“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Hos. 13:9.

“I will cause the sun to go down at noon.” Amos 8:9.

“Though thou exalt thyself as the eagle, and though thou set they nest among the stars, thence will I bring thee down, saith the Lord.” Obad. 1:4.

“How are the mighty fallen.” II Sam. 1:27.

God is crying because the greatest nation in the world is about to experience an outpouring of divine wrath.

The prophet Jeremiah would not be accepted in America today: but if he were ask to preach, he would deliver America’s funeral message: “she that was great among the nations . . . all her beauty is departed . . . Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed” Lam. 1; 1.6.8.

God is not going to judge America; He already has. A decade ago a leading clergyman remarked:

“I am often asked, “Is America at the crossroads?” My answer is an emphatic no! The image of the crossroad implies that we are at a place where we can choose one or more roads to follow. I think we have made our choice.

“America reminds me of a mental institution where the patients have taken over and locked up the doctors. Our values are upside down. We are not thinking straight. The choice was made when, as a nation, America abandoned obedience to God and to His moral law.”

“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil . . .” Isa. 5:20.

Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese “a day of infamy.” Novermber 2, 1992, in the light of biblical principles, should be considered “a day of shame”; for at this election a nation chose greed and government over family values and God.

This tragic mistake can only leave due consequences. A nation was ripened for judgment. What happened to our nation? Note this evaluation:

“It is hard to avoid the conclusion that a large part of the American people have turned their backs on that old-fashioned quality, virtue, private and public virtue. At home, they want freedom to live as they wish, without any constraint beyond the proddings of their own libertarian consciences. They want to abort unwanted pregnancy, to enjoy any drug or stimulant that takes their fancy, to make their own judgments without reference to an established code of behavior, or set of convictions, or religious creed.”

Our forefathers would cringe in horror if they could witness the spectacle of our day. This nation began with God. On November 11, 1620, after 66 days at sea, the ship MAYFLOWER approached land. An important document was signed. The opening sentence of the Mayflower Compact was, “In the name of God . . . Having undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith . . .”

Jerry S. Herbert writes in his book, America, Christian or Secular?: “There was a principal religion in American life from 1620 until about 1920: that this religion was Protestant Christianity; and that Protestant Christianity has been our established religion is in almost every sense of the phrase.”

Our great nation was built on a “moral and spiritual foundation.” Samuel Adams (1722-1803, American patriot and politician) declared, “The rights of the colonists are best understood by reading and carefully studying the New Testament.” In like fashion, James Madison (1809-1817 fourth president) observed, “We have staked the whole of our political institutions on the capacity of mankind to govern themselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

In the early days of America, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth were founded by Christians with strong moral values and absolute faith in God. Today He is not wanted in our country, our homes, our schools, and our individual lives.

What has happened to our great nation? Someone has said, “The Christian has fallen from grace to disgrace.” They’ve lost their salt and light and hence their spiritual discernment. We’ve been duped; we’ve been had. Nations are like sheep – easily led. Do you realize that in the early thirties in Germany a majority of Christians voted for Hitler? One Protestant pastor told his deceived congregation, “Christ has come to us in Hitler. We know the Savior has come.”

We have reaped the harvest of the sixties – “the chickens have come home to roost.” The late A.W. Tozer wrote in his day: “The clever proponents of evil ideologies are spending millions to make us Americans ashamed of our country. By the use of all available media of communication they are persuading our people that there is little left worth defending and certainly nothing worth dying for.”

The lack of spiritual discernment is appalling. Moses described our wretched condition in Deut. 32:28, “For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them.” People don’t want to hear the truth. Too many have forgotten “the rule book” and have played into the hands of the Devil’s crowd. America is becoming ugly, disrespectful, and undisciplined. It has been suggested that the national emblem is no longer an eagle but a pig.

Americans are becoming the best misinformed people in the world. It is not always those who are making the most noise who are making sense. The voice of the people is not always the voice of God. It is becoming evident that we are entering a world where the old rules no longer apply. Back in the 17^th century a Frenchman proclaimed a profound truth when he said, “The exact opposite of what is generally believed is often the truth.”

Right now in America, millions are listening to what man has to say, but most men are not saying what God wants them to hear. Those who are fortunate to hear what God wants them to hear have become an absolute minority.

We can learn a lesson from the nation Israel before she was taken into captivity. A study of the prophets reveals a striking parallel to our day. These men of God warned of coming judgment.

What is our condition today?

WE ARE FINANCIALLY BANKRUPT

America is committing suicide. John Quincy Adams warned, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide.” Years ago, Oswald Spengler predicted such a collapse. In his day, Zechariah cautioned his nation: “Who art thou, O great mountain? . . .thou shalt become a plain.” (Zech. 4:7)

Vance Havner, knowing what was going on in the United States, wrote: “Deceived into thinking that we are on the verge of a new era with poverty and ignorance abolished and the brotherhood of man brought in by government decree, what we do not know is that we re at the bedside of a dying America.” There are many who contend that facts are facts. “Once a great republic is a dept-ridden pseudo-empire, it is on its last legs. And we are bankrupt. We are in a read sense living on borrowed money and borrowed time.”

We are simply mortgaging the future for the present. Our representatives and senators have been bleeding this country to death, and not slowly. Since 1975, the lifeblood of the nation have been sucked out. They are destroying the country and the dream that has sustained the American spirit. Why are they killing our country? Because we let them, we’ve encouraged them, because we wanted to keep hearing the lies they tell us. Thus we have the government we deserve.

Big government will eventually lead to world government, according to Bible prophecy. In order for the world system to function properly, a world leader must come to power. He will be the Anti-christ (Rev. 13:16, 17).

WE ARE MORALLY BANKRUPT

How tarnished our nation has become, “whose glorious beauty is a fading flower.” (Isa. 28:1)

The theme of the book of Judges describes our own decadence: “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (21:25). The prophet Hosea commented, “Israel hath cast off the thing that is good (8:3).

Thomas Jefferson, though a Deist, warned, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that is justice cannot sleep forever. Robert Frost, the noted American poet, said, I hold it to be the inalienable right of everybody to go to Hell in his own way.” And our beloved nation is going straight in that direction!”

Today’s philosophy is characterized in these words: “Reality is what ever you want it to be. There is not wrong or right. There is not good or evil.” At one time in his life, Augustine remarked, “Love and do what you will.”

The family is important. Solzhenitsyn was right when he stated “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.” The moral roots of America are slowly but surely being destroyed. According to a Gallup poll, “Today 70 percent of Americans rejects absolute values.” In other words, there are no absolutes, no rules to follow. Play the game the way you want to. Thus over a million babies are killed each year; a woman is raped every 46 seconds; and more money is spent on leisure than education, construction of new homes or national defense. In a single year gamblers spend more than $304 billion on legal wagering.

America has lost its character. It has been said, “our leaders are a reflection of what we are and what we believe.” “A nation is judged by the heroes it honors,” and what a pitiful lot they are!

We have been tricked into believing that sin has no consequences. A spirit of hedonism pervades our land. Instant gratification is deliriously sought by the masses. The moral decay of ancient Rome has descended upon our land. What was incredulous a decade ago is now practiced by the population. Sex has become the goddess of our day. It is said, “The number of the Antichrist has become sex, sex, sex, instead of 666. No nation will rise any higher than its leader. Sodom and Gomorrah were utterly destroyed because of sexual perversion. Do we think the US can fare better?

A spirit of rebellion pervades our land. Isaiah 59:14 states our wretched condition: “And judgment is turned backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.” The street riots are a good example of our disrespect for authority. Thomas Aquinas asserted, “There can be no law without moral consensus.” Amos 3:10 declares, “They know not to do right.”

Any nation that has lost its morals is well on its way to oblivion. We are deceived if we believe we can have morality without morals.

WE ARE SPIRITUALLY BANKRUPT

Apostasy has taken its awful toll in the religious world. The religious scene can be described, Ichabod . . . “The glory is departed.” History has a lesson to teach us. In the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon said, “To all the people all religions were equally true: to the philosophers all religions were equally false, and to the politicians all were equally useful.”

Rev. 2:4 is a proper evaluation of the American ecclesiastical scene, we have lost our “first love.” The church is no longer salt. The old fashioned sense of sin is despised. Everything in this age is shallow. The tragedy is, the church has forgotten about her separation from the world. When Israel lost her separation from the heathen, she lost her favor with God. “Much of the latter spiritual declension in Israel was due to the fact that the Canaanites were not completely destroyed. As a result, there was prostitution of both sexes, infant sacrifice, and religious syncretism.” (Syncretism is the combination of different forms of belief or practice.)

Deuteronomy plainly stated there should be no fellowship with them. The way the Canaanites worshipped their gods was by immoral indulgence in the presence of their gods, as a religious rite, and then by murdering their first-born children as a sacrifice to those same gods.

Do we wonder any longer why God commanded Joshua to exterminate the Canaanites? Did a civilization with such abominable practices have any right longer to exist? Archaeologists who dig in the rivers of the Canaanites cities wonder why God did not destroy them sooner than he did.

In spite of the most fearful warnings, the Israelites were very prone to adopt the religion of the Canaanites with all its abominable and corrupt practices. God withdrew His blessing on Israel when that nation became engrossed in idolatry. Liberalism has ruined America. It has opened the door to syncretism, hedonism (a belief that pleasure is the chief good in life), and eventually atheism. A.W. Tozer described our ecclesiastical world: “A religious mentality and lack of courage have given a flabby Christianity, intellectually impoverished, dull, repetitious, and to a great many persons, just plain boring.” And Spurgeon was right when he said, “The church is nothing if it is not holy.” Our generation knows very little of God’s holiness.

GOD’S JUDGMENT IS INEVITABLE

Any nation that condones homosexuality or the killing of babies is under the judgment of God. The Almighty brought the blood on a wicked generation; Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire and brimstone; Jerusalem was ravaged in 70 A.D. It is axiomatic: Obedience to God brings blessings; disobedience results in judgment.

Spurgeon remarked, “He (God) will not allow a man to prevail over God, but with swift judgments will confound their gloryings.” When Alexander Solzhenitsyn was asked on BBC radio many years ago, “Why did the Russian people lose their freedom?” he replied, “Because we forgot God.”

The late A.W. Tozer warned America:

“All things being equal, the destiny of a man or nation may safely be predicted from the idea of God which that man or nation holds. No nation can rise higher than its conception of God. When Rome began to think loosely about God, she began to rot inwardly, and that rot never stopped til it brought her to the ground.”

The book of Romans declares, “There is no fear of God before their eyes.” (3:18). There comes a time when God gets angry and lays back His arm in judgment. Is God’s patience at an end with America? Listen to the warnings of Scripture: “The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God” (Psa. 9:17). Righteousness exalteth a nation; but sin is a reproach to any people” (Pro. 14:34). “Whoso despiseth the word shall be destroyed.” (Pro. 13:13). We have lost our sense of shame.

In the New Testament the word “lasciviousness,” also translated sensuality, unbridled lust, licentiousness, and wantonnes. Lightfoot says the word refers to one “so much in the grip of sin, so much under its domination, that one does not care what people think or say so long as one can gratify their evil desires. They are people lost to shame.” In other words, one is so mastered by sin “that in the end one loves even shame.”

11 Chronicles 36:16 gives an apt description of our nation in this hour: “But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy.” Note carefully: there comes a time when there is no remedy – when it is too late!

Is America over the hill? Have we sinned away our day of grace? We see frantic confused leaders gather at tables to seek solutions to the sordid problems of our nation. They grope vainly in the dark. Man’s day is soon to end. Then all of the schemes of foolish earthly men will behold the Ancient of Days coming down from Heaven with a ring of keys in His hands as He announces, “It’s closing time, gentlemen!”

PREACHERS AND JUDGMENT

The clergy must bear most of the blame for what has happened to our country. A man in the prime of his life is lying on an operating table, bleeding from open wounds. A team of surgeons is busy clipping their toenails.

Where were preachers in the last election? Shepherds on vacation, watchmen sound asleep. Isaiah says: “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day or night: ye that make mention of the Lord, keep not silent.” (62:6)

Preachers are guilty of playing to the galleries. George Whitefield said, “the reason congregations are so dead spiritually and morally is because they have dead men preaching to them . . . how can dead men beget living children?”

What good are dogs that don’t bark? “His watchmen are blind: they are all ignorant, they are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark.” (Isa. 56:10) The Republic is bleeding to death, and we stand by watching as though it was a spectator sport.”

Spurgeon said, “of all the people on earth, he scored as the most contemptible the miserable men who sat listlessly in the galleries, while in the arena the soldiers of Jesus Christ engaged the enemies of truth in a struggle to the death. It is always wrong to be neutral when the word of God and Satan are in conflict.”

CAN JUDGMENT BE AVERTED?

“If the foundation be destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (Psa. 11:3) We are witnessing before our very eyes the moral destruction of our nation. What should be done? What are we to do? For Bible-believers our textbook is the Word of God. George Washington said, “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” (Psa. 33:12)

The future of America is up for grabs. Should we stop praying? Abraham stopped praying for Sodom and Gomorrah when there were not ten righteous people to be found. But surely there are more than that number in America. And yet, the acts of sin in our day seem to carry no retribution. The psalmist declared, “Until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end.” (73:17)

GOD IS NOT DEAD, NOR DOTH HE SLEEP; THE WRONG SHALL FAIL, THE RIGHT PREVAIL.

Tell me how the American Republic will treat Christ, and I will tell you the future of the Republic. The destiny of any nation depends upon its relation to Christ. I personally do not see America occupying a prominent place in Bible prophecy, although I am aware of our giving to missions and our support of the Jewish people.

One temptation is to adopt civic religion, to equate your faith in Christ with faith in your country. The American flag is not equivalent to the cross of Christ. Being a good citizen does not make you a Christian. Our nation must be confronted with the holiness of God. Loyalty to Christ requires us to be salt and light in a pagan culture. Our nation is not our hope. We must keep our eyes and hearts fixed on Jesus.

We should not be given to apathy. A sense of urgency should prevail upon the church. For we represent God’s holiness on earth. Human beings do the work of God on earth. We must not be lulled into a fatal sleep.

The lateness of the hour demands that we be rudely awakened. The darkness of the night is settling about us. The blackest part of the picture is the inaction of Christian America. This is no time for sleep.

The city of Ninevah had been warned of impending doom. Jonah’s message was one of judgment; yet in consequence of his preaching he declared, “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” (Jonah 3:9)

Preachers are to lead the way. “Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach . . .” (Joel 2:17) We must stand between the dead and the living and exalt the Lord Jesus Christ. And, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.” (Isa. 58:1)

There is a journey we all must take, it is back to the Old Rugged Cross.

I charge thee in this solemn hour, America. Trust not in thine own paltry power, America. Remember that “In God we trust!” Return to Him the nation must. Lest thou be humbled in the dust, America.

Dr. Waiters can be reached at 704-636-3369.