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The Spiritual State of the Nation. “God does nothing redemptively in the world except through prayer.” John Wesley.
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“God does nothing redemptively in the world except through prayer.” John Wesley
“since 1947 Parliament has been destroying the Christian basis of our society by some of the laws that have been enacted. If the foundations of a society are destroyed, that society will inevitably collapse.”
“The Bible teaches very clearly how God deals with a nation that has known His laws, if that nation deliberately forsakes them. Three main methods are described that God uses to bring a nation to repentance.”
“I will mention only the first one, and that is that God withdraws His Blessing from the “economy” of the nation and that, of course, rapidly wakens people up to the fact that things are not right.”
I believe the key to understanding what is happening in our nation today is to be found in a study of the Bible and the way God dealt with the nations there, especially with the nation of Israel whom He called to be His Chosen People, because our own nation has been founded on Christian teachingand we were at one time known as a Christian nation.
As we read the history of the Jewish nation in the Old Testament we see the nation repeatedly sinning against God, whom they recognised as the Creator of all that exists, whose name in Hebrew had been revealed to Moses.
In our alphabet the Name God revealed to Moses has been represented by the consonantsr JHVH, or YHVH, or YHWH and has been translated as: Jehovah or Yehovah, or Yahweh. In the AV, RV, RSV and NIV, it is usually translated as “LORD”.
The LORD (JHVH) had called the descendants of Jacob (Israel) to be His “Chosen People”, and promised to bless them if they obeyed Him, but warned them that fearful curses would come on them if they disobeyed Him. At Sinai the nation entered into a Covenant promising to obey God.
Tragically the Jews seemed never to learn how to live in continuous obedience and repeatedly sinned against God.
When Solomon’s son Rehoboam became king, the nation split into two Kingdoms: the Northern Kingdom of “Israel” made up of 10 tribes ruled by Jeroboam and the Southern Kingdom of “Judah” that comprised Judah and the small tribe of Benjamin ruled by Rehoboam.
About 690 BC, God sent a man to warn the people in the northern Kingdom of Israel that they would be punished if they did not repent. His name was Amos.
God sent Amos to warn Israel that Divine Judgement was coming to them unless they repented. Amos said that “The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?” A lion roars just before it pounces on its prey to kill it. So his call to repentance was urgent. (Amos 3:8.)
Sadly they did not repent and some 30 years later they were punished by being conquered by the Assyrians and the 10 tribes of Israel who comprised the Northern Kingdom of Israel disappeared from history. No human being really knows what became of them.
When Amos warned the people of the judgement to come, he said that God is distressed by people’s sins and takes no delight in judgement, but wants everyone to repent and change their ways of living.
Amos gave a clear assessment of “the spiritual state of the nation” and warned of the inevitable consequences if the people did not repent. Some of his best known words are: “Prepare to meet thy God.” Amos 4:12.
So I want to ask today, what is “the spiritual state of our nation”? Are we prepared to meet with God?
Our Nation is in a similar state to that it was in, in the 18th Century when the nation was corrupt and immoral. The Churches then were powerless and many thought that Christianity was finished and out of date.
Dr. Donald Coggan who was Archbishop of Canterbury some years ago said that a revival of Christianity was the only hope for Britain and the Western world.
Winston Churchill said to Billy Graham in 1954 at a private interview after the crusade at Harringay Arena: “I do not see much hope for the future unless it is the hope you are talking about young man. We must have a return to God.”
In 1969 the Revd. David Gardner, the founder of the Mayflower Family Centre in London, wrote a pamphlet entitled: “A Warning to the Nation”.
David Gardner realised that Britain had passed from being in the position of a nation which had experienced the Hand of Almighty God in Blessing - to becoming a nation under God’s Judgements, because of the way Britain had forsaken God and was deliberately defying Him.
Two very serious Parliamentary Acts that defied God were passed in 1967. In that year Parliament legalised homosexual activity between consenting adults and Parliament also legalised abortion.
David Gardner said this was like the sin of Jeroboam, the first king of Israel who legalised wrong doing and thus set his nation on a path that led to total destruction, because they defied God.
The Bible makes it clear that God uses various forms of judgement to bring people to repentance and if a gentle judgement is not effective then a more severe one is given until, if there is no repentance, the nation is destroyed. We see that principle in operation in the history of Israel and Judah.
“Our situation in Britain today is so desperate that only God coming down in mighty Holy Ghost revival power will touch the situation today, if indeed that is to happen at all.” “Sound the Trumpet amongst the Nations” by David Gardner, p61.
Amos stated: “ Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, without revealing his secret to his servants the prophets”. Amos 3:7.
Revd. Dr. Clifford Hill was lecturing at Spurgeon’s College in London speaking about the social structure of modern Britain when he suddenly found himself being carried away from his lecture notes and realised that he was being given a revelation of divine truth.
Clifford Hill wrote:“Towards the Dawn - What is going to happen to Britain?”. He said that the alternatives before our nation were to be taken over by some form of revolution, or to face social disintegration and chaos, or to repent and turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for help and experience a Christian Revival.
Three of the most serious sins in our nation are: 1. Abortion - since 1967 over 7,000,000 babies have been aborted. In our nation today the only licenced executioners are doctors of the medical profession and they are licenced to execute the innocent. In the Bible God makes it clear that the one of the worst things any one can do is to shed innocent blood.
2. Sexual Immorality: that is fornication and adultery. The family is the basic foundation of our nation and we have neglected the family. God says clearly in the Bible that sexual intercourse is to be restricted to marriage and He will not bless any sexual relationship He has not sanctioned.
Selwyn Hughes wrote that if both man and wife obey God in their marriage: “then marriage can become as Luther described it, ‘the nearest thing to heaven on earth’. “Marriage as God intended” by Selwyn Hughes.
3. Legalisation of homosexuality. In the Bible one of the sins that brought rapid and complete destruction on the city of Sodom, was homosexual behaviour.
As Billy Graham has said, if God does not intervene to stop the evil practices in our nations, He will have to apologise to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Clifford Hill started the magazine: “Prophecy Today” that was published every two months to call people to repentance. It was replaced by a new magazine called “Sword” about five years ago because it was realised that we are now a nation under God’s judgement.
God alway gives us a choice. We can obey Him and be blessed or we can do our own thing and be punished.
What attitude do we take to the state of our nation? Are we sorry for the evil that is being done? Do we repent of our part in it and on behalf of our nation as Daniel did (Daniel 9)? Do we pray for our leaders that they will repent and turn to God and govern our nation rightly?
General Public Debt - Morgages etc. £14,430,000,000,000 Average debt per person £290,000 Note: in modern calculations 1 trillion is 1,000,000,000,000
National Income per year (GNP) £1,620,996,000,000 Government Debt £1,230,000,000,000 (Due to increase by 2015 to £ 1,900,000,000,000) Money borrowed to bail out banks £ 900,000,000,000 Total Government Debt in 2015 £2,800,000,000,000
Interest payments on Government Debt per year (2014) £43,000,000,000 That is paid to those who loaned money to the nation. The government estimates the interest will rise to about £70,000,000,000 per year by 2017.
During the lifetime of the present government the public debt will have increased by about £700,000,000,000. So although our “deficit” is said to be decreasing our national debt is actually increasing. For more information see: www.debtbombshell.com
As a nation we are like a man with a good income of say £40,000 per year who has a credit card debt of £50,000. So long as the man has only to pay interest on the debt and does not have to repay the debt he can survive. If he has to pay the debt back now, he has a very serious problem.
How long we can go on as a nation as we are is a very interesting question and shows us how much we depend upon God showing us mercy.
A second problem we face as a nation is the rapid growth of Islam in our land. In 1950 there were about 5,000 muslims in Britain; the last census in 2011 showed there were 2,706,066 muslims now in our nation and Islam is the second largest religion in Britain.
What can we do? We can seek God’s forgiveness for ourselves and our nation. We can pray for good harvests each year. We can pray for people to repent and become Christians, because that is the only way society can be changed for the better and we can decide that we will seek to obey God ourselves.
“If My people who are called by My Name will humble themselves and pray and seek My Face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from Heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land”. 2 Chronicles chapter 7 verse 14.
One thing we can all do is to pray that God will revive His Work in our hearts and in the hearts of the people of our society, and give us all "times of refreshing from the presence of Lord”. 19 “Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord”. (Acts 3:19)
