God has a limit, you know. God is love but He is no doormat. He doesn’t overlook sin, patting you on the head, saying, Aww, that’s all right. He does not accept rebellion lightly. He will not accept war against Him under any circumstance.
Did you know that when an individual is so hardened to the truth, He gives them over to it? There IS a point of no return. “For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen. For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,” (Rom 1:25-26). “But when Pharaoh saw that there was respite, he hardened his heart, and hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had said.”(Exodus 8:15) so the LORD finished the hardening Pharaoh had started, and hardened Pharaoh’s heart completely. (Exodus 10:20). God gives people over to their rebellion after a certain point.
After a certain point God gives nations over, too.
First, remember that He always judges sin. Even if the nation is not at the point where He will judge it, but only discipline it, sin is dealt with. “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; therefore be zealous and repent.” (Rev 3:19). Haiti repented after the earthquake and that is a praise to our Lord!
But in addition to reproving and disciplining, He judges. Nineveh is the example here. Jonah preached and they repented, from the top to the bottom. The King got up after hearing Jonah and he set aside his robe and he put on sackcloth and the nation fasted and prayed. God was satisfied and stayed their judgment for over 100 years. God had promised that judgment would come, but because of their repentance, an entire generation had been spared it. (Jonah 3:5-9) When the nation had fallen back to their wicked ways – brutality, plunder, idolatry, and after 150 years, they were judged. (Nahum)
He waits a long time before judging. He waited 120 years before sending the Flood. In Genesis 15:13-16 God told Abraham He would judge the Amorites after 400 years, “until their iniquity was complete.” Sincere repentance can delay judgment, as we have seen with the example of Nineveh, but if God deems the nation incurable, judgment WILL come.
God judges a nation for a variety of reasons. He judged Sodom and Gomorrah for their sin of homosexuality. “Genesis 18:20 – “And the Lord said, ‘The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great, and their sin is exceedingly grave.'” He destroyed the city. There are many, many other examples of God judging the nations for their actions. He judged Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Judah, Moab, and Israel (Amos 1, Judgment of Nations) for idolatry, brutality, oppression, plunder, for not keeping the Commandments of God, for despising God.
When does He judge? First He warns, then He disciplines. If repentance is absent or if the nation worsens their actions in spite of His obvious discipline, then at a certain point after long-suffering compassion, He deems their sins “incurable” and He judges. “There is no relief for your breakdown, Your wound is incurable.” (Nahum 3:19) Usually the judgment is devastating. Nineveh’s was so complete, the city was obliterated and never found until 1845, after almost a thousand years. If you look up “incurable” in a good concordance, or here, you will see He spoke to Jeremiah, Micah, and Isaiah as well as Nahum about the point at which various nations were deemed to be given over to incurable sin.
In aviation, there is a term called the “point of no return.” Wikipedia defines it as “the point on a flight at which, due to fuel consumption, a plane is no longer capable of returning to its airfield of original takeoff. After passing the point of no return, the plane has no option but to continue to some other destination. In this sense, the phrase implies an irrevocable commitment.” The irrevocable commitment…
Is America irrevocably committed to sin? It would seem so. If we are, then we are in danger of God deeming America “incurable” and passing the point of no return. We are the number one national exporter of child porn, abortion ( child murder), gambling, and violence. We are legalizing homosexual marriages, drugs, and making divorce very easy. And not only are we rebellious against God in persisting in these sins, we deliberately fight against Him through deliberate dismantling of His presence in our society. We have removed His commandments from the schools and from public life, government, and speech. We have banned prayer in schools and at public functions. One Supreme Court suit today upheld a ban on the song “Ave Maria” being played at a graduation – the instrumental version, no lyrics, even! It was still banned for being “too religious.” We have ignored His Word in our churches, watering it down to match with the culture. All the nations above were judged for less.
Since our judgment is a surety, all we need to wonder about is “when?” My opinion is “now” or “soon.” The current health care bill that pays for child murder at the taxpayer dime is a heinous crime in God’s eyes. Leviticus 20:3 describes God’s anger against those who sacrificed their children to the god Molech “And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.” Child-sacrifice profanes God. He is serious about His children, the littlest among the little. When we as a nation wantonly kill them it is bad enough. But when that murder is supported from the government levels as a taxpayer funded activity, it becomes a profane that defiles His very sanctuary. Worst, we are cursing the land that He blessed, pushing Israel to divide it, thus straining our relationship with His blessed nation. Will He stand that for all this sin much longer? I do not think so. People get ready!
