1962 Turning Point in America

I believe a Bible verse that best describes the state of the church today is found in the book of Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 6, 16 it declares, Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein.

I've been around a long time, friends, and I've watched the pulpits in our churches go from bad to worse, as we have forsaken the old paths of our fathers, who maintained a high view of the Almighty. But we today have shrunken God down to man's size, and taken salvation out of the hands of God, and placed it in the hands of man. I've watched pulpits in our country change from preaching thrones that thundered God's truth with authority, to become frivolous podiums of man's opinions and funny stories.

I've witnessed our houses of prayer become houses of entertainment, and I've watched in horror the crumbling of our moral culture and society, to where it's not even safe to go out in public anymore, without being gunned down by a madman. America at this hour is a godless, violent nation, hell-bent on destroying herself. And I've tried to put my finger on it, where everything began to go wrong in this nation, and my mind keeps going back to 1962.

Let me give you a picture of America in 1962. I'm sure many of you still remember it. In 1962, man's word was as good as gold, and we were a dressed-up society back then.

Men wore suits and hats in public. Women wore white gloves on their hands and pretty little hats on their heads, and their modest dresses covered their ankles. In 1962, only women wore earrings, and only sailors had tattoos, and marriage was still between a man and a woman.

And there was no such thing as public nudity back then. No one went out in public in their underwear like they do today. There was such a thing as shame in society back then, and people actually blushed at sin.

In public school, I used to stand with my hand over my heart as we pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and we stood tall and proud as we did this as children. Now grown men mock our national anthem in disrespect and are applauded for it. Back then in school, we bowed our heads humbly in prayer as we publicly recited the Lord's Prayer, and if any atheist cried out against it, that person was shouted down because God still held the majority in the nation back then.

Things were different in society back then. There was still a fear of God in the land, and the church still had influence upon society rather than society influencing the church, and the pulpit still had a ring of authority back then. The Methodist Church in the early 1960s kicked a TV commercial off the air because it featured an outhouse in it, and that was considered offensive.

Now all television programming is offensive, and the church is silent. The caliber of preachers in this country in 1962 was remarkable as men who walked with God and lives of holiness held forth from our pulpits of this land, men like A.W. Tozer, Alan Redpath, Stephen Olford, Sidlo Baxter, Vance Havner, Rolf Barnard, L.R. Shelton Sr., and R.G. Lee, men who only feared God and not men, who preached sin was black and hell was hot and a future judgment awaited all mankind because there was a payday someday for sin. They preached man's duty of repentance, and they held up a bloodstained cross on which the Prince of Glory died.

Churchgoers knew their Bibles better than church folk today, and they knew how to pray better because there was still such a thing as a weekly prayer meeting in the churches back then, and the carpets in the sanctuaries were wet from the tears of brokenhearted saints who wept over the lost in their community. But something else happened back in 1962 as well, and I believe this was the turning point for the nation. In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court held that organized prayer in public schools was unconstitutional, but that's where the downgrade began in this country, friends.

The next year, the Bible was kicked out of public school. When I was a little boy in 1962, I don't recall mass shootings in this country. They began in 1966 when a madman killed 17 people from a tower at the University of Texas.

It all began at a school. The bloodbath started at a school. It was as if God said to this nation, if you don't want me in your classrooms anymore, then I'll remove my protective hedge from about you.

Look at all the mass killings since 1966 in this country, especially in the last 12 months. The carpets in our sanctuaries today are now wet with spilled blood from an evil violence that has this nation in its grip. Satan runs rampant in America today, and perversion floods our cities like an open sewer because America kicked God out of this country 55 years ago.

1962 was the turning point in this land, and that's the reason why we are where we are today. And like our passage today from Jeremiah, friends, I believe the church got off the good path. When the church watered down the gospel message so not to offend anyone, and decided to grow their numbers by increasing the size of their campus to have bigger bragging rights within their denomination, that's when the church lost their authority and voice in this land.

Instead of preaching hard against sin and warning folks of a burning hell, they decided to soothe them with soft messages and entertain them instead. Like I said, things are different in this country today. Recently they had to let the Ringling Brothers Circus go because the novelty wore off.

Why pay for a circus when you can have it for free on Sunday morning? When will this nation turn back to the God of the Bible? Will it ever turn back? Heaven help us if we don't. Let us pray.