"Men Have Forgotten God."

Alexander Solzehnitsyn

In The Harbinger, Jonathan Cahn parallels the disappointment God felt toward the rebellious nation of Israel and their eventual fall into judgment with God’s disappointment in America and its impending judgment.  Critics disapprove by saying you can’t take Bible verses that were specifically meant for God’s chosen people and apply them to other nations.  I don’t agree.  I think there are certain principles that apply to ALL nations as well as to Israel.

Do not certain principles apply to all individuals, not just a chosen few?  Specifically among them is the biblical teach that if one disobeys God there will be severe consequences.  If one worships another god there will come a severe judgment.  If a person ignores God or claims he doesn’t exist, in a very literal way, there will be hell to pay.

The Bible teaches that these certain principles that apply to all individuals also apply to all nations. This is expressed clearly in Psalm 9:17 “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God.”  If one rises early in the morning before the light of day and casts his gaze toward the eastern horizon he will see something that all men of all generations have seen for thousands of years.  He will see the sun rise.  That is really a misnomer, the sun doesn’t actually rise.  When we see the sun appear we can rest assured that the earth is still spinning on its axis.

Just as surely as that natural law plays itself out every 24 hours, there are certain spiritual laws that cannot be compromised or altered.  Among them is one very important to Americans:  A nation that forgets God cannot and will not escape the judgment of God.  We have pushed God aside. We have chosen to worship our own idols.  We are obsessed with our own position, possessions and pleasure.  Multitudes claim to be a part of the Christian family but only for their own expediency, not because they have actually made any sacrifices for or developed any relationship with Him.

We tend to think that nations rise and fall based on the type of governments they form and the value of the policies they adopt.  This is humanism:  giving man more credit than he deserves for the rise and fall of nations.  It is a sovereign God who determines life or death for the nations of the earth.  He explains in his word over and over again the reasons for the rise and fall of nations:  “Righteousness lifts up a nation, but sin is a shame to the people” (Prov. 14:34).  The same laws that apply to individuals apply to nations. “Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)  If pride comes before the fall of the individual, pride also precedes the fall of a nation.

When nations turn away from God, acting as if He does not exist, sinfulness festers within the soul of that nation like an abscess in a boil.  The nation become infected with political corruption, dishonesty, slander, public displays of sexual perversions, rape,  violent crimes, , theft, , adultery, abortion, pornography,  drunkenness, drug abuse, gluttony, graft, greed and gambling of all kinds. 

God’s anger is revealed as his hammer is applied to the pillars of society.  Economic woes surface as taxes increase and government borrows more and more money to pay for the public demand for entitlements.  Government always fails in its attempt to satisfy the needs of all the people because their resources are limited.  Our God “owns the cattle on a thousand hills” (Psalm 50:10).  He is unlimited in his ability to provide and care for his own.  He entitles his follows to a fountain of grace and mercy that can never run dry. 

The spring of blessing from which the church has drawn its life begins to dry up.  The family rambles toward wreckage.  Education crumbles under the strain of trying to maintain a justification for eliminating truth from its curriculum.  Entertainment mollifies the masses and the press prostitutes its integrity.  The pillars weaken as God seeks to remind us of our failure to acknowledge him.

May God have mercy on America!

My father had four sons.  I was the youngest of the pack.  There are many disadvantages to being the youngest.  I didn’t get away with much because by the time I made my appearance my father had a pretty good grip on how to do the father-thing.  But there is one outstanding advantage that I didn’t always take advantage of.  The youngest can always learn from the mistakes made by his older siblings. 

Why is America not learning from the mistakes made by older nations?  The Israel of the Old Testament lost its identity because they disobeyed God.  Judah was taken into captivity because of their rebellion against the Almighty.  In the modern age, Germany was defeated and destroyed because the German people chose to follow Hitler instead of Christ.  On Christmas Day in 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union and a great nation fell without a shot being fired, one of the most amazing historical events of our time.  How could this happen? 

We who live in the west would do well to consider the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great writer and historian of Russian society.  When attempting to answer the question as to why a horrible revolution took place in his country that killed 60 million people, Solzhenitsyn said, “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that's why all this has happened.” 

The truth is never complicated, it is always so simple.  We could fill libraries with the books men have written about the causes of WWI, WWII, The Cold War and the present unrest in the Middle East.  Don’t bother spending too much time perusing through those sources.  The answer is simple:  Men have forgotten God.

Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon of America’s future.  Those clouds indicate the judgment of God upon a nation that has disobeyed, a nation that has abandoned the intent of its founding fathers.  We have become softened and weakened by our wealth and abundance.  We have chosen to place our trust in other things rather than in God.  He has allowed us to do this just as he allowed a multitude of nations that preceded us to do the same.  What are the consequences of forgetting God?   I believe the answer is found in Psalm 106:15 “And he gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.” 

It is not too late to return to the temple.  Let us repent of our sin of self-sufficiency.  Let us seek forgiveness for our callousness and forgetfulness and let us sincerely and desperately seek to restore what we once had; the blessings and approving smile of God upon us.

Kevin Probst - Teaches History, Government and Apologetics at the high school level in Columbus Georgia.