Our favorite patriotic song is “God Bless America,” but it is high time God’s people began to pray “GOD SAVE AMERICA.” In fact God has already blessed America more than any nation in history. It is now time for America to Bless God rather than to sing “God bless America,” and when we do we can pray “GOD SAVE AMERICA” and He will.
- GOD’S MIRACULOUS BLESSINGS UPON AMERICA IN THE PAST: As I have studied American history and observed the American experience, I identify SEVEN spectacular ways God has shed His grace on us:
- God gave us a Land. The natural beauty and natural resources of America are astounding. Take the State of North Carolina alone, it is a dream land. The earliest settlers of North Carolina called it “The Eden of the East.” When I lived in Texas, I told the Texans that God made North Carolina so we would have a better idea of what heaven will be like. Of course, the Texans laughed and scoffed at me, for you can always tell a Texan but you can’t tell him much. But one day one of our church members decided to visit Maggie Valley, North Carolina, and he returned to Houston and said to me, “Pastor, you were not exaggerating when you said North Carolina looked like heaven. Heaven can’t be more beautiful than Maggie valley.” It is my understanding that this brother, a millionaire purchased an estate in Maggie Valley.
- God gave us a Law – the Bible. When you read this book, you find on the one hand that God says “Thou shalt not” do so and so, and on the other hand you find that God says “Thou shalt do so and so.” Now when God says to America “Thou shalt not,” He is saying “Don’t hurt yourself or even destroy yourself.” And when He says “Thou shalt,” He is saying “America, help yourself to happiness and a wonderful future.” Ponder Psalm 9:19.
Yet America has removed God’s law from public life. The question is “Who Really Removed the 10 Commandments?” They were removed 50 years ago from the pulpit and the hearts of the American people.
- God gave us Liberty: Our liberty is rooted in the great God who created us. The Declaration of Independence is based upon this truth. “We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Liberty is not the gift of the State; but the gift of the Almighty God. However, our liberty is not license. It is liberty “in law” as the song says. America is rapidly becoming an enslaved nation because it has rebelled against the law of liberty (James 1:25). Jesus says “If you continue in my Word, then you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know (and live) the truth and the truth shall make you free (John 8:31-32). These words were the Motto of our oldest college, Harvard, which today has debunked the Bible as God’s Word. Alas, for God says “the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psalm 9:17).
- God gave us Life. The Bible speaks of two kinds of life (a) Bios life – biological or physical life. God, even Jesus Christ, gave us this life, even creating us in His own image; but God also gave us a second kind of life, Zoe life or eternal life. Our forefathers conquered a wilderness and built the greatest civilization in history because they possessed incredible physical strength but not only physical strength, they possessed the very life of God which gave them courage to fight for their freedom and then to live lives for God’s glory. Illus: the Great Awakening (1725-1740) prepared the colonists to fight the Revolutionary War.
- God gave us Leadership. Only the hand of Providence could have brought together such an Assemblage of remarkable men, spiritually, intellectually, politically, as the founders of the USA: Washington, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, Patrick Henry, etc. Someone has well observed that Washington was our Moses and Lincoln later was our Jefferson, etc.
- God gave us the Lord. He is none other than our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. His name and Word have been so interwoven in our institutions that you cannot separate the two. America without the true God and Savior would be like mathematics without numbers, and music without notes.
Yet in our day the Supreme Court has laid the foundation for a new vision of America – a totally secular and anti-religious, anti-Christian nation. In the infamous Everson case, Justice Hugo Black asserted that the First Amendment erected “a wall of separation between church and state” which “must be kept high and impregnable.” (Everson vs. Board of Education, 330 US 1 (1947). He went on to write that the first Amendment was intended to keep “the state’s hand out of religion” and “to keep religious hands off the state.” Thus the High court has decreed that the America of Washington, Jefferson and Adams cannot be the America for you and me. According to the Court, religion may no longer shape our public life. Faith is private and should never influence our laws and national vision. So now we live in a society where atheists file lawsuits to have “In God we trust” erased from our money, The ACLU (the Anti-Christ Lawyers Union) challenges every expression of our Christian heritage, the removal of prayer from our public schools, and now the removal of the 10 Commandments from state buildings. All these things have been justified by the misinterpretation of the phrase used by Thomas Jefferson, “separation of church and state”
“For example, ask the average man on the street in America what the Constitution has to say about religion and government, and he is going to tell you that the Constitution requires a separation of church and state. It has the ring of truth to him because these words have been repeated so often. But they are false. The Constitution says nothing about the separation of church and state. In fact, the Constitution never mentions the word church. Instead, these words were first used in a private letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to a group of Baptist ministers in Danbury, Connecticut. They have entered our laws and our culture over time, but they aren’t in the Constitution. Moreover, Thomas Jefferson wasn’t even in the country when the Constitution was written. He was our ambassador to France at the time. The words did appear in a constitution once, though: the old constitution of the Soviet Union. I don’t think we want to model ourselves on that disastrous experiment![1]
Listen to these words from the Father of the Constitution, James Madison:
We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future…upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God.”[2]
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”[3]
It is not overstating the case to say that most of our nation’s greatest leaders would be landed in jail were they living today – Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, etc.
Today America is on the “Slippery Slope” to Absolute Destruction. Alexander Fraser Tytler lived at the end of the 18th century, but his book The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic sends a chilling warning to America this very hour. Tyler found that ancient democracies collapsed under the “selfishness” of human hearts. These nations have progressed through the following stages:
- From bondage to spiritual faith
- From spiritual faith to great courage
- From courage to liberty
- From liberty to abundance
- From abundance to selfishness
- From selfishness to complacency
- From complacency to apathy
- From apathy to dependency
- From dependency back to bondage.
There is no doubt in my mind that America has been on this 9-fold “Slippery Slope” until it has reached the precipice and is close to falling into the abyss unless God’s people follow God’s direction NOW.
Since 1932 and the advent of the New Deal, Americans have become increasingly dependent on the government for their very livelihood, when the purpose of government is not to provide for us a living but only to protect us (read the Preamble to the Constitution.) As Dr. Charles Stanley said in his sermon on July 3rd 2010, America has now become a Socialist Nation and he defined Socialism in these words, “Socialism is when the government controls both the means and distribution of wealth.” Dr. Stanley went on to say that there is absolutely NO HOPE FOR AMERICA unless God’s people turn to Him in desperate prayer out of a righteous life. He is, therefore, pleading with God’s people across the nation to pray 140 days that God will intervene and SAVE our beloved nation from total ruin. Can the Government rescue us? Absolutely not. The proof of this is seen in the “UNSTOPPABLE OIL SPILL” which continues full blast for about 70 days.
What, then, is God saying to His people in America in this dark hour? He is saying, “America is in our hands Christians.” He is saying what He said to His people in the Old Testament, “IF MY PEOPLE, WHO ARE CALLED BY MY NAME, WILL:
- Humble themselves – James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5
- Pray and – 1 Thess. 5:17; Ephesians 6:18
- Seek My face – Psalm 27:3
- TURN FROM THEIR EVIL WAYS, Psalm 139:23-24, THEN, (and not until THEN) -Psalm 139:23-24
I WILL HEAR FROM HEAVEN AND FORGIVE THEIR SINS AND HEAL THEIR LAND.
This verse falls into three parts. These parts can be summarized in the word “PAR” which is used in golf to mean a normal and good game.
- “P” stands for God’s Compassionate PROMISE: “If my people who are called by my name.” If you are a born-again believer you are one of God’s people.
- “My people” is a highly specialized word in Hebrew, AMI (217 times in the Old and New Testament.
- “My people,” is the generic, but God goes on to specify that they are “Called by His name.” What is His name? CHRIST – “They were first called Christians at Antioch” (Acts 11:26). Thus this promise is for all Christians. Has this promise expired? Absolutely not. Has America sunk so low to be rescued? No, in the deepest hour of history, God’s people have cried out and God has heard. He heard George Washington at Valley Forge, Lincoln at Gettysburg, Eisenhower at Normandy, McArthur at Quadocanal and Iwo Jima, Reagan at the Berlin Wall and especially 10,000 in Poland. – The Compassionate Promise is followed by the letter A.
- “A” stands for God’s Commanded ACTION: What is that action? That His people, Christians, would HUMBLE THEMSELVES, PRAY, SEEK MY FACE, AND TURN ( Heb. Shuv, Repent) from their wicked ways. Note step #5 of nations on the “Slippery Slope” to destruction. In my life I have seen America slip. “From ABUNDANCE TO SELFISHNESS, followed quickly from SELFISHNESS TO COMPLACENY, COMPLACENCY TO APATHY, FROM APATHY TO DEPENDENCE, FROM DEPENDENCE TO BONDAGE. Selfishness is living for and serving SELF and doing what feels good and living as if God did not even exist any more. Do you know any professing Christians living this way? Example: Only 4 percent of Americans tithe, leaving 96% who spend to satisfy their own selfish desires and appetite.
Are you willing to look back and identify your sins, take full responsibility for them, turn from them in true repentance? Unless God’s people, those called by His name, are willing to do so, WE HAVE NO HOPE.
- Humble themselves, that is, in brokenness and utter humility cast yourself and our nation upon the Lord, beseeching His mercy and rescue of America (June 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5).
- Pray – not a 5 minute devotional but a bombardment of heaven in desperation as we call upon the Lord,
- Seek His face – Desire His presence and will above ourselves and selfish desires, and selfishness expresses itself in every sin in the book: immorality, abortion, drinking, drugs, alcohol, lying, cheating, laziness, undependability, stealing, vulgarities, anger, bitterness, rape, arson, murder, incest, homosexuality, lesbianism, abandonment of church, prayerlessness, neglect of Bible reading, absenteeism from church, envy, deceit, gossip, criticizing, judgmental, child abuse, wife swapping, etc.
- Turn from our wicked ways which is serving self, not God or our fellow man.
Having done the above, Commanded Action, we wills see the “R” come to pass:
- “R” stands for God’s Complete REFUGE. “THEN (GOD KNOWS WHRE TO PUT HIS “THENS”) I WILL HEAR FROM HEAVEN AND FORGIVE THEIR SINS AND HEAL THEIR LAND.” These are words of 2 Chron. 7:14. To understand them we must put them in context by looking at the preceding verse, 2 Chron. 7:13, “When I shut up heaven, and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among the people, “ even then “If My people wil humble themselves…” “I will forgive and heal.” What an amazing promise. Applied to America today, that teaching indicates that God may be judging us for our sins, but He will turn right around and forgive and heal us if we will HUMBLE our hearts, HUNGER for Him above all and live holy lives, He will Rescue America.
Exactly what should an individual do when he sees how selfish and self-serving he or she, making that person a part of our problem rather than being a part of the solution? You should do what Jesus told the church at Ephesus to do when they had fallen in love with themselves and left their love for Jesus (Rev. 2:1-4). And what was that? Look back and see what you were doing when you loved Jesus with all your heart and served Him and not yourself? As an American what should we, then, do? Simply look back to what Americans were doing when the Lord was blessing the nation abundantly and above measure. They were basically a God-fearing people, a praying, sacrificing, Bible believing, church going people – from the birth house to the White House.
[1] Parsley, Rod, Silent No More, Charisma House, A Strange Company, Lake Mary Florida, 2005, pp 10-11.
[2] Parsley, Ibid. pp 13-14.
[3] Eidsmoe, John, Christ and the Constitution, Baker Book House, 1987, p. 273.