Why These Prophetically Significant Trends Should Alarm the Church
It is hard for me to realize, but I was born during the transition from the “Greatest Generation” to the post-World War II “Baby-Boomer Generation.” This statistical grouping is designated roughly as those born after the end of WW II (1945) and before the assassination of President Kennedy (1963). Along with more than 76 million others, I am a Baby Boomer!
In those supposedly “peaceful” years of the early Boomer Generation, post-war families were started and the economy expanded to meet the demands of these demographic developments worldwide. Men and women still made public declarations of love and commitment to each other for life-long relationships and to joyfully have and nurture children in the ways of the Lord.
Today, many slow-to-mature millennials (born 1980-1994 and who may soon out-number the yet living adult Boomers) have become disillusioned with the political, cultural and climate changes around them. Some have become hardened pessimists and believe everything is bad and getting worse; bringing kids into this nightmarish world scape, they say, would be too expensive and tantamount to child abuse.
The practical and moral consequences of this kind of selfish thinking and private choices have contributed to the unprecedented worldwide trends of declining fertility and live births, not to mention the alarming rise of legal abortions and even euthanasia.
Democratic presidential candidates all affirm and promote abortion as a “right” and believe it should be part of women’s government-paid or subsidized health care coverages. Elizabeth Warren says abortion is “no different than having tonsils removed.”
So much for the sanctity of unborn human life.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democratic “Congress-person” from New York’s Staten Island, represents this selfish, humanist, and escapist thinking when she says: “The world is going to end in 12 years. If you have kids, it will end in probably like six years or something because they’ll just breathe more.”
A similar view is shared by a popular blogger, Marina Bridges, when she says: “The most progressive thing we can do is abort as many of the next generation as possible so they don’t have to be brought into this apocalyptic nightmare.”
Fertility rates now go up and down with short-term economic or social trends. For instance, in 2017 only 3.8 million babies were born in the United States. While that may sound substantial, it actually represents a drop in the U.S. fertility rate to only 1.76 births per woman—the lowest rate ever recorded in our country.
This is alarming because this birth rate is less than what is needed to maintain our population, provide for our national defense, and care for our aging population. The same issues grip the modern-day leaders of Europe and westernized Asian nations.
Our world is smitten with “self-love.” Narcissistic people simply choose to live for themselves. Single-member households are expanding (by choice or circumstance) faster than any other subgroup in our country–and many other westernized nations.
In the face of shrinking families and fertility, many feminists are angry at “evolution” for having given them child-bearing organs. They reject the wisdom of King Solomon when he said:
- “Look, children are a gift of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is a reward.
- As arrows in the hand of a mighty warrior, so are the children of one’s youth.
- Happy is the man who has his quiver full of them; he shall not be ashamed when he speaks with the enemies at the gate.” (Psalm 127:3-5 MEV)
A statistically small percentage of deceived individuals wish to become other than their God-given, biological reality and God-replacing educators and doctors are enabling them in their psychological and emotional dysfunction.
Consequences of these narcissistic “human choices” cannot be escaped. Paul warned:
“Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that will he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7 MEV)
Most self-declared “leftist and progressive” men and women refuse to worship our Creator nor prize our human progeny. The prophet Isaiah declared:
Have you not known? Have you not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, does not faint, nor is He weary? His understanding is inscrutable. (Isaiah 40:28 MEV).
God allows humans to make choices. We can choose good or evil and define morality as we wish. But God will have the last word on these “private choices.”
“They turned the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” (Romans 1:25 MEV)
Our Lord God, Creator and sustainer of heaven and earth, will intervene by future, end-times judgments, as the Bible clearly speaks. (For example, read 2 Peter 2:1–3:18.)
Peter declared that:
“The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trial, and to keep the unrighteous under punishment for the Day of Judgment, especially those who walk after the flesh in pursuit of unclean desires, and despise authority…they speak evil of things they do not understand, and in their corruption they will be destroyed” (2 Peter 2:9-12 MEV).
Unquestionably, these alarming trends, selfish motives, and demographic crises affecting families, fertility, and feminists are markers for the Biblical end times and are prophetically significant. Therefore, while we are waiting for our Lord’s prophetically promised return, let us “be diligent that you may be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless” (2 Peter 3:14 MEV)
“Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:20b MEV)
Ordained to the ministry in 1969, Gary Curtis is a graduate of LIFE Bible College at Los Angeles (soon to become Life Pacific University at San Dimas, California). He has taken graduate courses at Trinity College in Deerfield, Illinois, and Fuller Seminary in Pasadena, California. Gary served as part of the pastoral staff of The Church on The Way, the First Foursquare Church of Van Nuys, California, for 27 years (1988-2015); and served for the last 13 years as the vice president of Life on The Way Communications Inc., the church’s not-for-profit media outreach. Now retired, Gary and his wife have been married for 50 years and live in Southern California. They have two married daughters and five grandchildren.
