God's Judgment on American Apostasy
Nov 8, 2017 11:19:05 GMT -6
Post by Todd on Nov 8, 2017 11:19:05 GMT -6
Romans 1:18-32 presents a picture of fallen humanity and God’s temporal judgment of it. That is, men do all manner of evil, and worship anything or anyone rather than God. And God turns them over to their own lusts, whatever they may be, to reap the consequences of those lusts. This is God’s judgment on nations, cultures, societies, in short, humanity in its various groupings. Of course, each person will face a final judgment for his own unrighteousness. But God’s judgment on collectives is temporal and consists of allowing sinful societies to reap the rewards of their sinfulness. So despite the fact that Americans, as individuals, will all face judgment of some sort, America, as a nation, cannot be judged at the final judgment, because it is an abstraction that changes every second of the day as some are born and others die, and the quotient of sin changes from day to day.
But how else does Judgment come to a nation? Apostasy may be punished by revoking the independence of the collective. When the evil of a collective becomes so rampant that its pure stench reaches heaven, God may take its power and prestige away from it, and destroy its means of doing evil. Judah and Israel were taken into captivity by their unbelieving enemies. Germany was squashed by Europe and Russia. Other examples are readily available.
It may be that judgment is worst in cases where the nation was either a great pioneer of deep and deliberate evil or a nation once dedicated to God but that later committed apostasy. The former case is apparent in the fate of Nazi Germany. The latter case was surely true of the Hebrews, God’s “chosen people.” But what of America? On the one hand, we are not deliberately developing new monestrous ways of inflicting evil on others. And on the other hand, we were never proclaimed by God to be his “chosen people.” Rather, we were founded as a “Christian nation” and officially acknowledged God as our nation's God. This is dangerous stuff if such a nation later commits apostasy, throws off the moral convictions of godliness, and disavows any special relationship to God. For if God did not spare Judah and Israel, who were His own chosen people, what might happen to a nation that chooses God then abandons Him? Where shall that nation go for safety? Where might it hide from the wrath of God? Are not vast numbers of today’s individual Americans setting themselves up for a horrible final judgment? And have we not set America up for temporal judgment? Indeed, is that temporal judgment not unfolding even now?
We, as a nation, like those mentioned in Romans 1:21-22, “know God but do not glorify Him as God,” and, “professing ourselves to be wise, have become fools.” The Gangs, the murders, the fraud, and the complete collapse of sexual morality are bad enough. The corrupt judges and ruined judicial system might also be enough to bring about judgment. But running down the list of sins from Romans 1:29-32, we see that there is not one single item that does not apply to whole sectors of our current culture, and several of the sins mentioned are now legally protected behaviors! Precisely who the Hell do we think we are? We might not know, but Romans 1:28 has us defined to the last letter. We are those who “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” and who, therefore, “God gave over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not seemly.”
I began seeing the hand of judgment on America in 1976 when it became crystal clear to me that the cultural direction of the country was on a downhill trajectory from which we had not the will to turn. The Abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade a few years earlier should have been more than enough to awaken me, but it was not. Indeed we all should have been awakened when School prayer was outlawed. In any event, the pace of America’s decline has hastened until now we are on a bobsled bolting to the bottom. The Columbine High School shootings shocked the nation for several days. Today, School shootings are almost passe. Each new catastrophe is greeted not with a call for national repentance, but with exclamations of “what is going on,” followed within a day or two of total unconcern. Granted, the media outlets play the stories for just so long as they can milk them for a few more dollars, and there are always a few calls for the government to “do something,” by those few imbeciles who do not realize that the government already has done something - it greased the runners of the bobsled. Either way, such matters are quickly forgotten, and we blithely await the next catastrophe.
But if we read such incidents as the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers as a judgment on America’s greatness, economic might, and political pride, and if we are able to see school shootings as a judgment on the education system in which morality cannot be taught, and public prayer to the God of the Bible cannot be uttered, what are we to make of the attack on synagogues and Churches? Can God be any plainer? Are we waiting for handwriting on the wall, or worse, on tablets of stone? We have already turned away from these, so what is left?
The real question is simply this? Are we even awake? If God could not find 10 righteous men in a city the size of Sodom, is it not pretty likely that in our country of 300 Million our days not pretty tightly numbered?
- Todd
But how else does Judgment come to a nation? Apostasy may be punished by revoking the independence of the collective. When the evil of a collective becomes so rampant that its pure stench reaches heaven, God may take its power and prestige away from it, and destroy its means of doing evil. Judah and Israel were taken into captivity by their unbelieving enemies. Germany was squashed by Europe and Russia. Other examples are readily available.
It may be that judgment is worst in cases where the nation was either a great pioneer of deep and deliberate evil or a nation once dedicated to God but that later committed apostasy. The former case is apparent in the fate of Nazi Germany. The latter case was surely true of the Hebrews, God’s “chosen people.” But what of America? On the one hand, we are not deliberately developing new monestrous ways of inflicting evil on others. And on the other hand, we were never proclaimed by God to be his “chosen people.” Rather, we were founded as a “Christian nation” and officially acknowledged God as our nation's God. This is dangerous stuff if such a nation later commits apostasy, throws off the moral convictions of godliness, and disavows any special relationship to God. For if God did not spare Judah and Israel, who were His own chosen people, what might happen to a nation that chooses God then abandons Him? Where shall that nation go for safety? Where might it hide from the wrath of God? Are not vast numbers of today’s individual Americans setting themselves up for a horrible final judgment? And have we not set America up for temporal judgment? Indeed, is that temporal judgment not unfolding even now?
We, as a nation, like those mentioned in Romans 1:21-22, “know God but do not glorify Him as God,” and, “professing ourselves to be wise, have become fools.” The Gangs, the murders, the fraud, and the complete collapse of sexual morality are bad enough. The corrupt judges and ruined judicial system might also be enough to bring about judgment. But running down the list of sins from Romans 1:29-32, we see that there is not one single item that does not apply to whole sectors of our current culture, and several of the sins mentioned are now legally protected behaviors! Precisely who the Hell do we think we are? We might not know, but Romans 1:28 has us defined to the last letter. We are those who “did not like to retain God in their knowledge,” and who, therefore, “God gave over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not seemly.”
I began seeing the hand of judgment on America in 1976 when it became crystal clear to me that the cultural direction of the country was on a downhill trajectory from which we had not the will to turn. The Abortion ruling of Roe v. Wade a few years earlier should have been more than enough to awaken me, but it was not. Indeed we all should have been awakened when School prayer was outlawed. In any event, the pace of America’s decline has hastened until now we are on a bobsled bolting to the bottom. The Columbine High School shootings shocked the nation for several days. Today, School shootings are almost passe. Each new catastrophe is greeted not with a call for national repentance, but with exclamations of “what is going on,” followed within a day or two of total unconcern. Granted, the media outlets play the stories for just so long as they can milk them for a few more dollars, and there are always a few calls for the government to “do something,” by those few imbeciles who do not realize that the government already has done something - it greased the runners of the bobsled. Either way, such matters are quickly forgotten, and we blithely await the next catastrophe.
But if we read such incidents as the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers as a judgment on America’s greatness, economic might, and political pride, and if we are able to see school shootings as a judgment on the education system in which morality cannot be taught, and public prayer to the God of the Bible cannot be uttered, what are we to make of the attack on synagogues and Churches? Can God be any plainer? Are we waiting for handwriting on the wall, or worse, on tablets of stone? We have already turned away from these, so what is left?
The real question is simply this? Are we even awake? If God could not find 10 righteous men in a city the size of Sodom, is it not pretty likely that in our country of 300 Million our days not pretty tightly numbered?
- Todd