A Sign of the Last Days: Offense
“And then many will be offended, will betray one another, and will hate one another.” (Matthew 24:10)
In a passage entitled “The Signs of the Times of the End of the Age” in the NKJV, Jesus states that “many will be offended.” And if you live just a little, if you listen to the news and keep up with social media, then you know that this is practically an everyday occurrence. We are living in a day where people are perpetually offended. You might as well say that the mere fact that you breathe offends someone. On the surface this seems a bit frivolous and less concerning than some of the others signs Jesus mentions, but is it really?
Privileged Victims
In a recent article published in The Atlantic entitled “The New Intolerance of Student Activism: A fight over Halloween costumes at Yale has devolved into an effort to censor dissenting views,” students very literally lose their mind over what they perceive as a life-altering offense concerning Halloween costumes.
Just let that sink in. A well-intentioned administrator married to the Yale Simillion college master sent out an email basically telling the students that she, in fact, cannot tell them what not to wear for Halloween sent those little privileged kids into hysterics. Hysterics that caused them to fail at Ivy College life by “not going to class...not doing their homework...losing sleep...skipping meals, and...having breakdowns.”
ARE.YOU.KIDDING.ME???
These kids were so traumatized by something they perceived as a threat to their privileged late teen, early twentysomething existence that they fell to openly disrespecting, hysterically screaming at, and cursing out their college master. “Don’t believe me? Just watch.” *Language*
I agree with the author of the piece who closed it out by saying:
These students were offended by one person’s words, and were free to offer their own words in turn. That wasn’t enough for them, so they spat on different people who listened to those words and called one minority student a traitor to his race. In their muddled ideology, the Yale activists had to destroy the safe space to save it.
OFFENSE.
Senseless, baseless, mindless, mob-driven offense. It’s taking over our high school and college campuses like a crippling disease. And these, as Whitney sang, are “our future.” God help us!! But the mentality of perpetual offense does not stop there. Oh no. These privileged “Yalies” had to get it from somewhere: their parents, their educators, and society at large who promote existence over merit, mediocrity over excellence, and group-think over decent common sense.
She Get It from Her Mama
TheBlaze blogger, Matt Walsh, one of my favourites of all time, recently wrote a brilliant satire about the current disease of “offensomania.” In his piece entitled “Dear Walmart, Someone Insulted Me in One of Your Stores. Your CEO Must Now Resign,” he states:
It all started in the parking lot of my local Walmart. I was walking from my car to the store, minding my own business, when suddenly another customer, a man, walked up and accosted me. I should pause here and apologize to the transgender, agender, nongender, pangender, bigender, trigender, and quasigender communities if they feel offended or victimized because I’m labeling this individual a man. To be honest, he never mentioned his gender identity, and I would be the last person to ever assume anything about anyone. But in this case I feel comfortable guessing that the entity in question was a man because, in my experience, only cisgender white Christian Republican middle class heterosexual men are ever guilty of doing anything wrong. Anyway, I don’t really believe in labels, except for the five or six labels I just used in the previous sentence.
So, back to the incident. The man came alongside me, out of nowhere and without invitation, and immediately started sharing opinions with me. They were bad opinions. Opinions I didn’t like. Opinions that were different and confusing and scary. Opinions that shouldn’t exist. Opinions that made me feel delegimitized and otherized and vaporized. Literally vaporized. The opinions were like a death ray that zapped me and reduced me to ash and rubble.
Somehow, in the midst of this barrage, I was able to let out a desperate shriek. “STOP,” I yelled. “STOP. DEAR GOD. STOP.” He looked at me and even his look was offensive because I could tell in his head he was still thinking opinions that weren’t my opinions. “HOW DARE YOU DEVALUE MY LIFE EXPERIENCES,” I shouted.
He told me he had no idea what that meant. I could tell he’d never been to college. I put up my hands – just like they teach us in college – and started screaming “SAFE SPACE, SAFE SPACE, I’M IN MY SAFE SPACE” over and over again.
I thought that was the end of it. They told me in college nobody is allowed to think differently, and if anyone ever does think differently, all I need to do is run to my safe space. Everyone has to respect my safe space, which isn’t to be confused with my healing space, although my healing space must also be respected.
But these defenses were useless against the man. He only upped the ante. He insulted me. INSULTED ME. Do you understand what I’m saying to you? He formed words with his lips and ejected sounds from his throat and those sounds came out in the form of insults. He called me names. All kinds of names. All kinds of terrible, awful names. I’d repeat them here but I fear it would only cause others to experience the trauma I am now suffering.
PLEASE read the full article, it’s SO worth it, I promise and if you don’t LOL, it’s because you’re crying because you know how true this really is for many educated idiots.
#SorryNotSorry
OFFENSE.
We can’t get away from it. My spiritual father always says that “Offense is a sign of immaturity.” He often states this in a spiritual context, but I would apply it to common-sensical contexts as well. Sadly though, common sense is not a flower that grows in everyone’s garden. In fact, most people rarely even own gardens, much less tend them.
We are seeing a group of young and should-be seasoned adults who are children, dare I say, toddlers trapped in an adult’s body. They are vastly immature. But you can’t tell them that because it would offend them. And you can’t tell them the things they get offended over are not worthy getting offended over because they would get offended all over again. And you can’t show them how to think differently because--you guessed it--that too would offend them. Again, if you breathe, you will offend someone. And yet this problem goes deeper still…
Bringing It to the End Times
This utterly apparent lack of common-sensical and spiritual maturity is a well played plot of the enemy. “How?” you might ask. Because in a nation and world of perpetual offense, of strategic people in high places “suffering” offense, of grassroots and student movements being triggered by the “trauma” of offense, the path to the AntiChrist is made straight.
Whoa, there Desiree! Aren’t you getting a little conspiracy-driven? A little off your rocker? A little off the deepend? Can’t people just be offended for the sake of being offended?
On a mass, hysterical, pandemical level? I think not.
And yes, I just made up the word “pandemical.”
Again, Jesus identified mass offense as a sign of the last days, as a sign of perilous times. And He sandwiches the statement right between Matthew 24:9 which states “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and kill you, and you will be hated by all nations for My name’s sake,” and verses 11-12 which states, “Then many false prophets will rise up and deceive many. And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold.” This is the evidence that the god of this world, the spirit of the Age, is working and working well, far, and wide, because Satan knows his time is short. In the Book of Revelation it says:
“Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time.” (Revelation 12:12)
And while this speaks of the Tribulation, I believe that we are seeing measures of this now. Satan doesn’t know when Jesus is coming back, but he knows that he is coming back! That means that all of those who belong to Christ will be “caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air,” (I Thess. 4:17). So if Satan can deceive the masses and “even the elect” (Matt. 24:24), then he can prevent all of those souls from going to Heaven.
Jesus ain’t coming back for a bitter, offended, resentful Bride! He’s coming back for a Bride without spot, pure (Eph. 5:27) because it is only those with pure hands and a clean--unoffended--heart who can see the Lord (Psalm 24:3-4)! We must rid the offenses from our hearts.
Offended by Christ
I believe, in the mass sense, the spirit of offense is the path to the AntiChrist because it is inextricably connected to intolerance. And who is the biggest target of liberal intolerance? Christianity. Not the namby-pamby, pansies who just play at being Christians, but the hard-core, uncompromising, Bible-believing, Christ-serving, self-denying Christians. And yet, in this offensive intolerance, we ourselves are being accused of intolerance because we refuse to bend to the spiritually, emotionally, and mentally unstable voice of the offended masses.
Those who have the image of a white, Hippie Jesus or Santa Clause in the Sky have no clue who the real Jesus, the real God, actually is. And thus, in the name of this false Christ, they wage war--first verbal, then social, then eventually literal--against true Christianity, true Christians, and the true Christ. But is this really shocking? Because Jesus warned us that “yes, the time is coming that whoever kills you will think that he offers God service,” (John 16:2).
These people think they are doing themselves, the world, and whoever and whatever they deem to be “god” a favour when they attack and declare Twitter of physical war on Christians and Christianity.
In fact, when you listen to many groups such as atheists, many of them would LOVE to do away with Christians all together. New Agers believe that the earth will take care of itself by eradicating those who are a threat to the evolution of the human consciousness and only after this happens, will we as a race be able to evolve, reaching our full potential. And this is the faulty excuse many of them will give after the Rapture takes place.
They want us gone. We offend them. Our God offends them. His Word offends them. Thus they think the world would be better off without us.
When bad things happen, God gets the blame. They cherry-pick a Bible they don’t even believe in by an Author they don’t even know to try and crucify us with certain infamous passages, all the while not understanding that the Word of God is not inconsistent and that you can read words all you want to, but without knowing the Author, it won’t mean much. If a Christian displays or makes a stand for their faith, they cry that they are being attacked because they don’t want to be subject to that “offensive” Christianity. Heaven forbid they gain a sense of morality in an age of moral relativity.
They forget that even all religion aside, part of being a mature adult means that you do not throw tantrums like a toddler and act out like a teenager when you don’t get your way or hear something you don’t like. They forget that having free will and [in America] constitutional rights guarantees the protection of individuals to act in a way that just may not be pleasing to and or supportive of them and their way of life--and you know what? That’s okay.
But many of them were raised to be spoiled by their parents. They were never chastised (and thus, not loved properly by their parents) for their wrongdoings. They were given awards for simply showing up instead of actually earning them by merit. They were taught they could invoke the law of the land in the office and marketplace when something happened that threatened their limited “safe place.” They want positions without experience. They want handouts without understanding they’re not free. They want the title without the responsibility. They want to make poor spiritual and life decisions without having to pay the cost for them in this life or the next. In short, they were taught they can eat their cake and have it too, without any of the calories that inevitably come with the cake. But curses be upon your head if you dare to remind them of those darn calories!!
It’d be laughable if it weren’t so serious.
Everyone gets offended at one point or another, EVERYONE. That is not the problem. Jesus said, “It is impossible that no offenses should come...” (Luke 17:1) Offenses coming is not the problem. The problem comes in when you hold on to the thought; when you keep it, nurse and nurture it, and incubate it in your heart and mind. We are commanded to bring EVERY thought captive to the obedience of [the word of] Christ (II Cor. 10:5), offenses included. The problem comes when you go on the warpath because you’re too spiritually, emotionally, and mentally immature to handle real life and everything that comes with it. How can we expect to lead the world and build a healthy future if we can’t even control our own emotions? The answer: we can’t.
God help us all.
