THERE ARE STILL TEN RIGHTEOUS IN AMERICA
Continuing pronouncements of great doom by prophetic voices around the nation have kept me seeking the Lord for His truth concerning the reality of the coming days. Is some sort of doom appointed for America? Has sin gone so far that we must disintegrate as a nation?
I believe the answer begins with God’s dealings with Sodom in Genesis 18 when God told Abraham that for the sake of even ten righteous He would spare Sodom from the judgment and destruction He had planned. By anyone’s measure, ancient Sodom’s wickedness exceeded the sin of the United States by a wide margin. This is not to say that God’s discipline will be withheld but I believe God says that in the USA He still has ten righteous, figuratively speaking, for whose sake He will yet spare the nation.
Worldwide, I believe natural disasters will increase as the earth groans under the collective burden of the sins of men. Earth has absorbed the blood of wars too numerous to count in too many places to list. Worldwide, we have come to call evil good and good evil as touching everything from aberrant sexuality to the violence of Islamic radicals. Galatians 6:7 warns, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.” Sowing to sin cannot continue indefinitely before the reaping comes. And it has begun. Judgment comes, but for the sake of ten righteous He will spare this nation the worst of it. The pain of recession will discipline us and teach us righteousness, but we will be preserved. Isaiah 26:9b, “For when the earth experiences Your judgments The inhabitants of the world learn righteousness.” Christians must take care to remember that discipline is not punishment. Punishment destroys while the discipline of a loving father produces “the peaceful fruit of righteousness” (Hebrews 12:11).
America as a nation will reap its share according to what we have sown, but for the sake of those who cry out in repentance and long for holiness, America will not collapse. Occasionally, the Lord quickens a passage of Scripture to me containing reported history by way of saying that what was then is akin to what now is. Recently He pointed me to Isaiah 21:12, “The watchman says, ‘Morning comes but also night. If you would inquire, inquire; Come back again,’" and verse 16, “For thus the Lord said to me, ‘In a year, as a hired man would count it, all the splendor of Kedar will terminate.’”
In other words, we will see pockets of economic recovery, perhaps in the next six months, that will move in the right direction and look like a dawning after the time of darkness, but we will also see lingering trouble. Kedar was a tribe of Arabs who traded with Israel during the reigns of David and Solomon, contributing to the prosperity of the kingdom. For the current application they represent international trade. Although America will not collapse, we will be under the corrective discipline of the Lord for an extended season. Part of that discipline will be that we will see international trading partners collapse, thus diminishing our own wealth by eliminating markets. This will be part of the mixture of morning with night and it will keep us as Christians coming back again and again in prayer (Isaiah 21:12).
Under His discipline we, the church, will prosper, provided we walk in His ways. I remain convinced that this is a golden hour for the church, if we will choose to surrender discredited and unbiblical prosperity teachings in favor of the sacrificial message of the cross. It is time to discover the true nature of the radically loving heart of our heavenly Father and live it out in kingdom authority and godly integrity. If those who can will give generously and sacrificially rather than be bound up in fear, then we can care for those who suffer poverty in these days. If we will choose to seek the heart of God, and in that heart fully understand our authority, we will heal the sick, cast out demons and raise the dead in a culture where increasing numbers of people find health care difficult to access. We can be a people of hope, demonstrating the power and reality of the living God in the midst of a time when hope fails.
(Prophetic Moments is an occasional bulletin produced by Pastor R. Loren Sandford, New Song Fellowship, Denver, Colorado. )
