08/09/16 WOW, THIS IS SO, "NOW"
Though the following passage from Isaiah was delivered prophetically to Judah, it is easy to see the principles which are applicable to our own country today and the inevitable end result of total desolation.
OUR NATION IS SICK
Our head... government leadership.
Our heart... spiritual leadership.
Our soles... the citizenry.
WE HAVE TURNED FROM GOD
Resisted Him.
Rejected Him.
Ridiculed Him.
BAD CHOICES LEAD TO WORSE CHOICES
By turning from God, we have reduced ourselves to the worst of bad choices for leadership. When God is denounced and renounced then any other choice is for the one who is not the worst candidate, rather than a vote for the one who is the best candidate.
SEE WHAT GOD TOLD JUDAH
Isaiah 1:4-7 (WEB)
(4) Ah sinful nation, a people loaded with iniquity, offspring of evildoers, children who deal corruptly! They have forsaken Yahweh (the Lord). They have despised the Holy One of Israel. They are estranged and backward.
(5) Why should you be beaten more, that you revolt more and more? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
(6) From the sole of the foot even to the head there is no soundness in it: wounds, welts, and open sores. They haven’t been closed, neither bandaged, neither soothed with oil.
(7) Your country is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Strangers devour your land in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
BLESSING SHOULD LEAD TO REPENTANCE
God wants to bless us, but God's blessings should bring us to repentance.
Romans 2:4
(4) Or do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and patience, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?
SORROW SHOULD LEAD TO REPENTANCE
But if we do not repent in response to the goodness of God, then our rebellion brings us sorrow. Sorrow should produce godly sorrow, leading to repentance, but if it does not, it will bring judgment, leading to temporal failure and eternal suffering.
2 Corinthians 7:9-10
(9) I now rejoice, not that you were made sorry, but that you were made sorry to repentance. For you were made sorry in a godly way, that you might suffer loss by us in nothing.
(10) For godly sorrow produces repentance to salvation, which brings no regret. But the sorrow of the world produces death.
REBELLION LEADS TO JUDGMENT
However, failure to repent brings God's judgment.
Romans 2:5-9
(5) But according to your hardness and unrepentant heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath, revelation, and of the righteous judgment of God;
(6) who “will pay back to everyone according to their works:”
(7) to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life;
(8) but to those who are self-seeking, and don’t obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will be wrath and indignation,
(9) oppression and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
