21-What-has-God-declared.-Americas-moral-problem-pdf     (TO READ IN BOOK FORMAT, OR TO PRINT THIS ARTICLE)

It is simply this:  That America has broken God’s First Commandment by refusing to believe God’s gospel promise.

Where has God said this?  Repent, and turn from all your transgressions so that iniquity will not be your ruin!  Get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit!  For why would you die?  For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies, says the Lord God (Ezekiel 18:30, 31, & 32). Repent, and believe the gospel! (Mark 1:15.)

Yet Americans today no longer repent nor believe the saving gospel in the biblical sense as they did years ago.  Those who have declined to do this have left the church.  Those who have stayed within the church, however, commonly have followed man-made substitutes.

Throughout history this same sad story has been repeated.  This time history is repeating itself in America.  That story is this:

1. God will bring his gospel promise to a country:  The start of a golden age.
2. As a groundswell, God will move many people to believe his gospel pledge.  As a result, they will possess a place in heaven:  The rise of that golden age.
3. About the time of the third generation, the people will begin to fall away from believing his gospel pledge in a reverse groundswell:  The fall from that golden age.
4. God will call them back by sending them ever more severe punishments, for example, storms, floods, losses, and oppression.  Yet they will turn a deaf ear to them, will refuse to repent and to return to the faith, and will continue to inflict misery upon themselves through their immoral behavior.
5. Finally, after his patience has ended, the Almighty will bring a war on that country’s soil, and will annihilate or practically annihilate that people:  The end of that golden age.

The almighty Lord of heaven and earth went to great lengths to prepare America as a home where he could bless the people with his highest gift of all:  his gospel promise of salvation.  Though there had been gospel-believing settlers all along, God especially moved many Americans, beginning in the 1840’s, fueled by the waves of immigrants from northern Europe and Scandinavia a few decades later, to believe his saving gospel.  Then a golden age of Christianity flourished in America for about a hundred years.  After that, more and more Americans lost their love for the gospel, and quit believing it.  This was evidenced at that time not only by a continual loss in church members, but by the rapid decline in morality especially in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

The following biblical passages will show what God thinks about America’s falling away.

God would have all men to be saved (1st Timothy 2:4).

If you would continue in the faith grounded and steadfast, and would not be moved away from the hope of the gospel (Colossians 1:23).

How will we escape if we would neglect so great a salvation? (Hebrews 2:3.)

What solution, then, could and should America apply?  It will be the simple solution which God has urged all along in his Bible:

1. That you must admit that you are a sinner;
2. That you must be sorry for it; and
3. That you must return to God by believing his gospel pledge of salvation.

In other words, ask yourself, “Morally, am I fit to face the Almighty on Judgment Day?  Do not reply, “I may not be as bad as some notorious criminals are”; or:  “All men have some good in them”; nor even offer the wishful thinking, “Everyone has done some good to land them in heaven,” for the holy and righteous God, the Almighty who gave you life, has handed down this ultimatum:  “You must be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19:2).  What is more, his unbreakable Bible convicts, indicts, and condemns you for your total failure to be this way, declaring, “All have sinned” (Romans 3:23).  As a result, “These will go into everlasting punishment…. Into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:46, 41), which is the second death” (Revelation 21:8), since “God is angry with the wicked every day” (Psalm 7:11).

Face these facts!  Admit that you have grieved and offended the Almighty who will punish you out of anger!  If anyone should be sorry, you will be the one, and you ought to do it here and now!

Know, therefore, that Jesus is your sin-bearer, sin-remover, and sin-destroyer!  He was sentenced to Calvary’s cross in order “to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:28). On that occasion Divine Justice laid on the Lord Jesus “the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6) in order to affect your cleansing, and to release you from all your guilt and punishment; in order to establish your high pardon and complete innocence.  As a result, you have been restored to friendly terms with the heavenly Father, who is waiting to receive you into his heavenly home.

Thus declare: “I want to believe that Jesus has gotten forgiveness for me”!  Say it!  Mean it!

If America would do these things, then the Lord will keep his promise to bring peace to our land once more.

The following biblical passages will demonstrate this.

God commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30).

Repent, and believe the gospel! (Mark 1:15.)

Repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in Christ’s name among all nations (Luke 24:47) to open their eyes in order that they may turn from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to that of God; so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and the inheritance among those that have been sanctified by faith that is in Christ (Acts 26:18).

If my people, who are called by my name, would humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land (2nd Chronicles 7:14).

Return to me, and I will return to you! (Malachi 3:7).

What will God do to America since it has refused to apply his solution of repentance and faith?  In keeping with his threat in the Bible, as he has stated it clearly and carried it out consistently, the Almighty will lay upon America increasingly severe punishments, for instance, storms, floods, losses, and oppressions.  After America stubbornly would choose to suffer rather than to repent and to believe the gospel, God finally will bring a war to this land which will annihilate or nearly annihilate it.

The following biblical passages will demonstrate this.

God is angry with the wicked every day (Psalm 7:11).

His soul hates the wicked (Psalm 11:5).

I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity (Isaiah 13:11).

The nation and kingdom that will not serve you will perish, and those nations shall be utterly ruined (Isaiah 60:12).

All nations that forget God will be turned into hell (Psalm 9:17).

They chose new gods, then there was war (Judges 5:8).

The Lord is a man of war (Exodus 15:3).

Unless you would repent, you will likewise perish (Luke 13:3).

What will happen to America in the future?  It will be what has happened consequently to those countries which fell away from the gospel and did not repent:  a war of punishment will be sent by the Almighty.

To be sure, the people of those countries could and should have recognized that their national problem was one of immorality. Just the same, the overwhelming majority of citizens would not control it by repenting.  In their spiritual blindness and in their spiritual hardening of their hearts they would neither acknowledge nor remember the biblical teaching that the eyes of people have to be opened and that their hearts have to be changed by God’s powerful gospel pledges before the problems resulting from immorality ever could be recognized properly by them, and before the people ever could have the will to control their immorality properly.  In other words, in order to clean a muddy stream a person would have to go to its source, and clean it there, not dip out water along its banks. On the contrary, in their spiritual blindness and in the hardening of their hearts, the people of those countries, for example, commonly had turned to any political opportunist who would promise to solve their disputes without a need to change biblically their immoral hearts.  The American people, likewise, will attempt to solve their disputes without a need to change their immoral hearts, for they have shown no signs of doing differently by repenting.  Neither have they shown any signs of believing the gospel in order to escape the more serious eternal torment.

In addition, while no one may have ever articulated the following axiom, throughout history men have certainly carried it out in practice; and that is this:  In order to stop a neighboring country from committing even more evil, if its heart could not be changed, that nation plainly will have to be put to death.

Realize this!  Repent of your sins!  Believe the gospel of Jesus Christ!  Pray the following hymns!

Christ, by heav’nly hosts adored,
Gracious, mighty, sov’reign Lord,
God of nations, King of kings,
Head of all created things,
By the Church with joy confessed,
God o’er all forever blest;
Pleading at Thy throne we stand,
Save Thy people, bless our land!

On our fields of grass and grain
Send, O Lord, the kindly rain;
O’er our wide and goodly land
Crown the labors of each hand!
Let Thy kind protection be
O’er our commerce on the sea;
Open, Lord, Thy bounteous hand,
Bless Thy people, bless our land!

Let our rulers ever be
Men that love and honor Thee;
Let the powers by Thee ordained
Be in righteousness maintained;
In the people’s hearts increase
Love of piety and peace;
Thus united we shall stand
One wide, free, and happy land!

Henry Harbaugh, 1860

Almighty Lord, before Thy throne,
Thy mourning people bend;
‘Tis on Thy grace in Christ alone
Our failing hopes depend.

Dark judgments, from Thy heavy hand,
Thy dreadful power display;
Yet mercy spares our guilty land,
And still we live to pray.

How changed, alas! are truths divine
For error, guilt and shame!
What impious numbers, bold in sin,
Disgrace the Christian name!

O turn us, turn us, mighty Lord!
Convert us by Thy grace;
Then shall our hearts obey Thy Word,
And see again Thy face!

Then, should oppressing foes invade,
We will not yield to fear,
Secure of all-sufficient aid,
When God in Christ is near.

Anne Steele, altered