Where is our country going?

As we are in this new year, unanswered questions are in the minds of many people. Political, social, and economic affairs in this country seem to be on an unstable downward path. All of a sudden things that many have put their faith and trust in have become very shaky : fear is griping the American people on all sides. What's happening to this great country of ours?

Could the answer to this question be that we, as individuals, have forgotten the had that has fed us since we became a nation? Have we forsaken the one who has allowed us to become the greatest nation in the world; the one who has blessed this country in ways beyond measure? I'm talking about the God of Abraham, Issac and Jacob, the Redeemer of all mankind.

We do well to remember Abraham Lincoln's words in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1863. "We have been the recipients of the choicest counties of heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power and no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us. We have vainly imagined in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtues of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us" This very same thought is expressed clearly and simply in Psalm 12:1 - "Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord".

Have we become our own gods; become lovers of pleasure and self instead of lovers of God? Have we become rebellious towards God and as such, are we experiencing part of God's judgment on this nation? Deuteronomy 9:19 says, "And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the Lord they God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall perish".

Government is ordained by God. It's an instrument of God, but never a substitute for God. Psalm 9:20 - "Put them in fear O Lord that the nations may know themselves to be but men". Moral issues, inherent to the Bible, have become political. Godless men have taken God out of the school systems, and replaced it with a theory. According to Isaiah 44:24 , "Thus saith the Lord, thy redeemer and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the Lord that maketh all things, that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself."

James Madison, called the Father of our Constitution, said we were not to suppose that the hopes of our future freedom were based on the power of government. "Rather, he said, they were staked on the capacity of each individual for self-control, the ability to govern himself according to the 10 commandments". Our country is free today because it was founded on God's word while countries with their godless system have bondage. If America remains free it will be because the nation returns to God and His truth.

Is there hope for America? Yes. Jonah was sent by God to Nineveh, a great city, with a mesage of repentance. The people of Nineveh listened to Jonah the prophet, and turned from their ways of pleasure and self toward God. The great city of Nineveh was spared from God's judgement! Simply stated, "Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is no else". Isaiah 45:22