Sadly, the bad news just keeps coming. New reports shows violent crime in America is surging, our national debt is surging, and we’re about to have a $1 trillion deficit for the fourth year in a row. Nearly 60% of Americans say the country is on the “wrong track.” Leaders in Washington, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, say our national debt crisis is a national security threat. The question is: Can we turn things around before it’s too late?
Let’s look first at violence in America. In Implosion, I noted that violent crime in America is up more than 400% since 1960, a sign that our society is at risk of spiritual/moral/cultural implosion. Now we learn that after several years of leveling off, violent crime spiked again significantly last year. “Violent crimes unexpectedly jumped 18 percent last year, the first rise in nearly 20 years, and property crimes rose for first time in a decade,” reports the Associated Press. “The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics reported Wednesday that the increase in the number of violent crimes was the result of an upward swing in simple assaults, which rose 22 percent, from 4 million in 2010 to 5 million last year. The incidence of rape, sexual assault and robbery remained largely unchanged, as did serious violent crime involving weapons or injury.” Meanwhile, this year we have seen murder sprees in Chicago and New Orleans. We’ve seen massacres in Colorado and Wisconsin. We’re also seeing a record murder wave in small towns in America. At the same time, Americans are murdering more than one million unborn babies every year. We are already guilty of more than 53 million abortions since 1973, and the genocide just keeps happening.
Now let’s look at the national debt. We’re at more than $16 trillion and climbing. And now comes this report from CNN: “It’s official. The U.S. government rang up a $1.1 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2012, according to final numbers released Friday by the Treasury Department. It marked the fourth-straight year that deficits exceeded $1 trillion.” Worse, we’re approaching bills of $57 trillion in unfunded liabilities, promises our government has made us regarding Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that we have no way of fully paying for. Yet the President still has no plan to balance the budget.
“According to the U.S. Treasury, the debt of the U.S. government climbed by a total of $1,275,901,078,828.74 in fiscal 2012, which ended yesterday,” CNS News reported on October 1st. “That means the federal government borrowed approximately an additional $10,855 for each household in the United States just over the past twelve months. The total debt of the United States now equals approximately $136,690 per household.”
“The national debt was not on the official agenda for the third and final presidential debate, which focused on foreign policy,” CNN notes. “But both President Obama and Mitt Romney acknowledged Monday night what a chorus of former military leaders, current administration officials and fiscal hawks have been saying: that the country’s debt is a threat to national security. ‘A nation with our current levels of unsustainable debt … cannot hope to sustain for very long its superiority from a military perspective, or its influence in world affairs,’ Admiral Michael Mullen, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said last month. The concern: If the debt continues to grow unbridled, the U.S. government will be constrained in its ability to pay for what it wants to do militarily and diplomatically. And it could limit the country’s leverage with foreign powers. Especially since other countries own close to half of all outstanding U.S. public debt, with China and Japan leading the list of creditors.”
These trends are not sustainable. There is a point of no return — a point at which God removes His hand of grace and mercy and turns to the judgment of America. If we don’t repent for our sins, we are going to face that judgment soon.
America is in desperate need of a Third Great Awakening. The Bible says, “If My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land.” (2 Chronicles 7:14) Please join me in prayer and fasting for America. At the moment, we’re on Day 27 of 40 days of prayer through a ministry called If My People 2012.
Also, pastors, would you turn your Wednesday night service this week into a call to prayer, fasting and repentance along the lines of 2 Chronicles 7:14 and Joel chapter 2? More than ever, America needs pastors to boldly and passionately preach that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only message that will save this country. America needs pastors who will call this nation to humble ourselves and turn from our wicked ways and seek His face, before it’s too late. America cannot be saved unless the Church wakes up from our long and bitter slumber.
“Blow a trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm on My holy mountain! Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming; surely it is near….’Yet even now,’ declares the Lord, ‘Return to Me with all your heart, and with fasting, weeping and mourning; and rend your heart and not your garments.’ Now return to the Lord your God, for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness and relenting of evil. Who knows whether He will not turn and relent and leave a blessing behind Him, even a grain offering and a drink offering for the Lord your God? Blow a trumpet in Zion, consecrate a fast, proclaim a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children and the nursing infants. Let the bridegroom come out of his room and the bride out of her bridal chamber. Let the priests, the Lord’s ministers, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, ’Spare Your people, O Lord, and do not make Your inheritance a reproach, a byword among the nations. Why should they among the peoples say, ‘Where is their God?’” (Joel 2:1, 12-17)
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