America in the Hands of an Angry God

[Kokavkrystallos]

Here I have used a portion of Jonathan Edwards "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and taken liberty to change some of the wording so as to address the nation as well as individual sinners. The majority of the text is from the original sermon.:

God’s Hand upon the Wicked​

The observation from the words that I would now insist upon is this:
There is nothing that keeps a wicked nation at any one moment from a burning fiery end, but the mere pleasure of God.
By the “mere pleasure of God” I mean His sovereign pleasure: His arbitrary will restrained by no obligation, hindered by no manner of difficulty any more than if nothing else but God’s mere will had, in the last degree or in any respect whatsoever, any hand in the preservation of wicked men one moment.
The truth of this observation may appear by the following considerations.

1. Power enough​

There is no lack of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men’s hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist Him, nor can any deliver out of His hands.
He is not only able to cast a wicked nation down, but He can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty in subduing a rebel who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the number of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defense from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and a vast multitude of God’s enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind, or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we find crawling on us; so [too] it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that anything hangs by—thus easy is it for God when He pleases to cast His enemies into hell., and to bring a nation into destruction. What are we that we should think to stand before Him at Whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before Whom the rocks are thrown down? Yea, The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God" (Psa. 9:17)

2. Nation's deserving​

They deserve to be conquered and destroyed, so that divine justice never stands in the way; it makes no objection against God’s using His power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, “Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?” (Luk 13:7). The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy and God’s mere will that holds it back.

3. Under just condemnation​

They are already under a sentence of condemnation to hell and judgment. They do not only justly deserve to be cast down thither, but the sentence of the Law of God, that eternal and immutable rule of righteousness that God has fixed between him and mankind, is gone out against them, and stands against them—so that they are bound over already to hell. “He that believeth not is condemned already” (Joh 3:18), so that every unconverted man in any nation properly belongs to hell—that is his place; from thence he is. “Ye are from beneath” (Joh 8:23), and thither he is bound; it is the place that justice, and God’s Word, and sentence of His unchangeable Law, assign to him.
When Achan sinned the entire nation was affected. The sin of one man brought Israel defeat before a lesser enemy. (Jos. 6:17-17:21) How much more dreadful a judgment when millions are in sin: both hidden sins as Achan's, and overt sin that is committed for all to see?

4. Objects of wrath even now​

“God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day.”—Psalm 7:11
They are now the objects of that very same anger and wrath of God, that is expressed in the torments of hell; and the reason why they do not go down to hell at each moment, is not because God, in Whose power they are, is not at present very angry with them—as He is with many miserable creatures now tormented in hell, who there feel and bear the fierceness of His wrath. Yea, God is a great deal more angry with great numbers that are now on earth—yea, doubtless with some who may read this book, who, it may be, are at ease—than He is with many of those that are now in the flames of hell.
So it is not because God is unmindful of their wickedness, and does not resent it, that He does not let loose His hand and cut them off. God is not altogether such a one as themselves, though they may imagine Him to be so. The wrath of God burns against them, their damnation does not slumber; the pit is prepared; the fire is made ready; the furnace is now hot, ready to receive them; the flames do now rage and glow. The glittering sword is whetted and held over them, and the pit hath opened its mouth under them.
"For the indignation of the LORD is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter. For my sword shall be bathed in heaven: behold, it shall come down upon Idumea, and upon the people of my curse, to judgment. The sword of the LORD is filled with blood" (Isa. 34:2, 5, 6)

5. The devil at ready​

The devil stands ready to fall upon them and seize them as his own, at what moment God shall permit him. They belong to him; he has their souls in his possession and under his dominion (Joh 8:44). The Scripture represents them as his “goods” (Luk 11:21). The devils watch them; they are ever by them, at their right hand; they stand waiting for them, like greedy hungry lions that see their prey and expect to have it, but are for the present kept back (1Pe 5:8). If God should withdraw His hand, by which they are restrained, they would in one moment fly upon their poor souls. The old serpent is gaping for them; hell opens its mouth wide to receive them; and if God should permit it, they would be hastily swallowed up and lost.

6. Hellish principles reigning​

There are in the souls of wicked men those hellish principles reigning, that would presently kindle and flame out into hell fire if it were not for God’s restraints. There is laid in the very nature of carnal men a foundation for the torments of hell. There are those corrupt principles in reigning power in them, and in full possession of them, that are seeds of hell fire. The principles are active and powerful, exceedingly violent in their nature; and if it were not for the restraining hand of God upon them, they would soon break out. They would flame out after the same manner as the same corruption, the same enmity, does in the hearts of damned souls, and would beget the same torments as they do in them.
The souls of the wicked are in Scriptures compared to the troubled sea (Isa 57:20). For the present, God restrains their wickedness by His mighty power, as He does the raging waves of the troubled sea, saying, “Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further” (Job 38:11). But if God should withdraw that restraining power, it would soon carry all before it. Sin is the ruin and misery of the soul; it is destructive in its nature; and if God should leave it without restraint, there would need nothing else to make the soul perfectly miserable. The corruption of the heart of man is immoderate and boundless in its fury (Pro 20:9); and while wicked men live here, it is like fire pent up by the course of nature. As the heart is now a sink of sin, so, if sin was not restrained, it would immediately turn the soul into a fiery oven or a furnace of fire and brimstone.

7. Death appearing remotely​

It is no security to a wicked nation for one moment that there are no visible means of death and destruction at hand! It is no security to a natural man that he is now in health, that he does not see which way he should now immediately go out of the world by an accident, and that there is no visible danger, in any respect, in his circumstances. The manifold and continual experience of all the world, in all ages, shows this is no evidence that a man is not on the very brink of eternity and that the next step will not be into another world.
The unseen, unthought-of ways and means of persons going out of the world are innumerable and inconceivable. Unconverted men walk over the pit of hell on a rotten covering; and there are innumerable places in this covering so weak, [but] these places are not seen. The arrows of death fly unseen at noon-day; the sharpest sight cannot discern them. God has so many different unsearchable ways of taking a wicked nation out, consigning them to the dustbin of history, to be a sad memory, that there is nothing to make it appear that God had need to be at the expense of a miracle, or to go out of the ordinary course of His providence to destroy any wicked nation, at any moment. All the means that there are of Nations falling, are so in God’s hands, and so universally and absolutely subject to His power and determination, that it does not depend at all the less on the mere will of God, whether sinful nations shall at any moment go to hell, than if means were never made use of or at all concerned in the case.

Conclusion:
God can, at his pleasure and will, destroy a nation by wars of any kind: Civil war, foreign invasion, foreign attack, terrorist sleeper cells attack from within: conventional weapons, biological, chemical, electrical, and nuclear.
God's sovereign will and power can cause collapse from within: financial, supply chain, racial, electrical, communications system, that latter we rely on so much today. He can make thy plagues of many and wonderful variety, as oft as He please, if He so decrees it.
God hold the earth in His hands, that at any moment of any day, with sudden terror and without warning, earthquake, volcano, a swarm of storms and whirlwinds: it is only His will and his hand that keeps an F5 tornado from striking a major city with complete devastation.
At any moment God could rip apart and tear the Atlantic sea floor, causing a massive tsunami, so that Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington DC, Charleston, Miami, and all cities large and small in between along the coast be utterly obliterated, "the sea and the waves roaring" (Luk. 21:25) Equally as devastating would be the Pacific tsunami, destroying Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, and san Diego, with all cities along the coast. The nation would be gravely crippled by such an event, and when coasts are fearsomely inundated by a mighty cracking and moving of the earth's crust, it will be because God's hand alone holds the mighty power to unleash or stay.
"He gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth" (Pro 8:29) It is God who appointed these things, and at any moment He can appoint them to destruction. Let us then fear this Mighty and Holy God, whose mercy alone holds back fearful judgment upon a sinful nation, for a multitude of sins.
Now, undoubtedly it is, as it was in the days of John the Baptist, the axe is laid at the root of the trees, and every tree which brings not forth good fruit, may be hewn down, and cast into the fire (Mat 3:10).
Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and flee from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over the nation, and every unregenerate sinner. Let everyone flee out of Sodom: “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee…escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed” (Gen 19:17)!