From Spanish Flu to Covid-19

The end of this century of American history was as eventful as its beginning. World War I and the Spanish flu ended as the 1920s began, and 100 years later Covid-19 turned the world upside down. The decade of 2010-2020 proved to be a time of moral decay as same-sex marriage was legalized in 2015 and an American President lectured the public to accept homosexual and transgender perversion. But in the midst of this chaos there were Christian people who stood strong and in fact grew stronger. As we end this study of 100 years of American history, we come full circle to the words of Ecclesiastes 1:9: “There is no new thing under the sun.”

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• Scriptures: Daniel 4:17, Judges 21:25, Isaiah 29:16
• Church, State, and Disease by Kerry Duke 

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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.

How should we describe the period between 2010 and 2020?Perhaps it will be good to go back and look at some keynotes in the decades that we've already reviewed. The 1920s was a time of prosperity and fun, and an era of rebellion against family and community values. This was the beginning, in many senses, of liberal theology in America and the anti-Christian theory of evolution as it began to take root in American education.

The 1930s was the bust after the boom, the time of the Great Depression. This was a mixed period of religious revival on the one hand and sinful living on the other. The 1940s was a time of war, but the more lasting conflict was at home as divorce rates increased. And mothers left their homes to go to work, and the baby boomer generation began, a generation largely reared by others besides their own parents. The 1950s was another mixed age of sensualism on the one hand and spirituality on the other. It was an age of increased pornography and affairs among men. But it was also a time of conservative morals in another part of the population, and so the war ensued.

The 1960s was the time when the dam broke. The first baby boomers came to age and the moral foundations of the country began to crumble. Rebellion at every level was the theme of the decade, and we have never recovered. And if the dam broke in the 1960s, the flood wiped away the moral structure of society in the 1970s.

Divorce rates skyrocketed. Abortion was legalized. Movies became filled with immoral garbage. And drugs and easy sex became like nothing. In the 1980s, the effects of the onslaught of the moral revolt of the previous two decades took its toll. Divorce reached an all time high as the decade began, and abortion peaked at the end of the decade and into the 1990s.

The 1990s brought chaos and disregard for decency into the public arena. The media by this time had become successful in convincing people of what is good and what is bad. And the decade of 2000 to 2010 was a time of far reaching change in values, partly as a result of internet technology that led to a more global view of everything, including religion, the family, and morality.

We might say that the period of 2010 to 2020 has been a time of reaping what we have sown, a time of watching the nation crumble, a time when one nation under God decided that it didn't need God or want God anymore. But we'll simply say that this was, in many senses, a time of war, not just the war against terrorism, as bad as that war has been, not just the war against drugs, or the war against poverty, or the war against disease, but a war that has been a key strategy of Satan from the beginning, and that is the war against the family as God created it.

The Bible says that God created mankind as male and female. Genesis 1 verse 27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” The Bible also shows that God created marriage for man, who is male and female. In Genesis chapter 2 verse 18, the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone. I will make him an help meet for him,” that is, a helper who is meet, that is suitable or fitting for him. Then the Bible says that He made a woman and brought her to the man. And in Genesis chapter 2 verse 24, we have the beginning statement about marriage: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.”

Then the Bible also shows us that God placed children in the home under the authority, supervision, and protection of parents. In Ephesians 6, beginning in verse 1, the Bible says, “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you, and you may live long on the earth. And fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.”

Now I'm looking at this the way that Satan views this situation. The devil must undermine or change these roles. He must destroy the home to succeed. He must divide and conquer at this most fundamental level of society—the home, which is the building block of society. When homes are divided and unstable, the nation is divided and unstable. But when the homes are God-fearing, so are the people. Now, this is why Satan has waged unrelenting war against the God-given roles and relationships of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and their children.

Satan has indoctrinated children to rebel against authority through television, books, movies, music, education at school, sports, social media. Satan has lured husbands into adultery through a culture that is immersed in pornography, and he has convinced legislators that there is no difference between a male and a female except what culture defines them to be.

Now this role of Satan in all this reminds us of a segment that was aired in 1965 by radio personality Paul Harvey. It is entitled, “If I Were The Devil” and it reads, “If I Were the Devil. If I were the Prince of Darkness, I'd want to engulf the whole world in darkness. And I'd have a third of its real estate and four fifths of its population, but I wouldn't be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, thee.

So I'd set about however necessary to take over the United States. I'd subvert the churches first. I'd begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve, ‘Do as you please.’ To the young, I would whisper that the Bible is a myth. I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around.

I would confide that what's bad is good and what's good is square. And the old, I would teach them to pray after me, “Our father, which art in Washington.” And then I'd get organized. I'd educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting, so that anything else would appear dull and uninteresting. I'd threaten TV with dirtier movies and vice versa.

I'd peddle narcotics to whom I could. I'd sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. I'd tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I'd soon have families at war with themselves, churches at war with themselves, and nations at war with themselves, until each in its turn was consumed.

And with promises of higher ratings, I'd have mesmerizing media fanning the flames. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine young intellects but neglect to discipline emotions. Just let those run wild until, before you knew it, you'd have to have drug-sniffing dogs and metal detectors at every schoolhouse door.

Within a decade, I'd have prisons overflowing, I'd have judges promoting pornography. Soon, I could evict God from the courthouse, then from the schoolhouse, and then from the houses of Congress. And in His own churches, I would substitute psychology for religion and deify science. I would lure priests and pastors into misusing boys and girls and church money.

If I were the devil, I'd make the symbols of Easter an egg and the symbol of Christmas a bottle. If I were the devil, I'd take from those who have and give to those who want until I had killed the incentive. And what do you bet I could get whole states to promote gambling as the way to get rich? I would caution against extremes and hard work in patriotism, in moral conduct.

I would convince the young that marriage is old fashioned, that swinging is more fun, and that what you see on TV is the way to be. And thus, I could undress you in public, and I could lure you into bed with diseases for which there is no cure. In other words, if I were the devil, I'd just keep right on doing what he's doing.

1965, Paul Harvey. We're almost tempted, as we look back, to say that these words in 1965 were prophetic. Our culture was beginning to crumble, and many of the things that Paul Harvey imagined have happened, exactly as he said, with the consequences that he described. But even he could not foresee a nation with such a religious legacy like America eventually legalizing the perversion of same sex marriage.

So in a real sense, we could call this period of 2010 to 2020 the age of the gender war, or the war against gender, or the war to remove gender. The tension had been building for decades, but it became worse in the 1990s and in the 2000s, Vice President Al Gore in the 1990s made his support for the gay community clear when he invited 100 gay and lesbian leaders to his home to discuss how he could help them with their goals.

And then, President Barack Obama became the first President not only to openly state his approval of homosexuality, but also to criticize and threaten anyone who failed to comply with his own pro-gay agenda. For instance, in responding to questions about what he thought about the issue of homosexuality and about verses in the Bible that condemn it, he said he would take what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount over some obscure passage written by Paul in the book of Romans.

Now, he didn't specify the statements in the Sermon on the Mount that he had in mind, but he was probably taking Matthew 7 verse 1, a verse about judging, and Matthew 7 verse 12, a verse about the Golden Rule. He was probably taking them out of context. The statement in the book of Romans about the issue of homosexuality is definitely Romans 1:27 which says that women with women and men with men is against nature.

Now, there is nothing obscure about that statement. But to make matters worse, he used his office to urge and to pressure public schools and businesses to allow transgender people to use either the men's or the women's restroom. How could a President do anything more ungodly or more perverse? And yet, this was how far American culture had gone in its rebellion against the creator.

And that's what it was. Absolute arrogance and rebellion. And during this time, in the first half of this decade that we're examining, homosexuals began to use every tactic. and avenue possible to further their cause—Hollywood, education, sports, music, finances, and especially the legal system. They lobbied for tighter laws, they pushed for the election of pro gay congressmen and judges, and they flooded the courts with lawsuits claiming discrimination.

All this set the nation on edge, and in the public arena, the perverted movement of homosexuality gained more and more momentum. Lawsuits on the lower level were bound to make their way eventually to the United States Supreme Court, and this came to a head in the year 2015. Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan had passed legislation defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman.

So the petitioners in the case that went to the United States Supreme Court were over a dozen same sex couples who claimed that these states had violated their Fourteenth Amendment right and in the end, in a 5-4 decision, the high court sided with the homosexual movement and struck down state laws defining marriage exclusively as a union of a male and a female.

The Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex and to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state.” This decision was like another Pearl Harbor or 9-11. It sent shockwaves around the country and throughout the world.

God-fearing people were outraged. Most of us remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard the news. Driving or working or walking or sitting at home. As Christians, we had spoken against this sin long before the legal aspect had been debated in public. But in the end, there was nothing more that we could do to stop it.

Once the dam broke with the legalization of same sex marriage, our nation was flooded with the gay agenda, and this has remained to this very day. The government stamp of approval also brought out other perverse elements of society into the public spotlight. The transgender lifestyle, which was once considered to be so shameful that it was rarely even mentioned, became the focus of national attention and legal proceedings.

After all, the transgender crowd argued that if homosexuals and lesbians have rights, so do we. So, as a result, laws and public perceptions of this perverse behavior began to change, and God fearing people had to stand up to this moral insanity. Television shows promoted it. Drag queens—men dressed up like women—went to public libraries to read stories to children about fairness and tolerance.

School textbooks continued to try to erase the line between males and females. The unisex, or no sex, or no gender or every gender is equal mentality had engulfed the nation, and anyone who dared to stand against the homosexual agenda was attacked, legally as well as verbally. In 2015, for instance, a Kentucky woman who served as a court clerk refused to issue a marriage license to two men after the United States Supreme Court decision. She was arrested and put in jail, yes, in the United States of America.

The puzzling thing about the victories of the gay and lesbian community is that they were and still are a small minority of the population. Estimates vary, but those estimates are that persons who are other than heterosexual make up anywhere from say 2-3 percent to maybe 5-7 percent of the population.

But even then, a high figure still means a minority. So how did this small group of people get their way? There are several factors that we might suggest. First of all, they are oftentimes relentless in their sin. Like the men of Sodom, who were about to break into Lot's house before the angels intervened, gay and lesbian activists, driven by lust and rage, will stop at nothing to vent their vile passions.

Another possibility is that they have friends in high places, and not just friends, but participants in government, in the media, and in Hollywood—people who are sodomites and lesbians themselves. Another suggestion is that they have successfully used propaganda mantras like being equal and pseudo-spiritual blame games about judging others as a means of weakening social aversion to this behavior.

But still it seems incredible that such a small part of the population could revolutionize society like they have. But consider this. This moral landslide didn't begin with the public condoning homosexuality. It started decades ago, just as we have seen. It began when the public began to weaken its conviction about sex between a man and a woman before or outside of marriage.

Movies and magazines began to mold public sentiment in the 1930s and 1940s, gradually. And sometimes quickly, people looked at adultery and fornication as common. as normal and eventually acceptable or at least tolerable. This loose attitude toward the sanctity of sex in marriage became worse in the 60s and the 70s.

But this pattern was bound to get worse and it did. How could people who condoned fornication and adultery condemn homosexuality? How could they call the gay lifestyle a sin when so many of them were guilty of adultery? They didn't want anyone telling them that they were wrong. They didn't want to be judged.

They wanted others to excuse their sin and accept them. And that's what happened to a significant degree. Americans shut their eyes to the evil of heterosexual sex outside of marriage. Tolerating homosexuality was just the next step, even if the majority of people were not homosexuals. Many of the heterosexual population had something in common with the homosexual population, and that is that they were both guilty of sin before God.

And they didn't want anybody making them feel ashamed. So they began to defend the homosexual lifestyle. In reality, they were and are defending their own behavior, a mindset of free and open sex. So this movement that culminated in the legalization of same sex marriage in 2015 had been in the making for a long time.

And what we see in the decades prior to this decade was a gradual weakening of the national conscience. But there was also a weakening of religious conviction on this issue in these decades, especially beginning in about the year 1990 and leading up to this decade of 2010 to 2020 where it became increasingly noticeable.

What we witnessed in the years of 2010 to 2020 was the end result of vicious propaganda, persistent indoctrination, and ruthless manipulation designed to erase the line between males and females and destroy the family, the unit that has come to be called the nuclear family. And it would be hard to overstate how thoroughly this assault has been leveled at our culture.

We've talked about the unisex or the no sex agenda going back into the 1940s and 1950s. This movement has infiltrated and now shapes policies and attitudes in business, education, sports, entertainment, and especially government. But the gender neutral debate has been around for decades also in religion.

It has affected Bible translations, which now use the word inclusive. Many of these translators go out of their way to eliminate any kind of masculine reference in the Bible. Some remove words like he and him, and replace them with words like they and them. Some versions even go so far as to call God our father and mother instead of our heavenly Father.

The simple truth of the matter is is that theological education and scholarship have been pressured to accommodate the broader cultural trend toward inclusivism. And, of course, the more noticeable manifestation of the feminist agenda in religion is the emergence of female elders and deacons and preachers in a growing number of churches.

And the Bible is clear that a deacon or an elder must be the husband of one wife [First Timothy chapter 3 verse 2 and verse 12]. And that clearly excludes women from being in these church offices. Also, First Timothy chapter 2 verse 12 says a woman is not permitted to teach or have authority over the man and that definitely prohibits women from being preachers. So as far as the Bible is concerned, and that's all that matters as far as God is concerned, and as far as we as Christians should be concerned, that is all that matters anyway. The role of males and females in the church as well as the home is settled regardless of what happens in a culture.

Still, the war against the sexes and the home has caused chaos in a once united and stable society. The result of this rejection of God given roles of men and women, and the fundamental importance of marriage and child rearing, is anarchy in society, and this is the inevitable consequence of leaving God.

Once people turn from God, there are no rules except the ones that they make, which are then broken and discarded to make way for more rules. The direction is inevitable. Every man does what is right in his own eyes [Judges 21 verse 25] and people will turn against each other, and the nation will self destruct.

This is not only the pattern in the book of Judges, but also throughout the whole Old Testament and throughout history. And this is why we have seen such a complete turning upside down of American culture in this decade. Every man's hand is against his neighbor, and every man's hand is against him. In God's judgment upon Judah in Isaiah chapter 3 verse 5, one of the consequences is the people will be “oppressed, every one by another and every one by his neighbor.”

But no matter how closely we followed and studied these trends in the decades leading up to the year 2020, nothing could have prepared us for what happened in that year. Not since the Civil War have we seen such division in our land. And for what? We had experienced new diseases before. We accepted the reality of risk, and even the fact that people die from communicable diseases.

We had lived through the Spanish Flu, the Hong Kong Flu, AIDS, SARS, Swine Flu, and many other illnesses. So even though COVID 19 was and still is a serious disease, We began to treat it unlike any other disease we had ever known. Why? Because of politics and the media, both mainstream and social. This health issue divided friends, families, communities, states, churches, the whole nation, and the world itself.

It was almost like a trance or hypnotic state had come over the otherwise sensible people in America and throughout the world. And perhaps it was a divinely sent a “spirit of deep sleep” poured out by God to punish people like Isaiah described in Judah in Isaiah chapter 29 verse 10. Oh, their free will was still present, but sometimes God punishes people when he sees that they will not correct their ways and he allows them to go even further in their sin.

So, as a result, the values of people were turned completely upside down as the prophet also described in Isaiah chapter 29 verse 16. Instead of valuing their spiritual life first, many showed that their number one priority was their physical life. Anyone who might be suspected of having a new so-called deadly disease was seen as a traitor or an enemy when appearing in public.

The level of fear and anxiety which was fueled by incessant media propaganda bordered on something from the Twilight Zone. In the end, the virus caused sickness and took lives, but the flu also took thousands of lives at the same time. However, the stigma had already been attached to the new virus, and that was all that mattered to many people.

Then came the protest and the riots in the year 2020 and the insane cry to defund the police. It had become clear that we had entered a civil war. Major U. S. cities like Seattle, Portland, and New York and Chicago began to implode. Now, my claim is not that this assault on the home, and especially the attempt to erase the line between males and females, was the only factor in producing this anarchy.

Clearly, there were powerful political forces in conflict who were using the virus and the protests to intimidate, enrage, and divide the nation. But this could not have happened if our homes had been strong. The only way Satan was able to divide and conquer was because there had been a prior destabilization of American society leading up to 2020.

The timing was perfect for the devil to unleash an all out war on the world as a whole and America in particular. And the consequences of the turmoil of 2020 will be felt and will be talked about and written about for generations to come. So where does all this leave us? How can we as Christians go forward in an ever-changing world, especially one that's going farther in the wrong direction?

How can we keep our faith and our sanity in an upside down world? How can we have any sense of peace and joy? Well, here are some teachings of God in the Scriptures that are especially important as we move forward. Some of these we've looked at, and some of them will be in addition to what we've already studied.

First of all, we've seen that nothing is new. Ecclesiastes chapter 1 verse 9: “That which has been is what will be. That which is done is what will be done.” Amen. “And there's nothing new under the sun.”

The Bible also says that God knows the future. God knows the future of individuals, and He knows the future of nations.He already knows about the rise and the fall of future nations. The Bible says in Isaiah chapter 46, verse 9: “Remember the former things of old, for I am God. And there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure.”

In Daniel 4 verse 17, the Bible says, “This decision is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the Holy Ones, in order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomsoever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men.”

It's also very important for us to remember that though nations rise and nations fall and God already perceives that, God's kingdom, the church, will live forever. The Bible says in Daniel chapter 2 verse 44: “And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed. And the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever.”

We also need to remember that life is full of hardships. In Job 14 verse 1, the Bible says that “man that is born of a woman is a few days and full of trouble.” In Acts 14, verse 22, Paul said that we “must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.” But the Bible shows at the same time, that if we have faith in God, we can endure. In John 16, 33, Jesus said, “In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world.”

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