God IS Judging America

I have thought about this for years, but recently I have come to a conclusion.

God IS judging America. 

First we should probably look at some of the reasons that people will offer why this can’t be true.

Some will say that that is all Old Testament thinking.  The New Testament changed all that.  We’re under a New Covenant.

The Bible says that “all Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, capable, proficient, equipped for every good work.  2 Timothy 3:16,17

The only Scripture they had when that was written was the Old Testament.  Scholars debate when the various books of the New Testament were written, but when someone like Paul mentioned Scripture, they were basically thinking of the Old Testament, and maybe a few New Testament books.  The New Testament writers refer to the Old Testament hundreds of times in their writings.

Others might say that God doesn’t judge nations.  Maybe God dealt with Israel in the Old Testament, because Israel was God’s chosen people.  But that is all Old Testament, and we are now in New Testament times.

But in the Old Testament, God judged all the nations.  God told Abraham about the future of his descendants, and how that they will go to another land for a while and (Genesis 15:16)  “Then in the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”

When the Israelites came out of Egypt to go to the Promised Land, they were to fulfill God’s judgment on the nations that lived there.  God wasn’t just thinking about Israel.

Then in Amos 1and 2, God told Amos of His judgments on 6 other nations or peoples before He spoke of His judgment on Israel: Syria, Philistia, Edom, Tyre, Ammon, and Moab.

So why do I think God is judging America? 

Look at Amos 1 and 2.  In pronouncing His judgment on these six people groups, God uses an unusual way of expressing Himself that scholars aren’t sure how to interpret it.  He says for three transgressions of Damascus, which would refer to Syria, and for four.  For three transgressions of Gaza, which refers to the land of Philistines, and for four. 

Scholars differ, but it’s like 3 is bad enough, but 4 is just too much.

Four issues.  That’s all it takes.

So what would be America’s transgressions?

I’m not ranking them in order of importance.  I’m just listing them.

1)         The first transgression is abortion.  It’s not only legal, but it is heavily funded by taxpayer money.  Your money is paying for abortions. 

Maybe that is not that important for Christians, because they frankly sympathize with people who say they just can’t afford any more kids.  Or maybe they feel sorry for young single women who probably couldn’t give the kid a good home.

In both cases, I fault our country for creating situations where these circumstances are more likely.

I recently taught a lesson on the greatest privilege God gives to human beings, and that is that humans are co-creators of human life, and that’s a life that bears God’s image.  One day we will judge angels.  Psalm 139 says that God weaves these children together in the womb and has their lives all planned out ahead of them.

How dare we think we can kill children in the womb and not pay a price for it as a society?

Yes, I know the reasons that we give for doing it.  I contend that other choices we have made as a society have contributed to creating problems where even the solutions come out wrong.

2)         The second transgression a lot of you will brush off, but I would then refer you to the lesson I taught on it.  Our nation rejects the idea of a sabbath day.

We used to honor the Sabbath as a nation.  In our Constitution, it says that the President has ten days to veto a bill, excluding Sundays.  Stores were closed, and even if somebody had to work on a Sunday, it was always paid as overtime.  Now all the days are alike.  It’s the busiest shopping day of the week.

All throughout the book of Jeremiah, God warns them of His judgment and lists all the reasons why it’s coming.

But then, in chapter 17:24,25, He says that if they had just honored the Sabbath, everything would be alright.  God blessed and sanctified the Sabbath long before there ever was an Israel. 

3)         We have turned our back on God as a nation. 

Our nation was founded on the belief that God gave human beings unalienable rights.  And this is not a belief that is a part of every religion or idea about God.  Some say our nation was founded by deists.  Well, a deist god wouldn’t give anybody unalienable rights and certainly wouldn’t tell them about it if he did.  It was the Christian God and the Bible was a main part of public education for almost 200 years, before the court called that practice unconstitutional.

We have been told that our government must be neutral toward all religions, that it cannot favor one over the other.  Well, that just means that all religions are equally irrelevant, equally untrue.  The only way our government can be neutral toward all religions is to have no religion at all.  They call our nation a secular nation, which is essentially an atheistic nation.  You can believe in God if you want, but it has nothing to do with any public policymaking.  

God is no longer needed or wanted in public life.  The nation can go through the most difficult of times, like now, and never see the need to call on God.  Any answers it wants can be found in science and government.  If we just spent more money on this problem, we can fix it.

4)         The fourth transgression I’m not even going to mention.  Why?  It’s controversial, some of you will just stop listening or reading, and I won’t and don’t have the time to explain it.

Think of it like burning the bridges. 

On the south side of Chicago, a former President wants to build a Presidential something in a major park there.  A lot of people protested that the park was not a good place for it.  It would require cutting down an enormous amount of old tall trees that make the park so special.

Then one day people came in and cut them all down.  Maybe not all of them.  But that argument was no longer valid.

They wanted to preserve something that was no longer there. 

In the same way, our country has done some things that make a return to God, I don’t want to say, more and more unlikely.  Or even harder.  The point of a miracle is that the situation is impossible to begin with.

But it’s like the nation tried really hard to make sure that that wasn’t going to happen.

I suppose that would be a little like the guards sealing Jesus’ tomb to make sure He didn’t come out.

But I see it as a final act of defiance against God to make our nation less and less likely to ever return to God.

Now when God judged Egypt, it was run by Pharaoh.  He was responsible for all the ills of the people.  God protected the Israelites from most of the effects of the plagues.

But in America, we don’t have Pharaohs or kings or Caesars.  We choose the people who run our country.  You can say that you didn’t vote for them, but what are you doing to get people to represent you who really do represent you?

We can’t just tell God that we didn’t vote for this person who supports abortion.  We didn’t vote for these people who removed God from our nation’s life.  What do you suppose God thought of the average German during World War 2?  The Nazis only represented a small proportion of their population. 

Sometimes you can’t just watch the things that happen in the world.  You have to be a part of what’s going on.