Where Do We Go From Here?

Knowledge without action is worthless. To know something is wrong and to not act on that knowledge is the condemnation of man. God has made it clear to all of us what he requires. The choice however is ours, God will never impose His will on us. Every command of Jesus was couched in the statement of “if”. If you want eternal life, if you want to be healed, if you want to follow me, then here is what you do. God requires our cooperation in the healing process.[1] There are many of us who will only believe if God continues to provide signs. There are others who profess belief if they are able to continue doing the things they want. Lord, I will believe in You and worship You, if I can continue to gamble, chase women or men, and do what I want to do. God is not to be bargained with like some Bob Barker in the sky.

I know that there are many who need to receive this Word. If you have found this place, it is not by accident. Regardless of what brought you here, there is healing here. There is a Word for you here. I pray that you would pass this site on to others, that others may find the healing that we all so desperately need.

Fornication is killing us as a nation. We have lost our moral way and now we are stumbling along blindly being overtaken by all manner of sin. Our children have rebelled against us and against God. We are in a very dangerous place when the sons of men have lost their fear of God.[2] The many problems that beset us stem from our refusal to obey God. Obedience to God is not optional for Christians. We do not get to pick and choose what we will follow and when. We should no longer allow the world to dictate to the Church what is acceptable.

I am exploring having this book edited and published. If anyone would like to support me in this project, please email me. I will need financial support to get this project published. I would like to be able to get this Word out to our young people while there is still time. Can we count on you to support us in this effort to stop this epidemic? I want every young person in America to have a chance to read this and know that they have a choice. Our communities and our young people need you. Can they count on you? We have let them down so many times, let’s put them first for a change!

Rodney.Knott@gmail.com

[1] John 5:8
[2] Romans 3:10-18

Chapter 7 Part 9 & Chapter 8 Part 1 The Church

Children need our direction and our support. More than anything, they should have our time and our experiences. We should spend more time with them sharing how they might avoid our mistakes. We should have those who have fallen to come and share their consequences with the younger ones. Simply to show them that you can choose what you want, but these are the consequences. All we should do is present them with the truth and let them decide. No scare tactics or false promises, just give them the facts. I believe that if given the facts, the truth, our children will make the right decisions. The problem is that we hide those who have fallen and present a false sense of reality. People fall, we all do. Let the children see and talk to pregnant unwed mothers and talk to single parents. Let them see the struggles and hear first hand what awaits the choices they make. Let them see the results of fornication without moralizing, but in its pure form. It is funny how we use these techniques for the symptoms (drug/alcohol abuse, crime, and anger) but not for the true cause; fornication. We should be willing to try new approaches to break this cycle. The old ways are obviously not working.

CHAPTER 8

The Church*

“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because
you have rejected knowledge. I also reject you from
being a priest for Me; Because you have forgotten
the law of your God. I also will forget your children.”
Hosea 4:6

I would be remiss if I did not make mention of what I believe has been one of the enablers of this epidemic of fornication. Unfortunately, it is the institution that should have helped to curb its effects. The church because of its failure to condemn sin has allowed the problem to escalate. Due to its public silence on this issue, many have taken that silence to mean there has been a change in God’s laws. In its efforts to embrace the world, some churches have forsaken the Word and the laws of God. The church was suppose to give the people knowledge of God and His commandments, instead the modern church has developed this doctrine of complete grace. In other words, they preach only part of the Gospel. They preach that Christ is savior, but not Lord. Yes, Christ died for our sins, but we must also obey Him. This complete grace is not the Gospel of Christ. The gospel of the early Church spoke of the Kingdom of God, that Kingdom has laws like every other kingdom. As citizens of this or any kingdom, we must obey its laws. It is that simple. Anyone preaching anything other than this should beware. Many of today’s mainstream churches preach this grace only gospel. It is easy and sounds nice. It is this preaching that allows this country to claim 90% believers in God, yet lead the world in all the sinful categories. We preach the dying, but not the living. The Bible says we serve the God of the living.[1] The church should set the example for the world, not the other way around. The modern church follows the lead of the world. True Christianity is not based on opinion polls or political correctness, it is based on the risen Christ. Is there any doubt that Jesus Christ left us with commandments? If so, why are we not teaching and obeying them? Has God suddenly for this age changed His mind after thousands of years? Has there been some new revelation that now discounts the commandments of God? The Bible that I read says, “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever.[2] The church has allowed itself to be corrupted by the world.

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* The term church is used to describe the mainstream church, there are many churches who are trying to follow the true teachings of Christ.

[1] Matthew 22:32

[2] Hebrews 13:8

Chapter 7 Part 1 Children

Chapter 7 Children

“Behold, children are a heritage of the LORD,
the fruit of the womb is a reward.”
Psalms 127:3

For me this is the most difficult chapter to write. As I look out at all the broken children and families that are in pain, my heart aches. Anyone who thinks there are no victims of fornication have obviously not spent time with the children of these illicit relationships. The Bible says that children are an inheritance of God, as a reward. They are to be treasured, they are our greatest resource. They are our future. Instead of treating them as the treasures they are, we treat them as inconveniences. How can we claim manhood when we father children we do not raise? Children we take no responsibility for. How can our women claim womanhood when they continue to bear illegitimate children without husbands? My heart goes out to all of the children. What lessons are they being taught? What values are they being taught? That it is ok to lay down with anybody and everybody with no responsibility or consequences. These consequences are human beings, they have names, and they are innocent children. When did a child become just something left over from some illicit relationship? Have we become so selfish that we can not see the damage we have done and continue to do? On the other hand, does anyone care? God gives us children to raise up for His glory and honor. We do not own them, they are given to us to take care of for Him. To train them and love them for His sake.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, And
when he is old he will not depart from it.”
Proverbs 22:6

How are we training our children? Are we leading them in the way of everlasting life or into the way of destruction? Each one of us must ask ourselves these questions, God certainly will. We must recognize the harm being done to our boys and young men. We neglect their training. We are so concerned with our own personal gratification that their needs are secondary. Children come into this world full of curiosity and wonder. They come to us without sin. If it were not for our inherited sinful nature, they would be given to us in purity. If allowed to follow their own desires they like us will choose to follow the world. Thus, the need for parental direction and involvement, except when the parents themselves are pursuing the things of the world then that value system is conveyed to the child. Because many of our children have not received the training they should have been given, today they are lost in a fallen world. They do not have the male role model training we were supposed to give them. Because we have pursued our own agenda of selfishness and childish pleasures they have not gotten what they needed or deserved. Therefore, we have children raising other children. Some of our young women were raising their brothers and sisters and felt that they might as well have their own since they are being mothers anyway. We do not have to be geniuses to figure out how that has been working out.

“Children are the crown of old men, And the glory of their father.”
Proverbs 17:6

The scripture is so appropriate for today. The crown of old men it says, we as old men of the last few generations should be ashamed of the crown that we are wearing. Many of these young men and women have received none of the tools they need to compete in this world. They have received none of the wisdom of their ancestors and now have a very difficult time coping with the world they find themselves apart of. For many of them they want to hide from this world through drugs or street crime. Instead of planning how to succeed through education they have chosen the fast buck of crime and drug dealing. There have been many ancestral heroes who have died for the opportunities they now take for granted and refuse to pursue. These words though written thousands of years ago ring true today. The honor and the adoration of children is their father. This is not only true for our earthly fathers but also for our heavenly Father. Today many of our children are being raised without that honor and reverence. In God’s perfect plan for the family a child is to be reared by both a father and a mother. It is funny how we will break something like a doorknob and then use something such as a piece of rope to open the door and say see how well the door works since I fixed it. The door may be operational, but that is surely not how it was designed to work. Granted there are those who have managed to succeed raising children as single parents and I applaud them, but that does not change the fact that something is still broken. The doorknob is still broken, yes, we are getting in and out of the house but the fact still remains the doorknob is broken. Our relationships are broken is the issue not whether we can patch something together to keep moving forward. The issue is how can we repair them and save our children? The father’s relationship with the children has a different component than the mother’s relationship to the children. The father is supposed to represent the head of the house, the leader. In our broken households, the head is missing. Every good soldier knows that if you remove the head the body dies. Moreover, our body (our community) is dying right before our eyes. Many single mothers do and have done a tremendous job under very trying circumstances and they must be commended, but that does not excuse the fact that we are still in desperate need of a solution to the epidemic we are currently facing. In this patched up worldly system the child is missing the authority and discipline that is best administered from the man. You notice I said a man, not the little boys that make babies and do not raise them that so permeate our communities today. Any one blessed enough to have been raised in a two parent home can attest to this. Because so many of our people have not been given this example they tend to minimize the benefits of this experience. When I was growing up all the mother had to do was mention the name of the father and order was immediately restored. Let the fathers begin to act like fathers and discontinue to act like the children they should be raising.

Chapter 6 Part 5

Again, how can we expect the world to do what we refuse to do? The people who create television, movies, and records don’t care about our children. To them they are just consumers, someone to be bought and sold. If we as parents are spending more time in seeking material success in the world than we are in teaching our children, then we are failing them. They may have the latest fashions or electronic gadgets, but what good will these things be in hell? What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul in the process?[1] No one said being a parent was going to be easy. We should stop following the instructions of the “academic community” concerning raising our children. It is time to stop being the friends of our children and return to being their parents. Sometimes being a parent requires saying no, not because we hate our children but because we love them. Parenting requires time and effort. Many parents today want to give their responsibilities to the school, the media, anybody but themselves. Many parents allow their children to spend hours at public places (malls, etc.) unsupervised and when the predators that now frequent these places violate them they seem shocked. Where was the security, the police, or somebody? The true question should be where were you? We as a society allow this to go unchecked too often. We allow parents to shirk their duty to protect their children, because not to do so would require us to look at our own behavior.

“Do not let your adornment be merely outward-arranging the hair,
wearing gold or putting on fine apparel-rather let it be the hidden
person of the heart, with the incorruptible beauty of a gentle and
quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God.”
1 Peter 3:3,4

So where does true beauty come from? It comes from the inner beauty of the spirit. A woman will be known and judged by her character. I know this is not what the glamour magazines say, but it is what God is saying. The television and the “so called” celebrities say it is all about what you look like and what you wear. By the way have you ever considered who these celebrities really are, they are for the most part sell-outs to the world. Many of them for the right price would endorse asbestos underwear in hell. Just because you have fallen does not mean you have to stay down or that you must continue to make the same mistakes. Modest apparel is the hallmark of a chaste woman.

“In like manner also, that the women adorn themselves in modest
apparel, with propriety and moderation, not with braided hair or
gold or pearls or costly clothing but, which is proper for women
professing godliness, with good works.”
1 Timothy 2:9

I cannot say how many women I have seen in church, in church mind you, wearing the prostitutes uniform. Yet they profess to have godliness. They are in church on Sunday true enough and out all night at the club on Saturday. How can you find a godly man at the den of the devil? Rather than staying at home and praying for God to bring you a godly man, you come up with your own plan. God takes too long, He is working fast enough. When has your plan ever worked? And then you expect God to bless this mess that you have created and tossed at His feet. See many of you do not really want a godly man, you may claim this is what you want, but you keep choosing the slick talkers and fancy dressers that are going to impress your girlfriends and let them think that you are all that. In our scripture, it talks about women being in modest apparel; when you begin to cover yourselves, the world treats you with more respect. It shows that you have respect for yourselves. Will there still be sick people that will continue to harass you, of course but I guarantee the number will decrease dramatically when you change your attire. The scripture speaks of how a person is known by the “uniform” that they wear, if you appear gaudy and all made-up the world will perceive you to be a easy woman. Those who profess godliness should be exhibiting it in their lives by their dress, their actions, and their speech. You should not have to tell anyone you are a Christian woman they should be able to tell when you walk into a room, by your speech, your dress, and your actions.

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[1] Mark 8:36

Chapter 5 Part 2

We have left the most important job God has given us to our women. A mans first job is to save his home. How can we save our homes? Homes implies family, we do not create families. We do not create homes we destroy them. We do not exalt our women we tear them down. We destroy homes by taking our young women from their homes with false lies and then leaving them after our fornication to raise our children. We steal their innocence and purity and leave them with nothing. From the looks of our communities children are not a blessing from the Lord, but more of an obstacle to the game. What game you ask? The game of how many women we can get to have sex with us. For many of our men the measure of our manhood is the number of sexual conquest we have. There is only one problem; children are being created. It is amazing with all this fornicating going on no one has considered condoms. Do not get me wrong fornicating is fornicating and is still considered a sin with or without a condom, with or without a child being produced. However, consider the lives we are needlessly destroying. We expect our women not only raise the children but to provide for their spiritual training as well. A job God has clearly assigned to the man. How long will we continue to try to mock God?

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for
whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who
sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but
he who sows to the Spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life.”
Galatians 6:7,8

We as humans are notorious for laying claim to those things we do not possess. We tell ourselves we are not so bad or evil men, so were in no danger of the wrath of God. The Bible plainly states we will all reap the wrath of God. The men of my generation have been sowing to our flesh for a long time.

There was a man who received two puppies. He named the first one flesh and the second one spirit. The man fed the puppy named flesh twice as much food as spirit and plus gave him all the scraps from the table. As they grew and matured, which puppy do you think will get larger? I would venture to guess the puppy named flesh. It is a physiological fact. That is what we have been doing, feeding our flesh man twice as much as our spiritual man. How do I feed my flesh man you ask? Simply by feeding my fleshly desires; fornication, pornography, drugs/alcohol, strip clubs, etc. You get the picture. How do I feed the spiritual man? Through fellowship with God and obeying of God’s word is how my spirit is fed. There is a war going on inside of us between our flesh man and our spirit man, it is as old as time. Right now, for most of us, our flesh man is “swoll” and our spiritual man is puny. When temptation comes along, we are not able to stand because the flesh man overrides the spirit man. Christ Jesus warned His disciples in the garden, “Watch and pray lest you fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” The flesh has been ruling our lives for too long. The Bible tells us we as a nation, we as a people will reap what we sow. We have sown the seeds of fornication and now we are reaping the fruits of it.

“They shall repay you for your lewdness, and you shall pay
for your idolatrous sins. Then you shall know
that I am the LORD God.”
Ezekiel 23:49

Because of our lewdness, God will judge us. The Lord wants to use us to show the world what can happen, if a people will repent of their sins and return to God. He wants to demonstrate His great mercy and forgiveness. Conversely, He will demonstrate what happens when they do not. There have been too many victims in this epidemic. The Lord is patient towards us, but His patience will not endure forever. It is time for us as Black men to grow up; the time for foolishness is over. How can we continue to demand that the world treat us as men while we behave as little children? Because we have left the authority of God, He is giving us up to our wickedness. For too long we have denied the hurt and pain we have inflicted on others through our fornication, taking the innocence and purity of our people with no regard to the outcome.

I hear men all the time say, “It’s the woman’s fault. We would not be fornicating if it was not for the women.” Not only is this cowardice, the Bible completely disagrees. The Bible says that the woman is the weaker vessel. We as men should step up and accept our responsibility to our communities. We will never be taken seriously by the world until we learn to control our behavior. In Proverbs it says, “That a man with no self-control is like a city without walls .” He cannot defend himself or anyone else. It is sad but even our Black brothers from around the world have lost respect for us. They see us as spoiled little children. The legacy we have given our children is full of sinfulness. As men our responsibility, is to teach the ways of God and to train them in God’s Word and ordinances. We have not done that. Instead of teaching them righteousness, we have taught them lawlessness. Can we now be surprised by the current state of life? I am not!

“For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud,
blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving,
unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good,
traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers
of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from
such people turn away! For this sort are those who creep into
households and make captives of gullible women loaded down
with sins, led away by various lusts.”
2 Timothy 3:2-6

Wow, do any of these traits sound familiar to anyone? This I believe concisely encapsulates our current state of affairs. The part that sticks out for me is the part about gullible women. We have men in our communities that make a living off the checks that some women get monthly. They only visit these women once a month when their checks arrive. Or they will do the same to women who are working regular jobs, only coming around on payday. These men do not give a second thought that the woman’s children and usually that man’s children also, will be struggling for the rest of the month. They concern themselves only with their own greed and desires. This is not the behavior of men, but of greedy, selfish children. The world revolves around me. These same women are supposed to be looking out for the welfare of these broken children, more on this later. These men have made captives of these households and loaded these women down with sins. The fruit of these sins are the children. The same children they chose to rob. How long will we rob our most precious resource and not expect a backlash. We also rob them in our lack of financial support. Those of you, who think you are better than the monthly check pimps are, think about how much support you are providing your children.

Here is the insanity of it all those men who do remain after the “blessed event” rather than teaching their sons not to repeat their mistakes, they teach them the exact same behavior. “I’m raising a playa”, they exclaim. No, you are raising another irresponsible fornicator like yourself! Children come to us as empty vessels from God; it is up to us to fill those vessels. It is as if their minds are new little computers that need to be programmed. In the computer business there is a saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” In other words, whatever you program in; that is what is going to come out. If I input wisdom, the child will be wise. Look at how we dress our littlest children; we buy them designer clothes and shoes. Not for their sakes are we buying these things, but to impress the world. We think it is more important to put them in FUBU than to put God’s word in them. It is more important what is on the outside of our children than what is on the inside. The Bible says, “They love the praise of men more than the praise of God.” Wisdom is to be sought after as if it were gold according to the Scriptures. It is to be taught by the elders. Wisdom is suppose to come with the passing of time, the older one gets the more wisdom one should acquire. The only problem we have is that some of older men are just as foolish, if not more foolish than our young men. Their many years instead of providing wisdom, has only provided a multitude of sins. O my people how long will we continue to forsake the Lord? How long will we ignore His Word and commandments?

“that the older man be sober, reverent, temperate,
sound in faith, in love, in patience…Likewise,
exhort the young men to be sober-minded.”
Titus 2:2,6

As we can see, according to the word of God, teaching of doctrine comes from the older men and women. How many of us can say we are even living the doctrine, let alone passing this information on to our children? We have too many babies raising babies for any wisdom to be imparted. What are we teaching our children to create this epidemic? What message are we sending that it is ok to go out and fornicate and create all these fatherless children? See their use to be a word for these children when we were growing up, it was called a “bastard child”. Of course, that has been replaced these days by some new sanitized term (baby’s momma or baby’s daddy). I believe that it is time to send some new messages. These messages are not in words alone, but also in deeds. We need to begin to change our behavior and character. The Bible tells us that those who do not train or discipline their children do not love their children. Due to our humanistic response to child abuse, physically disciplining children is no longer allowed. Were there being children abused? Yes. Are there children being abused today? Yes. There will always be a small segment of the population that will misinterpret God’s laws. Then of course, there will always be some sick people who are hurting and act out that hurt by hurting others. However, does this give us the right to ignore or reinterpret God’s Word? I think not! Under no circumstances are we to cancel what God has clearly revealed to us. We can never believe that we know better than God what is right for others and ourselves. We must never replace God’s wisdom with the wisdom of man, no matter how many degrees they have. Instead of following God, we are choosing to follow the world. The Bible says that following the world leads to destruction. The Proverbs tells us that “there is a way which seems right to a man, but the end of it is death.” To not physically discipline, your child seems right by today’s standards, but the Bible says I am sending that child to hell and that I in fact do not love that child.

“You shall teach them to your children, speaking of
them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way,
when you lie down and when you wake up.”
Deuteronomy 11:19

As you can see our jobs as men is not only to teach our children the ways of God, but to strangers and also ourselves. We are to not only speak them, but also live them in our homes. How can we teach our children what we do not know or do not practice? It is written that we should not only be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word as well. We should be streams of living water to our wives and our children; instead, we are cesspools of sin. Our fornication has blinded us to the truth about God. We have been blinded to our true purposes as men. Anybody can make a child; it takes a man to raise one. As we go, our people go. Our people will never climb any higher than we as men climb. Up until now, we have let our women and children down. Rather than sacrifice our selfish lusts, we have sold out the very people who counted on us to protect them.

Instead of protecting our women and children, we have preyed on them. It is no wonder our women are not treated with the respect they deserve. A lot of them have little or no self-esteem thanks to us. Our treatment of them is a direct cause of this epidemic of fornication. In an effort to find, acceptance and love they have allowed themselves to become deluded into accepting any semblance of love, no matter how perverted. In addition, we have orchestrated this wickedness for our own selfish purposes.

Chapter 4 Part 2

To continue, here is the place that the white establishment should step forward and accept responsibility for its racist policies that laid the groundwork for our current situation. Whether those policies were intentionally designed to create the atmosphere that helped to destabilize the black family, they did in fact have that effect. Because they penalized the women that were married, the policies sent the message that it was more beneficial to the family not to have a man present. The black woman no longer needed the man for financial security. The purpose of the man became procreation only and many men gladly accepted that role. It removed the responsibility from the man of raising the children they had fathered. However, what the family gained in economic security they lost in family stability. These policies replaced the presence of the father with a monthly check. These policies undermined the family structure and created a dependency that has taken decades to remove. These same policies had the opposite effect of their stated purpose. Instead of lifting people out of poverty and into the mainstream of American economic life, they created generational poverty. Those on the government rolls would pass that dependency on to their children and their children’s children. It became a vicious cycle and created an entrenched underclass. These guidelines also and more importantly perverted the divine plan of God for the family. They forced people to make a choice between economic survival or family loyalty. No one should ever have to make such a choice, but many did.

The purpose of this book is not to explore the depths of man’s inhumanity to his fellow man, but how we as a people must overcome the sin that we now practice with an attitude of indifference. The problem with placing blame for racism is that there is never anyone to accept the responsibility for it. In the white community, it has always been the previous generation that had the problem with racism. Have we been treated unjustly? Of course, we have! Am I trying to excuse the behavior of others towards us? Of course not! Nevertheless, we have to move forward and begin to take responsibility for our own destinies. The problem is that we think white people hate us and some do. The majority of whites are just indifferent towards our plight and us. The opposite of love is not hate it is indifference. Indifference means I do not care if you live or die, just do not bother me. I believe the term used is "NIMBY" or not in my backyard. Let me stay in the suburbs or in my gated community and leave me alone. Hate at least involves some emotion. How many of us now hate someone we once loved? However, how many of us are now indifferent towards someone we once loved?

Our future and our most precious resource depends on our taking responsibility for our own salvation. The salvation of our people and especially of our children depends on us and no one else. The time has come to stop waiting on others to do what we should do for ourselves. Rightly or wrongly, we are in the situation we are in, how we got here is moot. The real question is what are we going to do about it? Are we going to continue to look for help from outside sources, the very sources that enslaved us and counted us as less than a man in the first place? So far, our tactics and game plans have not proved profitable for correcting this gross inequity to the eventual benefit of all our children. It is high time that we take back our communities, one soul at a time. For too long we have had leaders that have enriched themselves at the expense of the rest of us. We have not treated our children as our most precious resource and we have begun to pay the price. What we have given our children as an inheritance is lies and empty promises. Instead of surrendering ourselves to God and getting under His authority, we have been waiting on the same people who enslaved us to rescue us. This is not only illogical and politically impractical, but an insult to our children period. Passing along an entitlement mentality is demeaning to us and to our children as if this world owes us because of our heritage, because of slavery and prejudice. Get over it! Right now, we need to accept the fact that we are our worse enemies. It is always easier to avoid responsibility for our own actions. Granted, someone brought the poison into our neighborhoods, but we did not have to take it. We will only get better results when we demand better from those in positions of responsibility and especially ourselves.

When God freed the Israelites He expected and demanded that they be responsible for themselves. With His guidance they would prosper without the help of their captors. However, when they submitted themselves to God, He would use their captors to prosper them.

“…who says of Cyrus, ‘He is my shepherd and will accomplish all
That I please; he will say of Jerusalem, “Let it be rebuilt.” And
Of the temple, “Let it’s foundation be laid.”’”
Isaiah 44:28