From Adam and Eve up until the present dispensation, God has always provided sustenance to His people. Bondage does not necessarily equate to God hiding His presence. God’s judgment can be meted out upon individuals as Paul wrote in Romans 1 when God’s patience was exhausted and “God gave them over to a reprobate mind.”įurther in Romans 9:22, Paul asked, “what if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction.” As the noted Bible commentator David Guzik explained, “if God chooses to glorify Himself through letting people go their own way and letting them righteously receive His wrath so as to make His power known, who can oppose Him?”īondage to sin is always experienced before either deliverance or judgment. We are privileged to have writings from generations of biblical scholars at our fingertips. We have access to 66 books containing examples, reproofs, and commandments with insight and guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Watchmen have been blowing the trumpet from our houses, street corners, churches, and on social media and YouTube videos warning that the righteous and holy sword has been pulled from His sheath. We live in a spiritual enlightened age never experienced throughout the church age. Ezekiel 33 warned, “when I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for he their watchman: if when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head.” The mercy of God begins when an individual or nation is given instructions and knowledge of God’s expectation for obedience. Longsuffering and Mercy Allows for Repentance The outcry for repentance to God and revival was for the most part silent. However, during the pandemic, much of our world and nation put their dependence for recovery on local, state, and national governments in terms of financial incentives and the development of medicinal cures. Were these events God’s judgment upon our country or warnings of the wrath to come? Our country experienced a short-term revival in our churches following 9/11. Photo Credit: ©iStock/Getty Images Plus/fcscafeine We are reminded in verse seven of Jude that the Sodom and Gomorrah “are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” Our nation has been warned by the men of God since its birth, yet we as a nation oppose His inclusion. Warnings in various forms were sent to the lands and ignored while the people continued to engage in sexual immorality and perversion cited in Jude 7 and relished in worldly prosperity without any regard to the Lord or the poor reflected in Ezekiel 16:49-50 and Luke 17:28. There is a point when God’s mercy and longsuffering end and judgment begins.

The reasoning is that the sins besetting America today are the same sins that brought destruction to Sodom and Gomorrah. Pastors and evangelists often recite the refrain that “God will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah if judgment doesn’t fall upon America.” Of course, these men of God do not actually believe that God would owe any nation or group of people an apology for exercising His divine providence and sovereignty.

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