When history is happening, it’s not immediately obvious when a tipping point has arrived. Only hindsight provides 20/20 vision.
Last week was a woeful week for America, with Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas making headlines. We may have reached the historic tipping point. The exact event that sends America over the edge may one day be obvious, but no one should be debating our debacle. We keep digging our hole deeper and deeper, as if there is a “Plan B.” There isn’t.
Remember the Boston Tea Party? When the Red Coats declared their intention to block Boston Harbor on June 1, 1774, Thomas Jefferson drafted a “Day of Fasting,” which was embraced by others and introduced into the Virginia House of Burgesses and passed unanimously. It called for “a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition,” and for “prayers” and the preaching of a “sermon.”
Fasting, humiliation, prayers, church and a sermon? Americans have been brainwashed about the “separation of church from state”—as if it were a pre-American mantra used by the colonists to keep faith out of the affairs of government. It never was.
The phrase “separation of church from state” appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is nowhere to be found—anywhere—in any piece of U.S. legislation. Revisionist “historians” want you to think differently, to their detriment and to the demise of our nation.
Days before the Battle of Lexington and Concord, on April 15, 1775, John Hancock and four others were responsible for the proclamation in the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, calling for “a Day of Public Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer to confess their sins to implore the Forgiveness of all our Transgression.”
If I may be gently blunt, those who insist on removing the Judeo-Christian God from everything, who insist upon a prayer-less, secular nation, demonstrate a fundamental ignorance of history, a lack of common sense and a misunderstanding of human frailty. Such ignorance is not bliss. It is getting Americans killed. The events of Louisiana, Minnesota and Dallas are coming to a city near you—as long as we keep thinking there is a “Plan B.” There isn’t.
If you’re a pajama-wearing part-time blogger filled with visions of your own grandeur, you’re no doubt ready to launch the “Founding Fathers were hypocrites” argument. Take a deep breath and relax. I agree with you 110 percent. But I also believe something you may have forgotten: We’re all hypocrites.
Every time humans are involved, hypocrisy, duplicity and imperfection are inevitable. The only agents of change are God and hypocrites. It’s always been that way. It’s time we unite. God has been waiting. We’ve kept Him waiting long enough.
Men and women who want nothing to do with God eventually get what they wish for. It’s time we embrace this fundamental truth: We must depend upon Someone beyond ourselves if we hope to achieve anything beyond belief. America is now in such a mess that we need something unbelievable to occur.
I am humbly calling for the people in every church and synagogue in America to engage in a morning of humility, fasting and prayer to confess our sins and ask God for forgiveness this coming weekend. Leaders, call your people to a solemn time of repentant prayer and dependence upon God during your worship gathering. Start doing it every single weekend from now on.
We need an unwavering commitment in the same direction—for as long as it takes. And don’t just pray for America. Ask God to break you, to start a real spiritual awakening in your own life. When God has answered your prayers, Plan A will be underway. Remember, there is no Plan B.
The National Week of Repentance is coming October 30-November 6. Get yourself and your people ready at RevivalMatters.com. It is time for the hope and change that only God can deliver. Remember, America, there is no Plan B.
Michael Anthony is founder and president of Godfactor.com; founder of the National Week of Repentance (RevivalMatters.com); and lead pastor of Grace Fellowship of York, Pennsylvania. (GraceYork.com). All views expressed are his own and not the official position of any organization.
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