John MacArthur called it a "self-deluding slogan." R. C. Sproul made mention that the phrase, repeated three times, certainly should call our attention to its importance. God gave Jeremiah the words to warn the people of Judah, for they thought, as MacArthur put it, that "the Lord would never bring calamity on his own temple." Have we in America deluded ourselves with just such an exemption, and incorporated a similar saying....God bless America, God bless America, God bless America?
The following blog entry is from 2011:
How would we respond if we were asked what we thought God's opinion was of us and our nation; and what would we rate the possibility of there being impending terrible judgments upon us? It's a difficult question for the average American to even contemplate for we as a people are generally certain of only one thing in that area, that being that America will indeed continue to plug on either in good times or possibly bad times, but far removed from utter devastation that other countries and empires of old had experienced. It's not a trait peculiar only to Americans for every empire has felt itself somewhat invincible for a long time after its influence and power had peaked. We are enjoying the fruit of our productivity and liberty while oblivious to predators of that productivity and liberty.
I worry about our youth. It's often said that every generation worries about its youth but I lived in those infamous 60s and even with the ascendancy of the drug and rock culture, the temptations were tame compared to the diversions that our youth of today have thrown at them. I had a Radio Shack Flavor Radio, a black and white television, a few balls of various shapes and sizes and a 110 pound set of weights to occupy my time. Television is far worse today, far more enticing with many more channels and an accompanying philosophy of life, society and politics that does anything but convey the belief systems that originally encouraged productivity and liberty.
Even so, television is not the biggest culprit in our decaying society for the Internet dumbs us down to such a degree that we can ingest but not digest, and we can take in vast amounts of information but cannot analyze it or even categorize it for future use. Throw Facebook into the mix and we now have more than one generation who are emulating Narcissus of Greek mythology who looked at his reflection in a pool until he died. We continually update and gaze at that reflection on our Facebook page as that day of judgment nears, for we consider it unlikely that that judgment, should it actually materialize, would be anything more than an economic decline or the results of political bickering that divides and occasional prolongs far off wars.
We accepted Darwin's flawed concept of the origin of man but this was not enough for God's mercy upon us to end. Our efforts to forbid public schools to have simple prayers to God began in 1962 but that was not enough either unless one takes into consideration the half century of chaos and violence our society has endured since then. We legalized the taking of life in the womb in 1973 which is estimated now to be 50 million lives but we still exist as a nation. Our latest offense may be our last in that in our haste to accommodate the gay agenda through same-sex marriage we would be, in effect, offering up the minds of our children in just about every area of their lives to what God very clearly calls an abomination. Personal opinion here, it is one thing to permit others in a free society to make choices that effects only themselves but an entirely different matter to validate those choices in impressionable minds to whom God gave express warnings not to lead astray.
Having said this, it is not the gay agenda, or the liberal agenda or even the radical Progressive/Marxist/Communist agenda that should be our primary concern, for all of these emanate from the consensus of a people, or at the very least from the lack of vigilance. It is our own individual failures that led to such a consensus that we need to deal with. Do we even have any right at all to speak against America's profane dealings with God when we ourselves have added to that considerably over the years?
The reality is that we indeed are a sinful people...dealing with our own individual sin as we struggle to lessen the temptations all around us that exacerbate that sin in ourselves and add to the decay of our culture. All the while we plead for and expect God's mercy but do we consider that we may have presumed upon that mercy for too long.
The violence and imminent collapse of our nation should chill us to the bone, yet we continue to call what is good evil and what is evil good. As I have written often in this blog, no political or military solutions will cure us. They need to be addressed but only a sincere, individual and corporate humbling before our Creator can give us any hope for renewed mercy; and we are without excuse... for the evidence is all around us, if only we would look, that God's judgments have already begun!
