I am convinced that with every crisis, with every crossroad a nation faces, there is ether more chaos or massive correction, bad critics or a brilliant cure. America is in a crisis and stands at a decisive crossroad. And the next few choices she makes – will determine her destiny!
If America ends up in the graveyard of civilizations, it will be of her own doing! There will be no one to blame but the people that make up this once blessed nation!
Psalm 33:12 “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.”
Folks, mark my words, if substantial change does not happen in the next 10 years, we will face calamity, terrorism, natural disasters and anarchy like we have never seen before in the history of this nation! But the sad part to this scenario is - if we ever reach the pit of despair and we pray, pray, pray – there just might not be an answer from heaven!
1 Samuel 8:18 “When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, and the Lord will not answer you in that day.” NIV
The only cure for the crookedness, the craziness, the chaos and the confusion in America is the cross! And the key is – every Christian and every church needs to depend on the old rugged cross as the only beacon of light in these dark days!
James Garfield was a lay preacher and principal of a Christian college. In l880, he was elected president of the United States, but served only six months in office.
A lawyer named Charles Guiteau became infuriated when his application to be the U. S. ambassador to France was denied. Guiteau believed that God had ordered him to kill the President. Guiteau stalked the President for several days. On July 2, 1881, Garfield arrived at the Washington railroad depot - Guiteau was hiding in the station and fired two shots at President Garfield. One bullet grazed his arm but the other one lodged somewhere inside the President’s body.
President Garfield was rushed to the White House, having never lost consciousness. For the next 80 days, 16 doctors were consulted regarding the President’s condition.
The first doctor to treat President Garfield, Willard Bliss, stuck a non-sterile finger into the wound (sterilization had been preached, but not widely practiced at the time). He followed this by inserting a non-sterile probing instrument to find the bullet. Bliss never found the bullet, but the false passage that he dug out confused later physicians as to the bullet’s actual path. As a result, they concluded that the bullet had penetrated the liver and therefore surgery would be of no help. The President would surely die quickly as a result. Of course, they were wrong.
Then the army surgeon general stuck his unwashed finger into the wound and dug as deep as he could. This was followed by the navy surgeon general who searched with his finger so deeply that this time he really did puncture the liver. His conclusion: the President would die within 24 hours. But, Garfield didn’t die the next day.
In an effort to find the bullet, Alexander Graham Bell rigged up a metal detector to help find the bullet. After several passes, Bell said he had located the bullet. It was much deeper than was originally thought. With Garfield’s condition growing steadily worse, doctors decided to cut him open to remove the slug – but it was not found. What Bell had actually located was a metal spring under the mattress!
In the end, they managed to take a 3 inch wound and turn it into a 20 inch canal that was now heavily infected, oozed more and more pus with each passing day. The deep wound with its massive infection, coupled with blood poisoning from the bullet, caused the President’s heart to weaken.
President Garfield had a massive heart attack several days later, and on September 19th, 1881, President James Garfield finally passed away.
Why did President James Garfield die? At the autopsy, examiners determined that the bullet had lodged itself some four inches from the spine in a protective cavity. Their conclusion? The president would have survived if the doctors had left him alone.
Folks - America has a large wound with a massive infection and everyday we have social engineers sticking their dirty philosophy into her wound, we have social ethicists wiping their demonic peroxide into her wound, we have social elitist pouring their deadly potion into her wound – America is getting sicker everyday because she lacks the right wisdom, knowledge and truth applied to her wound! Why nor leave what our Founding Fathers started 232 years ago alone? What was wrong with…
Isaiah states 2 sins of his day and they also parallel our day:
1. Bloody Hands. Vs. 3a
In America, we are swimming in a pool of blood! The holocaust of over35 million unborn babies in America since 1973 – that over 1 million every year! 65 million worldwide!
I take you to the ruins of Carthage, North Africa. In its pinnacle Carthage was, “The queen and mother of all cities in Africa, the eternal rival of Rome.” She was first in power, first in prestige and first in prosperity. At one point Carthage wanted for nothing, and was so advanced in education, military, commerce, judges and lawyers. Sound familiar?
But then… historian Jim Black in his book “When Nations Die” writes, “Seething with every kind of wickedness, thronging with iniquities, full of riches, but fuller with sins, where men surpass one another in the vileness of their evil passions strong among themselves for supremacy in greed and impurity, others enfeebled with wine or gluttony, others crowned with flowers of reeking in perfumes… it is true, but everyone was drunk in sin.”
“And then there were the ornately carved funeral monuments some of which depicted scenes of infant sacrifices, were set up in the cemeteries and sacred precincts of the city to acknowledge the blood offerings made to the goddess in exchanged for her blessings.”
“I remember visiting the cemeteries and seeing the tiny stone coffins of infants who were murdered and burned as sacrificed to the pagan goddess. The sight of thousands of these coffins lined up, row after row was chilling. 20 years after my first visit, I still remember the sense of sorrow I felt then. I recall wondering what horrors the mothers and fathers of all those innocent victims must have endured at the hands of their demon gods.”
We must ask our selves, how is the murder of 35 million innocent aborted children any different? Isn’t abortion our culture’s sacrifice to the gods of “choice”, greed, convenience and materialism?”
The violence of our day has far surpassed Noah’s, King Herod’s and Hitler’s! America’s politicians peddle and parade their pro-choice platform as if it’s the ultimate prize for America!
Moses told Israel just before his death, Deuteronomy 30:19 “I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses, therefore choose life, that you and your children may live.”
2. Lying Lips. Vs. 3b
Sociologists say it’s no big deal to lie and cheat - if it doesn’t hurt anyone! From the classroom to the bedroom – cheating and lying is almost normal in order to function in this society of ours! Over the last 10 years we’ve had to endure the ridiculous debate about public and private morality! Folks, the standards are no different at home or at the job! If a man cheats on his wife with a bimbo – I wouldn’t trust him to run the School house, Church house or the White house!
For that matter – it’s a sad day in America when public approval validates wrong behavior!
Chuck Colson writes, “Societies are tragically vulnerable when the men and women who compose them lack character. A nation or a culture cannot endure for long unless it is undergirded by common values such as valor, respect for others and for the law; it cannot stand unless it is populated by people who will act on motives superior to their own immediate interests.”
Isaiah 5:20 “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness.”
Ecclesiastes 10:1 “Dead flies in perfume makes all of it stink.”
Folks, something is beginning to stinks in America!
So what’s brought this on? Americans Are Daily Experiencing:
a. A Diet of Deception. Vs. 5a
The people’s sins are compared to a viper’s egg! The pagan philosophies of Isaiah’s day are the same hatched eggs we are being fed everyday! And they are hatched in hell’s incubators.
We are being fed a snake-egg diet! Humanism, materialism, relativism, liberalism and Darwinism are all wrapped up in devilish deception!
And Satan himself is the grand daddy serpent of them all! Think about this…a teen age girl cannot get an aspirin at school without her parents consent, but she can get condoms and abortion counseling without her parents knowing it! That’s deception! We’ve gone morally mad on Main Street!
The great wisdom that built this nation is now openly laughed at in every walk of life! I dare you to just try and introduce creation in the classrooms of America!
BUT NOTICE… Verse 5b: crush them but it doesn’t kill them – it only produces more snakes!
b. A Web of Wickedness. Vs. 5b
Israel’s sin left them living in a web of wickedness! The nation was being poisoned everyday! Satan is still poisoning the well of righteousness in America!
Pornography is the #1 internet business in America! Over 1 million sites on the World Wide Web!
In the NYC School District, there is a textbook used in every high school and it says, “Pre-marital sexual intercourse is acceptable for any sexual orientation, if they are involved in a stable loving relationship.” - Harcourt School Publishers
You know you are living in an age of wickedness when we adopt Judges 17:6 “…everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said from the bench in a case concerning decency, “The evolving standards of decency mark the progress of a maturing society.”
c. The Trashing of Truth. Vs. 12-14
Notice there’s a traffic jam in the streets! Justice and equity can’t get through the streets any more because truth has fallen!!
What has caused truth to fall? Truth has been knocked down by doctors of philosophy, tripped up by dishonest politicians and chloroformed by liberal preachers peddling poison from their pulpits!
I firmly believe that we can re-capture the airwaves of information and step back into the dialogue of ideas and it’s just the right time. I even think the world is open to fresh ideas and fresh dialogues! By re-engaging we can as Christians take the marketplace of modernism and turn it into a marketplace of meaning again!
Why did God give us a Bible? So we can know the word of truth. Why did God send the Holy Spirit? So we can experience the Spirit of truth. Why did God give us the church? So we could be the “pillar and ground of truth”. Why did God give us Jesus? So every one can know the way, the truth and the life!
Truth is the only tool that can set someone free and set a society free from a diet of deception, a web of wickedness and from trashing the truth! Liberalism only binds up a nation in snake eggs and spider webs, and then puts up road blocks to stop truth from marching on!
Listen, we need something that can slay the snake and destroy the spider – and its truth! All of us in America have to lift her up again while we still have time and we still have a voice!
With truth we can preach, teach and bleach America clean again! Proverbs 23:23 “Buy the truth and sell it not.”
Dante said, “The hottest place in hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of crisis.”
You may be saying, “But Pastor, I’m not neutral in this moral crisis!” You may not be, but someone is!
Get this: In America we have about 7 million humanists and about 180 million Christians – someone’s neutral! We should not be losing the battle!
Fredrick Nietzsche a 19th century challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality. He said, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”
OH REALLY?
Janet Paschal, a wonderful gospel singer wrote a song that includes these words…
“They said it wouldn’t last
Said God’s word would pass away into mere history
They thought the church He built would end
Replaced by modern times and trends
But countless generations proved again
His truth keeps on marching
On a million Sunday mornings in a million little towns
Through a hungry little village in a distant foreign land
And in the pew when someone stands to testify again
His truth keeps marching on!”
