When A Nation Rejects God

Do you know what it feels like to pick up a book to read that causes you to drop to your knees in repentance?  For me, this happened recently when I picked up a book called The Harbinger, by Jonathan Kahn.

The book does a very effective job of tying the 21st century America that we live in today to Israel in the 8th century B.C. just before the Israelites were carried into exile by the Assyrians .  The author makes the claim, and I believe rightly so, that we need to learn a valuable lesson from the 8th century B.C. Israelites or we run the very real risk of being carried into exile just as they did.  Let’s explore this a little further.

The first question you might ask is this: what does America have to do with Israel?  How can the two even compare?  The answer is that both countries were found on Godly principles and that God was at the center of both countries’ founding.  We of course know the story of the Old Covenant with Israel – how God promised them many things, blessing, prosperity, posterity, and protection from their enemies.  The only thing that God asked of them in return was for them to be a holy people who would follow God and only God, not the other gods of the day.

As spiritual complacency began to infect the 9th and 8th century B.C. Israelites, God began to send a series of harbingers to Israel to warn them of impending danger, while raising up prophets (Isaiah and Amos being two of them) to send the message to the country that it needed to fall on its knees and repent because it had been rejecting God’s Covenant.  One of the harbingers was series of small military skirmishes in which God lifted the hedge of protection around Israel just long enough for some damage to be caused.  The Israelites, rather than falling on their knees and repenting, became indignant, arrogant, and proud about the fact that they would rebuild.  This is where Isaiah 9:10 comes in.  “The bricks have fallen, but we will build with hewn stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place.”  Of course, Isaiah 9:9 makes it clear that the Israelites said this with pride and arrogance in their hearts.  This pride and arrogance would keep them from repenting, and they would ultimately be carried into exile because of it.

If we carry this forward to 21st century America, Kahn makes the point that we as a country are at the very same point in our history that Israel was in the 8th century B.C.  Even though there are some who would debate about this today, let me be very clear on one very important point: we are a nation that was founded on Christian principles.  If you look at our moral and ethical code, it is founded on Biblical, scriptural ethics and morality.  In addition, when George Washington was inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America, his first act as the first President was to gather together the House of Representatives and the Senate, all of the people who were present at his inauguration, and walk down the street to St. Paul’s Chapel for a prayer service in which they prayed for God’s blessings on the new nation (remember that the first capital of our country was New York City).   Even though this was added much later, we truly were founded to be, and continue to be, “one nation, under God.”

Recently, though, this long-established concept that we are a nation founded on Christian principles has come under serious attack, and the United States corporately as a nation, is rejecting God and forgetting its roots.  We are, in effect, doing the same things now that Israel did as a nation over 2,700 years ago.  Spiritual complacency is causing us to lose sight of God’s promises and His blessings on our nation, and Kahn effectively makes the point that God is lifting His hedge of protection from around us as we speak, and that the very same harbingers that warned of impending doom for Israel before the first exile, have now manifest themselves in 21st century America, starting on September 11, 2001.  For the details and particulars of the various harbingers, I commend you to read the book.  It is very compelling.  Here are some take-aways from the book that we need to be aware of.

• When 9/11 happened (one of the harbingers), we as a country reacted with national pride and defiance.  We vowed to rebuild the Tower, and we used hewn stone as the cornerstone.  We went to war against the Taliban in a show of American strength.  We should have gotten down on our knees and repented.
• We continue to take prayer out of our schools.  We continue to remove the 10 commandments from our courtrooms.  We continue to allow God, and specifically Jesus Christ, to be written out of our national life.
• If we continue, as a nation, to reject God and write Him out of our national life, God will continue to lift His hedge of protection from around us, just as he did to Israel when they rejected God.  It was not a pretty sight for Israel, and it will not be a pretty sight for us as well.

I realize that this sounds like a lot of gloom and doom, but there is a lot of hope as well, and our hope is two-fold.  First, we can always repent as a nation and return to the Lord.  This will take another great revival in America.  And this great revival will start with us as Christian disciples – willing to proclaim Jesus Christ from the rooftops, and staying away from the fear of politics.  Second, if we are unsuccessful and another exile does occur, always remember that God delivers, and He uses those opportunities to draw His believers closer to Him.  Our God is strong and mighty to save, and will do that for us as individuals, even if things do not go well in our nation.

I have always said this, and so have other leaders in the Anglican movement in North America.  We are in for some amazing times.  I believe that an American revival is right around the corner, and North American Anglicanism will play a very important role in this.  We know what happens to churches when they go the way of the culture, and we know how freeing and how cathartic it is to repent from those ways and return to the Lord.  We are uniquely qualified to call others to that, because we have done it ourselves.  Reject spiritual complacency.  Don’t be afraid to be a “religious nut.”  The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few – but God is at work in the world, spreading the transforming love of Jesus Christ.  Let us all as Christian disciples join God in that work.  If we do, lives are transformed and we will see amazing fruits of the Spirit not only in our lives and our communities, but in the nation as well.  Then we will truly return to what has made America great – our foundation will once again be Jesus Christ our Lord.