When God Speaks to a Nation — E.A. Johnston

America's Loss of Reverence for God

In America, years ago, there was such a thing as a reverence for God and shame in society. Today, even our young people don't even know what shame is. Perversion parades down Main Street while God is legislated out of our nation by court-run society.

In 19th and 18th century America, there was still a fear of God in the land, for God was still in the land through national spiritual awakenings and revivals, and America was still a Christian nation.

But not anymore. This country has turned her back on the living God of the Bible. She doesn't want him anymore. When a nation commits national sins against a holy God and indulges in great wickedness and promotes evil in high places, then that nation stands under judgment from God.

Even in our churches, very little shocks us today because we have a people who are desensitized to sin from the very perverse society in which we live. But ministers and even political leaders of former days acknowledged and offended God, and it was not uncommon for a day of fasting and humiliation to be called throughout the entire country.

Recognizing God's Voice Through National Calamity

Ministers were wiser back then and knew how to interpret the voice of God when he spoke to the nation, when he spoke through national calamities and war. And when they did something about it, they sought the face of God in repentance and humility and begged God to heal the land and restore his favor to the churches through his presence.

But today we have the withdrawn presence of God, and this is a great judgment in itself. Teenagers in our churches have never witnessed the power of God in a meeting, and that's sad. I submit to you, friends, that God is speaking today to the nations of the world.

God is speaking to America at this hour through fire and floods, tornadoes and earthquakes and tragic deaths. Amos 3 .6 declares, Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? Shall there be evil in a city, and the Lord hath not done it?

Amos and the Remedial Judgments of God

The title of my message today, friends, is When God Speaks to a Nation. And my text can be found in the Book of Amos. You can turn in your Bibles there now. The prophet Amos was a fiery prophet of the Lord who warned the people of God to turn back in repentance to him.

And I believe this Book of Amos is one of the clearest passages of Scripture which deals with the remedial judgments of God. God's speaking to his people through divine judgments upon them. I want to read you what my friend Dr. Ted Randall wrote in regard to remedial judgments upon a backslidden people of God.

These are his words. In Israel, the rain of heaven was withheld from fields and vineyards. In the church, God's fructifying blessing is withheld from the sown seed, which is the Word of God. Why? In both cases, the answer is the same.

Sin in the hearts of God's people. Let us not seek to shift the blame to present-day conditions. The hardness of men's hearts. Greedy materialism. The international conflict or moral chaos. Let's face the fact in honesty and humiliation.

The reason for the shut heaven is the sin of God's people. And I agree with Ted Randall's words, friends. And Amos speaks in detail about the judgments which come from the hand of God upon a disobedient people of God.

But our modern view of God today does not line up with the biblical view of God. We have whitewashed God into a love God today who is tolerant towards sin. Our God would never send anybody to hell for sin, much less punish a city or a nation because of sin.

Historical Preaching on Earthquakes and Judgment

But pastors in former days knew their God much better than those who occupy our pulpits today. They heard the voice of God when he spoke through natural disasters. Listen to a firsthand account from a prominent Boston minister from the 18th century when disaster hit that city.

Listen to how he recognized the voice of God as it spoke to the inhabitants of New England at that time to a powerful earthquake which shook the entire city of Boston in 1755. Listen to this reported sermon taken from a newspaper from 1755.

Earthquakes, the work of God, and tokens of his justice pleasure, being a discourse on that subject, wherein is given a particular description of this awful event of providence, and among other things is offered a brief account of the natural, instrumental, or secondary causes of these operations in the hands of God, after which our thoughts are led to him as having the highest and principal agency in this stupendous work.

By Thomas Prince, pastor of the South Church in Boston, made public at this time on occasion of the late dreadful earthquake which happened on 18th of November, 1755. The text of the sermon was Psalm 18 .7.

Then the earth shook and trembled. The foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. Ministers were wiser in former times, friends, because they saw the voice of God in natural disasters as a remedial judgment to call the people back to the almighty in times of humiliation and repentance.

But today everybody just attributes these calamities to Mother Nature. Listen to the following newspaper clip from another prominent Boston minister that day. This man was Joseph Sewell, who'd been elected president of Harvard.

He was the pastor of the Old South Church in Boston. Listen to this sermon announcement from the newspaper that day. Repentance, the sure way to escape destruction. Two sermons on Jeremiah 18, verses 7 and 8, preached December 21st on a public fast occasioned by the earthquake the night after the Lord's Day, October 29th, 1727.

Notice, friends, this wise pastor led the entire city of Boston in a public fast on this occasion because of the dread God who had shook the city in his anger. Even the president of the United States back then acknowledged almighty God in a national day of humiliation.

National Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer

Listen to this following newspaper clip from 1798, which was published in Philadelphia. A discourse delivered in the First Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia on Wednesday, May 9th, 1798, recommended by the president of the United States to be observed as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer throughout the United States of America.

When I read that, friends, it makes me sick to my stomach to see where America has fallen today, where the very last thing a sitting president would do in our day would be to call the nation to a time of fasting, humiliation, and prayer throughout our entire country.

Can you just imagine that happening today? And if it did, the public outcry which would rise against it. America is no longer a nation that fears God, but rather it hates God and all things holy. I want to read us our passage at this time, friends, taken from Amos chapter 4.

Amos 4 and the First Remedial Judgments

We will be in verses 6 through 13, and this passage clearly demonstrates how God deals with the wayward people by bringing remedial judgments down upon them in an effort to turn the nation back to Him.

Let's look at verse 6 where God is speaking. And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord? Listen, friends, judgment number one was that God sent a famine in the land.

In His mercy, He sent them a famine. But how did they respond? Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord? Well, let's look at judgment number two. It's more severe as seen in verse 7. And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months of the harvest, and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city.

One peace was rained upon, and the peace whereupon it rained not withered. This judgment is more severe in its intensity. You can go a week without food, but man cannot live long without water. God sent a devastating drought to His disobedient people.

But correction is despised once more, as the stiff-necked people do not return to Him. Yet ye have not returned unto me, says the broken heart of God. Now notice in the next verse here in Amos, friends, how the following judgment is even more severe.

I have smitten you with blasting and mildew. When your gardens and your vineyards and your fig trees and your olive trees increased, the palmer worm devoured them. Yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord?

God sent them a financial collapse. If you want to ruin a nation, make it fall into financial chaos. Listen, friends, our world economy is nothing more than a house of cards, one strong wind from heaven, and it will all collapse in a moment.

The Danger of Ignoring God's Warnings

Look at all the chaos on the world stage right now, how the nations are lined up like dominoes, ready to fall over one by one. Look at all the violence in our cities, the natural calamities, which seem to strike towns and cities every single week in further intensity.

God is trying to get our attention. Are we paying attention, or are we asleep? I'm afraid the nation is too hardened to recognize God's voice in all of this, and our churches are too sound asleep to take any notice, and they snore on soft pillows of conformity and compromise.

But when God speaks to a nation, that nation better stand up and take notice before it's too late, while there's still time to avert a national judgment, so ruinous it would be a final judgment. In verses 11 and 12, God declares, I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning, yet have you not returned unto me, saith the Lord?

Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel, and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. That's the last thing a nation wants to face or hear. Prepare to meet thy God. Listen, friends, America's getting ready to see a side of God she is quite unfamiliar with.

Pestilence, War, and Increasing Judgment

Well, let's look at this next remedial judgment taken from our text in Amos, about judgment from God upon the land and the people in a more severe form, and take note of this, friends. The remedial judgments of God, when unheeded, become the increasing judgments of God.

See how severe this judgment number four is upon the people. Look at verse 10. I have sent among you the pestilence after the manor of Egypt. You young men have I slain with the sword and have taken away your horses, and I have made the stink of your camps to come up unto your nostrils, yet ye have not returned unto me, saith the Lord.

God removed the young men of the city by death. Take the young men out of a community, and your community has little future. God sends sudden death to them through pestilence and war. Listen, friends.

Our enemies are already in our country, and they're making preparations to strike at the heart of our nation with mass destruction. What kind of terrible national calamity will have to take place for this nation to turn back to God?

Will it ever turn back to God, or will the hearts of the people only harden even more in rebellion to the Almighty? When the Christian leaders refuse to acknowledge that God is speaking to this nation through his divine judgments, then we have the blind leading the blind.

A Call for Prophetic Leadership and Repentance

We need a prophet of God today to go up to Washington and stand before the president and all his men and cry out with authority, return back to God or prepare to meet that God. But most in our pulpits remain sinfully silent in a day of common catastrophe.

But pastors of former generations, even past presidents, knew how to lead the people of this nation back to God through nights and days of fasting and humiliation and prayer before the Lord. Who will take a stand for God in this land today?

Who? It is time for the people of God to turn from their wicked ways and fast and pray and seek his holy face in repentance and humiliation before it's too late and we don't have a nation left to pray in.

When will the sleepy headed pastors of our slumbering churches awake and stop playing church on Sunday and instead call the people of God to a time of repentance and humiliation and prayer and seek his face to turn and bless us once again?

When God speaks to a nation, will the people pay attention and act or will they continue to ignore the warnings and do nothing? Listen friend, why complain about this nation if you're not willing to do anything about it?

Go to your knees and go to your God and beg him for mercy to forgive the great and grievous sins of this land and to once again pour out his favor and his spirit through his presence upon us once again before it's too late.

Heaven help us all.