A
Perilous Predicament
The prophet Isaiah
began his prophecy with a salvo of scathing indictments against
backslidden Israel. It took just fifteen verses for him to describe
God’s disposition toward his people:
“And when ye spread forth your
hands,
I will hide mine eyes from you:
yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of
blood” (Isaiah 1:15).
It’s instructive to note while Israel
had NOT forsaken religious
activity, they had indeed forsaken the object of true worship—the LORD
himself!
The two-fold predicament Israel found
itself in was (1) no AUDIENCE
WITH God, and (2) no ASSISTANCE FROM God. I challenge you to imagine a
more perilous predicament than this for any nation...or individual, for that matter.
But America at this hour finds itself
in a similar predicament. When
Isaiah tells them their “hands are full of blood,” it’s unclear exactly
what they were doing to merit the indictment. Were they offering their
children as sacrifices to idols? Had murder and manslaughter become
commonplace with no justice?
What is unclear concerning Israel is
quite clear concerning America—the 60
million unborn babies we’ve murdered since 1973. Their innocent blood cries out
to Almighty God! For that reason alone, our hands as a nation are FULL
OF BLOOD!
A few verses prior, the prophet
explains why it was their God had not
destroyed them as he did Sodom: “Except the LORD of hosts had left unto
us A VERY SMALL REMNANT, we should have been as Sodom, and we should
have been like unto Gomorrah” (1:9).
The antidote for a PREDICAMENT such
as this is a REMNANT of the godly.
In a later chapter, the Lord tells Isaiah that remnant (“holy seed”)
would amount to “a tenth” of the population (6:13). Perhaps every young
preacher entering the ministry should expect to have to evangelize a
thousand lost souls in order to pastor a congregation of one
hundred saved ones.
So the question for each of us is
rather simple: Are we willing to be
part of the REMNANT that provides a buffer to God's judgment upon
America?
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