Seven Threats of Our Time

God is the one who has not only created man both male and female in the image of God. But He then created an entire universe as well as human beings and living creatures in systems. For human beings we call those [systems] Social Order or social systems.

So all of this social order that God has designed is important for us to understand, because it is that design that we need to continually move towards. That’s the benchmark for how we [should] live our lives.

Well, in each of those social spheres, those social systems, carry the notion of Authority, submission, and roles associated with who you are in that social order. But there are limits upon that authority, that submission as well those roles according to God’s word.

So, Del believes there are six social institutions that God has created for man, yea seven, the last [institution] is about the prime social system and that is God Himself. He is the God who is socially complex. He is the triune, [three in one], God. And it should not surprise us, therefore, that the triune God, who is socially complex, created a universe of systems. Of diverse pieces and parts that all work together for some higher good.

And so, in studying the scripture, these are the six that, I believe, God has instituted: The Family, State, Church, (the sphere of) Labor (,we would understand as business), (the social order of) God & Man ([which is] our relationship to God, and there are clear biblical expressions of the authority in that social system. The submission and roles that we play), (and then the final one is the sphere of) Community (, that is, how we are supposed to be engaging our neighbor).

So this leads us up to

[in] that it appears that God has created, equipped, empowered and then He delegates authority and responsibilities to His creatures to operate within those social systems so that even the smallest creature might flourish and bear fruit. And that fruit brings glory to God.

down to the lowest level so that the smallest creature might flourish and bring Him glory;

Satan consolidates power at the top, increasingly enslaving people, making them dependent and destroying their desire and incentives to be fruitful.

God creates His creatures, He then equips them, empowers them and then He delegates authority to them down to the smallest creature, so that the smallest creature might flourish and bring forth fruit. And that fruit brings glory to God.

Satan consolidates power at the top making them dependent and destroying their fruitfulness. Satan hates the glory of God and this is one of the prime ways in which he attempts to destroy the glory of God by destroying the fruitfulness of creatures. And he has done that often times through the consolidation of power.

from the stand point of what happens when we are obedient to that, when we reject that, and the consequences associated with that. So, in order to do that we’ll look at

require us to then talk about the design for the church. So, God has designed the church, if we look at the new covenant, where Christ is head of the church, there are leaders, we read about this in Ephesians 4 and other places in the scripture that talk about how this institution is designed. The saints are to be submissive to the leaders, but they are to be submissive to Christ, the leaders are submissive to Christ. And this leads us then, [to] the term, "sphere sovereignty." This is a term that was coined by Abraham Kuyper, but it is a good term for us, because I believe the scripture does, indeed, teach that when God created these institutions, he created them with a great deal of sovereignty. Not a sovereignty over God, but a sovereignty associated with the role and purposes that God made for them.

So that the church was not to superimpose its authority over the State and the State was not to superimpose its authority over the church. They were to operate properly, under God’s design, under the sovereign delegation of authority that God had given to them.

So, in the first case, you recall

We looked at the State and the Church. There is the sphere of the family. The sphere of labor, God & Man, and Community.

So here we have an example of what happens when the king, who is supposed to be subject to God and to rule in the way that God has caused him to rule and has given him authority to rule, he is to punish evil and to condone what is good. And that’s not, evil in what the king thinks is evil, not good in what the king thinks is good, because the king can begin to think that what is good, is what’s good for the king, rather than, goodness associated with the absolute truth of God.

And so, under that design, [in an ideal world], things should work well. And each one of these spheres is really (from Del’s-perspective) is built in order to ensure the fruitfulness of the members.

So the Family is there to raise children, to ensure so that they are raised as noble men and virtuous women and that they flourish in their life.

The sphere of Labor is to take the largess [the generous gifts] that God has given us and to enlarge the pie, to plant seeds and reap a hundred fold.

The church, the leaders job as you read in Ephesians four is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

The king is to punish evil and to condone what is good so that citizens are free in their property rights, they are free to be able to flourish.

So all of these systems are to ensure the fruitfulness, the flourishing, of God’s creatures.

What happens is the king begins to act, the government begins to act, as if God does not exist. Of course, God does exist, but if the king, the government, begins to act as if God is not there or if [God] is just given a little bit of acknowledgement, here on the side, and so forth. The king has to do that, he has to get rid of God in order for him to begin to usurp and grow the power beyond what God has given him.

And so, Statism is what occurs when the state then begins to pull each of these sovereign institutions underneath its authority and power and increasingly begins to reign over those institutions. To a large extent, unfortunately, this is what’s happening in our culture. There is an increasingly powerful state, primarily at the Federal level, but also at the state level, that has assumed authority. Authority over labor, authority [over] the church, what he can’t say, what he can say, that you can meet, that you can’t meet. Authority over the family and so forth.

So, this is what happens when the state begins to assume more and more power and then goes beyond its bounds. And again, I wish that God would sometimes strike with leprosy or put people out in a pasture eating grass like a cow. But the dustbin of history is littered with nation-states that have gone this route and have eventually collapsed. Primarily, because the fruitfulness of the people has been destroyed. And as that fruit begins to whither, the state itself becomes more desperate to try and grab on to more and more of our declining resources and it becomes a death spiral. And so, it’s tossed eventually into the dustbin of history as another failed nation-state.

That is why, of course, many people are warning, that what is happening here, in this culture is a result of that [Statism].

That brings to mind, again to me, having done a great deal of study on the founding era, how that founding generation were so wise.

And I’ll be honest with you, twenty years ago I would never believed that the sphere of Labor would have arisen to be a horn of power, but it has. And most of you are probably familiar with what is happening. If you look simply at things like social media and other kinds of internet platforms. Many people’s businesses are now tied directly to that technology and other technologies. Well, what has happened is, that those major technological businesses, corporations, multinational corporations, have begun to assume a new worldview. We’re going to talk about that next time, the next threat (The Rise of a Demonic Worldview). And I wondered whether I should do that first or second, but this is the right way, I think. So there is a new worldview that has assumed [authority] within our culture, at the elite level. And so, what has happened is, we find these major large technological multinational corporations are now imposing that worldview in such a way that you have probably heard, that if you do not walk according to that worldview then you are going to be hindered in your online presence. We’ve felt that here, I’ve felt that, we’ve seen that as we have been denied services as a result of our stand, which has not been (thoroughly) a stand that has been dramatic, but it’s sufficient enough for us to be labeled as hostile and to be limited in what we can do.

So the sphere of Labor has become an extremely powerful horn in this beast that we’ve never really seen in the past. There have been sometimes in early America where there have been the railroad barons and those things where you see part of that begin to arise. But nothing like [what] we see today. And that is because of the ubiquitousness (present, appearing, or found everywhere) of the technology and how that technology has now become increasingly necessary for people to do business. So the sphere of Labor is now exercising extreme authority and with a contrary worldview that can mean that people can be canceled. They can be shut down and so forth and you’ve heard of those things.

So these five horns that [are] in the middle…​ (Entertainment, Science, Media, Medicine, Academia) are technically, from my perspective, a part of this sphere of Labor. In other words, they operate under the design and the scripture for a sphere of Labor. But they’ve become so powerful in our culture today that I wanted to call them out. Because each of them, in its own way, is a horn of increasing power.

[On the end of the five, you have] Academia, my guess is that most of you understand how powerful Academia has become in our culture today. If you do not understand this then I’m sorry to say you are ignorant about what is coming out of our schools. Even grade school, up through high school and our universities. This new worldview is being taught with a vengeance, and the product that comes out of those academic institutions in many, many cases is carrying that worldview. Academia holds a huge sway within our culture.

On the other side [is] Entertainment. No one in the history of man, I think, could ever have even begun to think of how a song could become so powerful. Or a movie could become so powerful. Of course, we didn’t know what movies were. Entertainment was done, maybe, once a year when the traveling troupes came through town and you went to watch somebody perform a play or something like that. Now, entertainment is THE ubiquitous thing and the stats are that teenagers spend nine hours a day in screen time. Primarily that screen time is entertainment. It is watching videos, it’s all kinds of sports and all kinds of things. And it’s not just through phones, it’s TV, all of those ways that we entertain ourselves. In fact, we will, in one of the threats, we will talk about how we have become addicted to entertainment. That entertainment today carries this new worldview. You will not see a biblical worldview portrayed, well, in any way positive through the entertainment that comes to us through every quarter of our lives today.

The three in the middle, (Science, Media, Medicine), we’ll talk first about the Media. The media, of course, is also ubiquitous today because of technology. The news that you hear and read about, your understanding of what’s really going on, is going to be basically formed and molded by what the media tells you and me. No one could have ever have guessed that anything like this [that the media would become so powerful] would have ever happened. There was a time where the most ubiquitous media was the newspaper. The newspaper that was printed locally, you could go down and talk to the newspaper folk(s). If you didn’t agree with what they were doing [you could] talk about it, chat about it, and so forth. It was primarily the local newspaper. Before that it was just maybe a courier or messenger that would arrive by horseback or so forth. And now media is delivered to us instantaneously. We can all watch an event together or there are millions of people that are listening to a commentator who is telling you what’s happening. It is an extremely powerful, powerful horn in our culture today and it can sway people.

The other two horns are (Science & Medicine), there are some other horns that possible we could put here, but I thought I’d put these here to talk about maybe something that’s even more current for us to understand. I guarantee you that nobody five years ago would have said that medicine is a very powerful force in our culture today. But it is! It’s extremely powerful, as we have seen over the last few years [with the influence it’s had on policies throughout the pandemic]. That is also coupled with the notion of science. There are major worldwide policies that are being enacted as a result of science, I’m fighting for the right word to say without causing a lot of people to be upset, scientific theories and hypotheses, we’ll put it that way, that have been bought, such that, major, major policies are being enacted as a result of these things. And we’ve also seen that referred to, in terms of medicine & science, in terms of what we’ve just been through as well.

So these are the seven horns that in our day and in our time have arisen, have aligned themselves together. Each one of these has a powerful influence over the people in our culture today. And we as believers need to understand that not only, so that we can act with wisdom toward outsiders and others, but also for us to be wise to recognize and understand that these things [these horns] can mold us into the world’s form [ie their view].

And we have been warned about that, have we not? In Romans chapter 12, do NOT be CONFORMED, do not be squeezed into the world’s mold. Well, let me tell you, here are seven squeezers that are attempting to squeeze us into its mold and to have a power and control and sway over our lives.

Ok, so then, let me move to this next [idea — actually a slide] and superimpose what we were talking about last time [, malevolent compassion]. But this to me is a very interesting thing to ponder and to think about, that as we see in the imagery in Revelation, it’s a strange imagery and it’s hard to really understand, but the scripture talks about a harlot. A feminine imagery that’s riding on top of this beast with seven horns. Well, in our day, the way I am looking at this today, is that we have here today, and this is what we talked about the last time, this is not, again, a dissing thing about the women, about their femininity. God designed them to be feminine, to lead with grace and compassion, but He also designed them for that grace and compassion to be bridled truth and wisdom and righteousness. When that is unbridled, we talked about earlier [tonight], we end up with a malevolent compassion. And in my mind [today], right or wrong, I’ll pass it on to you, that this has become the prime ethic in our culture today. The prime ethic.

Everything is weighted against this malevolent compassion. And I would [say to you, that virtually] all the policies that are passed, the governor of Colorado just passed yesterday (2022) one of the most onerous abortion bills ever passed in this culture, and some even think that this bill is going to allow for infanticide, but if you read about it and you read the way that it was presented and those that are promoting it and so forth, it was constantly promoted under the guise of compassion.

All of the policies that we, I wrote about this in terms of what was happening, for example in California, the rise of crime, we talked about what was causing the rise of crime and the policies that are being passed, for example, to exempt anything under $1,000 dollars as a misdemeanor. And so, therefore, people can walk in, ride a bike in to a Walgreens and start pulling off expensive drugs and ride out with a security guard watching them. Because it’s simply a misdemeanor. So this drives almost everything that we’ve seen happening today. It’s behind everything you see about trying to implement a different worldview around human sexuality. Everything, listen to it, watch it, everything is under the appeal to this prime ethic of compassion, but it’s a malevolent compassion. In my mind as I borrow the imageries from the book of Revelation, this is the harlot that sits on top of each one of these [seven horns]. So that malevolent compassion, that notion of compassion driving everything, you’ll see it in everyone of these horns of power. It drives everyone of these horns. All you have to do is think about it and watch for it and you will see it.

Ok, so this is the point at which we drop back and say…​ "Listen, listen"