The thing that makes the world fall apart and civil society disintegrate is the loss of love. Fear and suspicion of other human beings spawns hate and sends love away. Jesus taught us to love all, including enemies. The more we turn on each other with bitter rhetoric, the more love disappears. Anyone who fails to love and continues to divide “us and them” contributes to the decline of society, while displaying an outright rejection of the teachings of Jesus Christ. Failure to love is no minor sin; it is as major as it gets. We like to say that “Jesus is the only way”; make no mistake, Jesus is the way, but only if we will walk, act and react, the Jesus way. It is the revival we need, not just some emotional stir. Anything else is just so many empty words.
“And then, going from bad to worse, it will be dog-eat-dog, everyone at each other’s throat, everyone hating each other. In the confusion, lying preachers will come forward and deceive a lot of people. For many others, the overwhelming spread of evil will do them in—nothing left of their love but a mound of ashes. (Matthew 24:10–12, The Message)
