One Nation Under God?

The year 2007 is now over and permanently sealed in history along with every year past before it. When we look back at the many things which happened this past year in our country, it’s easy to see what the “world” is really interested in and considers to be important. I do not watch much television anymore, but when I do its usually the FOX news channel. It’s really discouraging when I look back over the past year and consider the “major” news stories of 2007. Almost every time I turned on the News channel, all I heard about were the exploits of Britney Spears and the many possible fathers of Anna Nichol Smith’s baby. Its unfortunate that more people these days are interested in what celebrity is getting married for the sixth time, or who’s coming out of the closet and proudly proclaiming their freedom from the world’s oppression of their homosexual desires. Whatever happened to the news reporting facts that were actually important and relevant to what was going on in the world. Unfortunately we live in a consumer driven world, and it seems like most of the consumers these days are more interested in smut than soldiers fighting terrorism in Iraq or the millions suffering around the world.
I know this article does not have a very upbeat or positive ring to it, but when we consider the state our nation has lowered itself to, is it any surprise things are getting the way they are? When a nation seeks to take God out of it’s mainstream culture, you can expect it to decline ethically and morally as the days go by. The United States of America has been a light to the world for freedom and Christian beliefs for the last two hundred years, but that is quickly changing. Why? The nation is removing God from the center of it’s ideology. History can be a scary thing to consider. When you investigate all the major empires or nations of the past, you can see that there were always common denominators which contributed to their downfall. They were the lack of fear and respect for God, and progressively weakening moral values (i.e., divorce, sexual immorality, abortion, homosexuality). History has always proven that a nation without God ,or the principles set forth in the Bible, will exist as a weak nation or eventually cease to exist altogether!
Does the Bible have anything to say about what is happening to our country? Most of the Bible is history, and we can see the same thing that is happening in America repeated over and over again in the pages of It. We see how all the major world empires fell because of their rebellion against God. We also see many examples in the Bible of nations which crumbled from within because of immorality and their desire to live by the “way that seemeth right unto a man” (Prov. 16:25). I would ask you to read Romans 1:20-32, and consider the frightening similarities between what Paul described there and what we see going on around us today. Then review the Prophecy Paul made in 2 Timothy 3:1-5, and compare it to the society our media daily portrays this country as embracing. As negative as all this sounds, not all is lost. We as Christians are the ones that have the ability to turn things around. We do it by teaching our children to obey God. We teach the Bible to others, live right, and pray earnestly that our nation will realize that “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. 10:23). The answer to any person or nations problems always has been, and always will be, humbly submitting to God. -Ed