A Violated God in an Apostate Land — E.A. Johnston

The Holy and Just God of the Bible

If you are listening today with the hope of hearing an encouraging word, I am afraid you will be greatly disappointed with the message I am bringing before you now. In fact, very few church members in America today would want to hear this message for it is too disturbing.

My message today is about a nation that has turned her back on God and a people of God who have violated the God of the Bible. The portrait of God which I bring you today is a side of God few believe in today.

Just about everybody in the churches today, from the pulpits to the pew, believe in a God who is only a loving, long-suffering God. They believe that the God of the Old Testament, who was a vengeful God, that He doesn't exist any longer, that He has somehow morphed into only a God of love and not anger.

That's the God of America today. But the God of the Bible is very different from our current perceptions and figments of our imaginations. The God of the Bible is a God who must punish sin. He is the God who will judge all mankind at a severe future judgment.

He is the God who changeth not. He is the Ancient of Days. He is a Supreme Being who will cast all into hell who die in their sins without a saving knowledge of His precious Son, Jesus Christ. The God of the Bible is the Living God, the One True God, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End.

He sits on a throne in the heavens and a breeze cannot rustle the tops of the trees without first passing through His sovereign hand. He is a God high and lifted up whose name is Holy and who dwells among the cherubims and seraphims.

He is a God mighty and powerful and He is a God who hates sin, all sin, for all sin is very grievous to Him and it robs Him of His glory. He is the God of the Bible who was once referred to by pastors in this land in former days as the Almighty and the Great God.

Wiser men in former generations walked in a fear of this God. But today in the majority of the churches in the land, this God is no longer a threat to anyone. He is no longer the omnipotent King of the universe, but an impotent, benign being who is only concerned about doing good and serving mankind.

My message today, friends, may upset a great many people who have a different view of God than the God of the Bible. When I was conducting research on my biography of Ralph Barnard, I came across the startling fact that even in Ralph Barnard's day, which was over 50 years ago, that he too encountered church members, many of them deacons, who would object to his portrayal of the God of the Bible as being a vengeful God who must punish sin.

These church members in Barnard's day would say to him, I strongly disagree with your sermon because my God wouldn't act that way. My God wouldn't send anybody to hell. And Ralph Barnard would calmly reply, Yes, sir, I believe you're right.

Your God wouldn't act that way. But the God of the Bible would. My message today, friends, is about the God of the Bible and not the one of your own creation. My message is entitled, A Violated God in an Apostate Land.

Ezekiel 22 and the Warning of Judgment

My passage is taken from the book of Ezekiel in chapter 22, and I will preach from it with the conviction that it is for us in our day. It is a great warning to us. And if we fail to heed the warnings found in this striking passage of scripture, then we must face the consequences of its truths as applied to us in our day.

I'm afraid there are many today whose brand of theology would disagree with my message and say that we are in a different dispensation as the Jews and the Old Testament doesn't apply to us today. All I can say to you is you better put your theology in your back pocket, friend, and listen to the word of God and be forewarned of what is coming to this nation in the form of severe judgment from the hand of the living God of both the Old Testament and the new.

The Jews turned their backs on God and forsook him and fell into such an apostasy that they crucified the Lord of Glory and believed in doing it. They were serving God when the people of God violated the very God they claimed to serve.

Then God divorced himself from them entirely. He forsook them when they forsook him and swift and severe punishment fell from his hand upon them. Why do we foolishly believe that today we as a nation and as a people that claim to serve God can violate him in a multitude of ways, far worse than Israel ever did, and avoid the same sudden calamity and destruction to think that we today can violate God and ignore his laws and sin with impudence and escape judgment and punishment just because we call ourselves Christians is the very pinnacle of pride and arrogance?

We as a nation that was once favored by God through periods of wonderful revivals and spiritual awakenings, we as a nation that once spearheaded a vast missionary movement and canvassed the globe with the gospel of the Son of God, we as a nation who in its very currency claims to be one nation under God has gotten out from under him and violated him with the most grievous sins that could ever be imagined.

And the church has followed suit in this apostasy by diluting the gospel and removing from it offensive things to man like the need of repentance and a place of punishment for those who die apart from Christ in a place called hell.

We as a church have moved far away from the God of the Bible, and we in our arrogance foolishly believe we will escape judgment from his hand for a very violation of his holy word. My message today, friends, is found in Ezekiel chapter 22, beginning in verse 18 and following.

The Dross of Israel and the Fire of Divine Wrath

I will carefully read it to you and please take note of the similarities found in this passage between the ancient people of Israel and our nation of churches today. Behold, the word of God as found in Ezekiel chapter 22 and take special note of how God describes his people by comparing them to worthless base metals.

And when you hear this passage of scripture, also bear in mind how the churches in America have brought the world into the church and all its entertainments. Son of man, the house of Israel is to me become dross.

All they are brass and tin and iron and lead in the midst of the furnace. They are even the dross of silver. Therefore, thus saith the Lord God, because ye are all become dross. Behold, therefore, I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem.

And they gather silver and brass and iron and lead and tin into the midst of the furnace to blow the fire upon it, to melt it. So will I gather you in mine anger and in my fury and I will leave you there and melt you.

Yea, I will gather you and blow upon you in the fire of my wrath. And you shall be melted in the midst thereof as silver is melted in the midst of the furnace. So shall ye be melted in the midst thereof.

And you shall know that I, the Lord, have poured out my fury upon you. And the word of the Lord came to me, saying, Son of man, say unto her, thou art the land that is not cleansed nor rained upon in the day of indignation.

There is a conspiracy of her prophets in the midst thereof, like a roaring lion ravening the prey. They have devoured souls. They have taken the treasure and precious things. They have made many widows in the midst thereof.

Her priests have violated my law and have profaned my holy things. They have put no difference between the holy and profane, and neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean and have hid their eyes from my Sabbath.

And I am profaned among them. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves, ravening the prey to shed blood and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. And her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, seeing vanity and divining lies unto them, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken, the people of the land have used oppression and exercised robbery and have vexed the poor and needy, yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully.

And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it. But I found none. Therefore, have I poured out my indignation upon them?

I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath their own way. Have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God. This striking passage of scripture vividly portrays the promises of a curse carried out upon a people of God and a land for provoking and violating the very God they claim to serve.

It is a passage which speaks of divine anger, divine indignation and divine justice meted out through divine punishment. So the first thing we see from this passage in Ezekiel is how a people of God forsook the God of the Bible and served other gods, how the people of God abandoned God and forsook him and how a vengeful God abandoned them and forsook them, leaving them utterly to their own sinful ways and recompensing upon their heads their own way, which was their way and not God's way for them.

America’s Apostasy and the Prospect of Destruction

I submit to you today, friends, that America has abandoned God entirely, that America has forsaken the Almighty who once prospered her and flourished this land with plenty, that America has betrayed God and violated God and sinned against God to such a grievous degree that the only thing left for the God of the Bible to do is to punish this nation with a great and final destruction.

When you read the book of Revelation, you are quite unable to find any mention of the once and great powerful nation known as America. It has been brought so low as to not be of any notice or importance any longer.

And I submit to you today, friends, that the very people who claim to be the friends of God in this once great land, the many churches that stand prominently on the street corners throughout this once great land, that they too have fallen into such a great apostasy and have forsaken the very God for whom they claim to serve, and that the great God in his fiery indignation has sent a judgment into the land, a famine, a great famine, a famine for hearing the word of God.

And he has withdrawn his presence from among us and left us to our own ways and has recompensed them upon our proud heads. The only hope for America today is a national spiritual awakening whereby God in his mercy, rather than pouring out his anger upon the land through the destruction of it, pours out his spirit upon the land to heal the land and turn the hearts of the nation back to him.

Revival and the Full Gospel

And the only hope for the church at large in America today is revival, a mighty revival which will awaken her out of her spiritual slumber and stupor and rouse her once again to her great responsibility to reach this generation of hell bound sinners with the true gospel of the son of God, the gospel of the old paths, which speaks of ruin, repentance, redemption and regeneration, whereby the law is once again thundered in the ears of sinners to awaken them to their great danger of dying in their sins and falling into a permanent and everlasting place of burnings and torments called hell.

To preach the full counsel of God once again in its purity and proper order to break up the false foundations of self-righteousness, which so many in our churches sit upon today as they march towards hell as foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps of testimony.

Only revival will awaken the church to her dreadful condition to which she has fallen only revival friends will rouse her to her vast duty to reach this generation with the gospel of Christ. Only revival will save this God forsaken land and turn the hearts of a people back to the God of the Bible.

The Call to Repentance

My question to us today, my hearers, is this, how bad do we want revival? How badly do we want to avert destruction? Do we even realize how close we are standing to a precipice to which there is no return?

This is a call to the people of God to get right with God and turn from our wicked ways and pray and humble ourselves and seek the face of the Almighty while there is still time. The very last words Jesus Christ had to say to his church found in the book of Revelation was repent.

And that is the very thing that the church in America needs to exercise right now, right now. Let me pray. Oh, great God, great is your patience toward your strained people. Great is your faithfulness to an unfaithful nation.

A Prayer for Revival and Mercy

Oh, ancient of days, I beg you now in the name of your dear son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to raise up a man who will stand in the gap for this land and turn your heart in mercy toward us. Oh, Lord of glory, turn your heart from your fiery indignation to mercy and grace toward a rebellious and proud people.

Turn our hearts, great king. Turn our hearts to thee again. And may you once again pour out your spirit upon this land and heal it. Pour out your plentiful effusions of grace in revival and spiritual awakening upon this dry land.

You promised in your word to pour out your spirit upon the dry land. And Lord, the land is dry, barren, forsaken of you. May you come in your manifest presence once again to our churches and be the head of the church in the land again.

May you be prominent and preeminent in our sanctuaries once again. Forgive us for forsaking thee and replacing thee with idols of entertainments and worldly things. Forgive us, great God, for diluting your holy word to make it more acceptable to sinful man.

Pour out your spirit upon us, I pray. Hear this prayer, great God almighty. Amen.