Why Moral Decline Matters

https://www.thetrumpet.com/15831-why-moral-decline-matters

Prophesied to Happen

The Bible plainly reveals that God has set spiritual and physical laws in motion. At present, God is allowing humans to develop their own ways of living, which are contrary to His laws. He has been allowing us to reap the natural consequences that result from those ways. But the Scriptures record that God has begun to intervene and punish modern-day Israel with seven times more intensity of punishment on us.

Leviticus 26 is called the blessings and curses chapter. It prophesies what will happen to the nations of Israel—primarily America and Britain today: If they obeyed God’s laws, blessings; and if they disobeyed, curses.

“But if ye will not hearken unto me, and will not do all these commandments … I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you” (verses 14, 17). Yes, the great God actually said He would “set [His] face against” our nations for our rebellion!

“And if ye will not yet for all this hearken unto me, then I will punish you seven times more for your sins. And I will break the pride of your power” (verses 18-19). If we disobey, God promises to break the pride of our power. Though we have enjoyed tremendous national power, our will has been broken, just as God promised!

Look at the history of ancient Israel, and you see that our nations today are following the same course.

The Prophet Isaiah wrote that the morality of the ancient Israelites deteriorated to the point where they were actually proud of their sins. They “declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not” (Isaiah 3:9). Sadly, you could hardly find a more apt way to describe society today.

Hosea, one of Isaiah’s contemporaries, wrote that God had “a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.” Instead, Israel was full of “swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery.” Violence filled the nation, until “blood toucheth blood.” Because of this ghastly state, God decreed that the land shall mourn, and all who dwelled “therein shall languish” (Hosea 4:1-3). Hosea prophesied that because the Israelites refused “to turn unto their God,” they would “fall in their iniquity” (Hosea 5:1-5).

The prophecies of Isaiah and Hosea, like all the other minor and major prophets, focus primarily on “the latter days” (Hosea 3:5). God, the master sociologist, foretold that the end-time descendants of the Israelites would once again rebel against His moral laws and would suffer the same consequences as their ancestors.

Anciently, after the Israelites’ morals declined to the point of societal meltdown, God allowed the Assyrian Empire to take them away captive! Many prophecies show that the same fate awaits our nations in this end time! God will again allow a foreign nation to punish the peoples of America and Britain because of our many sins.

This severe punishment is simply the correction needed to teach people the error of sin, and to lead them toward living the way of life that brings blessings, instead of terrible curses. Once modern-day Britons and Americans have their wealth, prosperity, land and everything they possess taken from them, they will at last cry out to God for mercy and deliverance!

God told the Prophet Jeremiah that the day would come when He would “bring again the captivity of my people Israel” (Jeremiah 30:3). This prophecy isn’t about Israel’s ancient captivity, which had already occurred by that point. It is about an end-time captivity, called “the time of Jacob’s trouble” (verse 7). Jacob was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.

Yet even as God uttered these words to Jeremiah, He mercifully prophesied of a subsequent time when He would cause the Israelites “to return to the land that I gave to their fathers” (verse 3).

“Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither,” God declares in Jeremiah 31:8-9.”They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”

God will gather the outcasts from these nations like a shepherd gathers his flock (verse 10), showering them with blessings (verses 12-17), and establishing His New Covenant with them (verses 31-34). God promises to restore prosperity to America and Britain, and to make them a positive example. But first, they must learn that any society without God’s sacred moral code to govern the actions of individuals cannot stand!