Without Excuse :: By Terry James

We think of the heathen of the world in terms of their knowing little to nothing about God’s truth regarding the only way to salvation. This brings to the lips of some the accusatory rant that God is unfair. They say He sends people who have never heard the gospel to eternal punishment.

But God’s Word says the following about those in even the darkest regions throughout human history:

“For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 

“Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things” (Romans 1:18-23). 

In other words, people have no excuse because God reveals to all, even if they live in uncivilized regions of the world and/or have a lack of information. God will never be unfair. All have enough inward information to know they need Him. When people instead carve out idols for themselves, they’re deliberately rejecting the God who plants in the people’s hearts the innate ability to know Him for their personal redemption.

The same is true of “civilized” heathen. I think of the Hollywood cabal who push God aside. They know Him, yet don’t know Him—that is, they don’t know Him as their Heavenly Father. They deliberately ignore and even, in some cases, cast Him and those who are Christians in derogatory roles.

Proof that they are made aware, however, comes through in the films they produce. We remember the Cecil B. DeMille movie, The Ten Commandments. It was quite accurate in its depiction of the Exodus account.

In Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War, the scriptwriters had American naval officer Victor “Pug” Henry say something like, “Mankind is destined to kill each other in war until the Second Coming of Christ.”

The Hollywood people are aware that this fictional statement has played out in fact since World War II, as murderous conflicts continue to this day. Killing in war is prophetically scheduled to become even more prolific as time moves forward toward Christ’s Second Advent. All of humanity’s interaction points starkly at Heaven’s foretold intervention into the affairs of humankind.

Hollywood was and is thoroughly aware of Jesus Christ and His coming again. They are without excuse.

No people on Earth are more under God’s assessment of being “without excuse” than the people of the United States.

There are churches on many corners of most cities. There are means of communication that pour out the gospel message every hour of every day. There are so many Bibles that it is the most published and sold volume ever in America and the world. Yet, it is probably one of the fewest read and studied.

But it isn’t only America that comes under God’s condemnation of being “without excuse.” Europe long ago shut down most of its churches. Many are merely now museums for tourists to photograph.

The results of this dismissal of Heaven’s authority are blatant in all the world, not just in our country. As pointed out in recent commentaries, Paul’s words tell of the foolhardiness and its results regarding people who turn their backs on the God who created them:

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient” (Romans 1:28).  

Can there be any argument of substance against the proof that the Creator has turned this generation of God-deniers over to a “reprobate mind”?

The things we have witnessed in recent years offer evidence that would convict in any sane court of justice.

Government and the ideological left claim everything we do must be to protect the most innocent—the children. Regulations of every sort—in food production, medicine, and other such things—are in large part for children. Proposed gun control is so that the children can live happily and, above all, live safe lives.

Yet that same government and leftist, hypocritical ideology declares it’s their right to slaughter babies by the millions while still in their mothers’ wombs.

This, folks, is what qualifies as a prime example of what the God of Heaven calls the “reprobate mind.”

And we could go on and on telling things like teaching kindergartners about adult sexual activity, about letting porn-star transvestites who commit the most disgusting acts in film come before children as young as five to teach them about their abominable lifestyles.

So, humankind is without excuseAnd all who do not know the Lord Jesus as Savior will suffer eternal condemnation because of their unbelief. Thus, “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful.”

You, I—we all are without excuse. We all must come to Christ, for He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No person comes to the Heavenly Father but by Him (John 14:6).

Here is how you can make sure you are not under the condemnation “without excuse”:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

Wtjames1@swbell.net

Heaven’s Motivation for Removal :: By Terry James

I’m again climbing upon my soapbox.

It has always puzzled me why many seminaries, even those I consider quite on the mark as far as being faithful to God’s Word, come down contrary to a particular truth I find in the Bible. I refer to the matter encompassed within the question…

Will children below the age of accountability go to Jesus when He calls the Church into the clouds of Glory at the Rapture?

Admittedly, I have believed the answer to this is “yes” ever since I was a child during Sunday school classes and sermons at Seventh Street Tabernacle in Pekin, Illinois. But I must say that the Holy Spirit has reinforced this truth within my own spirit since that time when, as a six-year-old, I came to know the Lord for salvation.

Objections to this belief are based on the charge that it was steeped within denominational indoctrination, not upon Holy Spirit direction, while I was a mere child. But now that I’m almost eighty-four years old, the belief is more deeply set within my spirit than ever. And the many years—particularly the last few—have been used by the Holy Spirit to make understandable why children below the age of accountability will indeed be swept up in that astonishing moment when Christ shouts for all believers of the Church Age, living and deceased, to join Him in the clouds of Glory.

Anyone who has watched the news videos and listened to the stories, if honest, will understand the abysmal treatment in these times of little ones—the suffering inflicted upon children. Children in the wombs of their mothers serve as a primary example of such treatment. In the US alone, more than one million babies are aborted each year. As a matter of fact, there has been an increase, not a decrease, in the number of abortions since Roe v. Wade was reversed a few years ago. More than half of the nation’s population apparently demand the “right to choose,” as the deceptive phrase would have it.

The spirits of each of these babies murdered in their mothers’ wombs have gone directly to God in Heaven. There, they will on one eternal day bear witness to God’s motivation for dealing with Earth’s inhabitants so direly in the Tribulation (Matthew 24:21).

The evil that’s been perpetrated against the most helpless among us, the children, will be one of the major reasons sinful humankind will suffer God’s righteous wrath in those twenty-one judgments we learn about in the book of Revelation.

Children will be born to those left behind after the Rapture, but every one of them, if they die during that awful period, will go directly to be with God and eternal bliss. This is because each one will be below the age of accountability for deciding whether to accept or reject Jesus for salvation.

The number of children who will enter the Millennium following Christ’s return in the Second Coming is a matter only the Lord can answer.

But I believe there will be little ones, and even babies in their mothers’ wombs, who will not die during that horrendous time, and who will go into that Kingdom. If those children do enter the thousand-year reign of Christ upon the earth, they will be subject to the Lord’s righteousness and will be taught absolute truth—all without the presence of Satan and his minions, who will be sealed up in the bottomless pit.

But I must get back to the perpetration of wickedness and evil against children. In America and the world currently, children are targeted for the most heinous acts against God’s natural order of creation. And those who claim Christianity as the reason for their anti-God activity are front and center in the reprobate evil. Here is proof of some of that anti-God perpetration, and it’s just a mild part of the wickedness assaulting the very young.

In yet another significant move to the theological left, America’s largest Presbyterian denomination voted decisively to endorse sex-change operations for minors. Critics called the move just the latest evidence the Presbyterian Church (USA) has truly “lost its compass.” In a 441-30 vote, PCUSA delegates passed GEN-02, ….

“Gender-affirming care,” the rationale reads, “is age-appropriate care that is medically necessary and evidence-based for the well-being of many transgender, nonbinary, and gender-expansive people who experience symptoms of gender dysphoria or distress that result from having one’s gender identity does not match their sex assigned at birth.”

It further argues that transgender-related procedures are “critical health services.” (“Blessing What God Calls Sin: American Denomination Endorses Sex-Change Procedures for Minors,” Harbinger’s Daily, Rapture Ready News, July 9, 2026)

Satan’s ongoing attack on humanity can’t be missed by folks who are truly attuned to God’s Word about why Heaven’s judgment and wrath are in fallen humankind’s future. I believe judgment and wrath might just be in the immediate future, my thinking based in part on the evil aimed at the youngest and most vulnerable among us.

God says one thing he hates among six others is hands that shed innocent blood (Proverbs 6:16–19). None are more innocent than the very young, who don’t yet understand that they need to come to God through His Son Jesus Christ. Their blood is being shed even as I write this. This, alone, is motivation enough for God to remove all below the age of accountability when Christ calls all believers home to Heaven.

When millions, even billions, disappear in the twinkling of an eye—including every child below the age of accountability and including babies just conceived and in the womb—God will make a mighty statement about when life begins. He will, in that monumental second, let the astonished world of unbelievers know His opinion of evil inflicted against the most innocent.

Imagine the terror-stricken people who witness this instantaneous removal! Most who are on earth now, of course, don’t think such a prophecy will ever happen. But God’s Holy Word says that it will—perhaps very soon, based on the many signals of the coming Tribulation era that are prevalent at this moment.

Here again is Paul’s prophecy about the Rapture:

“But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. 

“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

And here is how to be part of that removal—the Rapture of believers, when Christ shouts, “Come up here!”

“That if you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9-10).

Wtjames1@swbell.net