"Then he said, "May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?"
He answered, "For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it."
If He would spare Sodom for the sake of ten, how much moreso for America? Draw comfort from His patience, joanie . . .
How many times in the Bible DID he destroy a people because they turned away from him? His patience doesn't always go on forever. I hope you're right, but I don't think it will necessarily work that way this time. We've tried his patience for so long, and taken his blessings for granted.
Although I deeply respect your optimism (and, in many ways, wish I shared it), and I certainly don’t dispute your scriptural reference to Sodom, scripture is also replete with examples of the Lord’s patience with unrighteous people having ebbed – His bringing the Flood upon the earth, and His causing His chosen people, the Israelites, to wander in the wilderness for forty years, until all the generation that had done evil in His sight were consumed, being two of the most obvious.
The Israelites were made to wander not because that journey required forty years to physically complete, but as a punishment for those who refused to enter the Promised Land when they first had the chance to do so. They were caused to wander aimlessly until all of the disobedient, dishonest and cowardly ones of adult age had died off.
Just recently, during the funeral services for Ronald Reagan held at the National Cathedral, Justice O’Connor read an excerpt from John Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill (I have also used Winthrop’s City Upon a Hill sermon/essay as a reference in a few Sunday school classes that I have taught). Although penned almost four hundred years ago, I believe Winthrop’s observations and warnings should be taken seriously. He was a devout, learned and righteous man (I’ve significantly re-written his old English spelling and punctuation in order to make it more readable) …
Now the only way to avoid this shipwreck and to provide for our posterity is to follow the counsel of Micah -- to do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God. For this end, we must be knit together in this work as one man. We must entertain each other in brotherly affection. We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of others’ necessities. We must uphold a familiar commerce together in all meekness, gentleness, patience and liberality. We must delight in each other, make others’ conditions our own -- rejoice together, mourn together, labor, and suffer together -- always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, our community as members of the same body.
So shall we keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. The Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as His own people, and will command a blessing upon us in all our ways, so that we shall see much more of His wisdom power goodness and truth than formerly we have been acquainted with.
We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when ten of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies … when He shall make us a praise and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantations: Lord, make it like that of New England. For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors for God’s sake.
We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us till we be consumed out of the good land wither we are going. And to close this discourse with that exhortation of Moses, that faithful servant of the Lord, in his last farewell to Israel (Deut 30):
Beloved, there is now set before us life and good, death and evil, in that we are commanded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another, to walk in His ways and to keep His Commandments and His ordinance, and His laws, and the Articles of our Covenant with him … that we may live and be multiplied, and that the Lord our God may bless us in the land wither we go to possess it. But if our hearts shall turn away so that we will not obey, but shall be seduced and worship other Gods. our pleasures, and profits … and serve them … it is propounded unto us this day, we shall surely perish out of the good land whether we pass over this vast sea to possess it.
~ joanie