Some may not enjoy my article this week. But then again, Jeremiah wasn't well respected by the prophets of his day either. And Danny, this is not scare tactics. It's how I feel. And I hope I'm wrong.

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AMERICA'S LAST GASP?

Sixty years ago, my dad was at Pearl Harbor. The events of September 11th therefore have a special meaning for me. All my life I grew up knowing about Pearl Harbor, and being told that unless we as a nation were vigilant, it would happen again, only worse. Dad, you were right.

This current national crisis is worse than Pearl Harbor in more ways than one. It is worse in that more people died, and it is worse in that they were all civilians. But it is also worse because I don't think young people today really care all that much. Yes, they will talk about how terrible it is for a month or two, but I don't think it will last. We've become a lazy, apathetic, godless people, caring only of ourselves and our own worldly pleasures.

I am glad we have a Christian in the White House. The Bible says that it is God who appoints the leaders of nations for His purposes. And I think that George W. Bush has been placed in the White House to call the nation to repentance and stand against a godless evil. But I really think it may be our nation's last gasp.

A hundred and fifty years ago, this nation was in another colossal struggle for survival. This time the enemy was not foreign armies but ourselves. As brother fought against brother and the bodies of Americans littered fields called Antietam and Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln declared these words:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown.

But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these things were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Despite what the history books may say, only a national repentance saved us. A national repentance that carried us with God's blessings through another one hundred years, and through two global wars. But before that second world war that national repentance was already showing signs of fraying, and by the 60's it began to unravel entirely. We began to turn our backs on God again. We voted Him out of our schools and out of our government.

Bibles began to gather dust on our shelves. "Freedom" became a license to do whatever we felt like doing, without restraint. "If it feels good, do it" became the national slogan. We decided we knew better than God what morality was, and we began sleeping with each other out of wedlock, sleeping with members of the same sex, and sending our unwanted pregnancies — our own children! — to the waste bins like so much garbage. Declaring there were no absolutes, "everyone did what was right in his own eyes."

We have once again forgotten God, once again become too intoxicated with the taste of freedom to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace. We have therefore doomed ourselves not to be saved, not to be preserved as a nation, unless we turn back to Him. Only a national repentance saved us then, and I believe only a true national repentance will save us now. "If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land."

But I don't think we care anymore. Yes, we will repent, and we will pray, and we will fill our churches for a time, but it will be largely pretense. We will draw near to Him with our lips, but our hearts will be far from Him. Then we will go back to our wicked ways. We will go back to indulging in our sins, thinking God doesn't see us, that He doesn't care. We will eat, drink and be merry; we will live only for today. We will continue to heap God's wrath upon us and upon our nation. And we will eventually reap destruction, as so many other nations before us have done.

I hope I am proven wrong in this. I pray our nation, especially our young people, discover a powerful and loving God who desires to rescue them, and fall on their knees en masse before Him, asking His help to save them and through them, their country. But I have my reservations that this will truly happen. Perhaps I am wrong. I pray that I am. But I see the spiritual apathy in our nation today, and it fills me with dread. Could we be seeing America's last gasp? May God help us all.

Dad ... you were so right.

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

Answers

I'm with you John !!!

I pray this isn't so, but I fear you're probably right. As examples already this week:

Business as usual has returned! The politicians are saying, "there are no Republicans or Democrats right now". That is a lie. California, this week, snuck in under the radar, their most prohibitive gun law to date. A large group of minority celebrities held a Telethon this past weekend under the guise of raising money for the disaster - only to donate the majority of the money to "Tolerance" organizations......ie Liberal, gay, minority rights groups.

Just goes to show that a lot of Americans either haven't repented of their ways or are just plain not too bright.

This disaster has provided an opportunity for Christians to reach out and teach this country what it needs to be doing - but will we be up to the challenge?

Only time will tell..........and that time is quickly running out!

-- Anonymous, September 26, 2001

AMEN brother!! That is my answer, 100% agreement. May I copy your post and send to others?

-- Anonymous, October 31, 2001