CRISIS IN AMERICA
In Psalm 33:12, the Psalmist states, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.”
There are reasons for the blessings we have enjoyed as a nation, and reasons for judgments that will come if we refuse to repent of our sins as a nation. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, made these remarks in the Church of the Holy Trinity, United States in 1892: “This is a Christian nation. Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian… this is a Christian nation.”
Also we read in Psalm 9:17, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.” Not that the earth will be opened up and souls will drop into hell, but the nature of those nations will be turned into hell.
From the pronouncement of Justice Jay to the debauchery of our legislative decisions in recent times, we are inviting the judgment of God. In God’s time it will fall on this and all nations that have taken the ways of sin over the ways of God. Over the last sixty years or so, this has been the direction appointed for this nation through decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. In 1962 prayer was removed from schools, and in 1963 the Bible was taken from our public schools’ system. In 1973 the Supreme Court legalized abortion, in 1980, it removed the 10 commandments from public places. In 2013 it struck down the defense of the marriage act, passed and allowed same-sex marriage. Now gender-neutral restrooms are one of the latest laws to have been passed. In the first Continental Congress, writers and signers of our Constitution were made up of 55 Christians out of the 60 attendees.
The Word of God, as well as the Constitution, is under a full assault and attack by forces who have no fear of God. God said in Ecclesiastes 1:9, “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” This same arrogance and lack of the fear of God that has brought down peoples and nations throughout the ages will certainly bring down others after them. Judah was so wicked that God judged them so severely (2 Kings 17:7-23) that He “removed them out of His sight.”
God said that at the resurrection, people will come from every “nation, tribe and tongue.” It is said that in wicked
Corinth, God “had many people.” As it was in evil Judah and wicked Corinth, not everyone in America is evil; but that will not prevent judgment for the sin in the land. It is plausible that God’s people would ask in times of their faithfulness to God while surrounded by evil workers, “what is going to happen to us?” “What will our ultimate end be?” Faith is the answer.
God knows those that are His. Indeed, God will deliver His chosen ones so that “the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13). Exodus 15:6 tells us, “Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.” Everything is for the glory of God and will be accomplished according to His declaration, “I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another” (Isaiah 42:8).
There is nothing new under the sun. Sin is nothing new but is a continual threat which has always been the ways of the unregenerate man. God has been faithful to record in His Holy Word what His children had to face in their generations. Furthermore, we are told of His reaction to each debauchery. In the time of Abraham there was sexual perversion in Sodom. Christians are quick to see the sins of Sodom, and rightly judge that hideous sin, but forget the Words of God.
Matthew 11:24 says, “But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.” There was a time when people were so wicked. It is written, “They have built also the high places of Baal, to burn their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor spake it, neither came it into my mind” (Jeremiah 19:5). So great was the judgment of God that the city’s name was changed to The Valley of Slaughter. God will not be mocked. The purpose of Pharaoh at the Red Sea was anti-Semitic because he was seeking to destroy God’s plan for His people. The desire of the Devil has not changed or been modified. God’s chosen nation of Israel is falling out of favor with America. God help us.
Our national foundation is based upon the Word of God. George Washington said, “It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” Our first president once prayed, “Oh, eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb and purge my heart by Thy Holy Spirit. Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of Thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in Thy fear, and dying in Thy favor, I may in thy appointed time obtain the resurrection of the justified unto eternal life. Bless, O Lord, the whole race of mankind and let the world be filled with the knowledge of Thee and Thy son, Jesus Christ.”
John Hancock, whose large signature is on the Declaration of Independence, on October 15, 1791 said, “…that all may bow to the scepter of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then the whole world be filled with His glory.”
Samuel Adams, called the Father of the American Revolution, in 1797, prayed that, “…speedily bringing on that holy and happy period when the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and all the people willingly bow to the scepter of Him who is the Prince of Peace.”
These quotes are engraved into the Washington Monument, placed there by our forefathers: “Holiness to the Lord” (Exodus 28:26, 30:30, Isaiah 23:18, Zechariah 14:20)
“Search the Scriptures” (John 5:39)
“The memory of the just is blessed” (Proverbs 10:7)
“May Heaven to this Union continue its beneficence”
“In God We Trust”
“Praise be to God” (engraved on the monument’s capstone in Latin as “Laus Deo”).
Compare those statements and prayers with words from America’s leaders today: “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation.” And “The Koran tells us, ‘O mankind! We have created you male and female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another.’”
Yet more, “Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order.” This was said by a leader about gays and same-sex marriage: “If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love… then surely, we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that American dream” (NPR.org/2012/09/04*). Again, “With the notion of marriage – an exclusive, emotional, binding ‘til death do you part’ - becoming more and more an exception to the rule given a rise in cohabitation and high rates of divorce, why should the federal government be telling adults who love one another that they cannot get married, simply because they happen to be gay? I believe when there are so many forces pulling our society apart, we need more commitment to marriage, not less” (washingtonpost.com).
So great and widespread is the depths of sin that God said in Genesis 6:6, “And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Americans have made and are making horrible decisions by following the voices of wolves and receivers. She will reap what she has sown. God, please be merciful!
We have departed totally away from God’s admonition in Proverbs 29:2 concerning those who would place in authority over us: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule the people mourn.” In America, as with the nations of the world, evil has the rule.
As a nation we are entering into that nature of hell, and unless we turn to 2 Chronicles 7:14 and be in full obedience and compliance, “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land,” hell will fill this land.
The very roots, and the greatness of this nation, were founded upon the Word of God and the God of the Word. As a people, we must return with our whole heart to our original heritage— the Almighty God. God has warned us of a time that would come when people would fall away from God (2 Thessalonians 2:3). God also has a people that have not and will not bow their knee to Baal (1 Kings 19:18).
God’s people are not for sale to anyone or anything for any price. They remain “…steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye now that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). In Jeremiah 7:16-19, in God’s hot displeasure over Judah and Jerusalem He said: “Therefore pray not thou for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me: for I will not hear thee. Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger. Do they provoke me to anger? saith the LORD: do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces?”
The weeping prophet Jeremiah made this plea, “O earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord” (Jeremiah 22:29). My plea before God is that all nations would hear His voice. This ministry reaches into an untold number of lands. We all need the Presence of God. Jeremiah spent most of his “ministerial” life forsaken and alone. In this late hour we cannot afford to leave this great task to one, or even a few people. I believe it would be the Will of God that we all join in this common labor. Every one of us are needed and have a call of God upon us. The hour is late; the time is short. God, please help us and use us. Go forward into the book of Joel 3:20 and read, “But Judah shall dwell forever, and Jerusalem from generation to generation.”
God spoke to Jonah and said unto him, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.” The judgment of God was to come upon the city. When the king of that great city heard the pronouncements of God’s messenger “…he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn everyone from his evil way, and from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not” (Jonah 3:6-10). From certain ruin to a miraculous answer to prayer.
The world is rapidly reaching the place spoken of the Amorites, “But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16). When God judged these people He utterly and totally destroyed them from the face of the earth.
One of the great needs of this hour is workers in the fields of all the earth, including America. “Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2). It would require some denying of a person’s personal time and interests, but the reward would be eternal and God would bless that worker forever.
In Acts 8:34 as Phillip witnessed to the Ethiopian eunuch, the conversation included this question, “And the eunuch answered Philip, and said, I pray thee, of whom speaketh the prophet this? of himself, or of some other man?” We must share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with all people including teaching them the meaning of the Scripture. One of the great proven ministries of teaching the Word of God is Pastor Clendennen and the lessons of the School of Christ International. “I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work” (John 9:4). In the Name of the Lord, for the Glory of God, and the souls of men and women, I pray you will do all that you can while it is yet day.
May God go before us to prepare the way and give us an enormous harvest of souls for the Kingdom of God. I believe when all God’s work on earth has been completed, we surely will meet many of the souls that our time, work, and money has been instrumental in the salvation of their souls. The words of a gospel song from years back said it all with these words, “Thank you for giving to the Lord, I am a life that was changed…”
Excerpt from the SOCI WMR November 2016