Dante said there is a special place reserved in hell for those who do nothing in a time of moral crisis. No doubt we are in the midst of a time of profound moral crisis. Much if what our society sees as morally acceptable today would make the citizens of Sodom blush with embarrassment.

Not only are people doing nothing themselves, they go a step further by advocating that others do nothing as well. I find it has become increasingly problematic to make any moral stand without getting my email inbox filled with hate mail.

A big source of this problem is that many preachers have become engaged in a bidding war over who can give the cheapest assessment of sin. You turn the TV on typical Sunday morning, and all you hear is the “love gospel” that is devoid of any moral responsibility. This type of guidance can only lead to destruction.

“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Prov. 16:25).

The Bible
The only source of lasting truth is the Bible. Any rules that man makes are subject to change and revision. The Good Book is the only way for us to know where we stand in God’s eyes.

The Bible played an essential role in the creation of the United States, and it continues to provide the moral compass for our nation. As Andrew Jackson was dying, he looked at the family Bible and said to his doctor, “That book, Sir, is the rock on which our Republic rests.”

Satan is mounting a furious attack on the validity of the Bible. He wants to cut people off from the very source with which they could truly understand the great plan and purpose their Creator is working out here on earth.

It is easy to find fault in the Scriptures. The Bible does not hide the moral failings of biblical characters. As much as people like to criticize the Bible, they are unable to find a better guide. Most critics would have us be a law unto ourselves.

“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16).

People Who Deserve a Special Place in Hell
Hell was originally created as a place of judgment for Satan and those who followed him in their rebellion against God. The Bible says, “And the devil who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and false prophet are. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever” (Revelation 20:10).

Someone once said, “If there isn’t place called hell, God needs to create one for the evil people who deserve to be sent to such a place.” Here are just a few examples of some people who have proven themselves worthy of such a dire punishment.

Dateline: Mobile , Alabama. A father was charged with capital murder in the deaths of FOUR of his children. Police said Lam Luong tossed his children, aged 3, 2, 1 and four months old, off a tall Mobile bridge after an argument with his wife. Luong later recanted his confession but he also reportedly told his family he did it because he wanted to be more famous than the 9-11 hijackers.

Dateline: Mason , Ohio. Another father, another four children found dead, this time in their own home. Michael Veillette was charged with murdering his wife and four small children – and with aggravated arson after setting fire to his two-story house. His wife was 33 years old. His children were 8-year old Marguarite, 4-year old Vincent, and 3-year old twins Jacob and Mia. What prompted the massacre was not clear. The father will surely be punished, but that won’t bring back those four innocent souls.

Dateline: Austria. A 73-year-old man held his daughter captive in his cellar as a sex slave for the past two decades and fathered at least six children with her. The woman, identified as 42-year-old Elisabeth F., has been missing since 1984 when she was 18 years old. The situation came to light when the mother smuggled out a note with one of her children.

Judgment Delayed
Many groups stand against putting to death people judged to have committed certain extremely heinous crimes. They have been so successful in gumming up the judicial process, someone who has committed mass murder has a greater chance of dying from natural causes than from capital punishment.

It is a good question: Why do liberal groups spend so much energy defending people who are sick, pathetic, deranged, psychopathic, and cold-blooded killers. The most common answer is that they are defending their civil rights against the possibility they may be innocent. This theory falls apart when you have people who have overwhelming evidence against them or have confessed of their crime, and yet, liberals still seek to get them off.

I think the real factor at work here is man’s rejection of his own sin disposition. Having to admit a fellow human is capable of being a monster proves that they share the same corrupt nature.

People don’t want to judge criminals because it reminds them of their own fate. The unwillingness to condemn evil makes us co-conspirators to their crimes.

“Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them” (Rom. 1:32).

In recent years, I’ve seen the use of some of the most outlandish excuses for why death row inmates should not be put to death. First the electric chair was deemed to be too cruel. I can’t imagine someone with a sudden burst of 50,000 volts going through his body is going to yell, “Ouch!” Then lethal injection was attacked as a potential source of pain. I don’t know how there is room for debate when one of the two drugs being administered places the person into a deep coma.

For the sake of full disclosure, capital punishment does create all manner of pain. It has nothing to do with the method of death. Everyone who dies in a lost state is subject to extreme agony that begins at his or her demise and lasts for all eternity.

In the Middle Ages, authorities chose to burn particularly evil people alive in order to prepare them for the fires they would be confronted with on the other side. When you think of it, this sort of send-off does make better sense than our attempt to provide a trivial moment of relief.

Avoiding the Fires of Hell
Most people in America believe in hell, but few of them view it as a personal threat. Judging by how casually some celebrities talk about this place, one can tell there is a desperate need for greater understanding.

Billionaire Ted Turner has a long history of venting his rejection of the Christian faith. He once boldly said, “I look forward to going to hell because I sure deserve it.”

Comedian and blabbermouth Kathy Griffin, in her fittingly named ‘Straight to Hell’ comedy special, talked about how she was certain that she will be one of the damned. “Oh I know I’m going to hell. I’ve got a hand basket all picked out. So don’t bother e-mailing me to tell me I’m going to hell,” she proudly proclaimed. Griffin then told her audience that they were going there too.

There is nothing trivial or funny about being eternally damned. Anyone speaking lightly of this horrible place will received a rude awakening. Jesus saw it as so vital to avoid hell the He offered some rather drastic advice:

“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast [it] from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not [that] thy whole body should be cast into hell” (Matt. 5:29).

Many times in personal conversation, I’ve used an analogy to explain why Christian groups are losing the culture war against sin. I found it to be such a helpful analogy, I decided to turn it into an article.

In case you don’t know, an analogy is a similarity between like features of two things, on which a comparison may be based–for example, the analogy between the heart and a pump; the rotation of electrons around an atom and the obit of planets around the sun.

The analogy I will focus on here is the observation of how rust devoured my 1986 Pontiac Sunbird and how sin in the same manner has encroached upon our society.

My Sunbird Loses Its Shine
In 1987, right before I left home to report for duty at Offutt Air Force Base, I purchased a one-year-old Pontiac Sunbird. It was dark blue, and at $6,000, it was the one of cheapest cars that General Motors produced. I drove this car for 13 years.

As a basic airman, I lived on base at Dyess Hall and parked my car right next to the dorms. Because the Sunbird was exposed to the full elements, I took special care to regularly wash and wax my car. A friend told me that it’s important to control rust because the engine will likely outlast the body of any new car.

I drove the vehicle for a few years without noticing any signs of corrosion. After about three years, I spotted a few scratches on the car. To remove them, I went to an auto store and bought a small bottle of touch-up paint. It worked perfectly on the dings.

I had to repeat the touch-up about once every year. The normal time for this would be after each winter, which is the hardest time on a car with all the prolonged wet weather and the sand and salt used on the roads.

With each passing year, I noticed the paint chips and rust would appear at a quicker pace and greater in size. At one point, I was no longer just doing touch-ups. I had to scrape big bubbles of rust from the car in order to apply the paint.

Eventually, the rust became so widespread that I had to buy a can of spray paint and apply paint to whole areas of the car. I even tried rubber cement to keep moisture at bay.

At the very end of my struggle, I reached what could call the point of futility. The rust started appearing everywhere. To make any progress, I would have bathe the whole car in paint, and somehow the rust would continue to form under the new layers of paint. In some spots, the rust had eaten holes in the doors’ panel and underside. I finally had to sell the car as junk.

I later realized what had happened. The physical and chemical structure of the original paint and metal had slowly succumbed to the law of entropy. The paint developed tiny cracks over time that allowed moisture to seep in. The metal had corroded, making it impossible to form a lasting bond with any new paint.

An Example Of Moral Decay
To get a good clear comparison of sin, I chose the trend toward the normalization of homosexuality. Because it was an unmentionable sin for hundreds of years, I thought I’d skip over the rust-free years by starting at the point where the corrosion process began to kick in.

The first Western nation to end executions for sodomy was the Netherlands in 1803, and in England followed shortly afterward, in 1835.

On August 29, 1867, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs was the first self-proclaimed homosexual to speak publicly in defense of homosexuality when he pleaded at the Congress of German Jurists in Munich for a resolution urging the repeal of anti-homosexual laws. He was shouted down.

In the late 1800’s, several authors dared to publish books that challenged the view that homosexuality was abnormal. A couple of these books were Sir Richard Francis Burton’s Terminal Essay and Sexual Inversion by Havelock Ellis.

The next step in the acceptance of homosexual acts was its decriminalization in many Western nations. In 1933, Denmark was once again the leader. Sweden followed in 1944, the United Kingdom in 1967, and Canada in 1969. In the U.S., states had jurisdiction over sodomy laws. They began appealing them in 1961 with Illinois.

Another major move came in 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, thus negating its previous definition of homosexuality as a clinical mental disorder.

In the 1970s, several cities passed ruling that prohibited discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.

In 1980s, there was an explosion of gay-friendly rulings. In 1982 alone, gay rights legislation was passed in seven states – California, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin. Many celebrities came out of the closet with little impact on their careers.

In the 1990s, gay political issues become issues of national political significance. Among them: gays in the military, gay marriage, adoption of children by gays, extension of employment discrimination protection to gays and lesbians, and extension of hate crimes to include crimes against gays and lesbians.

In the 21st century, homosexuals have overcome most obstacles. Gay marriage is frequently in the news because it is about the only taboo left to conquer.

It is truly amazing that the gay rights move has been able to make steady progress the past 30 years in the face of the AIDS / HIV crisis. Despite overwhelming evidence of this deadly disease’s direct connection to homosexual acts, the sin of sodomy has become accepted as normal behavior.

The Comparison
The lesson from my Sunbird and the sin analogy is that any sin involves a step-by-step process toward a greater level of wickedness. The most disturbing factor is the understanding that we should do something early because there is a point where immorality can achieve an unstoppable level of momentum, which is the key point of my analogy. I’ve listed the stages below for better perspective of how sin progresses.

1. Easy To Manage
In this first stage, there is limited problem with sin. Anyone committing an immoral act does it in secret, and anyone found to be an offender suffers severe social or legal punishment. The moral authorities receive little opposition. The lack of preventive measures is the main cause for us shifting out of this stage.

2. The Battle Phase
This is the longest stage, where there is a continuous culture war in society. The forces of virtue repeatedly win, but with each battle, ground is lost to the enemy. The rust of sin is easy to strip away, but it progressively takes less time to reappear. You eventually reach the point where moral authorities have greater difficultly with each battle in rallying the public to stand against depravity.

3. Out Of Control
This is the shortest stage, where sin advances on all fronts. Just like with my old car, a point is reached where there is no will to continue the battle. This is where the church develops cocoon mentality and many of the former watchdogs become part of the problem. This could also be defined as the stage where we simply lose the ability to say “no.”

“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say ‘no’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age … (Titus 2:11-12).

4. The Point Of Futility
The last stage is when civilization reaches the point where all hope for reform is lost. Christians who complain about immorality are seen as the offending party. The roles are now reversed, with the moralists becoming the ones who now have to act in secret.

Is There Hope?
It is anyone’s guess as to which of the two final stages we are in. We are clearly at a juncture where it would take extreme measures change our course. When sin becomes part of the DNA of society, we need total reform of the social structure to restore biblical values. There are a certain number of people who will never change their views. They become permanent obstacles to any effort at redemption.

The Bible warns that there will come a point where man is hopeless and is doomed to suffer judgment. The story of Jonah and the city of Nineveh would seem tell us that no society is beyond hope, but God has already given up on society on two occasions: the world that existed before Noah’s flood and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed with fire. Bible prophecy warns us there will be a third time when futility will reign supreme.

If we are in the hopeless stage, the best thing for true Christians to do is save as much of a remnant as possible. An end-time believer should know that
witnessing is his main priority.

Everything in this world needs to be forsaken because is contaminated with sin. When the Chernobyl nuclear plant suffered the worst accident in history, the surrounding city of Prypiat had to be abandoned. Because deadly radiation had crept into nearly everything, there was nothing that people could retrieve. The city that once had a population of 50,000 prior to the accident looked like the rapture had taken place.

In the end, Jesus is the only hope for salvation. It always amazes me when people die lost. God could put a point of futility warning light on their forehead and people would still ignore it. I ask everyone reading this article to consider the hour and make Christ your Savior today.