The Day of the Great Swap

There’s something happening in America, it’s not so much one can articulate as feel.  This thing has been happening over several decades but with ever-increasing speed, when men “exchanged the truth of God for the lie” (Romans 1:25).

It began when men had clear enough sense of God, “because what may be known God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:21).

Possessed of the knowledge of God’s reality and refusing to acknowledge the same, men began to worship man and beasts, “Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, . . . God gave them up to vile passions.  And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;” (Romans 1:24, 26).

A sampling of those things which are not fitting:  “. . .sexual immorality, wickedness, greed, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful” (Romans 1:30,31).

Is this reflective at all of contemporary American society?  Many would say, “Yes”.

What must we do?  We need to get our perspective straight.  There is a God with whom we have to do.  The Apostle Paul put it this way, “for in Him (God) we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  In terms of God’s reality, nature has been our instructor, the continued existence of the Jew and now the re-appearance of the nation of Israel also instruct us, last of all the purest message of the church instructs us.  This being the case, “(God) now commands all men everywhere to repent (turn from the wickedness of their ways and to God), because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man (Christ Jesus) whom He has ordained.  He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead” (Acts 17:30, 31).

This “day” on which God will judge the world, by many biblical allusions (prophetic utterances) appears to be near at hand.  Why wait when all about are evidences of a gathering storm of judgment?  Noah gave such a warning for his day.  None but his immediate family paid attention.  Will you pay attention?  Will you invite your family and friends to the “Ark of God’s salvation”?  That’s a large part of why you’re still on the earth—as a “believer”. There is a work for you to do.  As we do that work God may relent in the judgment He aims to bring to America and the world even as he relented the judgment He designed for ancient Nineveh, after they offered to him great repentance following the preaching of Jonah (Jonah 3:10).