Cry for National Repentance

I believe we today can learn much from getting in our Bible and studying how God moved in the life of his people in former times, how God would raise up his prophets to call a nation to repentance, how he would bring first a remedial judgment upon them by way of a sudden natural calamity, and then send his prophets to them to call the people back to God to avert an impending national disaster far more devastating in its severity than anything preceding it. Unfortunately, most of the time the stiff-necked and rebellious people paid no heed to the dire warnings from God, and consequently they suffered devastation and ruin. Occasionally, a people heeded the call to return to God and repent to avoid impending ruin, such as the repentance of the Ninevites under the preaching of Jonah.

But more frequently, we see in the midst of calamity, there was a national oblivion to divine action. They refused to recognize the hand of God in the calamity. Kind of like us today, in a politically correct atmosphere, few even suggest that God is behind a great calamity upon our nation.

Have you ever wondered why the church remains silent in the face of national disaster? What terrible disaster will have to befall our nation before all the sleepy-headed pastors call their congregations to a solemn assembly, as seen in the book of Joel, where the ministers weep between the porch and the altar, crying out in desperation, spare your people, O Lord! Rising floodwaters and violent earthquakes used to mobilize the church to preach revival sermons to call the nation back to God, as seen in the following example of early America, where pastors were wiser and preached revival sermons on the heels of natural disasters to turn the hearts of the people back to God. Listen, friends, to a sermon preached by a leading pastor in Boston in 1755, when an earthquake shook that city. Listen to the title of his sermon, Earthquakes, the Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure, being a discourse on that subject wherein he is given a particular description of this awful event of providence made public at this time on occasion of the late dreadful earthquake, which happened on the 18th of November, 1755.

The text of the sermon was Psalm 18.7. Then the earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. Our trouble today, friends, is we don't think he is wroth. He's just a God of love.

But I remember in America when there was still a fear of God in the land. 9-11 was a wake-up call, but we've all gone back to sleep. God often will give a nation or an individual a space of time to repent and return to Him, as seen in the following passage from the book of Revelation, in chapter 2, beginning in verse 20, where Jesus is addressing His church.

Notwithstanding, I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and seduce my servants, to commit fornication and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication, and she repented not. God allows a people space to turn back to Him, but if they refuse to do so, then the hammer of justice falls, and death and destruction soon follow.

I've seen this happen in the lives of people I've known, who God was dealing with them, and they had time to do something about it, and they refused to submit to God. And then God had to suddenly remove them through violent death. God will allow a nation to fill its cup of iniquity before He destroys that nation and reduces it to an ash heap of rubble.

Most people living today don't even realize how close society came to annihilation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in the early 1960s. I was alive then, and actually went through the drills in my classroom at school, where they made the kids hide under their desks in the event of a nuclear blast. I don't know how they thought hiding under our desk would save us, but they made us do the drill anyhow.

A good way to picture this in your mind, friends, is to imagine you're holding two pencils in each hand, and you slowly bring them together until they almost touch. That's how close we came to having 200 million people burned up in an hour by a nuclear blast. The nations of the world sit like dominoes in the wind, and one sudden catastrophic event could make them all fall one by one.

God is the only one holding it all together. God is the only one who's holding mankind together. But He could let loose of the whole shooting match, and before you could blink your eye, you'd be in eternity, one you were quite unprepared for.

I've never seen a time in my life, friends, where we have so many frequent national disasters, one right after another. It looks like a page right out of the Old Testament, and now we have a plague that won't go away. It just keeps morphing into another new strain, and no drug or vaccine can keep you from getting it.

How many more millions will have to die before God gets our attention? What's it gonna take for the leaders in the churches to call their people to a time of prayer, humiliation, and fasting in nights of solemn assembly and desperation, confessing the sins of the land and our own sins in the church where the prophets of God, where are they? Where are the prophets of God, bold enough like a Jonah who emerged from the deep waters of purging to cry out in God's name for repentance, to bring our modern Nineveh to its knees. Great God, raise up such men for our day. I pray in the strong name of Jesus.

Amen.