Overview

However, if you do not obey the LORDÖ The LORD will send on you curses, confusion and rebukeÖuntil you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in forsaking himÖ The fruit of your womb will be cursedÖ The sights you see will drive you madÖ You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will go into captivityÖ You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life (Dt 28:15, 18a, 41, 66).

On May 21, in Springfield, Oregon an angry 15 year-old boy burst into a crowded high school cafeteria and opened fire, killing two students and wounding 25 more. His parents' bodies were found, shot dead, at their home. This is the seventh tragic incident of its kind in America since the school year started last September: Jonesboro, Arkansas, Pearl, Mississippi, West Paducah, Kentucky, Stamps, Arkansas, Edinboro, Pennsylvania and Fayetteville, Tennessee.

• President Clinton, whose home state was site to 2 of the recent tragedies, told Americans "I'm struggling to make sense of the senseless and to understand what could drive a teenager to commit such a terrible act." He recounted his efforts for tighter school security measures, more police, the adoption of curfews and tougher truancy policies. He called on Congress to pass his new "Juvenile Crime Bill." "We must all do moreÖto teach our children the unblinking distinction between right and wrongÖ," he said. VP Al Gore called for parents to make better use of TV ratings and to use the developing "v-chip" to help reduce violent behavior in youngsters.
  
  
• Liberal educators & psychologists took to the airwaves calling for more of the same failed programs which brought us to where we are today. Such programs are a poor substitute for prayer and the Ten Commandments, which were removed from public schools 36 years ago. Their solutions: stricter gun control, more federal control in education, more & higher-paid counselors & teachers, humanist "socialization" & behavior modification programs, more pre-school & after-school programs, etc., will only make matters worse. Pro-family Conservatives pointed to the disintegration of the family.
  
  
• Violent video game manufacturers rallied to reject blame on their products insisting such games have a "cathartic" effect on troubled youth. But military scientist, Lt. Col. David Grossman, in his 1995 book (The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War & Society, Little, Brown & Co.), boldly predicted such tragedies, documenting how we are "training" children through TV, movies, video and computer games to use violence as a problem-solving tool. Children are learning hair-trigger behaviors without the concomitant self-control and obedience to authority taught combat soldiers in real warfare training. Lacking healthy role models at home and church, young men, especially those from single parent families, receive ideological training from "Rambo" and other vigilantes and antiheroes.

America has the innocent blood of 35 million of its own unborn children on its hands (millions more overseas). We publicly finance abortion (in Oregon, physician-assisted suicide). We enforce the sacred "right" of teenage girls to murder their own babies in the womb. We require our children to be taught they descended from apes. We enable our children's addiction to violent music, television & movies. We have allowed our elite rulers to officially remove God, prayer and God's moral law from our "learning" institutions. God is not mocked. What we have sown, we will reap (Gal 6:7-8). Apart from wholesale repentance, America's families will not be healed and we can only expect ever-increasing, more bizarre violence.

The President, the educators, the psychologists cannot turn things around. God and His mercy are our only hope and God's People are the key. Only the Church, through radical personal and corporate repentance, the urgent declaration of God's eternal Law, the proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the election of God-fearing civil leaders (with genuine moral authority and character to make an "unblinkable distinction between right and wrong") can lead America away from a path of unthinkable, uncontrollable violence.

• May God minister to those directly affected by these tragedies (Ps 34:15-19; 103:8-17).
  
  
• May God's People REPENT & ARISE TO BE THE CHURCH! May God's Prophets WARN believers & unbelievers alike that this is but the beginning of sorrows unless we REPENT! (Pr 1:22-33; Ez 18:30-32; 33:2-14; Lk 13:2-5; Eph 3:8-13).