Church of God News

Notice what God says He will do to people who refuse to practice what He teaches them.

“But it shall come to pass, if you do not obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments and His statutes which I command you today, that all these curses will come upon you and overtake you: cursed shall you be in the city, and cursed shall you be in the country. Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl. Cursed shall be the fruit of your body and the produce of your land, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.

“Cursed shall you be when you come in, and cursed shall you be when you go out. The Lord will send on you cursing, confusion, and rebuke in all that you set your hand to do, until you are destroyed and until you perish quickly, because of the wickedness of your doings in which you have forsaken Me” (Deuteronomy 28:15-20).

We are experiencing, in season after season and year after year, one major weather catastrophe after another. This is how God first began to punish ancient Israel. But several decades of increasing local disasters did not bring about any lasting repentance. Finally God began to allow their enemies to whittle away their military and economic power. He gradually reduced them from the region’s most prosperous nation to a vassal state of the ancient Assyrian Empire. But they still didn’t learn their lesson. Finally God allowed the Assyrians to conquer Israel and take them into exile.

Could such a punishment come upon a nation as great and powerful as the United States? We must remember that God shows no partiality in His response to people (Deuteronomy 10:17; Romans 2:11). Even though God is patient with individuals and nations, wanting them to recognize their sins and repent (2 Peter 3:9), He eventually calls us into account for our actions.

God blesses those who love Him and keep His commandments (Exodus 20:6). But He also punishes those who don’t (verse 5). The path we are following is the same path ancient Israel followed to its destruction. Those who think God will ignore America’s moral decline are kidding themselves. If we collectively do not change direction, we may soon see the day that God will respond to America’s moral decline in much the same way He did to ancient Israel’s.

The Hebrew prophet Zephaniah offers a warning all people would do well to heed: “Seek the Lord, all you meek of the earth, who have upheld His justice. Seek righteousness, seek humility. It may be that you will be hidden in the day of the Lord’s anger” (Zephaniah 2:3).