What our nation desperately needs is neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump. Regardless of which one wins the presidency, America will lose.
What our nation needs above all is spiritual renewal, and that can come only through repentance.
National Sins
We need to fall on our knees before God and repent of the following facts:
- We have killed millions of babies in the name of “freedom of choice for women.”
- We consume more illegal drugs than all the rest of the world combined.
- We have one of the highest divorce rates in the world.
- We have legalized sexual perversion and same-sex marriage.
- We spend more than $120 billion per year on gambling.
- We host 60% of all the Internet porn sites in the world.
- We have burdened future generations with trillions of dollars of debt.
- We are the moral polluter of the earth through our immoral, violent and blasphemous television programs and movies.
The Call for Repentance
God cannot bless a nation with these sins on its hands, regardless of who its leader may be. There must be repentance. The Bible makes it clear that nothing touches the heart of God as deeply as repentance — except faith (Acts 20:20-21):
20) You know that I [Paul] have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you but have taught you publicly and from house to house.
21) I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our Lord Jesus.
A Biblical Example
A good example of the power of repentance is the city of Nineveh which was the capital of the ancient barbarous empire of Assyria. God called the prophet Jonah to preach to the people of this city, warning them of their impending doom.
To Jonah’s surprise, the king responded in repentance. He took off his royal garments and covered himself in sackcloth and ashes. He then issued a proclamation to his subjects, calling on them to repent (Jonah 3:7-9):
7) This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh: “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink.
8 ) But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence.
9) Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”
God’s heart was touched by the king’s action and the response of the people to his call for repentance, and the Lord decided to spare the city and the empire.
But 150 years later, God called a second prophet named Nahum to return to Nineveh and warn them once again of their impending doom. Nahum fearlessly proclaimed (Nahum 1:2-3):
2) The LORD is a jealous and avenging God; the LORD takes vengeance and is filled with wrath. The LORD takes vengeance on His foes and vents His wrath against His enemies.
3) The LORD is slow to anger but great in power; the LORD will not leave the guilty unpunished…
Nahum further declared that the nation’s sins had become so terrible and so entrenched that “your wound is incurable” (Nahum 3:19). This was an ominous statement. The same was said of the nation of Judah in its final days. Both Jeremiah and Micah proclaimed that Judah’s sins had reached the point where the “wound is incurable” (Jeremiah 10:19, 30:12 and Micah 1:9).
Nineveh refused to respond to Nahum’s message with repentance, and God destroyed the city and the Assyrian Empire. In like manner, when the people of Judah set their jaw against God and refused to repent in response to the pleas of their prophets and the remedial judgments that followed, God poured out His wrath, allowing the Romans to destroy Jerusalem, the Temple and the nation.
Some of the saddest verses in the Bible tell of God’s reluctant destruction of the nation He loved so much and had so abundantly blessed (2 Chronicles 36:15-16):
15) The LORD, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through His messengers again and again, because He had pity on His people and on His dwelling place.
16) But they mocked God’s messengers, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy.
The grim reality is that there is a point of no return in a nation’s rebellion against God.
And thus, in the final days of Judah, God told Jeremiah not to even pray for his nation (Jeremiah 7:16 and 14:11). In like manner, God told Ezekiel that even if the most righteous men who had ever lived — Noah, Daniel and Job — were to intervene for Judah at that point in time, their prayers could only deliver themselves and their families, but not the nation (Ezekiel 14:12-16).
In the second segment of our look at what America desperately needs, we’ll cover the power of repentance seen in the history of our nation.