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| 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.
