“And the LORD sent against
him bands of the Chaldees,
and bands of the Syrians, and
bands of the Moabites, and
bands of the children of Ammon,
and sent them against Judah to
destroy it, according to the word
of the LORD, which he spake by
his servants the prophets. Surely
at the commandment of the
LORD came this upon Judah,
to remove [them] out of his
sight, for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that
he did;
And also for the innocent blood that he shed: for he filled
Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the LORD would not
pardon.” (2 Kings 24:2-4 AV)
“ Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a
murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely
put to death. And ye shall take no satisfaction for him that
is fled to the city of his refuge, that he should come again
to dwell in the land, until the death of the priest. So ye shall
not pollute the land wherein ye [are]: for blood it defileth the
land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is
shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it.” (Numbers
35:31-33 AV)
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The sin of murder is a horror in the eyes of the Lord. Murder
is the taking of innocent life, whether it is the slaying of a
neighbor who has committed no crime, an enemy who does
not deserve to die, or the murder of a baby in the womb, or
the slaughter of the old and dying.
Life is a precious gift from God alone and it is to be esteemed
as one of God's finest gifts to us. In despising men's lives we
are transgressing on the glory of God. It is no wonder that
life becomes cheap when it is thought to be the result of
impersonal processes in the slime and that man comes from
the lower animals.
A civilization can choose to believe that slimy story if he wants
to, but he has no choice about the consequences that come
from his acceptance of the story: laziness, fornication, adultery,
sodomy, theft, lying, and worst of all, the murder of innocents.
Only the blood of the transgressors can cleanse the land of the
blood of the innocents. If a nation does not punish murderers
and limit the assault on human life, then God will Himself bring
cleansing in the blood of the citizens of that land.
Abraham Lincoln understood this. In his second Inaugural
Address, Lincoln understood that the hand of God was in
the shedding of the blood of the American people: "Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty
scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if
God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled
by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop
of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another
drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand
years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments
of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Will God require of us Americans again the price of blood?
Will armies again march across our beloved country, through
the fields of New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina,
Tennessee, Kansas, Oregon and California until we have
been cleansed of the blood of innocents? In the hardness
of our hearts we have slaughtered innocents by the hands
of our doctors and medical profession for many years now,
millions and millions of babies have been thrown into the
garbage cans, their bodies dismembered, because they
were inconvenient and unwanted. We have sacrificed them
to our lusts, just as David sacrificed Uriah for his lust for
Bathsheba, and as Saul destroyed the Gibeonites.
In the Civil War, it was Americans shedding the blood of
Americans; who will God raise up to cleanse our land the
next time? Will he deliver us into the hands of Islamic fascists
who are implacable, cruel, and love slaughter more than we
can imagine?
Let us pray for our bleeding, suffering land. Let us pray that
God will cleanse us from our iniquities and transgressions,
that He will remember mercy and turn us again into the ways
of righteousness. That ministers will once more preach the
whole word of God and not the imaginations of their own
hearts.
It is the mercy of God that we so desperately need: the grace
that transforms the heart and changes the mind. This is the
work that Jesus came to do, as the prophet Isaiah wrote:
“The Spirit of the Lord GOD [is] upon me; because the
LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the
meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to
proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the
prison to [them that are] bound; 2 To proclaim the
acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance
of our God; to comfort all that mourn; 3 To appoint unto
them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes,
the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the
spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of
righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might
be glorified.” (Isaiah 61:1-3 AV)
Jesus claimed its fulfillment in Luke: “The Spirit of the Lord
[is] upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the
gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight
to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, To preach
the acceptable year of the Lord. 20 And he closed the book,
and he gave [it] again to the minister, and sat down. And the
eyes of all them that were in the synagogue were fastened on
him. And he began to say unto them, This day is this scripture
fulfilled in your ears.” (Luke 4:18-21 AV)
“Cast away from you all your transgressions, whereby ye
have transgressed; and make you a new heart and a new
spirit: for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”
(Ezekiel 18:31 AV)
"O Lord God, do not to us sinful Americans according to
our sins and iniquities, but pour out thy Holy Spirit upon
our land, to turn us from murder and strife and iniquity and
uncleanness and restore unto us thy favor and grace. Raise
up faithful and true ministers and churches and families and
men and women who will love you and keep your
commandments. Set the Lord Jesus before our eyes, crucified
for our sins, and grant us grace to believe and cast our sins
behind us, O Lord our God. Take away our idols and false
religions from among us and give us faith to cast all idols
behind us and pray to you only, for you are the Father of our
Lord Jesus, and there is no other living and true God. Amen
and Amen."
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