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Tract Number 356
Audio download at bottom of page
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AMERICA IS LAUGHING
Its Self to Death!
WHAT’S SO FUNNY?
Courtesy is given to Edgar M. Arendall, in Bible Crusaders News for portions of this article. We have added some comment on the subject.
“Let your laughter be turned to mourning” (James 4:9). “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful” (Proverbs 14: 13).
Anything for a laugh. In the newspaper the comic strips, on television, and radio and movies, hundreds of people work to make programs to entertain and produce laughs. It’s a laughing world.
Everywhere you go, bill-boards blur out the words, “Hilarious . . . funniest comedy of the year.” Entertainers seem to think and feel that if America would only collapse in a paroxysm of mirth, all our problems would be solved. But, frankly, I see American ideas and heritages dying before our eyes. I believe America is laughing herself right into hell.
At a Washington cocktail party, some top government officials stand in the corner, glasses in hand, “giggling and laughing” planning defense strategy. Around them, partly drowning their conversation, is the hollow laughter of men and the shrill cackling of sophisticates. One tells of having lost his shirt at the race track. He makes it sound funny and all his listeners laugh.
In a big city night club a half-nude woman comes out upon the stage, goes through some contortions and tells a filthy story. What happens?—wild and raucous laughter rocks the room.
“Whether we believe it or not, or whether we admit it, or not, America finds sin hilariously funny. It is something to laugh at. It is sanctioned by a funny joke and a laughing audience. It may be amusing to some, but it is a sad story to others.
We are not the first nation that is guilty of such action. The king of Babylon made a feast for thousands of his lords. They drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver, and the handwriting came upon the wall. It was their doom. (Daniel 5).
Rome did the same. In her heathen methods of persecution of Christians, the Romans conducted a hilarious episode, and Nero fiddled while the city burned. France followed suit and the moral decay became a cancer. She reaped what she sowed. And now America laughs at sin, and Mr. Arendall says, “I can see the handwriting on the wall.”
Life is a serious thing. It should be a matter of deep concern. This does not mean that we are to be confined without an expression of joy and happiness, because we now know that “happy is the people, whose God is the Lord.” Real happiness is of the Lord.
All around us, and everywhere we go, there seems to be an absolute absence of heartfelt sorrow for sin. America needs a godly sorrow that leadeth to repentance, a turning away from sin, if we are to survive as a nation. “A nation that forgets God shall perish.”
Statistics show crime on the increase, tragedies of every nature, sin on the rampage, and yet America is trying to drown her woes by laughing it off. By drinking, gambling, and evil practices of a wicked life.
May America turn back to God! Unless we do, we will reap the harvest of a wicked career. Like the nations of old, we will go down, unless we get to God!
G. W. Pendleton
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