HORRIFIC CRIMES BY TEENS

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

Yesterday, one of the most disturbing murder stories I can ever remember hearing hit the airwaves. Most of you have heard or read that four New Hampshire teenagers decided to break into a home at random and kill the inhabitants. Armed with a knife and a machete, they picked a Mount Vernon, New Hampshire home, killing the homeowner, 42-year-old Kimberly Cates and badly injuring her 11-year-old daughter. The radio talk shows have been filled with confused and anguished callers, venting their opinions about this terrible crime. Some have blamed the teen’s parents. Some blame video games and computers. Not only have many of the callers who have railed about “these kids today” been in my age group (50s and up), but I’m frankly surprised at the number of callers in their 30s who want to go back to the “safe, good old days” of the 1980s, when kids respected their parents and obeyed their authorities. Are they kidding?

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, my father was constantly railing about “these kids today”. He hated the long hair, the psychedelic clothing and colors, the Beatles, the Rolling Sones, all that stuff. We were always joking that he wanted to turn the clock back to the 1940s, but it was no joke. He DID want that!

Secular humanists tell us that “man is essentially good”. Hard line Calvinists tell us that man is “totally depraved” without redemption through Jesus Christ. We in the Assemblies of God do NOT consider ourselves Calvinists; however the Calvinist position is pretty accurate.

A small percentage of deviant teens have committed terrible crimes throughout the centuries.

Take my hometown of Canton, Massachusetts, for instance. In the midst of the “good old 1980s” (1986 to be exact) Canton teenager Rod Matthews took his classmate Sean Ouellette to a wooded area off of Pleasant Street and Sawyer Avenue and bashed his head in with a baseball bat, reportedly because he wanted to see what it was like to kill somebody. And, (pun intended) just a stone’s throw away from that murder site, in 1870, a group of 4 boys STONED THEIR TEACHER TO DEATH outside the tiny wooden Sherman schoolhouse. You can read about that at:

http://www.canton.org/history/barstow1.htm

Please don’t misunderstand me. Do I take the New Hampshire murder lightly? Of course not! It’s deeply disturbing! In my humble opinion, these “kids” should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I will shock a number of my friends, but I’d have no problem with them getting the death penalty.

I’m just saying, this kind of thing is not new.
Yes, some will laugh and mock, but both as individuals and as a society, we need Jesus!

Revelation 22:20 says, “He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly: Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

AMEN- COME LORD JESUS!