Recent warnings about our security
Four major events over the past 23 years reflect God’s weariness of our country’s sins and should awaken our spiritual senses. These four events shook and in many ways shattered four distinct aspects of our American life.
Our political and electoral process has never fully recovered since the 2000 elections and the resulting legislative and judicial drama. The tension and visible hatred between the parties gradually increased. As a result, the American people have lost all faith in the political system. The attacks on our country on September 11 shattered the belief that our country was impenetrable to foreign attack. The housing and stock market crashes have eroded our confidence in our financial markets. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call to the fragility of our healthcare systems.
Were these events God’s judgment on our country or warnings of the wrath to come? Our country experienced a short term revival in our churches after 9/11. However, during the pandemic, much of our world and our nation have placed their reliance for recovery on local, state and national governments in terms of financial incentives and the development of medicinal remedies. The outcry for repentance to God and revival was mostly silent.
Patience and Mercy Enable Repentance
God’s mercy begins when an individual or a nation receives instruction and knowledge of God’s expectation for obedience. Ezekiel 33 warned, “When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man from their shores, and set him to be their watchman, if they see the sword coming upon the land he blows the trumpet, and admonish the people; then whoever hears the sound of the trumpet, and receives no warning; if the sword comes and takes him away, his blood will be on his head.
We live in an age of spiritual enlightenment never before seen in the entire church age. Guardians blew trumpets from our homes, street corners, churches and on social media and YouTube videos warning that the righteous and holy sword has been drawn from its scabbard. We have access to 66 books containing examples, reproofs and commandments with the insight and guidance of the Holy Spirit. We are privileged to have the writings of generations of biblical scholars at our fingertips. God’s judgment can be inflicted on individuals, as Paul wrote in Romans 1, when God’s patience has been exhausted and “God has delivered them to a reprobate spirit.”
Later in Romans 9:22, Paul asks, “And if God, desiring to manifest his wrath and make known his power, had endured with much patience vessels of wrath fit for destruction. As the famous biblical commentator David Guzik explained, “If God chooses to glorify himself by letting people go their own way and letting them receive his wrath in righteousness in order to make known his power, who can oppose him? ?
