There is an old English hymn that is never sung anymore in the Disney-fied churches of America. The words go like this:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform,
He plants his footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

The city of New Orleans is in ruins. Nearly half a million people are without homes or the basic needs of life. Once pristine and gleaming office towers and hotels are collapsing ruins, only gaping holes where plate glass windows used to be. The bars that just a few days ago had drunks staggering and vomiting their way out the the doors are closed and will have to be torn down. The strip joints that drew men and women of the most vile lusts and passions are empty shells. No broken, depraved and sin-sick individuals will fulfill their lusts there today.

The Southern Decadence Days have been canceled. Over 10,000 homosexuals were scheduled to descend on the city in a non-stop orgy of perversion and sodomy Labor Day weekend. The party's off. A video taken by taxpayers at last year's event showed homosexuals engaging in sex openly on the streets. The police turned their backs and the city organizers promoted this year's event with gusto. Only it isn't going to take place after all. The casinos where gamblers from across the state would gather to throw their money away in a frenzy of greed are now up to the rafters in stinking flood waters. The slot machines are rusting beneath 10 feet of water in some cases. The machines won't take anyone's money today. The mayor of the Big Easy is calling for prayer.

We are moved, as we should be, with human compassion as we see so many people, many of them poverty stricken to begin with, homeless and without hope. The loss of life and the innocent people who suffer move us to seek to help in any way we can. But in the midst of this tragedy, let's not fail to see the bigger lesson. Despite President Bush's insistence that we Americans are good people, a closer look says otherwise.

This nation's soil is reddened with the blood of tens of millions of aborted children. The multi-billion dollar pornography industry is pumping filth out of the pit of hell into the homes and bedrooms of Americans daily. Thousands of militant homosexuals march in the streets of American cities each year in Gay Pride parades, demanding their rights and breathing out threatenings to those politicians who stand in their way.

But then God speaks, as he did in Hurricane Katrina. What is He saying? By allowing in his sovereign will this disaster, and every disaster mankind faces, God is saying, “I, even I, am the Lord and beside me there is no Savior.” Isaiah 43:11.

The Lord reminds us of our desperately needy human state. He reminds us that in our arrogance and rebellion that He alone gives and He alone takes away. He reminds us that none of us exist without his explicit mercy towards us and He calls us to repent and seek Him.

Evangelicals cringe now at words like these. “Don't go making God look like an angry, vengeful God!” they say. That's because increasingly, the God of Evangelicalism only has one quality, love. The many passages of Scripture that speak of God's holiness, his righteousness and his intolerance for sin are ignored. The passages that speak of God's dealing with a rebellious Children of Israel are relegated to quaint stories for our children in Sunday School. But the God who judges in history, who raises up leaders and who brings them down, a God who will not tolerate forever the sins of a nation that sheds innocent blood? “No, that's not God,” they say. “And don't let a newspaper reporter hear you say that, or we're toast!”

Even a cursory reading of Scripture reveals a God who is not only loving but is wrathful against all evil, as well. The rebellion of America has been a stench in the nostrils of God for a long time. Why God has stayed his hand on this land for so long, I do not know. I am grateful for that mercy but I tremble for America's future if there is no repentance in Christ's church. Why the church? Because Scripture tell us that judgment begins in God's house. I have written repeatedly about Evangelicalism that in a quest for temporal greatness and influence has perverted the Gospel until it is unrecognizable. This, God will judge.

As the howling winds of Katrina destroyed expensive homes and tossed costly cars like matchboxes, they pointed us to the words of Jesus Christ:

“Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock.“ Matthew 7:25-26

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© 2005 Ingrid Schlueter

Ingrid Schlueter has been producer and co-host of the Crosstalk Radio Talk Show on the VCY America Radio Network for 18 years. She is author of numerous articles on current issues and is a regular columnist for Wisconsin Christian News. She has also authored, Parent Police: The UN Wants Your Children. Email: vcyproducer@aol.com  Website: http://sliceoflaodicea.com  

 

Other articles by Ingrid Schlueter: Don't Ask Don't Tell Policy is Destroying the Church (More will be added)

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