Thomas Vincent was an English Puritan minister in London....who was born in 1634....and therefore thirty-one years olds when the Great Plague of London began in 1665. That plague which killed sixty-eight thousand people in London alone had no sooner subsided....then in a few months....September 2 of 1666....the Great Fire of London destroyed most of the city. Vincent had stayed in London during the plague....and ministered to his people. In 1667 he wrote....God's Terrible Voice In The City....which gave great detail to the deaths of the plague....including weekly counts of deaths....and then great detail of the fire. This in itself is an important historical documentation on both of those catastrophes in London.
After about six chapters of Thomas Vincent's....God's Terrible Voice In The City....or 'sections' as he labeled them....detailing the plague and the fire....he then spent the rest of the book detailing....in his learned ministerial opinion anyway....the causes.....or the reasons for these God's judgments in quick succession....on London....through plague and fire. He was fond of lists in writing this book....and listed twenty-five general sins of London that brought God's judgment upon it. I'll only give a few here....
The slighting of the gospel.....which is what we do today in America.....it is just not that important in our lives anymore. Einstein once remarked on this as he could not understand how these Christians whose scriptures proclaimed such a glorious and majestic God....did not seem to live as if He were indeed glorious and majestic.
Unfruitfulness....in that much was given to them but they did not use the gifts that they were given. Tares had overtaken the wheat. The sermons were preached well but the people just had little interest....and thus the glory of God departed.
Hypocrisy....in that their religion was more fashion than real belief.
Lukewarmness....which defines us....as we take more interest in the god of sport than the Lord of Glory!
Pride.....and as we saw only a few nights ago how Trump promised to restore pride in America.
Unmercifulness....as we surely showed during the pandemic and in immigration and with the Ukraine and Israel. We have lost our compassion....replaced by a hard heart....desiring the happiness of the temporal....over the joy of the eternal.
Carnal Security.....or as Vincent put it...."O the good days that some have looked for, upon presumption of what they had ground for".....in other words.....what they thought that they deserved....which is the basis of our....Make America Great Again.
Thomas Vincent offers more lists in the book....one list being...."Duties which God expects from London after such desolations by the Plague and Fire." I'll only repeat one thing on this list....and that is that Vincent goes on and on on the concept of....'Awake! After these judgments....open your eyes....open your ears!"
So we today have had the judgment of a pandemic.....a plague if you will....pestilence....but we in the church effectually refused to label this a judgment of any kind. No. What this was....was an attack from China....on Trump. Any culpability on our part was ignored! We are the good guys...."one glorious nation under God!" The problem here is....under what God? The God of Sport that is in the pantheon of gods that we worship? Or the God of Ourselves? Or the God of America? Or a combination of many gods?
There were only a few months after the plague before the Great Fire of London began. What will be the 'fire' that God judges us with....if that be His plan? Billy Graham gave the same message for decades that Thomas Vincent proclaimed after the evidence of God's judgment was everywhere....Awake!
