No one is so blind as he who will not see.  For the last twenty years or so, we have heard reports from some religious quarters that many people were turning to the Lord and that spiritual revivals were sweeping our nation.  But all the evidence is to the contrary.  If God were really at work in saving large numbers of people the proof would be seen in a wave of righteousness, and the three great institutions ordained by God—the church, the family, and government—would be transformed and transforming in righteousness.  But such is not the case.  In fact, every sector of society evinces corruption.

            So-called churches proclaim a message of “love” and tolerance that makes no distinction between moral and immoral behavior.  Many have boldly declared themselves to be sanctuaries for people who have broken our laws.  Many pulpits proudly announce that all religions are equal and refuse to recognize any moral distinction among the various faiths, whether Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, some going so far as to include the occult and Satan worship.  Sin is never mentioned; righteousness and morality are viewed as anachronistic vestiges of our puritanical past.  We have taken a sledgehammer to the family structure.  Virtually any adult can marry any other adult; no standard as commonsensical as one-man-and-one-woman-only survives.  In fact, marriage has long since ceased to be the standard or essential bond for starting a family.  Divorce and repeated divorces multiply.  Our government has not only legalized but also promoted murder by abortion.  It has legislated against prayer and public acknowledgement of the God of the Bible, all the while protecting the vilest of sexual perversions.  It protects the violent and attacks those officers of the law sworn to uphold the peace.  It promotes socialism and communism, if not in name, certainly, in principle.  And in all of this, many think we are doing well, and even that God is pleased.

            However, the terrorism that has begun spreading across our nation is only the loudest and most recent of many indications that God is not pleased with us as a nation and has begun judging us for our sin and rebellion, although such a thought is entirely alien to much of our nation’s citizenry today.  But God does exist; He is righteous; and He does judge sin.  And the Old Testament prophecy of Nahum has been preserved, not as some curious and archaic artifact, but as a testimony to the character and purpose of God and as a witness against any who would sin presumptuously.  Space does not permit us to rehearse the wickedness of the Assyrians who inhabited Nineveh nor the history of God’s mercy and longsuffering toward them, nor of their ultimate destruction as prophesied by Nahum.

            But we must remember and learn from these two truths as expressed by Nahum.  Although “the Lord is slow to anger” (1:3), He is, nevertheless, “a jealous and avenging God . . . the Lord is avenging and wrathful.  The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries, and He reserves wrath for His enemies” (1:2).  God is still today the God who declared the following words through His prophet Nahum.  “’Behold, I am against you,’ declares the Lord of hosts” (2:13).  “Woe to the bloody city, completely full of lies and pillage; her prey never departs” (3:1).  “There is no relief for your breakdown, your wound is incurable.  All who hear about you will clap their hands over you, for on whom has not your evil passed continually?” (3:19).

            Our current economic prosperity, which is founded on a twenty-trillion-dollar debt, and our technological advances have deceived many people into believing that all is well.  God will not—indeed, cannot—ignore the sin that stands like a vast mountain range across this nation.  His failure to fully judge us as a nation testifies to His patience and longsuffering, not to His approbation.  We must decry the sin around us, live lives of personal righteousness, and remind any who will listen that God still saves repentant sinners one by one.  But He who destroyed Nineveh will not forever wink at America’s sin.