Deliverance

Surely the Lord God will do nothing , but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. Amos 3:7

Do you believe this still holds true? If God has determined to bring some calamity upon a people, do you think he would do that without giving that nation ample warning, ample opportunity to repent?

All through the Old Testament, God warned not just his own people (the Jews) but also heathen nations, to repent. The entire book of Jonah is an account of God sending a Jew to warn a nation that the Jew absolutely abhorred. Jonah wanted God to pour out retribution on Ninevah. But God forced him to go deliver the message of impending judgment, so that the people would have an opportunity to repent.

He chastised his offended prophet with these words: Should I not have compassion on Nineveh, the great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know the difference between their right and left hand, as well as many animals? (Jonah 4:11/NIV)

God warns. God calls people to repentance.

In 1997, around 1 million men gathered in Washington, D.C. for a day of fasting and prayer. Don't remember that? I'll bet you remember Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March" in 1995, but according to a security guard on the National Mall, he had never seen as many people there at one time as were at the Stand in the Gap gathering 2 years later. The major media outlets did not give the day of repentance the same coverage they gave the black march, even though it truly was a "million-man" gathering.

My husband went with a friend to the Stand in the Gap. He told me later there were so many people there that it would take an hour just to shuffle about 10 feet in the packed throng. The dust made it difficult to breath. All those men came there to repent of their individual sins and the sins of the nation. They heard from several speakers, but the high point of the day was when over a million men and boys got down on their faces before almighty God and prayed. In that huge plaza crowded with people, a stillness descended, and all was silent...except for the low murmur of thousands of prayers.

I believe God heard those prayers that day. I believe he stayed his hand, holding off the destruction that this nation has brought upon itself.

In the years after that day, when we have occasionally run across men with a spark of fire in their eyes for the Lord their God, we would find out those men were in Washington on that day in 1997. I believe that spark came from being there.

Then came 9/11 -- the first salvo, the first shot across the bow. God's protection of the United States has been removed, and his judgment has begun. After 9/11, people crowded into churches. People went home, to be closer to those that really mattered to them.

But the churches did not tell people to repent, they just offered them comfort. So everything returned to the status quo, and the judgment continues.

What should we repent for? In the book of Amos, God told Israel that they needed to repent for "treading...upon the poor, and ye take from him burdens of wheat...they afflict the just, they take a bribe, they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right." (Amos 5:11-12)

In Ezekiel: "Ye eat with the blood, and lift up your eyes toward your idols, and shed blood: and shall ye possess the land? Ye stand upon your sword, and ye work abomination, and ye defile every one his neighbor's wife; and shall ye possess the land?" (Ezekiel 33:25-26)

For those of you unfamiliar with English of the King James Bible, I will clarify...

We take from the poor their ability to work and provide for their families, by teaching them the ways of living with a government check.

We mock those who try to tell us to be righteous.

We mock the poor and homeless, and in any conflict he has with a rich person, the rich person must be right.

We slaughter innocent babes in their mother's womb, and that blood is on our hands.

We honor eastern religions, vampires and sorcery.

We are proud. We believe we are the strongest, the meanest, the smartest, and the best-armed, able to defend ourselves, in no need of God.

We laugh at sexual purity, choosing instead promiscuity, perversion, adultery.

For these sins, and more, the United States is under the judgment of God.

Things will get worse...much worse. Is there deliverance?

For this nation? I don't think so. I think the judgment has been decreed already. God has warned for years, but we haven't listened.

For individuals, however, there is always a chance of redemption. You can save yourself and your family, if you get on your face before God and ask his forgiveness. Just as the city of Ninevah was spared when the people repented.

Repent of your sin. Ask God for his forgiveness. Ask Jesus his son to be your Savior. He will save you in the time of trouble, and when you leave this life (as we all surely will) you will have life eternally in Heaven.

The time is now. There will come a time -- I don't know when -- when you will no longer have the opportunity. Don't wait until it is too late.