America's Greatest Need # 2

America's Greatest Need # 2

B. We should be grateful for our natural, industrial and scientific resources with which we have been blessed. Because of our giving God His rightful place at the outset of our national life, God smiled - and gold poured from the rocky crags of the Gold West. God smiled - and wide acres of grains sprang from the soil of the Middle West. God smiled - and the picturesque hills of the East yielded black gold in ample abundance to warm our hearths and turn the wheels of industry.

God smiled - and the automobile, the airplane and a thousand and one industrial miracles took place before our eyes. God smiled - and has seen to it that Old Glory has never dipped her colors to any atheistic, God-hating, man- enslaving country. God smiled - and our scientists brought into being the atomic and nuclear bombs, which are destined to be those paradoxical instruments of destruction to save men from destruction.

Today, we stand in a precarious position in regard to our national life. We as a nation must do nothing to invoke the frown of Almighty God. Our course must be such as to keep Heaven's smile upon our beloved country.

We stand at the crossroads. To the left lie the bogs of extreme liberalism, socialism and the inevitable drift into communism. To the right lie the timeworn swamps of untra-conservatism, which leads to monopolies of certain groups at the expense of other groups. We must keep in the middle of the road and prayerfully seek the guidance of God that makes a country great, not the genius of statesmen, not merely the form of government not the energy of its people, but the level of the national morals and the depth of national faith in God.

Not serried tanks with flags unfurled,
Not armored ships that gird the world,
Not hoarded wealth nor busy mills,
Not cattle on a thousand hills,
Nor sages wise, nor schools nor laws,
Not boasted deeds in Freedom's cause -
All these may be, and yet the state
In the eye of God be far from great,
That Land is great which knows the Lord,
Whose songs are guided by His Word;
Where justice rules, 'twixt man and man,
Where love controls in art and plan;
Where breathing in His native air,
Each soul finds joy in praise and prayer -
Thus may our country, good and great,
Be God's delight - man's best estate.

C. Henry Van Dyke once wrote after a trip abroad, so it's home again, home again, America for me! My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be. In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars. Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars. Thank God for a part in guiding the American home in spiritual things! For years, every morning a radio poll showed I spoke to 800,000 people over the Nation's Family Prayer Period. People from all walks of life gathered before their radios at the beginning of the new day to look into God's face and listen to His Word. We need a revival of interest in spiritual matters today.

2. We Need a Greater Consciousness of Our Responsibility

Our greatest sin as a nation is the sin of complacency. Smugness is the forerunner of indifference, and indifference is the predecessor of national deterioration. As the old saying goes, "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link." It can be truthfully stated that America is no stronger than her weakest citizen. This truth puts a tremendous responsibility upon every one of us. The forces of anti-Americanism and anti-Christianity are at work in our beloved land. Most of their work is sinister and under cover; but like leaven, they seek to eventually leaven the whole lump of our way of life and supplant regimented, centralized totalitarianism for old-fashioned, red-blooded, stalwart Americanism. This leaven of atheism is found in high places as well as low. No nation ever survived a moral collapse. When Rome was in the zenith of her power and glory, sin started to eat like a canker at the heart of her national morals. Her politicians became weak, flabby and spineless. She became morally weak and spiritually depraved. One night while the Roman politicians were engaged in a shameful, drunken orgy in the resort town of Pompeii, the fires of God's judgment were raging not far distant in the bowels of famous Mt. Vesuvius, the volcanic mountain. As the night wore on, the sin and debauchery became more pronounced in Pompeii. There came a weird,sickly rumbling from the adjacent mountain. For years Vesuvius had been quiet and asleep, but the hour of God's judgment had arrived. As the revelers continued their sinful indulgence, Vesuvius quivered with a mighty quake, and the top of the volcano was blown completely away as a surging river of flaming, molten rock poured down the mountain in a death-dealing torrent. There was no hope of escape. The door of God's mercy was closed for these Roman renegades. As the lava swiftly overwhelmed the city, 25,000 people were buried beneath the flood of molten rock. This was the beginning of Rome's end as a nation. It all began when sin and lust supplanted the love for God and when gratification of the lower appetites took the place of noble character. 

~B. R. Lakin~

(continued with # 3)