While driving along the road the other day, I passed a truck going in the opposite direction. The driver was towing a trailer with a load of heavy boards on it. It was obviously too heavy for the trailer because one of the wheels was broken at the axle, was bent at a 45 degree angle, and was chugging out blue smoke because of the friction with the road. It was obvious that the driver was completely unaware of what was going on, and I wish had been able to signal him, but he was already past me when I realized what I was looking at. When I came back that way a couple hours later, the truck and trailer were parked on the side of the road, wheel still hanging at an extreme angle, about 1 mile down from where I passed him.
He figured it out eventually, but it took a bit. Maybe someone signalled him or flagged him down before something caught on fire. Either way, he noticed and was able to stop before a worse disaster happened. This is similar to what is going on in people's souls today. Vast numbers of people are heading down the pathway of their lives, and are completely oblivious to the burden that they are carrying with them which will eventually lead to their destruction if they do not stop.
Will we be the ones who help them to see the danger they are in? Will we be the ones who bring them the gospel of God's redeeming grace so that they can stop and change the course of their lives? Scripture tells us that "whoever brings back a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). Paganism, heathenism, and secularism, have all shown themselves to be bankrupt systems of belief, and they are each quickly degenerating into chaos. The atheistic and humanistic perspective is reaching an end, and we are living in the days when it will collapse.
We can take advantage of this experience and be ready to step in the gap. This means, though, that we need to get ready now, and not just wait until the last minute. The Roman Catholic Church has a wealth of knowledge and guidance that can be provided to hurting and confused people, but we have to know what that truth is if we are going to disseminate it. Furthermore, we need to learn how to be winsome in the manner that we present it, or we will come across merely like one more self-centered cultist who wants to salve his conscience by bringing someone into his circle of misery.
The evil and hatred that is so prevalent in modern society cannot continue for long without destroying itself. Yet, who will step forward when it does collapse? Will it be the Catholics? If we do not get ourselves prepared to speak the truth, then it will not be us, but rather one more ungodly system based in the philosophy of the devil. Nature abhors a vacuum, and sometime soon there will be a vacuum that needs to be filled. We can fill it with truth, goodness, and beauty, or we can fill it with a new form of lies, evil, and ugliness (it has been done before, so it could happen again).
Even though I seem to write much about the problems in the modern world, I tend to be big on "hope". In other words, I really do have a strong hope in the reign of Christ in our behalf. That means that I have no doubt that Jesus will conquer all His enemies; maybe not in our day, but He will do so eventually. If we want to be able to reap the fruits of the Kingdom of God, then we need to be working right now to be a part of that. We will be rewarded if we remain faithful to the calling that each of us has received. It not only shows our willingness to serve, it also shows that we worship a sovereign Lord Who rules over all.
