Americanization of Sin
Mom, apple pie, baseball, and Chevrolet conjure up expressions of yesteryear. They affectionately communicate a sense of what America represented in less complicated times. Later in this article, you will find another surprising element added. As one digs deeper in our history, however, America was considered a nation set apart. A country devoted to be a “city on a hill,” “a light to the nations of the world.” Our Pilgrim forefathers and mothers, Christians filled with lofty Biblical virtues, sturdy wills, and invincible energy, came to America in the “name of God” “for the glory of God” and for the “advancement of the Christian faith.” So says the Mayflower Compact, which became the basis for their “civil body politic.” It is important to note that the acknowledgment of God was not a belief statement for their church, but an acknowledgment of God as the source of authority for their social compact and political constitution.
Before the founding of America, the dungeon, torture, tyranny, and oppression were the rule, rather than the exception in man’s bloody history. The Pilgrims knew firsthand the suffering associated with political and religious persecution. Thus, they fled England and eventually traversed the mighty Atlantic Ocean to establish a nation in the New World based upon freedom of conscience to worship God according to the Bible and not the precepts of a state-controlled religion.
Their combined missionary and patriotic zeal, which inspired them to endure the hardship of coming to these shores, is best described by colonial preacher, Cotton Mather. He stated, “In coming to the new continent, they (Pilgrims) were influenced by a double hope: the enlargement of Christ’s Kingdom by the conversion of heathen tribes, and the founding of an empire for their children in which His (Christ’s) religion should gloriously prevail.”
Based upon these blessed hopes, America began to prosper. As we grew strong, instead of using our superior strength to conquer weaker nations, we spent much toil, blood, and treasure to defeat the forces of evil, oppression, and tyranny in the world. Though not perfect, America has represented a force for good in our poor-fallen world. More charity, medicine, missionaries, and relief have been sent from this nation to aid the nations of the earth suffering from man-made and natural disasters than any other nation on the face of the earth.
In fact, French Historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, commenting on American exceptionalism stated:
I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America...Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.
The latter statement can easily reveal what has gone desperately wrong with America’s experiment with liberty. America has become discombobulated morally and spiritually. Good has become evil and evil, good. Thus, that which should make us ashamed as Americans, we celebrate with demonic glee and that which we should treasure as Americans, we renounce. Politically, this explains why Obama’s foreign policy encourages and appeases our enemies, while offending our traditional allies.
It is this phenomenon that inspired the title of this article, The Americanization of Sin. Once again, history repeats itself. In the Old Testament, Israel enjoyed a privileged position in the world. God’s Word declares, “Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: for all the earth is mine (Exodus 19:5).” Though they were indeed the recipients of the propitious smiles from heaven and partaker of God’s favor as a people, eventually the Jews developed an Israelization of sin (Deuteronomy 6).
Jeremiah, the prophet, exposed Israel’s nationalization of sin. He thundered:
Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Amend your ways and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, are these. For if ye throughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye throughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbour; If ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood in this place, neither walk after other gods to your hurt: Then will I cause you to dwell in this place, in the land that I gave to your fathers, forever and ever.
Behold, ye trust in lying words, that cannot profit. Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not; And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord.
It was this same mentality that led to our Lord’s denouncing of Israel at His first coming. Whenever Israel was confronted with the claims of Christ and the truth of His word, they denounced Him and relied upon their national identity and genealogy as “children of Abraham.” Both John the Baptist and our Lord refuted their claim. John the Baptist declared:
O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits meet for repentance: And think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire (Matthew 3:7-12).
Jesus stated:
I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father. They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it (John 8:38-44).
To this day, when I witness to Jewish people, they claim a special status with God based upon being the physical seed of Abraham. What they sadly refuse to recognize is the reality that both Ishmael and Esau were also a part of the physical seed of Abraham, but were rejected by God. It is in the promised seed of Abraham, Christ, which ushers in God’s salvation and blesses the nations of the world. The Apostle Paul drives home this critical revelation. He states:
Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith (not Jewish race or Israel’s national identity), the same are the children of Abraham…There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if ye be Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:6, 7; 3:28, 29).
America, it seems, is hell bent on following this same recipe for national disaster. By virtue of being an American, anything goes. American citizenship has become the ultimate “get out of jail free card.” Unless of course, if you love God, obey His commandments, and holds fast to the testimony of Jesus Christ (Revelation 12:17). Little do we realize, however, is God’s response, “Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, but go directly to Hell.”
Suffering from major delusional thinking, our country believes that we can kill God’s babies, flaunt sexual perversion, prostrate Christianity, break all of God’s moral commandments, and when questioned, claim that we are “free” to do as we please. Vainly, these are the “rights” many claim as Americans. NONSENSE! MADNESS! INSANITY! This mentality did not work for Israel and it will not for us!
Recently, when we were in Washington DC at the Islamic gathering at our nation’s capitol, we ran into this same rhetoric. Before the Jummah prayer began, we met with the organizers of the event. Dressed in Islamic garb, they assured us that they were just as American as mom, apple pie, baseball, and Chevrolet. We also learned from their expert historians that the American Capitol belongs to Islam by virtue of Muslim slaves that were forced to build it. You never heard of such a thing? Well, do not feel so bad, neither did we.
Where did they get such notions? Perhaps it came from our “Appeaser in Chief,” Barack Obama. He assured the Muslim nations that America is not a Christian nation. In his world, America is more a Muslim nation. After all, he snubbed the national day of prayer, but fell all over himself to honor the Muslim observance of Ramadan.
Moreover, there is probably not a day that goes by that the homosexual agenda does not wrap their perversion in the American flag. These self-indulgent, spoiled, bratty children raised by permissive parents have lost the ability to blush. They have been afforded the best education, have higher incomes than the average American, and live in upper scale homes and yet have the audacity to claim discrimination based upon their sexual orientation. It makes my blood boil that America is falling prey to their Americanization of sin.
We have warned for years that America cannot turn moral wrongs into civil rights. We cannot tolerate what God deems intolerable. We cannot make straight what God has called crooked and thrive as a people. Tragically, for the most part, it has fallen upon deaf ears as America, the “city on a hill,” corrupts herself with each passing day.
Commenting on the homosexual’s marching on Washington DC demanding and receiving from Obama the further implementation of their perverse agenda, I wrote Fox news. I stated:
Biblically, homosexuality means the "burning out" of man. It is a sign that our civilization is going the way of every other nation that dared parade their sin like Sodom in the face of a holy God. Historically, rampant homosexuality has been one of the social malignancies that have preceded the fall of nations (Greece, Rome, etc.)
We are witnessing the Americanization of sin. We vainly believe that we can wrap perversion and baby murder (abortion) and sanitize these abominations with the American flag.
There is a direct connection between our spiritual and moral state and the litany of woe coming upon our beleaguered nation. We cannot make straight what God has called crooked and thrive as a people. Either America ends this sexual immorality and rebellion or God will. The only problem is, when God does it, it is typically with a heavy hand, Sodom and Gomorrah anyone?
2 Peter 2:17-19 warns:
These are wells without water, clouds that are carried with a tempest; to whom the mist of darkness is reserved for ever. For when they speak great swelling words of vanity, they allure through the lusts of the flesh, through much wantonness, those that were clean escaped from them who live in error. While they promise them liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption: for of whom a man is overcome, of the same is he brought in bondage.
Brothers and sisters, the enemy of our souls has founding a resting place in the highest seats of authority in our nation. He is using our once great nation to sanitize evil, which is invoking God’s wrath upon our heads. We need to know the truth, the worst of it, and stand our ground against the Americanization of sin and those who promote it. And if we go down in our Lord’s service, remember the words of Rev. Flip Benham, “Let us go down, standing up in Jesus’ name!”