Excerpt from a sermon preached by John MacArthur:

"A haunting line is found tucked away in the little prophecy of Hosea chapter 4 and verse 17, and it refers to Israel by the name Ephraim and it says this, "Ephraim is joined to idols," so says God. The next line, "Leave him alone." Sounds out of character for God, doesn't it? "Ephraim is joined to idols, bring him back," might sound a little more like God. "Let him alone?"

People and nations, even the covenant nation Israel can come to a point where they are abandoned by God. Jesus reiterated this in Matthew 15 when He confronted the Pharisees and then described them to the disciples. He said this, "They're blind leaders of the blind. Let them alone." When God lets you go, it's serious. When Jesus pronounces over you abandonment, it's serious.

Now I'm going to say something, you're going to have to hold on to your seat a little bit. I'm convinced beyond doubt that in this same sense, God has abandoned America. I know that's a strong thing to say and I'm going to show you why I believe you can see that clearly in Scripture.

Open your Bibles to Romans 1...Romans 1....

Here in Romans chapter 1, beginning in chapter 18 running to the end of the chapter, you have the most clear presentation of God abandoning a nation, what that looks like, what happens and why He does it. This is the most graphic and the most detailed and the most comprehensive discussion of what it means for a people, a society to be abandoned by God. And it perfectly describes the moral chaos in our own nation today....

We all understand eternal wrath, eschatological wrath, calamitous wrath...But there's this other category of the wrath of abandonment, it is a form of God's wrath in which He lets go of a society and let's it catapult full speed without restraint in the direction of its own sinful desires and devices and choices. That's the wrath being described here. This is the cyclical reality of this wrath that has defined human history and will always until Jesus comes. As Paul said, in all the generations gone by, God permitted the nations to go their own way...

this massive concept of the wrath of abandonment I'm convinced is now at work in our society. We'd like to talk about the fact that America was founded on Christian principles and God was at the center of it, and all of that, whatever it might have been in our founding, it's no longer the way it is and I want to show you how you know that has happened...

There comes a time in a nation when God has had enough and He literally lets go and turns them over to the sentence that they have passed upon themselves by their incessant sinful choices. To see it another way, they are deprived of restraining grace....

The first thing you look for in a society you're trying to discern whether God has abandoned that society is whether or not that society has gone through a sexual revolution so that illicit sex, adultery, every form of immorality is accepted as normal in that society. And we're there.

The second step in the progression, verse 26, "God gave them over, not just to passions that are explicable because they're men and women, but to inexplicable degrading passions for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural." You know a society has been abandoned by God when it celebrates lesbian sex. God has given them over...gross affections, unnatural, unthinkable.

So you follow a sexual revolution with a homosexual revolution, and homosexuality becomes normalized. Verse 27 adds the male part, "In the same way the men abandon the natural function of the women burned in their desire toward one another.."....

interestingly enough, the Holy Spirit puts the women first here and the men after. Why? The Holy Spirit refers first to the degradation of women because they're usually the last to be affected in the decay of morals because their hearts are so naturally inclined toward a husband and toward the responsibility of nurturing children. But when they lead the parade, God has removed His restraint. And the amazing thing of it is this, verse 27, "The man abandoning the natural function of the women, burning in their desire toward one another, men with men, committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error." Right into this wrath of abandonment comes the wrath, the consequential wrath and even though it generates venereal disease and AIDS, they keep doing it. This is what step two looks like and we know this has come like a flood. But it's not the final step. The final step comes in verse 28, the middle of verse 28, "God gave them over to a depraved mind."

Now the version of the Bible you have, I'm reading the New American Standard, might have a different translation for depraved, so let me tell you what the word means...non-functional. It doesn't work, useless, can't think, can't reason, can't comprehend. And you look at this world and you say, "Rampant sexual immorality, out of control, destroying people willy-nilly even in the church, even in the leadership of the church. Homosexuality, same thing, rampant, out of control, demanding to be accepted as normal and the society rushing to affirm that acceptance. Isn't there anybody in the system who would stand up and call this what it really is, a massive, moral disaster? Can't they see it? Can't they figure it out? No...no. First Corinthians 1 says, "Man by wisdom knew not God." Human wisdom just on its own doesn't get there. Then you add that the god of this world has blinded the minds of them that do not believe and you've got a compounding blindness. And then you add the fact that they are blinded by virtue of the sweeping, dominating elements of their culture and you're just not going to get anybody to rise up and take that position and have people rally around it. You're going to have more people in leadership in the country outing themselves as homosexuals. If you think you've seen a lot of that, you haven't seen any of it yet as it becomes more and more accepted...

This society will not tolerate you standing up and displaying righteous indignation against sin. How long is it going to be before if you preach against it in your pulpit the government is going to come in and tell you, you can't do that?...

What do you have to pray for? You have to pray for the Word of the living God to be proclaimed across this nation. And if it's not being proclaimed in churches, it's not going to be proclaimed anywhere else. This is not a time for weak men in weak ministries preaching weak messages. This is a time to call on God to raise up a generation of passionate faithful gracious loving preachers of the Word so that a nation can listen to God....

God only wants one thing out of a nation. Listen and believe this book. I really get grieved even when I hear evangelical people in the media and the public eye kind of equivocating about the clarity of the gospel. It's all we've got. Or about the clarity of what Scripture says. Your prayer and mine has to be that God would raise up faithful preachers and people who would proclaim His Word across this land. Pray for this generation of young men that God will call and shape and send, pray for pastors everywhere. Pray for lay people, for Christians to be bold. There's only one solution and that's the truth...the truth by which God saves, by which God sanctifies, and if this nation will respond and listen to His truth, God will open the flood gates. We might be the greatest recovery story in history. But there's no other way..."

- John MacArthur

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SI Moderator - Brandy Gordon

hi, my home church is baptizing 30 to 50 a week and is on fire as are others in my city. God sent Jesus to save the lost not to condemn them and this ever present negativity is driving me to tears. make a difference in your town with your life style, joy and kindness(Christlikeness).love your neighbor enough to minister to his needs,wipe their tears, feed the hungry,minister hope to the children.what person wants to hear about a God from someone who looks like he just ate a lemon?jimp

jimp you need to be carefull how you judge. You are judging by appearance..lemon eating..instead of judging righteously. As Jesus said to do!

John Mcarthur is not someone you just casully judge as a lemon eater.

Amen for John MacArther.

It does seem that God has abandoned America. Judgement will soon come upon the Churches in America, if we do not repent. The Lord has been warning us for years. We just haven't listened.

Jimp, I am so happy that your church has been baptiszing new converts in your church. In my area many pastors are trying to become "Joel Osteen", it seems. The Baptist church that I was born agian in back in '86, has lost her salt. The youngest church member is 62 years old and only 10 people which make up the board attend.

This breaks my heart.


But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost...

The Lord has place this verse of scripture on my heart over the last few days. I have meditated on these words, chewing on them through out the last couple of days & nights, and it has become a bitter pill to swallow. Some may say, have God take it away. No, I have prayed for this burden for over 20 years. Why would I have him take it from me? My prayer now is "Lord Increase it!"

Meditation has now turn into a burden. I have had to turn to my prayer closet in intercession for those lost souls that are and will be damned to a groulish hell... All because they have not heard the good news of the glorious Gopsel of Christ.

why? How is that possible?

Here in America there are Church buildings on every block, radio stations dedicated to spreading the word through out our Nation and world, Television stations with 24 hour a day preaching and teaching of Gods word.

God Gave us Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. We have the gifts of the spirit, and the whole counsil of God, through our bible.

So, why haven't these lost souls heard the Gospel? The Good News of Jesus our Holy,Divine,and glorious Christ?

It seems virtually impossible that if someone was searching for Christ, he whom seeks will find?

In my local area, I have only found 1 church in a 20 mile radious that has prayer meetings and a soul winning outreach, where we go to homes and witness to them.

The others are all imitators of the world. God help us.

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William Cato

Thanks for sharing that wonderful preaching there by John MacArthur. He/you don't have to try to convince me anymore, this makes total, perfect sense. Our nation is worse or at least as terrible as Sodom and Gomorrah. Just as the Sodomites were forcing their way into people's homes to force homosex on them then, the Sodomites of today are forcing their way into our public schools and everywhere else to shove their sin and agenda down everyone's throats, with every bit as much venom and hate as the Sodomites of that day. I heard a a ridiculous pro-gay political ad on tv yesterday saying that politicians "should stay out of people's bedrooms". Well if only the Sodomites would KEEP it in their bedrooms!!! But no, THEY have brought it into the public square and the classrooms! THEY seek to shove it down our throats. No one ever went into their bedrooms.

So is there any hope for America, given that God has abandoned us/it?? I mean, isn't that pretty much the end then? It's pretty much a given now that America will fall into oblivion like every other nation abandoned by God, and like the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, right?

Of course, it's not just homosexuality/perversions/fornications that drove God away.It's the infanticide holocaust(also an abommination), the widespread occultism/witchcraft(also an abomination), and the denial of God in the public schools, media, government, workplace, apostate churches and homes.

Outstanding - I'll be listening to that one. I would also say, and have done before, that I could take anything about America, swap it for Britain and the message would be exactly the same...

(except the megachurches)

All we can do now is pray, and preach the gospel, until it costs us our lives. That is a deep challenge to my heart as much as any true believer today...

Many thanks for this message - it's what the church needs to hear.