Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands afar off; for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. So truth fails, and he who departs from evil makes himself a prey.
Isaiah 59:14-15
Truth is Fallen
A 2021 Gallup poll found that more than 18,000,000 adults in the United States identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or something other than heterosexual.[1] In 2019, 13.6% of Maine high school students identified as LGBTQ+.[2] In 2021, the percentage had surged to 29.3%.[3] In Washington state, parents will no longer be notified when minor children pursue abortion or surgery to alter their appearance.[4] So-called gender affirming surgeries, hormone treatments, and puberty blockers for children are increasing exponentially year over year.[5] Drag shows are held for children in libraries, churches, and schools. Public schools teach LGBTQ+ ideology and sexual activities as they do any other subject. Pride is promoted as love. Murder is called healthcare. Perversion is called good. Pure is called evil. Men are called women; women are called men. The Living God is not in our thoughts, almost everyone does what is right in his own eyes. Surely, we can say with the prophet Isaiah, “truth is fallen in the street.”
The wells of living water have been filled up with lies.[6] Will the faithful remnant dig again the wells and proclaim the Living Water that is freely offered to all?[7]
The first article addresses the fall of truth and the conflagration of sinful consequences. The second article calls the Christian to fight the good fight with the tried methods of the Lord for overcoming darkness and advancing the Kingdom of Grace.
How Has Truth Fallen?
The preacher looked around at the world and concluded, “that which has been is what will be, that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”[8] The sins in Solomon’s day were the same as the sins in Isaiah’s day. They were the same in the time of the Judges, the apostolic age, and the present. Making the Lord’s case against Judah, Isaiah highlighted three sins: Deceit; Murder; and Pride.[9]
Deceit
Satan the deceiver is a liar and the father of lies.[10] He leads many false prophets to bring false messages so that myths[11] are considered by the world to be reality. The ears of many are itching for fables. They hire for themselves teachers to turn them away from the truth.[12] The result is misery, sorrow, and death but is called progress, personal choice, and freedom. Peace, joy, and eternal life through Jesus Christ the Son is ridiculed as rubbish and worthless.
King Ahab went to his death following a false prophet with a lying spirit. Ahab was convinced that all would be well when in fact death awaited him as the prophet Micaiah warned.[13] False prophets in Judah challenged Jeremiah by constantly preaching, “Peace, peace!” But the reality was only war, death, and utter destruction just as Jeremiah warned. Only a small remnant of Judah survived the captivity, famine, sword, and pestilence.[14] The majority of the Jewish leaders in Jesus’s day denied that Jesus was the Christ and stirred up the people to shout, “Crucify Him.” The people crucified the very one who had healed their diseases, raised their dead, and preached to them the gospel of peace.[15] The same spirit of unbelief and deceit is seen throughout history. Myth, lies, and make-believe are propagated as truth.[16] Our family members, friends, neighbors, and colleagues are falling for myths. Are we telling them the truth?
Adolf Hitler claimed that with consistent propaganda people would embrace hell as if it were paradise and reject paradise as if it were hell.[17] After years of crushing defeats, round-the-clock bombing, hunger, loss, and daily tragedy, many Germans believed well into 1945 that Hitler would gain ultimate victory. It wasn’t until Allied armies came through their towns that many realized the truth. Though they had embraced the myth of German dominance and ultimate victory with religious zeal, they believed a lie.
As Judah followed the false prophets in Jeremiah’s day and Germany followed Hitler’s propaganda in the 1930s and 1940s, so it is happening again today to the same end. Following the father of lies into “strong delusions,”[18] the world has exchanged the truth for lies and lies for the truth. All the while the truth remains the truth and lies remain lies. The truth has fallen in the street. Who will lift it up again?
Murder – Abortion & Transgenderism
When truth falls, deceit rises, bloodshed and pride follow. God proclaimed through Jeremiah, “truth has perished and has been cut off from their mouth….they have built the high places of Tophet… to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire.”[19] Isaiah gave similar judgment and repeated the word of the Lord from Proverbs that the people had feet which ran to evil and made haste to shed innocent blood.[20]
We see a similar pattern in recent history. As truth fell, many false religions, philosophies, and ideologies filled the void. Bloodshed and widespread destruction followed. The ancient abortion religion returned to captivate the minds of those blinded by the sexual revolution and postmodernism. The aggregation of many lies resulted in the final solution to the baby question – the mass murder of countless innocent children.[21] Not finding satisfaction in the murder of more than 20% of the U.S. population before birth (and upwards of 40% worldwide), the abortion religion branched out into a new product line of destruction – transgenderism.
Until the early 1970s when the word “Transgender” first appeared, everybody knew the sex of the child just by looking. The midwife or doctor never “gave” or “assigned” gender but only recognized the reality of the way God made the child. Gender and sex are not formed or crafted by men but by God in the womb of the mother. That was and still is the truth.
As God gave scientists the ability to analyze chromosomes they discovered that God made males with “X” and “Y” chromosomes, while He made females with two “X” chromosomes. More obvious differences exist externally. Women are more beautiful than men. Men are generally stronger than women. Women can carry children in their wombs. Women give birth. Men are not given wombs. Men do not give birth.
In 2021 a woman showed me a picture of a supposedly pregnant man. Upon investigation it turned out to be a pregnant woman pretending to be a man. The woman in the picture needed to hear the truth of sin and the Savior of sinners lest she perish in her unbelief. Changing an appearance did not make the woman a man or mean men are suddenly getting pregnant and giving birth. The idea that men get pregnant and give birth is absurd by the testimony of Scripture, experience, history, and common sense. However, as Dr. Erwin Lutzer recently noted, absurdity used to be an argument against something, but today absurdity is an argument for something.
The world works tirelessly to unhitch gender and sex from reality and from each other. The once reputable Cambridge Dictionary now defines “Transgenderism” as “The fact of not having your gender match the body you were born with.”[22] Planned Parenthood defines “Transgender” in this way. “Transgender means your gender identity is different from the gender that the doctor gave you when you were born based on the way your body looked.”[23] Yale University takes as a given that gender identity in the mind can differ from physical gender identity as created by God.[24]
The dictionary, Planned Parenthood, and leading universities state as fact the false feelings that gender can be changed by an individual from the body and sex that God gave at conception. Nancy Pearcey and others have highlighted the construction of a false separation from mind and body. It has similarities to Gnosticism and the rejection or subservient place of the material world (the body) from the spiritual world (the mind or soul).[25]
Based on the false feelings of the transgender, horrific acts of brutality are carried out on the body through surgeries and medication. Healthy body parts are surgically cut off. Through hormone treatments and puberty blockers moods are altered, bones stop growing properly, and other mental and physical sorrows multiply. All this is done to try and conform the body to a false idea in the mind. Destruction always comes from the fall of truth and the ascent of lies. Is it any wonder that Planned Parenthood as the leading proponent of abortion is a leading proponent of transgenderism?
Even after all these horrific procedures are carried out, the man who does everything he can to look, appear, and sound like a woman is in fact still a man. He can cut off parts of his body, alter his voice, dress in women’s clothing, and go to women’s restrooms, but the fact remains that the man is still a man. He cannot change the way God made him. The man and woman pretending to be the opposite sex are not becoming the opposite sex. They are merely acting like the opposite sex. It is not real, it is not fact, it is make-believe, pretend, an act. The cost is high in this life. The cost is higher in the life to come.
God said that He “created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”[26] Further, “He created them male and female, and blessed them and called them Mankind in the day they were created.”[27]
While the world rejoices at the murder of a child and weeps at the death of a cat, the truth of the Lord and the reality of the world that He made remains. The transgender is acting like the opposite gender.[28] No matter how many sources propagate myths, acting and pretending do not change the myths into reality. The truth is fallen. Who will lift it up again?
Pride
300 years ago Matthew Henry gave this epithet to truth from Isaiah 59:14: “and there she may lie to be trampled upon by every foot of pride, and she has never a friend that will lend a hand to help her up; yea, truth fails in common conversation, and in dealings between man and man, so that one knows not whom to believe nor whom to trust.”[29] As truth falls, the deceitfulness of pride rises.
The problem with pretending or acting to be the sex you are not is that God calls it an abomination – sin. The Lord said in Deuteronomy 22:5, “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment, for all who do so are an abomination to the Lord your God.”
When God looked at the creation He had made, He said, it was “very good.”[30] A man acting like a woman is at least saying to God, “Why have you made me like this?”[31] But the complaint goes further – the person is saying to God, “You have made a mistake and I must fix it.” In other words, the individual is setting himself above and against God and His Word. The word for this in Scripture is pride.
The nation of Babylon manifested its pride in the same way as pride is manifested today. Isaiah brought an indictment from the Lord on the nation of Babylon for they had said in their hearts, “I am, and there is no one else besides me.”[32] The Babylonians made themselves out to be God using His covenant name to describe themselves.[33] The same sin of Babylon displays itself today in abortion, transgenderism, and the pride movement.
The pride religion aggregates lies concerning morality and natural affections with the result of debauchery, self-inflicted sickness, and destruction. The first chapter of Romans summarizes in this way, “God gave them over to a debased mind…”[34] While many millions plan to march for pride in the month of June, God’s word stands firm declaring, “Pride goes before destruction.”[35]
Pride is here. Destruction is coming. Truth has fallen in the streets. Who will lift it up again?
The Intersection of Sin
Why do pride flags fly at abortion clinics and homosexuals volunteer for abortion causes? Why does Planned Parenthood march at Pride parades?[36] Why are symbols of the occult often at both pride and abortion venues? Why do abortion clinics promote transgenderism?
Chuck and Donna McIlhenny experienced all these intersections as the conflagration of sin raged in 1980s and 1990s San Francisco. The McIlhenny’s noted that, “abortion is inextricably linked to the promotion of homosexuality [because] both of these movements are engaged in activities that never bring life, but always result in physical and spiritual death.”[37] Today you can drive by abortion clinics around the country and see these sins together.
Most people would agree that an anorexic person concerned about being overweight while dying of starvation is terribly mistaken and delusional. The person needs to be warned, guided, and shown the truth or perish. Nevertheless, politicians, schools, corporations, and churches are calling men “women” and women “men,” and the people are perishing.[38]
The consequences of the sins of transgenderism, abortion, and pride are many. 40% of those given to the sin of transgenderism attempt suicide. The suicide rate among transgender youth is higher than 40%. Meanwhile the youth are the demographic singled out most energetically to embrace the transgenderism perversion.[39] More than 1,000,000 children will be murdered this year in the womb. Countless numbers will contract and spread HIV and other STDs. Those are just the physical consequences. The spiritual consequence for the one who dies retaining his sin is Hell. Unless the sinner repents and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, he will not inherit the kingdom of God. He will close his eyes in this world and open them in the place of fire and torment.
The truth has fallen in the street. Who will raise it up again?
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Next: Part 2 – Truth Is Lifted Up: Pride, Lies, and Transgenderism
[1] https://www.themainewire.com/2023/02/maine-lgbt-gender-ideology-transgender-lgbt-doe-education-schools/
[2] https://www.maine.gov/miyhs/sites/default/files/2021-01/2019MIYHSLGBTInfographic_0.pdf
[3] https://www.themainewire.com/2023/02/maine-lgbt-gender-ideology-transgender-lgbt-doe-education-schools/
[4] https://senatedemocrats.wa.gov/liias/2023/04/13/legislation-to-protect-trans-youth-seeking-lifesaving-care-passes-the-house/
[5] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
[6] Genesis 26:15-18
[7] See Martin Lloyd Jones – Sermons on Revival largely based on Genesis 26:15-18 https://www.mljtrust.org/sermons/revival/ – Jesus Christ and His gospel is the Living Water. See also John 4:10-14 and John 7:37-38.
[8] Ecclesiastes 1:9
[9] “For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue has muttered persist… Their feet run to evil and make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity… (Isaiah 59:3,7).
[10] “Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said to the woman, “Has God indeed said, ‘You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”… “Then the serpent said to the woman, ‘You will not surely die…” Genesis 3:1-7 “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.” John 8:44
[11] In these articles, myth is defined as: “A commonly believed but false idea.” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/myth
[12] 2 Timothy 4:3-4
[13] See I Kings 22, especially verses 19-28.
[14] There is a further example of this with the prophet Hananiah in Jeremiah 27-29.
[15] John 23:24-30; Acts 2:36.
[16] Without any evidence, observation, or replication, all public schools and nearly all colleges and universities teach the myth and theory of evolution as scientific fact while dismissing the fact Scripture and God’s Creation as myth.
[17] Gross, Bertram, 2016. Friendly Fascism: The Face of Power in America. P. 259
[18] 2 Thessalonians 2:12
[19] Jeremiah 7:28,31.
[20] See Proverbs 6: 17 and Isaiah 59:7.
[21] Lies of the abortion religion include but are not limited to “the fetus is not a baby,” “the child is just a clump of cells,” “the child has no intrinsic value before it can care for itself,” “the woman’s decision about her child is always the right decision,” “abortion is a human right.”
[22] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/transgenderism
[23] https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/gender-identity/transgender
[24] https://medicine.yale.edu/news-article/what-do-we-mean-by-sex-and-gender/
[25] Pearcey, Nancy, 2018. Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality.
[26] Genesis 1:27
[27] Genesis 5:2
[28] The better word than “transgender” is “transvestite.” No matter the number of surgeries, blockers, or hormones, the woman is still only dressing as a man and the man as a woman. It is make believe and not real. While no offense with terminology is meant, transgender has the suggestion of the possibility of an individual crossing genders. The crossing of genders is impossible. Transvestite refers primarily to acting as the opposite gender and is the better word of the two.
[29] Matthew Henry, Commentary on Isaiah 59:14-15.
[30] Genesis 1:31
[31] Romans 9:20
[32] Isaiah 47:8 – See also the pride of Babylon expressed in Isaiah 13:19, Jeremiah 50:29-32, Daniel 4:37, and Daniel 6:27.
[33] When God met Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, God told Moses in 3:13-15 to tell the people, “I AM WHO I AM… I AM has sent me to you…” God went on to say, “This is My name forever, and this is My memorial to all generations.” “I AM” is the Covenant name of God referred to most often as “LORD” in English translations, and it is the name, “Jehovah” or “Yahweh.” The meaning is, “the self-existent God” or “the God who is there.” Jesus referred to Himself as “I AM” on several occasions including John 8:58 and John 14:6. The Jews recognized immediately that Jesus was making Himself out to be Jehovah in the flesh, the I AM who I AM and they desired to kill Him rather than worship Him. As the name that is above every name, “I AM,” can never be applied to a created being or nation – it is Almighty God’s name alone. When in blasphemy it is applied to an individual or nation, it is an attempt to usurp the place of God. For these reasons, it was the height of pride and unbelief for the Babylonians to use this name for themselves.
[34] Romans 1:28
[35] Psalm 101:5; Proverbs 6:16-17; 8:13; 11:2; 16:18; 29:23; Jeremiah 13:15-16; Mark 7:21-23; I John 2:16-17 McIlheney, Chuck & Donna, 1993. When the Wicked Seize a City. The authors note multiple occasions where lead figures in the Gay Pride Parades in San Francisco, CA in the 1970s and 1980s died within weeks, months, or years of AIDS.
[36] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/06/26/us/abortion-roe-wade-supreme-court
[37] McIlheney, Chuck & Donna, 1993. When the Wicked Seize a City. P. 146.
[38] Isaiah 5:20
[39] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32345113/
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Truth Is Lifted Up: Pride, Lies, and Transgenderism (Part 2) – Like The Great Mountains · May 10, 2023 at 3:48 am
[…] Part 1 we considered the downfall of truth as demonstrated in popular lies. We proceed in Part 2 to […]