Posted on 06/30/2008 6:04:57 AM PDT by John Leland 1789
America's Sin In Forgetting God
By Evangelist Joseph T. Larsen
This article is from the July 1933 Moody Bible Institute Monthly
AMERICA'S greatest sin and the real cause of the present depression is forgetting God. That means failure to obey God, to listen to His Word, and to bring up our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Godlessness leads to disregard for law, corruption in politics, fraud in educational and state life, and hypocrisy in the Church.
America has forgotten God! Its parents, youth and citizens as a whole - these have forgotten God. Even ministers, educators and church officials have forgotten God. True, millions of Christians have not yet forgotten God, but the whole tendency in state life, school life, commercial life, and even in religious circles, is to forget God.
Though there are fifty million church members in the nation and many more Christians who are not church members, yet there are about seventy million outside the churches, living as if there were no God or hereafter.
America's History Has Been Phenomenal
From the first there were many immigrants coming to America seeking religious liberty. In godly worship they settled our eastern shores, then moved westward, until they settled almost three million square miles of territory. They built cities, made marvelous inventions, improved everything possible, and now support approximately 124,000,000! For 157 years, God has been the God of this nation, piloting us safely through the pioneer periods, the five wars for freedom of oppressed peoples; and as a culmination, the people following the recent period of prosperity, have turned largely away from God! Then came the events which brought a general depression!
How Does America Forget God?
By largely banishing the Bible from schools and by misinterpreting it in universities, criticizing it in theological seminaries and colleges, and scoffing at it among the infidels and atheists of the nation. False cults numbering nearly ten million are sweeping the land with propaganda of denial, deceit and devilish doctrines. Atheists, modernists and communists have formed a deadly alliance against God, Christ, the Church, and the Bible. "But he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the Lord shalt have them in derision."
Pleasure, newspapers, magazines, business and society have largely taken the pre-eminent place that God and Christian living ought to take. Crime gets the eye, not Christ! Society not salvation, business and not betterment of souls, money and not missions, earth and not Heaven is foremost in thinking. True, there are a few million Christians in America who still adore, worship and serve Him; but they are like salt in a rotting nation.
Judgment Is Coming
Ancient Babylon, Greece, Rome, Medo-Persia, Assyria, and other empires all forgot God, and have been ruined and forgotten; but only until the judgment!
Oh, citizens of America! Will you ever learn a lesson from past history, from experienced adversity, from former judgments on the nations, that forgetting God does not pay? Can the professing Church of today continue to exist if she joins the world, praises the communists and denies God's divine rulership?
Macaulay, the English historian, writing nearly one hundred years ago, said of America, "She will be pillaged and looted in the twentieth century by vandals, and forces within her will cause her destruction." Indications prove him to be right, and unless something can be done by godly people to stem the tide of lawlessness, communism, modernism and immorality, she will go the way of the ancient nations. Will Christians, will governmental leaders, will its citizens awaken in time or too late?
What Will Cause America to Return to God?
Only a nation-wide revival of Christian teaching, the preaching of a crucified Christ, the return to the Bible, banishing communism, deposing false cult-teachings, baring worldly and sinful amusements, and all dangerous teachings in our public schools. God must find His rightful place in human hearts, the family altars must be restored, and the Church must cease pandering to worldly aspirations.
The prodigal son "came to himself," and America must come to herself. God's voice calls upon her to repent, confess her sins and return to the God of love and life. Mercy pleads with justice, grace pleads against judgment, truth opposes falsity, and wisdom foresees coming disaster, unless there is a change through national revival.
May God's faithful ones keep crying to God for a revival and "give him no rest" until He hear from Heaven with a mighty power as of old. Let us pay unceasingly, "Wilt thou not revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in thee?" (Ps. 85:6)
To get the people’s attention, a great calamity need befall us, I fear.
I agree with that, sadly.
The Founding fathers knew that for us to survive as a great nation we must be both educated and moral. Educated so that we could ascertain the difference between right and wrong, and moral so that we would choose to do right.
How do current bankruptcy laws square with:
“And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies and, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish.”
Sadly, I have to second it myself.
I think there is a big difference between lending, personally, to a Christian brother (without necessarily knowing if you will be repaid) and lending in a capitalist sense of making a profit by taking a risk. Jesus spoke favorably of investment and earning interest (the talents story).
Forgetting and purposeful are 2 different things.
“I forgot about the meeting” is different than “I decided not to go to the meeting”.
Not so sure we “forgot” God...
Probably more accurately is, we are choosing to live “apart” from God.
“To get the people’s attention, a great calamity need befall us, I fear.”
We seem to be asking for it.
“Not so sure we ‘forgot’ God...
Probably more accurately is, we are choosing to live ‘apart from God.”
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I can’t argue with that. I believe that the author probably had Pslam 9:17 in Mind.
“The wicked shall be turned into Hell and all the nations that forget God.”
FYI .... Your thoughts!!
The story is a parable.
The king in the story entrusted the money to the servants with the instruction to put it to work.
No where does it suggest the money should have been lent to the poor at crushing interest rates.
Who said crushing? In fact, if you lend to the poor at a reasonable rate, you are showing them love. If you give to the poor unceasingly, both of you will quickly be poor.
Dare I say it?, ... as a nation, we are too affluent for our own good!
A great mistake was made by that generation that said, "I will make sure my children are better off than I was." Better that generation had said to it's children, "Go, and make a life better than was mine."
Thanks for this post...it is, sadly, very true, and even more so than when first written. We seemed to make a comeback for a few years as a country, but now we are really going downhill fast what with all the people who are publicly mocking and demeaning God growing in numbers. We need to pray for their souls and for their turning to Christ. We need to be constantly praying 2 Chronicles 7:14.
The descendants of those that forgot God have no concept of the morals required for a democracy to function. The people don’t know their left hand from their right. Moral ignorance blinds them, and they will vote for a demagogue. Hello, Obama!
We have too many clergyman who do not speak the truth about sin! Too many don’t believe we need to worry about sin because of God’s great mercy and love,but Jesus spoke well of John the Baptist and he was always preaching for the need to repent of sin. We have 50 million dead children because of abortion and we have homosexuality being accepted as normal. People don’t see the need to marry anymore,as long as they love each other,or until something better comes along. The list goes on. I know too many women today that have at least three children with three different fathers. And let us not forget the adoration we give to hollywood crowd. The entertainment that comes from hollywood now is for the most part porn and then we have hollywoods disrespect of God’s holy name. This is the same crowd that supports Obama and for the most part hates conservatives and Christians. Yep we will be disciplined by God not because he is a vengeful God but because he is merciful and a loving Father.
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