The Real Truth, a magazine restoring plain understanding

“And the Earth Was Filled With Violence”

July 10, 2006

“The rebel made Muctarr’s uncle hold out Muctarr’s right hand and sliced at it with the machete. It did not sever so the rebel held Muctarr’s arm against an orange tree and struck twice more before he succeeded at his grisly task. ‘Then he cut off my right ear and put it in my pocket,’ Muctarr said. When the rebel turned his back, Muctarr said he hid in the jungle. It was 15 days before he staggered into a hospital to get treatment.” (“Victims Recount Terror in Africa,” The Times Herald-Record)

In Sierra Leone, atrocities such as the one described above are common. The violent thug cutting off the arm of a small boy is part of a group calling themselves the “Revolutionary United Front.” While the account is particularly gruesome, other radical, self-interested criminals repeat similar violent acts across the globe.

The acronyms of groups and names of individuals may change, but a common trait describes them—they are all mercilessly violent!

And this rising tide of violence is not restricted to the Third World. The West is also experiencing escalating acts of violence and lawlessness. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in 2005, the rate of violent crime spiked for the first time in 13 years.

Why do terrifying atrocities occur? What drives man to inflict injury and death upon his fellow man? Why do human beings—created in the very image of God—seek to destroy other human beings? And, why does a loving God allow violence?

Rebellious Youth

A teenager approaches a woman standing quietly at a bus stop and punches her in the face. A gang of uniformed boys forcefully leads a boy to a remote area of a playground and knocks him out with a single punch. Incidents like these are referred to as “happy slapping.” This violent practice occurs regularly in Great Britain and other European countries. Generally, happy slapping involves a youth approaching an unwary victim and assaulting him or her—and this while another delinquent records the event with a cellphone camera! As the craze continues to spread, British authorities wonder how to stop it.

Hazing, a long practiced form of initiation rite, is also growing more violent. It is defined as the “ritualistic harassment, abuse or humiliation with requirements to perform meaningless tasks; sometimes as a way of initiation into a social group.” Hazing has been standard operating procedure in groups ranging from high school social clubs to United States military Special Forces such as the Navy SEALS and the Army’s Green Berets.

The hazing activities among social fraternities and sororities have been in the news in past years largely because of tragic consequences. Violence is no longer limited to male organizations, as demonstrated by the May 2003 hazing incident at Glenbrook High School in Illinois. Instead of the customary psychological hazing methods often used, this incident turned violent when a group of senior girls kicked, punched, pushed and even beat other girls with buckets. This was in addition to smearing the girls with pig intestines, feces, urine, fish guts, paint and coffee grounds!

A recent hazing incident at Plattsburgh State University in New York resulted in the tragic death of a prospective fraternity member. This young man was pressured to drink huge amounts of water over a period of ten days, resulting in heavy vomiting and finally death.

However, hazing is relatively mild when compared to the widespread violence seen in public schools and colleges today. Most are familiar with the plague of premeditated murders in public schools across the United States, such as Columbine. Students have been murdered at random.

The problem is twofold: (1) lack of character and (2) an absence of serious consequences for violent crimes committed by youth.

Juvenile murderers are protected by a legal system that often tolerates criminal behavior at the expense of justice. In March 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated any threat of capital punishment for minors—even if they commit cold-blooded murder. What message does this send to potential criminals among the nation’s youth?

Educated To Be Violent

Generally, most teens spend hours watching television and playing seductive and violent video games. Such games condition and desensitize the player to commit increasing acts of violence. While the game industry will decry any association with crime, experience and hard statistics confirm the relationship between violent video games and acts of violence. A person who kills imaginary characters in an interactive game will gradually grow accustomed to violent behavior, accepting this as normal behavior. To satisfy increasing aggression, some teenagers participate in games with even greater and more violent behavior. A few will even act out their fantasy by committing murder!

The movies and sitcoms produced for television become more twisted with every passing year. Instead of providing a means to transmit healthy and wholesome family values, TV producers create programs that promote promiscuous sexuality, rebellion in children, sloppy etiquette, disrespect and weak father figures.

A wide range of violence is promoted and idolized. By the time the average child turns 11, he will have viewed more than 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of television violence.

In concert with this conditioning, today’s educational institutions relentlessly attempt to socially emasculate and effeminize boys, while pressuring girls to become more aggressive. The reasoning goes that by enforcing these unnatural roles, violence—especially toward women—will be reduced. To avoid being a target of male dominance, girls and women are taught to become more belligerent.

However, this vain attempt at changing basic physiology in boys and girls does not accomplish the intent, but produces confused, frustrated and miserable young men and women. The increasing violence against women in recent decades should scream that this philosophy of social engineering has resulted in disaster! Boys are either broken down into effeminate incompetents, or they react violently against the entire system, with many becoming criminals. Naturally, when girls are taught to be more aggressive, they will resort to violence to solve their problems!

A recent U-M study reported that women in their early twenties who had watched violent TV shows frequently as children, identifying with aggressive heroines, were much more physically aggressive and were more prone to have antagonistic personalities. Additionally, they were more apt to commit violent crime than women who did not watch much TV as children.

Sentence Not Executed Speedily

The first murder in history took place among the sons of Adam and Eve, as Cain rose up in jealousy against his brother Abel and murdered him. Since that time, periods of peace have been as rare as the Hope Diamond, as mankind has succumbed to every form of evil.

In today’s materially prosperous Western culture, we regularly read or hear about unimaginable violent crimes. The heinous acts committed by serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer—the Washington, D.C. beltway sniper shootings—the murder of a young college student with her own bikini—have horrified us. Just during the week of this writing, a family of seven was brutally murdered in Indianapolis during a robbery. None were spared.

We have all read about murders by former or present employees on the job, drive-by shootings, murders committed in churches by other church members, random murders committed as a gang initiation requirement—practically every imaginable form of brutality and carnage.

While most murders can be attributed to vengeance, jealousy or greed, the motives of child-killers are particularly twisted. Such reprehensible, sadistic acts have become commonplace in a degenerating culture—why? How can human beings do such perverted things?

We live in a prophesied time of lawlessness and injustice. The legal systems of democratic nations often protect criminals by placing roadblock after roadblock in the path to true justice. Hence, those prone to criminal violence have little fear of being punished.

People have become more apathetic toward crimes committed against their fellow man. Solon, a Greek statesman who lived in the 6th century B.C., described how crime could be reduced simply through neighbor showing outgoing concern toward neighbor: “Wrongdoing can only be avoided if those who are not wronged feel the same indignation at it as those who are.”

Consequently, a culture that views itself as enlightened and civilized as it grows tolerant toward criminal behavior will soon find violence escalating and society disintegrating. In the book of Ecclesiastes, King Solomon addressed the wisdom of administering swift and just punishment: “Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil” (Ecc. 8:11).

The lack of swift punishment is one of the causes of escalating violence. However, this is not the fundamental cause.

The Root Cause

Conditions will continue to grow worse until man finds himself engulfed in the worst time of suffering ever. The author of this violence is a great created being who attempted a violent coup against the God who created him. The Bible calls him Satan the devil. This malevolent spirit being “deceives the whole world” (Rev. 12:9). His deception is so widespread and entrenched that most people find it ridiculous to even believe that the devil actually exists!

Jesus Christ bluntly spoke of those who unwittingly serve this evil being: “You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth” (John 8:44).

Human beings cannot understand the real causes of violence because they have been blinded by the powerful being by whom they are influenced. Mankind commits violence while scornfully rejecting the Bible’s way of peace.

It is Satan who is the father of violence in the earth. It is in Satan’s nature to be violent, for he hates God and passionately hates humanity because of its divine potential. He rages with jealousy because he understands that mankind is destined to become greater than he.

God’s Word calls the devil “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). As “the god of this world” (II Cor. 4:4), Satan continually broadcasts carnal attitudes, thoughts and motives into an unsuspecting humanity. In effect, human nature—which is naturally hostile against God and the things of God (Rom. 8:7)—is actually satan’s nature, which is always violent! But Satan’s powerful influence does not excuse the countless acts of brutality that human beings commit day after day, year after year.

While mankind has always been violent, the Bible describes a time when violence will increase to a level experienced only in the days of Noah: “But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man [Christ] be” (Matt. 24:37).

We are entering that time, described more than 4,300 years ago: “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually…The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence” (Gen. 6:5, 11).

Today’s generation is filled with pleasure seekers, hating law and true justice. The apostle Paul described men and women in the last days as “lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy” and “without natural affection” (II Tim. 3:1-3).

While proclaiming this generation as enlightened and progressive, man has in fact degenerated beyond imagination. He has even lost the natural affection a parent should have toward his child! What is on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum from “affection”? Hatred!—and hatred, mixed with lust and envy, leads to violence (Jms. 4:1-5).

Hence, violence and brutality are increasing in direct proportion to mankind’s lust, impudence and self-love. God has given man free moral agency. For the last 6,000 years, he has been allowed to choose his own way—tragically, he has chosen the way of cruelty and bloodshed!

But soon great changes will be ushered in!

The End to All Violence

There is a time coming soon when peace will literally break out around the earth. This absence of violence will not come as a result of man’s political alliances and inane schemes. The United Nations will not usher it in. No humanly devised New World Order will bring peace.

The prophet Daniel interpreted the dream of King Nebuchadnezzar, who ruled over the first great world-ruling empire. In that dream, the king saw a stone that broke into pieces an image representing the kingdoms of mankind: “…the stone that smote the image became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Dan. 2:35).

This stone represents the kingdom of God—a divine, world-ruling government that will replace the governments of men: “And in the days of these kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom…shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever” (vs. 44). This is a message for our time.

Yes, God is going to end violence on the earth. His Son, Jesus Christ, will bring His government and will establish the peace that mankind has long desired, but never achieved. God will give man a new spirit—changing his very nature (Jer. 31:33). People will be taught to despise violence. They will be taught to cooperate instead of compete—to give instead of take—to unite instead of tear apart.

Finally, the earth will be at peace. The “wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them” (Isa. 11:6).

The nature of man will be changed through the knowledge of the truth: “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain [or kingdom]: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (vs. 9).

The violence that fills today’s world will forever be banished. Happiness, peace and joy will prevail throughout the earth!