Put simply, this is God’s just response to those who hate and reject Him. We are currently enduring God’s judicial retribution against our nation’s great treachery against the truth. As June approaches, it is blindingly clear that we are still in the midst of this great condemnation.
As we enter into the holy month in the Satanic Secular calendar—Pride—we are reminded once again that we remain firmly in the grip of divine judgment. What we have experienced as a culture in the acceleration of the past three-plus years is what it feels like for God to “give them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity…to dishonorable passions…to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done (Romans 1:24, 26, 28), and for Him to “send them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11). When this happens on an individual level, it leads ultimately to eternal self-destruction and condemnation; when it occurs on a societal level, it leads to total collapse and the scorn of future generations.
Why does God do this? “Because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25); “Because they refused to love truth and so be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10). Put simply, this is God’s just response to those who hate and reject Him. We are currently enduring God’s judicial retribution against our nation’s great treachery against the truth. As June approaches, it is blindingly clear that we are still in the midst of this great condemnation.
Amid a Great Condemnation
America deserves whatever God has coming for it. We are a people who have indiscriminately slaughtered infants for half a century, who have transgressed and trampled the marriage covenant through divorce, adultery, and sodomite union, and who have indulged in the most extreme forms of perversity and sexual abuse with the audacity to celebrate all of it. And all of this has been done in the glow of such unprecedented light and blessing from God that it cannot be explained by anything besides vicious, vitriolic, surface-level hatred of our blessed Creator.
Surely Jesus’ indictment on the cities of His day equally condemns us: “For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you” (Matthew 11:23-24). If Sodom was destroyed by fire from heaven to serve as a continual example for other nations who might indulge in the same sinful rebellion (Jude 7), what will God do to the nation that has enjoyed more gospel light and material blessing than any in history, and yet still arrogantly pursued the sin of Sodom?
The Worst Has Not Yet Come
When God told Abraham that his descendants would not inherit the Promised Land for generations because “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete” (Genesis 15:16), He waited over 400 years before sending His judgment in the form of the Israelite army to wipe them off the map. Our downfall seems to be occurring much more swiftly, yet we continue to rebel with a high hand, and so store up more and more wrath for God to visit upon us. However, though each new day seems to bring a further atrocity, a new outcry, a formerly inconceivable display of depravity (i.e., Jesus drag queens at Dodger Stadium, or a cross-dressing man feeding a baby strange secretions from his chest), it remains the case that the worst has not yet come.
We can confidently say this because the gospel of repentance and forgiveness still goes forth mostly freely. Though pressure campaigns and social media deplatformings militate against the proclamation of truth, pastors and churches in America can still preach the whole gospel with little fear of significant persecution. This is not to dismiss the rare cases of Christians who have been targeted and unjustly harassed for their gospel ministry, but it is to say that these instances are just that—rare. The church in America has not yet been driven underground. Yet this unjust targeting, scapegoating, and, yes, persecution will not stay rare forever. As judgment progresses, the light of the gospel available to our nation will continue to dim until there is barely a flicker. Christians must be fervently proclaiming one message to the nation: repent.
The Need For National Repentance
This is the only message that can bring about mercy for our guilty and damned nation. The secular and quasi-religious conservative backlash against movements such as transgenderism (particularly the “transitioning” of minors) will not pull this nation out of the mire of judgment. Christians can certainly be thankful for work done by the likes of James Lindsay and Matt Walsh, yet we must remain sober-minded in understanding that, while political action and societal pressure may have some effect in slowing the most outrageous excesses of our culture, they will not heal the disease with which America is afflicted. America’s problem is sin.
Our cultural consensus has become ugly and destructive because sin can only produce ugly and destructive fruit, and we are sold to a deeply sinful worldview that begins with a denial of our Creator and His authority. And when sin is understood to be not a problem with our nation but the problem, we must come to the realization that God has ordained but one remedy for sin and its consequences: “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?’ And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 2:37-38).
Individual sinners collectively make up sinful communities—a sinful nation. And the only way to be freed from national sin is through national repentance. This does not mean a top-down decree of repentance—it is necessary for individual sinners to personally repent and repudiate their sin and then to walk in that repentance if our nation is ever to repent genuinely. However, this also does not mean that every single person must repent in order for our nation to repent. America nationally celebrates Pride, though many individuals do not—yet we all share in the collective curse and shame of this wickedness (this is how covenant works).
Similarly, America can nationally and publicly repent, and though some individuals will not themselves turn from sin, they will nevertheless share in the national blessing. But the blessing only comes with genuine repentance, which is not the same as nationally recognizing that transitioning kids (or abortion, gay “marriage,” or no-fault divorce) are bad ideas. Repentance is “in the name of Jesus Christ.” It acknowledges that our deeds are not merely foolish but treasonous against our Creator God and His Christ. And this must be the message coming from the church.
Our Response As Christians
We will not experience a turnaround in this nation unless we repent as a nation, and we will not repent as a nation unless individuals begin to repent and walk in obedience. This means that during this June, rather than fume over the gross idolatry and immorality surrounding us, we ought to first repent of all that we have done to either directly or indirectly contribute to this state of affairs. And then we must go forth and proclaim the gospel to individuals, call individuals to repentance, and joyfully communicate and live out a better worldview than what the culture offers.
God does not guarantee mercy or blessing to particular nations. He may allow us to continue down this path of destruction, in which case America’s darkest days are yet ahead. But however dim the light may appear, it has not gone out—indeed, it cannot—and we know that the light we proclaim is powerful enough to cast out all darkness. So rather than sulk, retreat, or rage, Christians must be busy and bold in proclaiming and daily living out the forgiveness of sin through repentance and faith in the risen King.
In a video available on YouTube, John Cleese satirically talks about the Church he is starting. One of the two principles around which his new church will revolve is the idea that morals are only about sex. And such, with the partial exception of abortion, seems to be the theme of the above article.
Will someone explain to me how the systemic racism against people of color has never seemed to have merit the wrath of God? Of course, one would point out that the Civil War could be a punishment for slavery. But slavery is not the only expression of racism against people of color. Native Americans continued to be ethnically cleansed from the land after the Civil War and Jim Crow had a delayed start after the Civil War.
But we can talk about the violent labor history of the US. We can talk about how children were exploited for and endangered by owners in mills. We can talk about how adult workers were arrested without cause and found guilty in flimsy trials because they were labor leaders and how the police would side with the owners and exercised violence against workers who would try to organize or strike.
Or how about how women were treated as inferiors to men in many ways. Or how many women could be physically abused by their husbands with impunity and that never merited the wrath of God on us.
Of course the details of the Jim Crow era led to attacks on the families of Blacks with violence and forced poverty. Thousands of blacks had been officially estimated as being killed with impunity, especially through hanging, and sometimes parties, race massacres such as the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, and the many other ways in which blacks suffered during Jim Crow and those sins have never been mentioned as having merited the wrath of God.
Or consider how many times our foreign policies caused the replacement of a democratically elected leader with a right-wing brutal dictators. This especially took place when the leaders to be disposed politically leaned to the left. Our immigration problems south of the border still suffer from the consequences of those policies that are multiple decades old. Or consider the immoral Vietnam War that was defended by lies to public.
Consider our current way of life and how it endangers the lives of future generations with our poisoning of the environment and enhancing the future results of climate change and that was not mentioned in the article’s list of sins for which God will punish.
Are there other sins? Yes. But the Republican Party’s list of deadly sins only includes abortion and sexual immorality. So one has to ask if us religiously conservative Christians are being politically manipulated by our leaders. After all, during the last few centuries of Christendom and now, the dominant branches of the Church (Orthodox, Roman, and Protestant) in a given nation have often sided with wealth and power. And of the 2 major parties in the U.S., and I belong to neither one, it is the Republican Party that sides most with at least wealth if not including power. And which party do most religiously conservative Christians support?
I think that, without including it as part of the Scriptures, we need to listen to the parable of the two Pharisees. The one Pharisee prays that he is so grateful to God that he is not like that liberal, commie-loving, woke, and sexually immoral Democrat, and we could include socialists here too though there are very few of us around, After all that Pharisee is morally superior because he/she supports neoliberal Capitalism, the NRA, the police, our interventions in other nations, and real Americanism.
The other Pharisee is also grateful for his/her moral superiority over the conservative Pharisee because he/she is not a sinner like that conservative one. Instead, he/she supports DEI, abortion rights, efforts to battle climate change, efforts to tax the wealthy to give to the poor, and so on.
We should note that the Biblical parable about the Publican and Pharisee was not too kind to the Pharisee. And so both Pharisees from the parable in this comment fare the same. And that makes sense considering what Romans 2:1ff and 3:9 as well as the Biblical parable about the Publican and Pharisee say.