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By Elizabeth Prata
Editor's Note: I've written 5,141 essays here at The End Time, daily since 2009. Please enjoy some of the previous writings you may have missed.
This essay first appeared on The End Time in November 2009
Part 1 was yesterday
"Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." Can there be any more devastating sentence pronounced upon you? God said this to Belshazzar, when He wrote His condemnation of this King's leadership on the wall. Imagine God saying this to you. Or our nation. Well, someday, He will.
The Bible is replete with promises that He will judge individuals. All will be judged, believers and non-believers. Individuals and nations. There ARE scales in heaven.
Job 31:6- "Let Him weigh me with accurate scales, And let God know my integrity"
Isaiah 40:15- "Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales;"
God blesses and judges nations. Those who live for Him and use for Him the blessings He richly gives to us are blessed. Those who squander those blessings, turn apostate, or disobey, are judged. The Book of Amos alone lists 8 nations that are found wanting by God.
There can be no doubt that America has been richly blessed. For most of our 244 year history America has labored in His name for His purposes. Over the last seventy-five years or so, however, we have turned away from Him. This turning away has increased in momentum each decade that passes. We have slaughtered unborn, we have taken Him out of our schools, out of public life, out of government. We have become disobedient in His doctrines and introduced human ones. We worship money and sports and pleasure as idols. We have become lawless in society, apostate in religion, and cold toward our brothers. Many nations have been judged for less.
We used to be number one in the world. Are we still? Edward Gibbons spent twenty years writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Included in his through research was the realization that all great nations, Rome included, have fallen for the same reasons. Those reasons can be boiled down to just five.
Is God withdrawing His present help from us? Some say it has begun already, and I am among those who believe this. He will take the Restrainer out of the way. The Restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 is almost universally accepted as the Holy Spirit. Is the Lord taking Him out of the way slowly at first and then rapidly as the apostasy grows? The Bible does not declare the method; slow or fast, gradual or sudden, only the result. Judgment. But fear not! In wrath He remembers mercy.
Amos 9:9- "For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.
Christians are grafted into that sifting with Israel. He will not let the least little grain be lost! Despite the terrible judgment against Israel (war, famine, pestilence, captivity, slavery) He reassured them that not one believer will be lost. In wrath, He remembers mercy.
So why allow disasters? He desires to capture our attention through increasingly noticeable events. If blessings won't remind us of His presence in our lives, then a sifting judgment of His choice will be the alternate. We need not fear any potential coming national judgment, for our God is merciful in the weighing on the scales. Continue to serve Him and love all, so that you may be judged and found pleasing.
Editor's Note: I've written 5,141 essays here at The End Time, daily since 2009. Please enjoy some of the previous writings you may have missed.
This essay first appeared on The End Time in November 2009
Part 1 was yesterday
"Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting." Can there be any more devastating sentence pronounced upon you? God said this to Belshazzar, when He wrote His condemnation of this King's leadership on the wall. Imagine God saying this to you. Or our nation. Well, someday, He will.
The Bible is replete with promises that He will judge individuals. All will be judged, believers and non-believers. Individuals and nations. There ARE scales in heaven.
Job 31:6- "Let Him weigh me with accurate scales, And let God know my integrity"
Isaiah 40:15- "Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, And are regarded as a speck of dust on the scales;"
God blesses and judges nations. Those who live for Him and use for Him the blessings He richly gives to us are blessed. Those who squander those blessings, turn apostate, or disobey, are judged. The Book of Amos alone lists 8 nations that are found wanting by God.
There can be no doubt that America has been richly blessed. For most of our 244 year history America has labored in His name for His purposes. Over the last seventy-five years or so, however, we have turned away from Him. This turning away has increased in momentum each decade that passes. We have slaughtered unborn, we have taken Him out of our schools, out of public life, out of government. We have become disobedient in His doctrines and introduced human ones. We worship money and sports and pleasure as idols. We have become lawless in society, apostate in religion, and cold toward our brothers. Many nations have been judged for less.
We used to be number one in the world. Are we still? Edward Gibbons spent twenty years writing "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." Included in his through research was the realization that all great nations, Rome included, have fallen for the same reasons. Those reasons can be boiled down to just five.
Are we leaning toward exhibiting one or two of these indicators? No, all five are our byword these days. Woe be to us! No nation in the history of the world exhibiting all five criteria have survived. We are not going to be an exception to history. It has already begun.
- The undermining of the dignity and sanctity of the home, which is the basis of human society.
- Higher and higher taxes; the spending of public money for free bread and circuses for the populace.
- The mad craze for pleasure; sports becoming every year more exciting, more brutal, more immoral.
- The building of great armaments when the great enemy was within; the decay of individual responsibility.
- The decay of religion, fading into a mere form, losing touch with life, losing power to guide the people.
Is God withdrawing His present help from us? Some say it has begun already, and I am among those who believe this. He will take the Restrainer out of the way. The Restrainer in 2 Thessalonians 2:6-7 is almost universally accepted as the Holy Spirit. Is the Lord taking Him out of the way slowly at first and then rapidly as the apostasy grows? The Bible does not declare the method; slow or fast, gradual or sudden, only the result. Judgment. But fear not! In wrath He remembers mercy.
Amos 9:9- "For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all nations, like as corn is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least grain fall upon the earth.
Christians are grafted into that sifting with Israel. He will not let the least little grain be lost! Despite the terrible judgment against Israel (war, famine, pestilence, captivity, slavery) He reassured them that not one believer will be lost. In wrath, He remembers mercy.
So why allow disasters? He desires to capture our attention through increasingly noticeable events. If blessings won't remind us of His presence in our lives, then a sifting judgment of His choice will be the alternate. We need not fear any potential coming national judgment, for our God is merciful in the weighing on the scales. Continue to serve Him and love all, so that you may be judged and found pleasing.
These two articles are sobering. It breaks my heart to see what has become of this country, from what heights it has fallen. But we know in the last days there will be a general falling away, and if this means the LORD's return is imminent, we have a lot to do and not a lot of time in which to do it.
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