This past week the temperatures have plunged and the Mid-Western and North-Eastern part of our nation have been thrown into what forecasters have described as a polar vortex. A polar vortex is, according to a government website “a low pressure area—a wide expanse of swirling cold air—that is parked in polar regions. During winter, the polar vortex at the North Pole expands, sending cold air southward. This happens fairly regularly and is often associated with outbreaks of cold temperatures in the United States” To date this latest experience of the polar vortex has claimed the lives of 21 individuals from across the Midwest and Northeast.  Thankfully it seems things will warm up a bit by next week.

Recent headlines about governors and legislatures and the expanding of abortion reaching almost to infanticide (Think Virginia Governor Ralph Northam and New York’s Governor Andrew Cuomo and bills in the New York State Legislature and the Virginia State Legislature) should prove to us that spiritually speaking our nation, our culture, is in the grip of a Polar Vortex. This kind of spiritually frigid temperatures come not from Old Man Winter but from the darkest, coldest regions of the sinful heart of man and from Satan himself. A thaw is not coming anytime soon.

When the Governor of New York and the State Senate of New York applaud loudly over the passage of a bill making it legal to kill babies up until their last second in the womb, you and I should get the chills. When the Governor of Virginia describes the process of eliminating a live post birth-canal baby who is not in his eyes viable, our teeth should chatter as if we were at the south pole. Baby, it’s cold outside.

Jesus predicted that this lawlessness would abound in Matthew 24. In describing the end of the age He says “And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).

The Apostle Paul also warns us of this us in his second letter to Timothy. In it he says:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. ² For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, ³ heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, ⁴ treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God    – 2 Timothy 3:1-4

Please note the last phrase in Jesus’ words -“The love of many will grow cold”. If we aren’t careful the spiritual temperature outside can affect the love we have for the Lord on the inside. How incredibly dangerous!!!. I submit to you that today, because of the utter sinfulness of our culture as illustrated in the present debate involving babies in and outside of the womb, that that the followers of Jesus Christ are at great risk of having their love grow cold. That’s right, the Church could freeze to death from the inside out.

I was recently reading in Proverbs 31, the prose about the virtuous woman. In verse 21 we read these words: “She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.” Some sources substitute the word “double clothed” for the word “scarlet”. The Wycliffe Paraphrase Bible puts it this way “She shall not dread for her house of the colds of snow (She shall not have fear for her household concerning the cold and the snow); for all her menials be clothed with double clothes.” The Church, the Bride of Christ, is called the Elect Lady in Scripture. I wish I could say that the Elect Lady has nothing to worry about regarding her household during this spiritual polar vortex.  I can’t. Sadly, the church has great cause to be afraid. Her household is not wearing double layers but pajamas in the dead of winter. It is time to take the words to church of Laodicea to heart. Jesus says there:

 For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. ¹⁸ I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. ¹⁹ Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. – Revelation 3:17-19