commentary: What's in the Bucket? (Part Four)


John W. Ritenbaugh (1932-2023)
Given 22-Jun-19; Sermon #1494c; 12 minutes

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I believe that this will be the last of my "bucket" series of commentaries. I think you can see by now in my recent commentaries, if I give you the proper directions, the "bucket" is representing the world with its bad mixture of immoral social behaviors from which our carnal natures can draw inspiration to copy from this huge variety of anti-God bad behaviors.

The term "world" is used in a wide variety of ways within the scriptures, and one must not hurry past the term when one comes upon it because the apostles, especially, use the term in a wide variety of ways, beyond the prophets' usages in the Old Testament. Sometimes "world" simply means that which Jesus created, meaning the physical earth. Or, it might also refer to what we might more frequently term "the universe," thus indicating the entire system of planets, stars and the space that they are created within.

In the Old Testament, "world" is contrasted frequently with "heaven" on the one hand and "earth" on the other. In the New Testament, Greek influences are frequently used, and "world" frequently is understood within a context as an ordered system containing people. It is very, very frequently, very definitely, as an enemy to God, Jesus Christ and Christians.

This has a logical reason. It's because it's a reality, and it's a reality because that is the way that Jesus viewed it. He came to earth from a world of absolute moral and spiritual purity to this world, and strongly taught against the immorality of the citizens of planet Earth. He taught the apostles that we must fight against the behaviors of the citizens of planet Earth, not allowing them, with all our being, to gain a foothold in our character. We are commanded in I John 2:15 by the apostle John not to love the world, neither the things of the world. If a fairly strong inclination exists in a son of God to copy what the world lures one to frequently copy, then John declares that the love of God is not in that person.

In one place in Scripture, Satan is referred to as the prince of this world, and thus he is clearly defined as its leader. In fact, in I John 5:19 it is clearly stated that the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. The Bible adds in Revelation 12:9 that he's deceived the citizens of the whole world, that is, this earthly system, by means of his lies, strewn, as it were, into the hearts of its citizens. Thus, they follow those lies as their way of life, virtually oblivious of the true God and His way of life.

I said "virtually" because God gives His reply in Romans 1. He, even with His most merciful judgment, declares mankind as guilty and without excuse because there exists plenty of available factual truth that can be used to amplify God's existence and His way of life. Since it is impossible for God to lie, this means that until God calls us and almost forcibly reveals Himself, we have all stood within the same circle as the enslaved captives that Satan still stands before as their prince.

My point, I believe, is very clear. Do not drink from that bucket. It's contents are poisonous, despite its readily apparent attractiveness to our carnal senses.

I'm going to give you now an example from the world of abortion. Abortion has been sold to Americans as an easy and fairly inexpensive solution to the possibility of an unwanted pregnancy. People of the black race have, percentage-wise, taken advantage of it at a higher rate than others. It's not because they are black, but because of social, economic, family and religious factors that almost seem to force them into that choice to get out from under the pressures of an unwanted pregnancy.

See if you can answer this question: Do you know who the founder of the Planned Parenthood organization is? It's a woman—it was Margaret Sanger. Margaret Sanger hated black people. She made little effort to hide her disdain. She considered them an inferior race of people, but brethren, they are not. But the Planned Parenthood organization makes efforts to hide and deny its original purposes. Whether they like it or not, it comes through to those who know who the founder was, because the demon who heads these things in the world is kept from hiding himself by the God of creation, so that people can know the original intent of this organization.

Are you aware that Planned Parenthood kills more black babies in just one day than all the police forces nationwide in the United States killed in one year? The annual death rate from police killings of black men—usually men—is around 258.

Let's add another telling statistic to this. There are close the 45,750,000 black citizens in the United States of America. Those 258 black men killed by police equal to one six-millionth of one percent of the total black population. That's 0.000006.

Let's make another comparison. I want you to know that I'm not playing a numbers game with statistics here. Planned Parenthood aborts close to 2700 babies a day. All races—2700. People, especially whites, are catching on, and the total aborted is actually dropping. Now, 35% of that 2700 babies are blacks. That 35% equals 900 black babies that die every day—compare that to 258 in an entire year of black men—killed in the Planned Parenthood death camps. That figure, multiplied by 360 days a year, gives a total of 340,200 black babies who lived but were murdered and never really saw the light of day.

What's in the bucket?

Remembering the subheading of the Book of Ecclesiastes that I taught you, that Solomon is silently telling us that it seems on the surface of life that "vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Yet do not allow yourself to be foolish, because the reality is that everything matters. That's what Solomon is really saying: Everything matters.

A reality happening to the black citizens of the United States of America is the combination of black men killing each other, higher disease rates and abortion, and the black population in America has virtually stopped growing. It's reached that point where it's going to begin diminishing. It's just happening all over the country. But when you put all the stats together, it becomes mind-numbing. You can be sure when that poor gal goes into a Planned Parenthood to abort her baby, she's not thinking about that at all, but she's drinking the effect of the water that was in the bucket.

JWR/aws/dcg

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