What’s Behind America’s Fall From Grace?
For the last 60 years, many Americans have been pushing God out of the public square.
One of my favorite places to eat genuine Texas barbeque is a little restaurant on the Brazos River just a few miles south of where we live. The source of the Brazos is in the high plains a couple of hundred miles northwest of our house… from there it flows mostly south until it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
Just as a river has a source, so do the problems in America.
For the last 60 years, many Americans have been pushing God out of the public square. It began with the 1962 US Supreme Court decision that ruled that prayer in public school was a violation of the so-called Establishment Clause. It continues with the leftist/Marxist influence in our schools from kindergarten through college. Although large numbers of Americans still claim to be Christian, Christianity's influence in America is rapidly declining.
A 2020 Barna survey shows that past 30 years, belief in a biblical description of God among those ages 18 to 29 is down 26%, and among women, it’s down 25%. Worst of all, the largest drop of 27% was among those attending Pentecostal or charismatic Protestant churches.
What’s going on?
The most common reason for this found in surveys is the decline of the number of people in the U.S. who “consider themselves as religious" But that’s only stating the obvious.
One of the biggest reasons for this is sex. That’s right… sexual sin.
The sexual revolution began in the late 1960s. Born out of the invention of the birth control pill and more permissive attitudes about sexual behavior in popular culture… the sexual revolution was an invitation to promiscuity and an attack on the very foundation of American society, the family, and the church. In 1973, abortion as a path to sexual freedom and “birth control” became legal in America. Now, a radical homosexual agenda is taking root, with new efforts to silence Christians and others who disagree with their perverted lifestyles.
Sadly, several Christian leaders joined in this sexual misconduct. Beginning in the late 1980s with a prominent televangelist who admitted to hiring prostitutes, it spread to several megachurch pastors and is now manifesting itself in the Catholic churches’ recent homosexual clergy sexual abuse scandals that reach all the way to Rome. It is for this reason that many now reject Christianity as no better or worse than any other belief system.
Has God removed His blessing on America? Do the recent economic woes, pandemics, and natural disasters suggest that God has removed His blessings and hedge of protection from America?
Sexual sin isn't the only thing bringing potential judgment upon our nation, but one that may well cause God to remove his blessings from us. After God had established Israel as a nation, He warned them about the national blessings of obedience and curses for disobedience. God warned the Jews that if they rejected God, He would reject them and they would end up in bondage to other nations. They continued to reject God and did in fact and end up in bondage to other nations.
“If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth” (Deuteronomy 28:1 NASB)
However, these blessings were conditional…
14 and do not turn aside from any of the words which I command you today, to the right or to the left, to go after other gods to serve them. 15 “But it shall come about, if you do not obey the Lord your God, to observe to do all His commandments and His statutes with which I charge you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you. 16 “Cursed shall you be in the city and cursed shall you be in the country. (Deuteronomy 28:14-16 NASB)
The source of America’s problems is the rejection of Christianity. As a result, our country has crossed the line where evil is beginning to overtake good. As a result, I believe we are beginning to see God's wrath poured out on America for our rejection of God.
Christianity has always been associated with history’s great empires. Historically, the abandonment of Christianity has always led to the collapse of any nation that forsakes it. The situation that America now finds itself in cannot be solved by politics alone. It can only be resolved through repentance.
But many so-called Christian churches in our country are not preaching repentance, but a feel-good “God is love” message and have become ensnared in the worldly culture of wokeness and weakness.
These churches are ignoring the Biblical mandate found in Second Timothy:
2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. 3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, 4 and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. (2 Timothy 2-4 NASB)
America was once a righteous, God-honoring nation. Isn't it time that we again choose to obey God’s commandments? Isn’t it time that we as Americans no longer tolerate the evil doings of those in government and those who mislead others in our churches? If not, we will continue down this destructive path until we no longer have a country to save.
Pray, dear reader, that it never comes to that.
If there ever was a time for national repentance, it is now…