because that when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.”
The American experiment with moral relativism has not worked any better for us than it did with the Greeks. And what, we might ask, happened to their culture? How did it end for them? Well, Paul pointed out to these philosophers the same thing that their celebrated poets wrote, and what nature continued to declare right before their eyes every day, and that is that God is over all [verses 24 through 3]. But because of their prideful rebellion, they mocked at Paul's teaching when he spoke to them about life after death in verse 32. This was a doctrine that their superior wisdom said was impossible. The Greeks in Acts chapter 17 were always ready to hear new ideas in philosophy, and in the end, they had so many ideas that they had given up on the concept of anything being certain. They were, as Paul said later, in 2 Timothy 3, verse 7, “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” They ended up with a very pluralistic view of truth, especially moral truth. And today, we're seeing the same thing.
People are exposed to more new information in our age than in any other time in history. They see and hear about a wide range of views on virtually every subject: God, ethics, politics, history, the hereafter, and especially religion. In fact, they are on the receiving end of so much information that it's like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant.
Most people don't have the foundational knowledge of God to be able to assess this material, to discriminate things that are good or bad, the true from the false, the noble from the disrespectful, and as a result, they end up like the Athenians—confused and yet prideful, open minded to the wrong things, and yet closed minded to the simple truth right in front of them.
Now, in connecting all this to the decade of the 1990s, let's observe that one invention of prior decades that created this information overload that we're talking about actually became a household appliance in the 1990s. It was just beginning to be popular in 1993 when a major newscast opened with these words. “Tonight, the Information Superhighway and one of its main thoroughfares, an online service called Internet.”
In 1981, there were 213 internet users in America. In 1989, there were 80,000. In 1992, there were 727,000. By 1994, there were 2.5 million, and by 1996 there were 45 million. By the year 2000 almost half of U.S. households had access to the Internet, and the rest is history. In those days, you had to use a dial up connection to the phone line with a modem. You heard an awful series of sounds for about 30 seconds, and then you were online at a much slower speed than what we're used to today and with far less options.
The graphics back in those days looked different, too. But this invention changed the world as much as, or perhaps more, than the automobile or the television. The world became smaller overnight. The speed of communication was getting faster. In the old days, it had taken weeks to send a letter to a relative in some other part of the country and even longer to someone in another country.
Then came the telegraph, then the telephone, then radio and television. But this new thing called the internet went beyond anything these inventors of yesteryear had ever imagined. The world became a smaller place in one way, but the world of information and ideas actually became a much larger place.
Businessmen quickly saw the potential. They knew this was a goldmine of the future. So, investors poured billions of dollars into the stock market. The economy soared. Now, we know today that a lot of this was hype and speculation. The tech bubble, as we still call it, of the mid to late 1990s, was bound to burst.
And it did. But still, the economy was in another boom period. And like the old saying, what goes up must come down. And like the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3 verse 6, “there is a time to gain and a time to lose.” And also, in a moral sense, when the economy is good and people have plenty of money to spend, there is always the temptation to be greedy and selfish.
People tend to be confident when they have money, and this can lead to a prideful independence. This happened, to some extent, in the 1990s, just as it did in the 1920s. And while wealth in itself is not a sin, history shows that most people cannot handle it, and the Bible warns repeatedly about the allure of money.
In 1 Timothy, chapter 6, verse 6, Paul said, “Now godliness, with contentment, is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” So the real dawning of the age of the internet in the 1990s in American homes not only brought temptations because of increased information, but it also fueled an economic surge that revived the same old allurements that materialism has always offered.
And sure, the 1990s had its share of poverty, but overall, it was a time of prosperity. Now, I am not arguing that the internet is to blame for all of our woes. The internet is just technology. The people misusing it are the ones to blame. The same technology is used for good. There have been many people who have learned about the Gospel of Christ by being online, but the internet did open a door that swings both ways.
The flood of new ideas tended to water down and dilute the values that had kept society stable for so many years. It created fear and confusion in people who had no moral teaching, and it made people aware of what was happening around the world, yes, but it cut off communication with neighbors and in some cases, between family members.
In far too many cases, the internet has kept people in moral darkness, and it has kept people distracted. America had already turned away from God. And this invention tended to keep people so distracted that they had even less time to consider God. When man ejects God from his mind, his life becomes less like God and more like Satan.
So the internet came at the best possible time for the devil. Consider what was happening and what was about to happen in this decade. From August of 1990 to February of 199 we entered the Gulf War, and as the Bible says in Ecclesiastes 3, verse 8, it was again a time of war. Then in 1992, the riots in Los Angeles divided the nation and unleashed a spirit of anarchy.
Then in 1995, we began to hear a new phrase, homegrown terrorism. This happened when a U. S. citizen bombed a federal building in Oklahoma city in 1995, killing 168 people. In 1999 we entered another phase of domestic terrorism when two boys entered the Columbine High School in Colorado and shot 13 people.
What causes this mindless violence? How can men created in God's image act like wild animals? We've already seen the answer. All we have to do is to turn to Genesis 6 and look at mankind before the flood, or Genesis 19 and consider what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, or Leviticus 18 through 20, where we read about the moral depravity that was in the land of Canaan and the judgment of God upon them, or the book of Judges, where we find people slaughtering each other.
There is no way to have a free and safe world when people hate God and crave anarchy and rebellion. Consider the line of decency and the line of respect that tended to fade more and more in the 1990s. Now there had been serious damage done to these lines in private and in public before this time, but it became far worse in the 1990s.
In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle criticized a TV show called Murphy Brown in a speech about family values. He said this show didn't help things. It was about a smart, successful single woman who had had a child outside of wedlock. He said this show mocked the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.
And the media absolutely destroyed him for this comment. America had been trashing marriage and the home for decades, but by 1992, it was clear that saying anything about sin, especially in public, was a sin in the minds of many people. So you can summarize the cause of what has happened in America easily, and you can do so in nonpolitical terms.
The reason America has imploded is not because of accidents, it's because of choice. It's not because of bad grades in education, it's because of ignorance of the Bible. It's not because of bad economic or political decisions. It's because America has turned its back on God. The wicked shall be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God [Psalm 9 verse 17].
“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.” Another sign that Americans had erased the lines of decency and respect was the media coverage of the Bill Clinton scandal. Now he was not the first president to do something immoral, but the way that the media talked about it showed that traditional barriers as to what is appropriate in public discussion were no longer relevant.
Many in the media discussed the sorted, explicit details of his affair with a White House intern. There was no shame or embarrassment, and this happened on both sides of the media, among radio and talk show hosts. I'm speaking of those who were for him and against him. This kind of vulgar talk began to be more public in movies in the 1960s and each decade became worse and worse.
So by the mid 90s, people talked about the most private things in public. Now, the alarming thing about this is that we see this mark of a society that is in danger of collapse in several Bible passages. When people have no self-control or self-respect, they are too weak to withstand national overthrow from within, from without, or both.
Notice these passages. In Isaiah chapter 5, verse 20, the Bible says, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil, that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” We've looked at this passage several times, but it certainly applies to what we've just mentioned.
But let's go further. In Isaiah chapter 3, verse 9, the Bible says, “They declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not.” Then, in Jeremiah chapter 6, verse 15, the Bible says, “Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush.” Now, here's an important point to remember about these passages from Isaiah and Jeremiah. Both of these prophets warned of doom upon God's people for their sins, and when you see the moral degradation of God's people in the book of Isaiah and in the book of Jeremiah and the impending punishment of God upon them, it ought to wake us up because we're seeing exactly the same thing in our land today.
Furthermore, in Ephesians 5, verses 11 and 12, the Bible says, “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” Notice especially now, verse 12: “For it is a shame even to speak of those things which are done of them in secret.” There is a point when we're talking about sin where we should just say that something is wrong and leave it there and just stay out of the graphic, explicit details.
So what was happening in the 1990s was the same thing that was occurring in the 1960s except that it was getting worse. And that is that people had less and less self-control and self-respect and respect for other people. And that all begins with our attitude and our respect for God, because if people do not respect God, they certainly will not respect themselves and other people.
And in a word, when you think about Satan's attack on America in these decades, you can really boil it all down to one word, and that is the family, or the home. Have you noticed in so many of these decades that the major moral problems centered or sprung from Satan's attack on marriage and child rearing, when there is a breakdown in respect for authority in the home?
When there's a breakdown in order in the family, then society will collapse. Back in 1864, the Children's Aid Society wrote an article called The Aftermath of the Draft Riots of 1864, and here are some of those words. “Nothing we could say could add to the impressiveness of the lesson furnished by the events of the past year as to the needs and the dangerous condition of the neglected classes in our city, those terrible days in July, the sudden appearance, as if from the bosom of the earth, of a most infuriated and degraded mob, the helplessness of property holders, immense destruction of property, were the first dreadful revelations many of our people, of the existence among us of a great ignorant, irresponsible class who were growing up here without any permanent interest in the welfare of the community or the success of the government. It should be remembered that there are no dangers to the value of property or to the permanency of our institutions so great as those from the existence of such a class of vagabond, ignorant, and ungoverned children. This dangerous class has not begun to show itself, as it will in 8 or 10 years, when these boys and girls are matured. Those who were too negligent or too selfish to notice them as children will be fully aware of them as men. They will vote. They will have the same rights as we ourselves. Though they have grown up ignorant of moral principle, they will poison society. They will perhaps be embittered at the wealth and the luxuries they never share. Then let society beware when the outcast, vicious, reckless, multitude swarming now in every foul alley and low street come to know their power and use it.” That was reported by Senator Robert F. Kennedy on August the 25th, 1966, in a subcommittee hearing on the reorganization of the committee on government operations.
And now let me take you back to a speech by Robert C. Winthrop in Boston. In 1852, addressing this idea of self control and being controlled from outside, he said, “All societies of men must be governed in some way or other. The less they may have of stringent state government, the more they must have of individual self government. The less they rely on public law or physical force, the more they must rely on private moral restraint. Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled, either by a power within them or by a power without them, either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man, either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”
Let's go back even further. This is Noah Webster: “The Scriptures were intended by God to be the guide of human reason. The Creator of man established the moral order of the universe, knowing that human reason, left without a divine guide or rule of action, would fill the world with disorder, crime, and misery. A great portion of mankind, ignorant of this guide or rejecting its authority, have verified the fact, and the history of 3,000 years is a tissue of proof that human reason left to itself can neither preserve morals nor give duration to a free government. Human reason never has been, and unquestionably never will be, a match for ambition, selfishness, and other evil passions of man. On the other hand, opposed to the force of these passions, constitution and laws are generally found to be mere cobwebs and gossamer. The principles of all genuine liberty and of wise laws and administrations are to be drawn from the Bible and sustained by its authority. The man, therefore, who weakens or destroys the divine authority of that book may be accessory to all the public disorders which society is doomed to suffer. In my view, there are two powers only which are sufficient to control men and secure the rights of individuals and a peaceable administration. These are the combined force of religion and law, and the force or fear of war.”
He also wrote, “The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society. The best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men and the only book that can serve as an infallible guide to future felicity” [Noah Webster, 1832].
Now it's interesting before we leave this decade to notice that it began with speculation about the end of time and it ended with that same kind of speculation. When the Gulf War broke out Many people said this is Armageddon, it is the end of time, and then the war ended, and that kind of died down. Toward the end of the 1990s, we saw the Y2K, that is the year 2000, fear-mongering. Because television, magazines, and sometimes preachers said, this will be like an Armageddon.
This could be the end of the world. And actually, when you go back into history, you find that there were some commentators that actually held to that kind of view. That is, that somehow the year 2000 could be the end. Adam Clark, a Methodist commentator who lived from 1762 to 1832 wrote in his commentary, “The year of Christ, 2000 a time fixed by Jews and Christians for some remarkable revelation when the world, as they suppose, will be renewed, the wicked cease from troubling the church, and the saints of the Most High have dominion over the whole habitable globe. But this is all hypothesis.”
And long before him, Irenaeus, who lived from 120 to 202 A. D., wrote, “For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded. And for this reason the Scripture says, “Thus the heaven and the earth were finished in all their adornment, and God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made, and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works” [Genesis 2 verse 2]. “This is an account of the things formerly created,” He said, “as also it is a prophecy of what is to come, for the day of the Lord is as a thousand years, 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 8, and in six days created things were completed. It is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the 6, 000th year.”
The Bible plainly says in Matthew 24, verse 36 that all this speculation is false. “But of that day and hour knows no man, No, not the angels of heaven, but my father only.”
Thank you for listening to My God and My Neighbor. Stay connected with our podcast on our website and on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Tennessee Bible College, providing Christian education since 1975 in Cookeville, Tennessee, offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
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