Here was Mr. Biden’s proclamation: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/03/29/a-proclamation-on-transgender-day-of-visibility-2024/

You may remember some of America’s other proclamations. One was President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. It freed slaves. Staggering how different is America 161 years after President Lincoln.

I read the proclamation online. Then when my wife and I were invited to dinner by some friends Saturday evening, one of them brought it up to me, too. My mind immediately returned to Augustine’s writings about the sacking of Rome, of internal rot, of wickedness being rewarded, of corruption being the regimen, and of how God gave people over in order to demonstrate His righteousness. Funny how history unfolds over and again, and yet we act like things are new, that God has somehow changed, and that somehow we’re exempt from consequences of our sin.

I hope that biblical church leadership equipped the saints with truth and encouragement today on the holiest of Christian days (speaking in a calendarly way). How could biblical shepherds not speak to this? This was Nebuchadnezzar 2024. Fall down and worship purple-haired reprobation, genital mutilation, paganism, and the god of depravity, or be ready for what’s coming your way–whether fiery furnaces, lions, exile, or death.

Did you hear anything about it? Were you equipped? Were you fortified? Were you trained for the warfare that is invading your mind, your former borders, and your zip code?

You will, dear reader, be made to care.

In the late 50s of the 1st century A.D., Paul wrote a letter to Christians. Paul was living in an extraordinary time. The Messiah had come, been betrayed, spat upon, mocked, whipped, crowned with thorns, stripped, and crucified. And just like the Old Testament and Christ Himself had predicted in explicit detail, He rose again three days later. Skeptics became believers; Saul became Paul; persecutors became evangelists and pastors; and the New Testament churches were planted and multiplied.

Their leaders shared these historical truths of redemptive history. Christ was prophesied; Christ came; Christ died; Christ arose; Christ will come again.

These things matter, beloved. They matter because reprobation is nothing new. Rome fell. Nebuchadnezzar was taken down. Pharaohs were drowned in seas of God’s sovereignty. Herod was eaten by worms. Caesars were raised up and brought low. Ahasuerus was quickened. Haman was hanged. Judas committed suicide. And on and on it goes.

Why? Because all of Romans 1:18-32 remains true, dear ones. Because vanilla TED Talks save no one but rather abandon sinners to their damnation.

Not telling the truth that saves is hatred rather than love.

To paraphrase Edgar in the last scene of King Lear, “The weight of this sad time we must obey,/Speak [what is true], not what [pagans would have us say].”