Q. How can we determine the spirituality of a people by looking at their culture? What actually is a culture, and how should we, as New Covenant Christians, interact with the culture we live in?

Culture is that which remains when we forget everything that we learn, even as character is what remains when we forget all the deeds we did. Culture is the collective character or personality of a nation, what remains when it has forgotten everything that it learned. Culture is constantly changing. It is never static. Though some elements from old times may remain longer than others, they too pass away.

Today the majority of Norwegian citizens do not question the right of the individual to have free sex. A man can run around and have sex with as many other men or women as he wants to, and nobody, with the exception of the minority conservative Christians, bats an eyelid. Fifty years ago it was very different indeed. In this case society has forgotten what it has unlearned, namely, God's Law. What remains -- the culture of today -- may be said to have devolved spiritually.

Culture changes in slow, gradual increments. Homosexuality, for example, came only to be accepted very slowly to the point where the state now recognises homosexual civil "marriages". Culture is therefore rather like a slowly moving glacier, silently yet powerfully eroding away the rock of God's Law which lies beneath it.

Modern western culture is full of contradictions. Culture has become a relativistic pot pourri. In kindergarten small children are taught special creation. As they grow older, they are taught evolution -- two mutually contradictory explanations of the origin of life. Modern culture is a mishmash of almost everything but so long as minority interests are accepted by the culture people aren't too interested in getting a complete picture of the resultant culture.

Our modern culture is the product of forgetfulness -- forgetfulness of God's Word. Other cultures, which have had no exposure to God's Word at all, are simply products of ignorance. Some cultures are totally steered by astrology, animism and other superstitions, imprisoning millions of souls.

Occultists teach, as do most Christians, unfortunately, that we should live within the parameters established by culture and tradition. And it is here that New Covenant Christians take exception for we do not believe that we should bow to the demands of culture and tradition. We believe in bowing only to God's Word. Not unsurprisingly, this has made us unpopular, because culture, being the slow creature resistant to change that it is, resents alternative lifestyles, for it seeks to bind and make all citizens yield to its sleepy grip.

Not all traditions are bad, of course. Some, which are observed once a year, are good and ought to be observed daily. Armies have often declared an armistice on Christmas day -- how much better, though, would it be to have a permanent armistice and sue for peace! However, even these glimpses of hope are all too rapidly vanishing, and good traditions have been exploited by malicious enemies. The Japanese, knowing that Americans went to Church on Sunday and were more relaxed on that day, decided to attack Pearl Harbour early on a Sunday morning when people slept in. Israel's enemies in recent times attacked that nation on Yom Kippur, one of its holiest days, when everybody (including soldiers) would be holding religious observances. In ancient China an army would never attack an opponent before that opponent was ready. Not so today.

Every value and standard of righteousness is being eroded and absorbed into modern cultures. The culture permeates everything -- TV, cinema, radio, newspapers, magazines, and the way people are. This is not a culture for Christians to grow up in without being swallowed up. Therefore an alternative culture is desperately needed. And that is what the New Covenant aims to provide. But it will take time, as history has taught us. The victorious Allies tried to expunge nazism from Germany after the defeat of the Third Reich but an entire generation had been infected by it. Only now, 50 years on, has any real progress been made, yet neo-nazism is on the rise everywhere. Similarly, communism in Russia will take a full 50 years to expunge, though I doubt it ever will be. Though nazism may have largely been forgotten, it is still in the culture, as communism is today. The whole kaleidoscope of immorality, which has been seeping into society since the end of the First World War (and especially since the Second), will take generations to expunge should a Nuremberg-type immorality tribunal decide to follow that path. But it won't. We know it won't, because prophecy has told us so.

Modern culture is now beyond recovery -- it has crossed the line which would permit a 180 degree turn. The world, and all its cultures, is ripening in iniquity. It is beyond redemption by human agency. Only direct intervention by God with the Second Coming of Christ can restore the true, Christian culture. The price will be great -- the death of over one third of all humanity and massive destruction everywhere. Only in the 12 firstborn colonies of the New Covenant Church of God will small islands of peace and prosperity be immune from the tribulation that will occur. Building them is this Church's highest priority. Like a small cache of gold saved up for times of economic difficulty, so these colonies will contain the spiritual gold of the humanity -- Christians living the alternative culture -- the Millennial Culture that is to come.

Why drown in the prevailing Babylonian cultures of the world? Why not prepare to gather up to Zion instead by making your spiritual ship ready? Join the New Covenant Church of God and make preparations for your call to the world's last cities of refuge.

This page was created on 8 May 1998 Last updated on 8 May 1998

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