Covenant Presbyterian Church

Growing up in a family and in churches that took the Bible seriously, I regularly heard that God’s judgment would eventually fall upon this nation for its apostasy from his truth. Neither superior intellect nor mystical insights was necessary to see the truth of this message. As a child and teenager, I suppose my conceptions of this judgment were in terms of silly Dispensational fairy tales - the fodder of apocalyptic movies. With age and better knowledge of Scripture, I realize that judgment does not usually or often come in such forms. God sometimes works in ways we would call dramatic, but his bitterest judgments are not of the cataclysmic variety. They are the grind of his providence, common, inescapable, and haunting manifestations of his displeasure. Now, I feel hourly the reality of his judgments - against our nation and especially the church. The sense of foreboding never leaves me.

Seeing God’s hand against our nation is a relatively simple matter of opening one’s eyes. Take, for example, the recent water "shortage" in the southeastern United States. There are two forces at work here, especially in the suburban areas. The first is greed and presumption. Can any rational person think that we can continue to build, overbuild, and deplete natural resources, while failing to address such a fundament need as water management? Unbelieving men think and act with a god-complex. They are like the homosexual Lord Keynes, the philosophical fountainhead of our current economic nightmare. When asked what the implication of unbridled spending and artificial fiscal manipulation would be for future generations, he replied, "I will be dead." Yet, when the Lord stirs the tip of his finger and withholds water, all their plans are exposed as a house of straw. They respond with draconian measures of water preservation and rationing. Had they thought to depend upon God in the years leading up to this, had they refused to allow the profit motive to direct all their planning, some reasonable measures would have been taken to manage economic development with greater humility. Even now, building goes on at a breakneck pace. Reason would dictate a moratorium or at least a reasonable limitation on new housing starts. Newcomers should be directed to purchase the more than six thousand foreclosed homes in our county alone and the thousands of new homes that sit empty. This is just one example of God’s judgments - blindness. He causes men to make decisions that lead to their discomfort and destruction. They cannot see the situation as it really is.

The other and main issue is wickedness. We may tend to think that God is withholding rain because the "bad men" will not turn to him. Sometimes, it is true, he acts in this fashion. But have we considered the lives of those who profess to know him, our lives? Is the Lord pleased with the worship we are offering to him, our flagrant disregard for his law, and the pop-religion of man-centered spirituality that masquerades as biblical Christianity? Are our preachers calling us to repent and seek the Lord, as he commands us to do in times of his displeasure (1 Kings 8:35)? Whatever other purposes he has for the present situation, it should be a strong warning against the Christians in this area that the Lord is displeased with us. Our immorality, indifference to his word, and general unfaithfulness are more than sufficient to explain the present water "shortage." When judgments fall, we do well to remember the warning given in Ezekiel: "And the Lord said to him, ‘Pass through the city, through Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.’ And to the others he said in my hearing, ‘Pass through the city after him, and strike. Your eye shall not spare, and you shall show no pity’" (Ezek. 9:4,5). The Lord tells the prophet that he will have mercy upon those who weep over their sins and the sins of their city; the rest he will destroy. This is not a time for giddiness. It is a time for weeping - over one’s own sins, over the dishonor that is done each day to the name of the living God, and over the faithlessness of the church in this nation.

This is why I weep. Christian leaders endorse men for President who are known friends of abortion, homosexuality, socialism, and globalism. I weep because the Lord has removed the vision of godly leadership from our nation and its churches; the candlestick of Christ’s presence and light is on its way out the door. When children and women rule over us, you may know the hand of the Lord is against us (Isaiah 3:12). I weep because the bulk of professing Christians are playing the political game, compromising with God’s enemies, and living as if things are "business as usual" in this nation. Yet, we are killing our young men in unjust oil wars; professing Christians are among the worst of the war hawks. Thousands of babies are incinerated every day on the altar of convenience and promiscuity. Our dollar is worthless; the stock market is a shell game increasingly controlled by foreign investors and manipulated by big business interests. A new Tower of Babel is being erected by the globalists; the new tower, like the old, is built upon a foundation of fear of judgment and hatred of God. These are not simply precursors to judgment; they are the judgment. We are reaping their bitter consequences every hour. The liberties for which our forefathers bled and died are a distant memory. And Christians are sound asleep. As long as we are more concerned with our American conveniences and private spirituality, as long as we have no zeal for the glory of God and the kingdom of his Son, we will remain asleep. The judgments will continue to roll over us like the evening tide. Evening is here - the twilight of judgment. It can last for decades, even centuries, until all that is good, noble, and righteous is expunged from us, leaving us nothing but tyranny, emptiness, and bitterness.

I have painted a bleak picture, but I do not think it is exaggerated. It is probably too rosy. The worst aspect of this judgment is that most still do not see it. Satan has learned that the best way to lead the masses by the nose is to feed them like dogs. Give them what they want, and they will be satisfied - entertainments, an appearance of security and normalcy, and ample prurient diversions to keep them too morally weakened. You see, when men are gratifying themselves, they cannot stand against sin. The conscience is funny like this. If you sin against it privately, it will abandon you publicly. This perhaps explains one of the causes of the church’s happy acquiescence to the status quo, its inability to make a meaningful stand for righteousness. Its collective conscience is honeycombed with guilt. With respect to our culture’s favorite diversions, it must be said that Christians will be lulled to sleep if they spend any significant time watching, listening, and participating. This is the time for the uniqueness, the peculiarity of true Christians to manifest itself. One way we can meaningfully do this is to unplug from mindless entertainment and cease contributing to the materialistic blindness of our culture. If you do not, you and your family will continue to sleep. The day will come upon you unawares because you have been desensitized to sin and rendered incapable of seeing the mighty works God is doing.

There is hope. Our culture is somewhere in the Romans 1 burnout spiral. The church is also caught up in it. The burnout mode begins when men worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator, when men do not like to retain God, the true God, in their thinking and suppress his truth in unrighteousness. Everywhere God’s glorious word is ignored, twisted, and despised among his people, there Romans 1 is operating. Wherever Christian men are moving in their internet viewing from basic nudity to hardcore sexuality, Romans 1 is operating. Wherever "spiritual principles" are really nothing other than "feel good about how you are doing," God’s will is replaced by man’s pride, and Romans 1 is operating. Where is the hope in this? The hope lies in the fact that Romans 1 is a dead-end street. When men, cultures, and churches capitulate to the man-as-God philosophy, unbelief’s regime is reaching its climax. In our culture particularly, we are moving down this dead-end street. The righteous know that Romans 1 is God’s judgment against unbelief - whether that unbelief is expressed in the language of secularism or the language of truncated Christianity. Your response, however, must be the biblical one. You must weep and mourn. You must pray for God to be glorified, his enemies to be defeated, and his gospel to go forth with boldness and effect. You must repent of your sins and walk with him more closely than ever, for when God’s judgments are abroad in the earth, men learn righteousness. Learn and practice righteousness, and God will protect you. His Son reigns. Now when judgment creeps, it is so that a few more tares may be rooted out, in anticipation of the final separation. It is also intended to awaken the wheat to their God-given mission in the world - to summon men and nations to submit to the Lord of glory and embrace his gospel. Judgment is a prelude to victory.

There has not been such hope in a long time. Men and women are being converted in droves around the world. If we will see the kingdom of Jesus Christ in its transnational reality, we will realize that the United States is just one corner, and a small corner at that, of God’s mighty work. The tares here are obnoxious. They think they own the field. They are about to be disappointed. You must disappoint them by responding to this period of judgment with greater allegiance to Jesus Christ, love for his law, and commitment to thinking and living in terms of his word. In this time, your confidence lies in the knowledge that there is no future in wickedness. Its lease on life is always short. The gospel will triumph because the King reigns. No power raised against him will prevail. There is no other power. His church must awaken! After the darkness, light will prevail, and that light is Christ our Savior. All else is abysmal darkness.

As he works, we will be stretched. There is in each one of our hearts a root of selfishness that seasons of judgment expose. The church is filled with arrogant believers who are in love with a favorite period of the past, or personal comfort, or their church programs, or making a name for themselves. This will be rooted out. God will be all in all. He will not share his glory with another. I urge you, as I urge myself, to deal with these matters now. Look upon the majesty and holiness of God; until his glory you see, you will always think yourself to be far better than you are. You will never give yourself to him in thankful service for his indescribable gift of forgiveness and life through Jesus Christ. You will pursue your own priorities and activities each day without much thought given to him, how he is working, what he is doing. You will selfish and self-oriented. You may be caught up in the judgments that are unfolding all around us. If, however, you will respond to his judgments with renewed faith and sincere repentance, the Lord will preserve you. His seal of omnipotent protection will be upon your forehead. No weapon raised against you will prosper. When you suffer, it will be unto joy for the privilege of suffering for his name. If you lack, it will be so that he may show his power in your weakness. If you lose friends and family for your stand, you will know his friendship, the sweetest joy on earth.

Judgment, my friend, is creeping. It is growing. Will you join the Lord in his great work on the earth, for it will be glorious? Will you draw closer to him, your unassailable Rock and Refuge? Will you be a part of the revival of the church in this land? It will likely not come with artificial drama. God hates television revivals led by slick religious hucksters. It is coming and will continue to come as humble believers turn to him, live for him, and serve him, regardless of the cost, to be his peculiar people, his handiwork, his slaves of righteousness, his grateful sons and daughters.