September 15, 2013

Proverbs 23:10-11 — Remove not the old landmark; and enter not into the fields of the fatherless: For their redeemer is mighty; he shall plead their cause with thee.

Naples doesn’t have many amazing things for kids, so I was saddened the other day when a little amusement park just over the road from us closed. King Richard’s wasn’t a lot, perhaps — Mini golf, a few rides, batting cages, games, alligators, some food choice. Perhaps it was down-at-heel, not glamorous, but it was well-loved. It is, I understand, to be replaced by another automobile dealership. And so it goes on. The ancient landmarks that lend character to our neighborhoods, and the habitats of Florida’s unique wildlife, give way to an anonymous landscape of commercial plasticity and cookie-cutter gated communities.
I have seen a similar erosion in our cultural and social landscape. There was a time when speech and thought patterns, in the home and the school room, in politics and even entertainment, were informed by Biblical knowledge. It is so no longer. It is no secret that there has been a well-orchestrated campaign to drive God’s Word out of schools and public life, to make a mockery of it in public entertainment and to create a cookie-cutter speech and thought landscape of commercial plasticity!
I love what the great Dr. Ironside has to say on this subject:

In this dispensation of grace the portion of the people of God is heavenly, not earthly. Their inheritance is in the precious truth which He has committed to us. To remove the landmarks—the great distinguishing doctrines of Scripture—will be to incur the divine displeasure. Yet, alas, this is the wretched business in which many learned doctors and wiseacres are engaged to-day.

When it comes to the passing on of Biblical truth, so many of our children are effectively fatherless, Spiritual orphans, with none diligently to teach them the words that God has commanded.
The Lord says that those who overrun the land of the fatherless will find that they will, indeed have a Father to deal with — the mightiest of kinsmen redeemers — The Lord Himself! So it will be in the world of beliefs and ideas. They who seek to replace God’s word with lies and trivia will find that they are faced with a power greater than they can conceive of.
If like me, you are saddened by the seeming moving of the old landmarks, take heart. The Lord is at hand!