Watch a Nation Go to Hell — E.A. Johnston

Psalm 9:17 and the Moral Memory of America

In Psalm 917 we read the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. I grew up in the 1950s. Some of you still recall that time. It was a time in America when hemlines were lower and morals were higher.

The 1950s and the Public Shame of Sin

It was a time when immodesty was considered profane and sin stayed in the shadows. Homosexuality was considered perversion and adultery was a social scandal. Television back then was still in black and white and a Christian society prohibited Hollywood from broadcasting sex and nudity and swearing into our living rooms.

The Cultural Upheaval of the 1960s

But that all changed in the 1960s. I remember walking down Michigan Avenue in Chicago and seeing for the first time the Playboy building with its black bunny logo as it loomed in the distance. In the 1960s society was in chaos and social mores were changing as gross evil paraded down the street while the churches went into the shadows.

In the early 1960s a television commercial was banned by being broadcast by the Methodist Church because it had an outhouse in it and they put influence on that television programming to prevent it from being aired.

When the Church Influenced Society

The church back then influenced society instead of society influencing the church. The 1960s introduced miniskirts and free love and hippies who were anti-establishment and stoned out of their minds.

The Church's Retreat from Preaching Against Sin

The church caved into a society that relaxed all the rules of normal decency. Instead of holding their ground and preaching hard against sin the church gave up ground and quit preaching on sin. The anthem of the 60s was love is all you need and the churches fell in with that mindset and only spoke about a God of love.

Gone was the vestige of the Puritan preacher who denounced sin and warned guilty rebels about a sin avenging God who would cut you down in your rebellion. As society relaxed morally so did the church by not calling sin, sin.

The Dilution of the Gospel and the Loss of Repentance

And the gospel was diluted to make it more palatable to sinful man and the way of salvation was broadened in ways that Jesus never did by televised mass evangelism crusades. Soon Christianity was popular again and everyone from Hollywood celebrities to sports figures were tipping their hats to the man upstairs.

That's who God became, just a man upstairs who was put on the same level as men. The churches stopped warning folks about hell and ceased preaching man's duty of repentance. And when the church did that it paved the way for the government to kick God out of our educational system and legislate him out of our judicial system and ban him out of corporate society.

The Nation's Legalized Sins and Social Violence

And as the years have gone by I couldn't believe my eyes as I watched a nation go to hell. A public prayer was banned from public schools and our schools became the killing fields of mass murderers. Our government legalized abortion and our streets became washed with the blood of senseless crimes and violence.

We legalized marijuana and drugged the only hope of the nation which is its youth. We legalized homosexual marriage and mocked the biblical institution of marriage to where most folks now just live together instead of getting married.

We drowned the nation with booze and poisoned it with tobacco and perverted it with pornography. The America of today doesn't even remotely resemble the America of the 1950s. But God says in his word that the wicked should be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God.

The Church's Responsibility for National Judgment

America may have turned her back on God but you can't blame the White House or the courthouse but you can sure point your finger at the church house for being the ones who forgot the God of the Bible.

Living Under the Reign of the Devil

Our text says that the wicked and the nations who forget God should be turned into hell. Well living in America today is like living in hell because the devil has the reins.