In 1861, abolitionist, suffragette, writer, and speaker Julia Ward Howe penned the immortal words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

After every verse and chorus of Ward’s historic hymn are the words His truth is marching on.

In today’s world of pop-culture trends, general sleaziness, and rebellion, the truth is halt and limping aimlessly down the dark alleys of America’s decline.

We are losing freedoms like the right to decide about our own health and welfare even as the abortionists strip the rights of the unborn to shreds by leaving them dead in a glob of flesh and blood in thousands of medical waste receptacles.

Who can endure another speech in which some politician declares that the rights of women are being protected by the Constitution, even as they leave the remains of their own offspring in buckets to be discarded?

We all know, or should know, there is no law or provision in our Constitution that allows or calls for the death of unborn children.

There is no freedom that allows for the murder of the innocents.

In fact, using the Constitution to forward the scourge of abortion is an act of pure skullduggery and deception that gives full definition to the following verse of Holy Writ:

As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. (1 Peter 2:16)

Why is fighting for freedom only half of the equation?

The most splendiferous verse of the Battle Hymn contains the most revealing and theologically correct phrase in the entire song.

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea

With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me

As he died to make men holy let us die to make men free

His truth is marching on

Preceding the line about dying to make men free is a line that sounds very much like a scripture passage. It is a truth we seem to have long forgotten in America.

Simply put, there is no freedom without righteousness (or holiness) – one is the catalyst or foundation for the other. God will not allow freedom to the wicked, but only judgment, calamity, and eventually destruction.

Christ transfigures men by transforming them. Righteousness is something that comes from a combination of the word of God and the Spirit of God working together.

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. (Rom. 12:1-2)

Very little done in America today could qualify as “holy or acceptable” – in home life, education, entertainment, internet, social media, and all else, not a shred of holiness can be found.

On the best TV shows, news outlets, and web pages, there is always a sprinkling of nudity, porn, scams, greed, and foolishness that is indeed the very fly in the ointment of righteousness. Is God OK with just some sleaze?

What a travesty to go to a newscast or website to hear or read a wonderful, insightful, or inspiring presentation only to hear or spot some half nude women staring back at us or some scam for the latest cure for every malady you have now or will ever encounter.

Commercials interjected endlessly at syncopated intervals are geared for imbecilic non-thinking minds, dulled by tripe and foolishness, all with cash falling out of pockets and bank accounts waiting for the giant sucking power of the media.

Academics are purposely pumping pride, pomposity, peccadilloes, and puke to our children in the halls of academia. They are the creators of critical race theory, inciters of race wars, gay and transgender activists, abortionists, and tellers of stories from 50 billion years ago about how we sprang forth from the primordial ooze – never noticing the mud puddle we have unceremoniously returned to in our own time.

The sick and the sinners want rights, space, recognition, reparation, and apologies. Instead of a great revival, we have produced a great reversal. It is backward moving perversion sold as forward moving progress – it is a sure path to the death of a nation.

Using freedom to do wrong – reverse it now or watch the fall of the nation.

We are not spiraling toward our own demise because we have no one to fight for freedom. We are in decline because we have fewer everyday who will fight for what is right.

No one is attacking our shores; no nation is lobbing bombs at us, but we are running scared from our enemies from within and without.

Our departure from Afghanistan has made fools of us around the world. At home, we have hurricanes in the Gulf, floods in the east, drought in the mid-west and fires across the western states.

Our children are being spoiled by progressive teachers and college instructors, chased by gays and transgenders with a pervasive and belligerent agenda and an entertainment and media industry that spews out lies, misinformation, and sexual obsession upon us like deluge of poison rain.

Our political system is a shambles with a faux President who often doesn’t know where he is, a Vice President famous for doing nothing, and a House Speaker who thinks she is America’s “other” president.

Then comes a ruling majority of Democrats pawing at the treasures and wealth of the nation with reckless abandon while they carry on the business of making laws more like a coven of witches than a body of nation-loving statesmen.

We can no longer debate; we can only declare – this is the path to our own destruction.

Don’t look for a new answer – only the old answer will work

With a backwards leaning apostate church so busy trying to love people into the kingdom, we have not noticed we are slipping into the kingdom of darkness. Now we can only ask – who’s on first.

It is harder by the day to think of America as “God’s people," but since the door is not yet completely shut, we can make some last calls.

What is the call?

If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land. (2 Chr. 7:14)

While we reach for the stars, it may be the time to call upon heaven. After all, even if we are ignorant of the promise that our own timeline tells us about the vast time it takes to get anywhere in space, we have got to wonder what planet, inhabited or not, would want what we now call our civilization to arrive there any time in the near future. Let’s not spread this around the universe.

Call upon Him now, while there is still a bit of time left.

Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. (Isa. 55:6-7)