Rejoice in the Lord alway: and again I say, Rejoice. - Philippians 4:4 KJV
It is amazing how different modern America is from the America of just 100 years ago. Today multitudes of women look and act like men and many men look and act like women. Our modern nation, by and large, even condones blatant sin against the laws of conscience, which are clearly written in the heart of every man. But one change is significant in light of the anniversary of 9-11-01. Only a century ago, any national calamity was immediately seen as a reason for national humiliation, confession of sin, repentance, and prayer to the God of the Holy Bible. However, today, a national calamity is a time to offer a pitiful, self-centered, lazy, fast-food, “moment of silence” to nothing. Prayer to the God of the Christian Bible is now seen as bigoted and narrow-minded. And to preach that any national calamity is a NATIONAL JUDGMENT is to commit the unpardonable sin. But the Christians of America, and throughout the world, need to ignore these politically correct, emotion-driven “standards.” The preachers of this country have had too many “moments of silence.” It is time to cry out and call every man to repentance.
1. God uses calamities to punish cities, nations, and kingdoms that get lifted up in selfishness and sin:
Jonah 1:2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for THEIR WICKEDNESS is come up before me. 3:4 And Jonah began to enter into the city a day’s journey, and he cried, and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown. 5 So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them.
Matthew 11:20 Then
began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done,
because they repented not…
When Rome continued to ignore the light of conscience and fall into debauchery, God sent BARBARIANS to TERRORIZE their kingdom. These attacks by the Goths continued until proud Rome fell. Does not this serve as a warning to proud, gluttonous America?:
“The Pagan historians of Rome have branded and immortalized the vices and crimes of the Caesars: the misanthropy, cruelty, and voluptuousness of Tiberius; the ferocious madness of Caius Caligula, who had men tortured, beheaded, or sawed in pieces for his amusement, who seriously meditated the butchery of the whole senate, raised his horse to the dignity of consul and priest, and crawled under the bed in a storm; the bottomless vileness of Nero, ‘the inventor of crime,’ who poisoned or murdered his preceptors Burrhus and Seneca, his half-brother and brother-in-law Britannicus, his mother Agrippina, his wife Octavia, his mistress Poppaea, who in sheer wantonness set fire to Rome, and then burnt innocent Christians for it as torches in his gardens, figuring himself as charioteer in the infernal spectacle; the swinish gluttony of Vitellins, who consumed millions of money in mere eating; the refined wickedness of Domitian, who, more a cat than a tiger, amused himself most with the torments of the dying and with catching flies; the shameless revelry of Commodus with his hundreds of concubines, and ferocious passion for butchering men and beasts on the arena; the mad villainy of Heliogabalus, who raised the lowest men to the highest dignities, dressed himself in women’s clothes, married a dissolute boy like himself, in short, inverted all the laws of nature and of decency, until at last he was butchered with his mother by the soldiers, and thrown into the muddy Tiber. And to fill the measure of impiety and wickedness, such imperial monsters were received, after their death, by a formal decree of the Senate, into the number of divinities and their abandoned memory was celebrated by festivals, temples, and colleges of priests!….The wives and mistresses of the emperors were not much better. They revelled in luxury and vice, swept through the streets in chariots drawn by silver-shod mules, wasted fortunes on a single dress, delighted in wicked intrigues, aided their husbands in dark crimes and shared at last in their tragic fate…From the higher regions the corruption descended into the masses of the people, who by this time had no sense for anything but [circuses] and, in the enjoyment of these, looked with morbid curiosity and interest upon the most flagrant vices of their masters…No wonder that Tacitus, who with terse eloquence and old Roman severity exposes the monstrous character of Nero and other emperors…foreboded the fearful vengeance of the gods, and even the speedy destruction of the empire. And certainly nothing could save it from final doom, whose approach was announced with ever-growing distinctness by wars, insurrections, inundations, earthquakes, pestilence, famine, IRRUPTION OF BARBARIANS, and prophetic calamities of every kind.” (Schaff, “History of the Christian Church,” chapter VIII)
Even pagans philosophers, with only the light of conscience, could see God’s JUDGMENT in national calamities. There was certainly a time when practically every God-fearing Christian used every destructive “act of God” to call the world to repentance. For example, D.M. Panton, in the 1920′s, provided a BIBLICAL response to the great earthquake in Japan:
“In comparably the
greatest visible act of God since the War has been the earthquake in Japan
(Sept. 1, 1923), another ominous thunder – an earthquake among the greatest
recorded in the history of the world….The number of deaths at the lowest is
estimated (“Times,” Sept. 14, 1923) at 165,000….a million and a half people
were rendered homeless…It is tragic to listen to the Church assuring Science
that the world has nothing to fear… ‘On the third day,’ an eye witness writes,
‘a heavy storm visited the capital, and millions of refugees had no shelter,
nor food…It is right that we should not shrink from seeing what God intends all
the world to see – its horror…. ‘Tokyo,’ says one eye-witness, ‘was a living
hell,’…’Many thousands,’ says yet another eye-witness, ‘were roasted
alive.’…The reasons of any earthquake can be fully apparent only to
God….Nevertheless probably no great earthquake has been without its moral
clues….Japan, which, in the exhaustion of Europe and the chaos of China,
threatened a possible world-dominance, has been reduced for decades, by this
act of God, to a second rate, harmless power…Two or three months before [this
earthquake in Japan], Dr. Chas. Inwood said: ‘While I was in Tokyo one of the
leading journals of the city declared, in reference to the reading books in the
hands of the people: ‘Most of the books being read by the people, men and
women, are so obscene that they could not be translated into English.’ Dr. D.S.
Spencer, a missionary of forty years’ standing in Japan, says: ‘Japan alone
among the leading nations publicly licenses prostitution. Social vice fostered
by the government is undermining the family…endangering the church, destroying
the life of young manhood and womanhood, and eating out the heart of Japan.’…As
the home of idolatry, India, with its 350,000,000 gods is also the house of
famine, so the home of emperor-worship for two thousand years, Japan, is also
the home of earthquake and convulsion. In the last fifteen centuries Japan has
had an earthquake every ten years; in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
she has one every five years. A Japanese gentleman in London, not a Christian,
exclaimed: ‘This has come from Heaven! Japan was sunk in materialism, and
something had to happen!’” --(D.M. Panton, “The Panton Papers,” 1928)
How far we have strayed from this type of preaching! Today, most preachers in the public eye are puppets. They are paid and praised to make men feel comfortable as they rest in only a form of godliness (2 Timothy 3). When calamity strikes, they are immediately brought forth to comfort a whole nation in its sins.
2. Often, the specific judgment is in the form of human enemies the Lord raises up to terrorize and afflict the nation under judgment:
Judges 6:1 And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of
the LORD: and the LORD delivered them into the hand of Midian seven years.
Judges 13:1 And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD;
and the LORD delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty years. 2
Chronicles 21:16 Moreover the LORD stirred up against Jehoram the spirit of the
Philistines, and of the Arabians, that were near the Ethiopians: 1 Kings 11:4
For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart
after other gods: and his heart was not perfect with the LORD his God, as was
the heart of David his father. ...14 And the LORD stirred up an adversary unto
Solomon, Hadad the Edomite: he was of the king’s seed in Edom. ...Isaiah 10:1
Woe unto them that decree unrighteous decrees, and that write grievousness
which they have prescribed; ...5 O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the
staff in their hand is mine indignation. 6 I will send him against an
hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a
charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like
the mire of the streets. ...7 Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart
think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.
...15 Shall the axe boast itself against him that heweth therewith? or shall
the saw magnify itself against him that shaketh it? as if the rod should shake
itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself,
as if it were no wood.
3. The proper response to these attacks is self-examination, confession, repentance, and forsaking of the national sins – even though specific individuals who are harmed in a national calamity may or may not be culpable:
Luke 13:1 There were present at that season some that TOLD HIM
of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.
The Lord did not watch the murders on TV, again and again! They came and told Him. I have never seen a plane crash into the buildings. I have not seen video images of the destruction. But today, we have millions of people who can’t wait to get home to turn on the Roman Circus in their living rooms. If God has not provided them with images of a suicide or some other live destruction, they will turn over to HBO and watch a “simulated” version. With modern technology, it appears real enough to momentarily satisfy their lust for blood. These images, repeatedly replayed as entertainment, or to satisfy carnal curiosity (Acts 17:21), only cause people to become increasingly desensitized to the horrors of violence.
But Jesus answered these people. He was aware of the horrible tragedy:
Luke 13:2 And Jesus answering said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galilaeans were sinners above all the Galilaeans, because they suffered such things? 3 I tell you, Nay: but, EXCEPT YE REPENT, YE SHALL ALL LIKEWISE PERISH. 4 Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
Therefore, we are to realize that individuals who perish in national tragedies are not necessarily worse sinners than those who escape them. We must not make the mistake of Job’s friends. However, what is important here is that Jesus USED the horrible tragedies to PREACH REPENTANCE! The “Jesus” of many of these modern preachers, in the public eye, would never have used such horrible tragedies as a sermon-text to preach repentance and the fear of God! Yet these modern preachers are not only out of touch with Jesus 2000 years ago, they are out of touch with their OWN COUNTRY JUST OVER A CENTURY AGO!
In the 19th century, families in the U.S. were devastated by the Civil War. How did the government leaders respond to the national tragedy? Did they offer up a pathetic moment of silence? Did they pretend to salute Allah or Buddha? Did they pray to God for comfort without repentance or confession of sin? No! On March 2, 1863, Senator James Harlan introduced the following Resolution in the Senate. The Resolution beseeched President Lincoln to proclaim a national day of prayer and fasting. It was adopted on March 3, and signed by Lincoln on March 30. Read the words of this Resolution and see how different they are from the politically correct, hypocritical, smooth-talking dribble of our nations leaders today. Remember, the following Resolution was signed by the President:
“Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing
the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs
of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to
designate and set apart a day for National prayer and HUMILIATION. And whereas
it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the
overruling power of God, to CONFESS THEIR SINS and transgressions, in humble
sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine REPENTANCE will lead to mercy and
pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures
and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the
Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals
are SUBJECTED TO PUNISHMENTS and chastisements in this world, MAY WE NOT JUSTLY
FEAR THAT THE AWFUL CALAMITY OF CIVIL WAR, which now desolates the land, MAY BE
BUT A PUNISHMENT, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful
end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients
of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years,
in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no
other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the
gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and
strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our
hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and
virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become TOO
SELF-SUFFICIENT to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, TOO
PROUD to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves
before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for
clemency and forgiveness. Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and
fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation,
designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th. day of April, 1863, as a day of
national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the
People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to
unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in
keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the
religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in
sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the
Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and
answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the
restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy
condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand
and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of
Washington, this thirtieth day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the
eighty seventh. – By the President: Abraham Lincoln, William H. Seward,
Secretary of State.” (“The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln,” Roy P. Basler)
4. Obedient Christians must lead the nations and help them to understand the ways of God:
Matthew 28:19 Go ye therefore, and TEACH ALL NATIONS, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Matthew
5:14 Ye are THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. A city that is set on an hill cannot be
hid.
5. Spreading false assurances of comfort and safety, regardless of any true confession and repentance, is sin; it is not the role of God’s people to give messages of false hope and comfort:
Jeremiah 8:11 For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of
my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Isaiah 57:21
There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked. 58:1 CRY ALOUD, SPARE NOT, lift
up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the
house of Jacob their sins. 2 Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my
ways, AS A NATION THAT DID RIGHTEOUSNESS, and forsook not the ordinance of
their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in
approaching to God.
Many of the leaders of America are using God’s name in public speeches (“God bless America,” etc.), and offering up token prayers, while in the next conversation they take His holy name in vain. They act as if we are a nation that does not DESERVE to be destroyed! But how can this be? We are a nation that has embraced sodomy and perfumed the killing of infants in the womb. The entertainment of the deluded masses is perverted and debased. Shall we pretend to offer up prayers to God with no confession of sin, no repentance, no humbling of ourselves as a nation?
6. In the past, God has used the king of Babylon to punish the proud, rebellious nations of the earth for their sins. He will do so again in the last days:
Jeremiah 25:5 They said, Turn ye again now every one from his
evil way, and from the evil of your doings, and dwell in the land that the LORD
hath given unto you and to your fathers for ever and ever: ...8 Therefore thus
saith the LORD of hosts; Because ye have not heard my words, 9 Behold, I will
send and take all the families of the north, saith the LORD, and Nebuchadrezzar
the KING OF BABYLON, MY SERVANT, and will bring them against this land, and
against the inhabitants thereof, and AGAINST ALL THESE NATIONS round about, and
will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, and an hissing, and
perpetual desolations. ...12 And it shall come to pass, when seventy years are
accomplished, that I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation, saith
the LORD, for their iniquity, and the land of the Chaldeans, and will make it perpetual
desolations. ...15 For thus saith the LORD God of Israel unto me; Take the wine
cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations, to whom I send thee, to
drink it. ...31 A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth; for the LORD
hath a controversy with the nations, he will plead with all flesh; he will give
them that are wicked to the sword, saith the LORD. 32 Thus saith the LORD of
hosts, Behold, evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind
shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. Jeremiah 27:8 And it shall
come to pass, that the nation and kingdom which will not serve the same
Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, and that will not put their neck under the
yoke of the king of Babylon, that nation will I punish, saith the LORD, with
the sword, and with the famine, and with the pestilence, until I have consumed
them by his hand. 9 Therefore hearken not ye to your prophets, nor to your
diviners, nor to your dreamers, nor to your enchanters, nor to your sorcerers,
which speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon: Jeremiah
37:8 And the Chaldeans shall come again, and fight against this city, and take
it, and burn it with fire. 9 Thus saith the LORD; Deceive not yourselves,
saying, The Chaldeans shall surely depart from us: for they shall not depart.
10 For though ye had smitten the whole army of the Chaldeans that fight against
you, and there remained but wounded men among them, yet should they rise up
every man in his tent, and burn this city with fire. Habakkuk 1:6 For, lo, I
raise up the Chaldeans, that BITTER AND HASTY NATION, which shall march through
the breadth of the land, to possess the dwellingplaces that are not theirs. 9
They shall come all for violence: their faces shall sup up as the east wind,
and they shall gather the captivity as the sand. 10 And they shall SCOFF AT
KINGS, and the princes shall be a scorn unto them: they shall deride every
strong hold; for they shall heap dust, and take it.
These Scriptures are double prophecies. They speak of the old king of Babylon AND the king of Babylon in the last days. Saddam Hussein may, or may not, be the last days’ king of Babylon (which is distinct from the final Antichrist of Revelation 13). Yet, he is certainly in the spirit of this ancient, bitter and hasty king!
7. The four Kingdoms of Daniels prophecy will be restored again in the last days. The first Kingdom God uses to judge the world in the tribulation period will again be Babylon:
Daniel 7:3 And four great beasts came up from the sea, diverse
one from another. 4 The FIRST was like a lion… 17 These great beasts, which are
four, are four kings, which SHALL ARISE out of the earth. Daniel 2:38 And
wheresoever the children of men dwell, the beasts of the field and the fowls of
the heaven hath he given into thine hand, and hath made thee ruler over them
all. Thou art this head of gold. ...44 And IN THE DAYS OF THESE KINGS shall the
God of heaven set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom
shall not be left to other people, but it shall break in pieces and CONSUME ALL
THESE KINGDOMS…
Many of the prophecies of Daniel are dual. Iraq will once again be used to PUNISH the world. How far this goes in the present, depends, to some degree, upon how mankind responds to God’s warnings.
8. God has specifically promised judgment upon every nation that turns from the light of truth:
Psalms 2:10 Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye
judges of the earth. 11 Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and YE PERISH from the way, when his wrath
is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.
9. God will often show mercy to a condemned city or nation in response to mass repentance, and will postpone its final overthrow:
Jonah 3:8 But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and
CRY MIGHTILY unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and from
the VIOLENCE that is in their hands. 9 Who can tell if God will turn and
repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not? 10 And God saw
their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the
evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not. Jeremiah
18:7 At what instant I shall speak concerning a nation, and concerning a
kingdom, to pluck up, and to pull down, and to destroy it; 8 If that nation,
against whom I have pronounced, turn from their evil, I will repent of the evil
that I thought to do unto them. 9 And at what instant I shall speak concerning
a nation, and concerning a kingdom, to build and to plant it; 10 If it do evil
in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good,
wherewith I said I would benefit them.
America has been warned. One day, perhaps tomorrow, the tribulation period will begin. Iraq will once again be used as God’s hammer. Will you not seek God for His mercy upon our nation? It is a nation with bloody hands.
It is time to be an example to the lost and get on our faces before the Lord and repent. Church-going Christians can begin by repenting of their gluttony, lack of prayer for national leaders, gluttony, lack of discipline and sacrifice in tithes and offerings, friendship of the world, indulgence in worldly TV and movies, railing, sowing discord, gluttony, sending the mother out of the home to work, lack of standards, gluttony, lack of Biblical separation, immodest and perverted clothing, disobedience or disrespect to husbands, fathers, bosses, pastors and other leaders, sharpness toward wives and children, gluttony, adultery, fornication, lack of deep Bible study for the purpose of growing in personal holiness, lack of regular soul winning, lack of regular family devotions, etc.
Perhaps this article has made you mad because you have poison that needs to come out of your heart (see 2 Timothy 4:3 and Titus 2:1-15). This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting!
Change Must Begin at the House of God! And it must begin with the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Order The Rod: and see!
*******************************
THE ROD: WILL
GOD SPARE IT? *******************************
440 pages of Biblical and rare historic documentation on the Judgment Seat of
Christ.
Paperback: $20.00
(shipping included)
Hardback: $24.00 (shipping included) Change Must Begin at the House of God! And
it must begin with the fear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom. Order The
Rod: and see!