Is America past 2 Chronicles 7:14?

Jamdoc said:

2 Chronicles 7:14

The verse that inspires a call for national revival and repentence.... time honored, a beautiful verse... but I wonder if America can still come to a revival or is our wound grievous and our bruise incurable?
Looking back at the last several decades, I see Romans 1 playing out in our country as we cast God out of our society bit by bit, we've followed the Romans 1 path that destroys a people. Sexual revolution, homosexuality, and currently we're in the point of being given over to a reprobate mind and encouraging sin that leads to death, with homosexuality and sexual promiscuity and drug abuse and violence GLORIFIED.
I think we've been getting wiggled back and forth like a tooth being extracted, politically left and right, to loosen us up by politically dividing us. America is not in bible prophecy so it only makes sense that we have to diminish, be extracted from our place as world superpower, before the end.
I think we're past 2 Chronicles 7:14, and are instead at Jeremiah 7:16

and Revelation 22:11

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I do not believe that we are beyond help just yet. However, the messages to the 7 churches in the book of Revelation make sobering reading. Not one of them exists today. I agree that the US will diminish as a world power. Israel will be abandoned and only divine intervention will save them. I don't know if the USA will be hit by inner conflict, natural disaster or both. The Church will decide the issue. Or maybe it's been decided already.

Jamdoc said:

2 Chronicles 7:14

The verse that inspires a call for national revival and repentence.... time honored, a beautiful verse... but I wonder if America can still come to a revival or is our wound grievous and our bruise incurable?
Looking back at the last several decades, I see Romans 1 playing out in our country as we cast God out of our society bit by bit, we've followed the Romans 1 path that destroys a people. Sexual revolution, homosexuality, and currently we're in the point of being given over to a reprobate mind and encouraging sin that leads to death, with homosexuality and sexual promiscuity and drug abuse and violence GLORIFIED.
I think we've been getting wiggled back and forth like a tooth being extracted, politically left and right, to loosen us up by politically dividing us. America is not in bible prophecy so it only makes sense that we have to diminish, be extracted from our place as world superpower, before the end.
I think we're past 2 Chronicles 7:14, and are instead at Jeremiah 7:16

and Revelation 22:11

Click to expand...

The proof text is out of context.

2 Chronicles 7
Easy-to-Read Version
The Temple Dedicated to the Lord
7 When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from the sky and burned up the burnt offering and the sacrifices. The Glory of the Lord filled the Temple. 2 The priests could not enter the Lord’s Temple because the Glory of the Lord filled it. 3 When all the Israelites saw the fire come down from heaven and the Glory of the Lord on the Temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces low to the ground. They worshiped and thanked the Lord, singing,

“The Lord is good.
His faithful love will last forever.”

4 Then King Solomon and all the Israelites offered sacrifices to the Lord. 5 King Solomon offered 22,000 bulls and 120,000 sheep. So the king and the people showed that they had dedicated the Temple to God. 6 The priests stood ready to do their work. The Levites stood with the instruments they would use to play music to the Lord. King David had made these instruments to use when they gave thanks to the Lord and sang, “His faithful love will last forever.” The priests blew their trumpets as they stood across from the Levites. And all the Israelites were standing.

7 King Solomon also dedicated the middle of the courtyard, the part that is in front of the Temple of the Lord. There he offered burnt offerings, grain offerings, and the fat from the animals that were used as fellowship offerings. He did this because the bronze altar he had built was too small to hold all these offerings.

8 So there at the Temple, King Solomon and all the people of Israel celebrated the festival.[a] People came from as far away as Hamath Pass in the north and the border of Egypt in the south. This huge crowd of people enjoyed themselves for seven days. 9 On the eighth day, they had a holy meeting because they had celebrated for seven days. They made the altar holy and it was to be used only for worshiping the Lord. And they celebrated the festival for seven days. 10 On the 23rd day of the seventh month, Solomon told the people to go home. All the people thanked the king, said goodbye, and went home. They were happy because of all the good things that the Lord had done for David his servant and for his people Israel.

The Lord Comes to Solomon
11 So Solomon finished building the Lord’s Temple and the king’s palace. Solomon did everything that he had planned to do in building a house for the Lord and for himself. 12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him,

“Solomon, I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself to be a house for sacrifices. 13 When I close the sky so that there is no rain, or command the locusts to destroy the land, or send sicknesses to my people 14 and if my people who are called by my name become humble and pray, and look for me, and turn away from their evil ways, then I will hear them from heaven. I will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now, my eyes are open, and my ears will pay attention to the prayers prayed in this place. 16 I have chosen this Temple, and I have made it a holy place. So I will be honored there forever. I will watch over it and think of it always. 17 You must serve me with a pure and honest heart, just as your father David did. You must obey my laws and do everything that I commanded you. If you obey all I have commanded, and if you obey my laws and rules, 18 then I will make you a strong king and your kingdom will be great. That is the agreement I made with David your father when I told him that Israel would always be ruled by one of his descendants.

19 “But if you don’t obey my laws and commands that I gave you, and if you worship other gods and serve them, 20 then I will take the Israelites out from my land that I gave them. And I will leave this Temple that I have made holy for my name. I will make this Temple something that all the nations will speak evil about. 21 Everyone who sees it will be amazed. They will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do this terrible thing to this land and to this temple?’ 22 People will say, ‘This happened because they left the Lord, the God of their ancestors. He brought them out of Egypt, but they decided to follow other gods. They began to worship and to serve those gods. That is why he caused all these bad things to happen to them.’”

Footnotes
2 Chronicles 7:8 festival This was probably Passover.

I don't think we can come to that negative conclusion quite yet.


Elijah also thought that the nation was beyond saving. Eventually that would prove to be the case, but at the present time God would preserve the small remnant that had remained faithful.

We still have a remnant in this nation that have not bowed the knee. What's more, the Kingdom is being established and many in darkness are beginning to see that God is the only hope. So we cannot give up our work, no matter how the nation fares.

If Biden is fraudulently installed, a great darkness will envelope the land, and it is hard to see how it will be restored save a miracle. I don't think we should give up yet.

paul1149 said:

I don't think we can come to that negative conclusion quite yet.

God has not rejected His people whom He foreknew. Or do you not know what the Scripture says in [the passage about] Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? "Lord, THEY HAVE KILLED YOUR PROPHETS, THEY HAVE TORN DOWN YOUR ALTARS, AND I ALONE AM LEFT, AND THEY ARE SEEKING MY LIFE." But what is the divine response to him? "I HAVE KEPT for Myself SEVEN THOUSAND MEN WHO HAVE NOT BOWED THE KNEE TO BAAL." In the same way then, there has also come to be at the present time a remnant according to [God's] gracious choice. - Rom 11:2-5​

Elijah also thought that the nation was beyond saving. Eventually that would prove to be the case, but at the present time God would preserve the small remnant that had remained faithful.

We still have a remnant in this nation that have not bowed the knee. What's more, the Kingdom is being established and many in darkness are beginning to see that God is the only hope. So we cannot give up our work, no matter how the nation fares.

If Biden is fraudulently installed, a great darkness will envelope the land, and it is hard to see how it will be restored save a miracle. I don't think we should give up yet.

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The United States is just a country it is not His People. The Church is His People. The fall of the United States would be as irrelevant to health of the Body of Christ as was the fall of Rome.

grasping the after wind said:

The United States is just a country it is not His People. The Church is His People. The fall of the United States would be as irrelevant to health of the Body of Christ as was the fall of Rome.

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Yes, but my point is that though the institutions and culture of the US have become corrupted, there are many people here who are trying to preserve what is good, and because of them we should not give up on the nation yet.

paul1149 said:

Yes, but my point is that though the institutions and culture of the US have become corrupted, there are many people here who are trying to preserve what is good, and because of them we should not give up on the nation yet.

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A Christian always has hope.

Jamdoc said:

2 Chronicles 7:14

The verse that inspires a call for national revival and repentence.... time honored, a beautiful verse... but I wonder if America can still come to a revival or is our wound grievous and our bruise incurable?...
I think we're past 2 Chronicles 7:14, and are instead at Jeremiah 7:16...

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Unfortunately, the situation for whole western world seems to be that Jeremiah 7:16. It seems to me that too many people have gone far past God and will never want to come back. But, I believe there are people that have hope, but they are so few that it doesn’t have any effect on whole country.

Daniel Marsh said:

The proof text is out of context.

2 Chronicles 7
Easy-to-Read Version
The Temple Dedicated to the Lord
7 When Solomon finished praying, fire came down from the sky and burned up the burnt offering and the sacrifices. The Glory of the Lord filled the Temple. 2 The priests could not enter the Lord’s Temple because the Glory of the Lord filled it. 3 When all the Israelites saw the fire come down from heaven and the Glory of the Lord on the Temple, they bowed down on the pavement with their faces low to the ground. They worshiped and thanked the Lord, singing,

“The Lord is good.
His faithful love will last forever.”

4 Then King Solomon and all the Israelites offered sacrifices to the Lord. 5 King Solomon offered 22,000 bulls and 120,000 sheep. So the king and the people showed that they had dedicated the Temple to God. 6 The priests stood ready to do their work. The Levites stood with the instruments they would use to play music to the Lord. King David had made these instruments to use when they gave thanks to the Lord and sang, “His faithful love will last forever.” The priests blew their trumpets as they stood across from the Levites. And all the Israelites were standing.

7 King Solomon also dedicated the middle of the courtyard, the part that is in front of the Temple of the Lord. There he offered burnt offerings, grain offerings, and the fat from the animals that were used as fellowship offerings. He did this because the bronze altar he had built was too small to hold all these offerings.

8 So there at the Temple, King Solomon and all the people of Israel celebrated the festival.[a] People came from as far away as Hamath Pass in the north and the border of Egypt in the south. This huge crowd of people enjoyed themselves for seven days. 9 On the eighth day, they had a holy meeting because they had celebrated for seven days. They made the altar holy and it was to be used only for worshiping the Lord. And they celebrated the festival for seven days. 10 On the 23rd day of the seventh month, Solomon told the people to go home. All the people thanked the king, said goodbye, and went home. They were happy because of all the good things that the Lord had done for David his servant and for his people Israel.

The Lord Comes to Solomon
11 So Solomon finished building the Lord’s Temple and the king’s palace. Solomon did everything that he had planned to do in building a house for the Lord and for himself. 12 Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him,

“Solomon, I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for myself to be a house for sacrifices. 13 When I close the sky so that there is no rain, or command the locusts to destroy the land, or send sicknesses to my people 14 and if my people who are called by my name become humble and pray, and look for me, and turn away from their evil ways, then I will hear them from heaven. I will forgive their sin and heal their land. 15 Now, my eyes are open, and my ears will pay attention to the prayers prayed in this place. 16 I have chosen this Temple, and I have made it a holy place. So I will be honored there forever. I will watch over it and think of it always. 17 You must serve me with a pure and honest heart, just as your father David did. You must obey my laws and do everything that I commanded you. If you obey all I have commanded, and if you obey my laws and rules, 18 then I will make you a strong king and your kingdom will be great. That is the agreement I made with David your father when I told him that Israel would always be ruled by one of his descendants.

19 “But if you don’t obey my laws and commands that I gave you, and if you worship other gods and serve them, 20 then I will take the Israelites out from my land that I gave them. And I will leave this Temple that I have made holy for my name. I will make this Temple something that all the nations will speak evil about. 21 Everyone who sees it will be amazed. They will ask, ‘Why did the Lord do this terrible thing to this land and to this temple?’ 22 People will say, ‘This happened because they left the Lord, the God of their ancestors. He brought them out of Egypt, but they decided to follow other gods. They began to worship and to serve those gods. That is why he caused all these bad things to happen to them.’”

Footnotes
2 Chronicles 7:8 festival This was probably Passover.

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You are correct in a pedantic sense, but the principle still applies. The New Testament is made up of about 30% quotes from the OT, not always in context either.

2 Chronicles 7:14 doesn't apply to the United States. The US isn't God's covenant nation.

Nations rise and nations fall. But God's word endures forever.

-CryptoLutheran

Jamdoc said:

Right I'm aware of this, it's not about the literal verse, but rather that that verse has been used as a call for revival over the past.
It's just a verse that a lot of people like when we talk about the subject of praying for a revival on a national level.
Think of the topic as being "Is America past the hope of revival?"
Jeremiah 7:16 doesn't have to do with America either but the sentiment is what's important, a nation that gets so far bad that God says "don't even pray for these people, I'm not going to hear it" when God has determined to destroy a nation.
I just like to think of it in terms of scripture when I can. If we're not to apply scripture because it's not directly referring to our modern day nations well..
I guess God would have to have not sealed up the bible and continued to Inspire people to write as the world changed, giving us new scripture to deal with new things like technology and new world powers and global imperialism and internet and .. all that. We don't have any scripture that directly relates to that so we make do with what concepts we have.

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Correct, the US is not a covenant nation. However, the Church has superseded Israel, so the church is now responsible for the state of the nation. We are supposedly "salt", which is a preservative, and "light', bringing truth and revelation of God and His ways to the lost world. My observations over the last 49 years is that the church in the Western world has failed to be salt or light. Hence the rise of movements that reject God's authority and His ways and ridicule those who preach the true gospel.

God's judgement is on the nations continually, as Romans 1 states. What does He do? He leaves the nations to sort it out for themselves, individuals also. So we had the running sore of Vietnam, a war that should never have started, normalising relations with China, now the West's major enemy, wars in Afghanistan (did the leaders of the West learn nothing from history), the Iraq wars (failing to deal with Hussein in the first war and a total debacle in the second. Throw in Libya, the West's impotence in dealing with Muslim terror, and other assorted disasters and you can see a pattern.

Now truth has been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. Australian states are introducing laws to stop so called gay conversion therapy. 10 years in prison for trying to help homosexuals to get out of their wicked lifestyle? That's the threat. The next step is to call the Bible hate speech and outlaw preaching anything that the PC brigade deem unacceptable. So Australia is headed down the same track as North Korea. So much for democracy and free speech. People are so stupid that they applaud these evils, not realising that they are playing into the hands of the Antichrist. The mark of the beast will be conformity to laws that hinder the preaching of the gospel. I'm prepared to go to prison if it comes to that. Probably not in my lifetime, but things can change rapidly.

Is there an answer? Yes. Christians need to realise that they are responsible and take appropriate action. 2 Chronicles 7:14 is a good start.

Jamdoc said:

I don't align with replacement theology. It's not that we take the place of Israel, it's that we are grafted in. God still has covenants that are intended to be fulfilled for national Israel in the Millennial Kingdom. The covenant with Abraham was not "spiritual children" it was people directly descended from him, so God still intends to hold to that to show that He can keep a covenant even when mankind breaks his side of it. So while the church and Israel are different, one doesn't replace the other God will have both His gentile church, and His nation Israel, both redeemed through Christ. Revelation 1:7 and Zechariah 12 are clear that Israel will recognize that they killed their Messiah and mourn, and they'll get saved as God promised Isaiah.



Well, as much as I despise the sin of homosexuality, there's no evidence that "conversion therapy" works and some of it is rather cruel, the whole shock therapy and such.
It's better to just have them come to Christ and I guess they have to be eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven. Unless God is gracious enough to them to heal them and they become straight.
So I don't support conversion therapy, I support Jesus for that.


So you don't think we're beyond revival yet?

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No. The Catholic church ruled supreme, yet God was able to raise up Luther and Zwingli to bring about the Reformation. In England, the Anglican church was corrupt, being a Bishop was a well paid career and there was little of Christ in the whole thing. Then God raised up the Wesley brothers and a few others. A revival started that was the longest running in British history. The Welsh revival in 1903 came at a time when the Welsh church had become religious and spiritually pretty much dead.

The key to seeing revival is always the few in the church who realise that things are not how they should be. They pray and fast and God raises up men who will speak the truth in love. In Wales, it was Evan Roberts.

My concern about the laws is not banning "conversion therapy". That is a cure as bad as the disease. No, the real problem is that it is now illegal even to say that homosexuality is unacceptable to God. It's yet to be tested in court and there are possibly counter arguments that could be used, such as religious freedom laws. It's a further attempt by the world to silence those who would preach the gospel of the Kingdom. It may well backfire. The persecuted church has often flourished rather than being suppressed.

Jamdoc said:

2 Chronicles 7:14

The verse that inspires a call for national revival and repentence.... time honored, a beautiful verse... but I wonder if America can still come to a revival or is our wound grievous and our bruise incurable?

Click to expand...

A major revival is theoretically possible in my opinion but not likely. As I see it, the main problem is doctrinal presumption - everyone continues to assume that we we understand both doctrine and practice. Why is that a problem? Because any blessing from God LOOKS like a stamp of divine approval on 2,000 years of BAD doctrine and practice (bad in my opinion). He is reluctant to do anything indicating His approval.

To make matters worse, these bad doctrines fail to nurture revival. Two examples - again, just my opinion:
(1) In my view, sanctification and revival are the same thing, whereas many Christians merely see revival as an "added bonus" and thus not as a necessity. Hence they do not make it the number one priority in their daily life. In Paul's view, sanctification proceeds by incremental outpourings - revivals.

(2) Failure to recognize the primacy of Direct Revelation. For example, Israel was not supposed to march into battle without a clear sign from heaven (see for example Num 9:15-23) and Acts takes the same approach to evangelism (starting from the visible tongues of Fire seen on Pentecost). Such a sign from heaven counts as a promise of victory (more on promise in a moment). The point is that the church replaced the primacy of Direct Revelation with the primacy of scholarly exegesis (a position known as Sola Scriptura).

Points 1 and 2 summarize Paul's rebuke to the Galatians (see Galatians 3). Hence his discussion of "promise" and his clear intimation that the Spirit is to be received again and again and again. Gordon Fee stated that the clear implication of Gal 3:1-5 is that the Christian is to receive the Spirit again and again and again.