Through God’s providential powers, 2016 may go down in the annals of American history as the year when God permanently sealed our country to its foreboding death. It is still unknown at this time what powers God will finally appoint to bring this country to its knees with absolute judgment.
For this time in our history, we are drawn to the burden of the prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk penned his book around 627 B.C. on the eve of the Babylonian Captivity; it is possible he may have lived into the third deportation of 586 B.C. The meaning of his name bears the hope of “embrace.” The prophet wanted “to embrace” God and/or His people, or the prophet wanted “to be embraced” by his God Who answered him when he cried out.
The Prophet’s Cry
The true remnant of the End Time today finds itself with a similar heart perplexity as the prophet Habakkuk found amidst the deep debaucheries and violence consuming the once sacred city of Jerusalem. He wondered how long God would wait before bringing a finality of judgment upon the wicked and perverse city of Jerusalem. Habakkuk cried out:
O Lord, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention. Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth (1:2–4).
As Christians living in America, we never would have thought eight years ago (yea, four years ago, yea, even perhaps twelve months ago) that our country would be found in the swirling vortex of intellectual insanity, characterless leadership, ineptitude of academia, moral bankruptcy pervaded with inordinate affections of strange flesh controlling the laws of our country. And with all of this cacophony and absurdity, there is the mixture of covenants among the diabolical powers of the abyss of Satanic darkness. Yes, we cry as Habakkuk amidst our own national sinful distress, “O Lord, how long” before full judgment is sent upon this evil, God-forsaking nation called America?
The Lord told Abraham, “For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Gen. 15:16b). Nevertheless, it seems that the evils of America are more appropriately at the proportions mentioned in Revelation 18:5, “For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.” The cry continues in Revelation 18:6, “Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double.” In all that now plagues our nation, we seriously wonder if the cup of our iniquity can take another drop of evil.
The Lord’s Response
Unto Habakkuk’s disturbing cry the Lord responded, “Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvellously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you” (1:5). God proceeded to declare to Habakkuk that He was working, and that He would use the Chaldeans to bring this judgment upon His people in Jerusalem. In the light of the Chaldean reputation for evil, and of the barbarous atrocities they were known to commit, the prophet was shocked that God would use such a people to judge Jerusalem. The ignoble Chaldeans were far worse in their sins as heathen than even the deep sins of the Jews at Jerusalem. The prophet was shocked that God would work this way to bring about the needed judgment.
In the midst of this wonderment, Habakkuk then questioned God’s method of correction and judgment. How could the Judge of all the earth use a much worse evil to correct an evil? For such a judgment could get out of hand and take the matter further than what should be taken in judgment. Oh, the symbolic Chaldean powers that are prevalent in our times! Any one of them could be used by God to bring about the final destruction of America.
The Prophet’s Response and God’s Response
In Habakkuk 2, the prophet responds to the Lord’s sobering words of His coming judgment by the Chaldeans. He is hoping that God will change His mind, and perhaps another remedy to the evil of Jerusalem could be produced by the Lord. Therefore, the prophet stands upon his watch, “to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved” (2:1).
The answer does come from the Lord in three declarations. (1) First, He assures Habakkuk that He truly will balance the books in speaking of judgment upon all who do wrong. The child of God must believe that the Lord will vindicate His truth and holiness. But, we must remember that judgment may not immediately come, because God is not willing that any should perish; but He wills that all men come to repentance. (2) The Lord also assures that there is a wonderful and blessed day coming when the earth will be filled with “the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea” (2:14). Oh, what a soul-stirring consolation to know that there will be a day when evil will be overthrown, and that God’s Truth will rule as a song over the earth. Yet, (3) the Lord clarifies that there is to be a chain of events over time in-between these two assurances.
For this in-between period the Lord tells Habakkuk, “Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith” (2:4). This declaration is thus: “Behold the proud! His soul is not right within him; but the just [or the righteous] shall live by his faith.” This declaration is where we find ourselves today. The proud control the world’s leadership; they rule and judge by their pride and self-ambition; there is no desire or consciousness of God in what they do or say. In the light of this, God’s remnant will see no evidence of the triumph of truth, or of that which is right and noble. The Christian will have to live his life during this season of global history simply by faith alone.
If we walk only by sight, today we see no thread of hope that the right and the true will triumph. We cannot existentially pretend the deep, diabolical evil of this present age does not exist; rather, we must acknowledge it. The Word of God declares what the age to come will be; God will bring to naught all of the evil, and truth and holiness will become the watchword of the new world.
The Just Shall Live by Faith
Rising in Scripture is the fourfold view of this phrase given in Habakkuk 2:4; each of the contexts is important for specific seasons of our lives. Here in Habakkuk the first emphasis seen is upon his faith. Our living as a Christian in this generation cannot be upon another’s faith; each needs a biblical, personal faith. We are in a critical time in history when families are being divided; the Devil is working to draw children away from “the faith” of their godly parents. Oh, how the Devil and the world collaborate and conspire to draw the hearts of children away from the God of their fathers! We must pray that God will settle this personal faith in the hearts of the children of the remnant at a time when lukewarmness seems to have become the greater characteristic of children.
The second emphasis of this biblical phrase is found in Romans 1:17, when Paul speaks of the Gospel and declares, “For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith.” In this context the emphasis is upon the word just. Only God can declare a man just or righteous before Him. It is through the Word of God alone “in faith” that we come to believe this declaration of righteousness for our lives. Professing Christians tend to constantly question whether God has justified them. The apostle Paul cries out, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth” (Romans 8:33). We must believe we have been made just by God Himself according to faith in His Word.
The third emphasis of this phrase is found in Galatians 3:11, “But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith.” The emphasis in this passage is upon the word faith. It is not by the law that we are justified; it is not by the law we live this justification, but it is by faith in contrast to the works of the flesh. A living faith in the human heart is forever in obedience to the Word of God, for hearing in obedience is what creates that faith in the believer.
The final presentation of this phrase is in Hebrews 10:38, “Now the just shall live by faith: but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.” Here, the emphasis is upon the word live. Yes, there is the act of faith to be justified; nevertheless, justified people before God must live by faith. We dare not go back on God! This living by faith is one of the evidences of the Elect: they will not draw back unto perdition, but will continue to believe (in the present tense, Heb. 10:39) to the saving ultimately of the soul. There are three tenses concerning our salvation: we have been saved from our sins; we are being saved; and, we shall be saved in the end.
The Prophet’s Prayer and Resolve
Habakkuk 3 gives the prayer of this dear prophet. He gave it upon the Shigionoth, a word meaning “loud crying.” He knew inevitable judgment was coming. He prayed:
O Lord, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy.
This cry for revival must be our hope at this time in history. There can be no turning back of America, no matter who is elected its president. The wound of this country has become incurable. In a previous Straightway article entitled “Wherefore God Gave Them Up” (January-March 2014, Vol. 42, Number 1), we gave the following observations:
One of the passages of Scripture that rises in condemnation of our time in history is Romans 1, the presentation of one of seven New Testament apostasies. This passage concerns the apostasy of the natural man through immorality. Though individuals may be found in various sins of fornication (the general term for all sexual acts of uncleanness), a line can be crossed where one goes beyond the acts of fornication and enters into a state of those sins, making a supreme ruling choice to never leave that state of sin. Only God knows when this line is crossed and when He has given an individual up to the state and power of that sin.
The three stages leading to this apostasy are found in the first chapter of Romans. (1) The first stage (Romans 1:24, 25) is where God gives them up to uncleanness. We acknowledged in the article that “we believe the first giving up of our country took place in the 1960s, the most demoralizing decade in our country’s history.”
(2) The second stage (Romans 1:26, 27) is where God gives them up unto vile affections. For this stage we made the following observations:
I believe we witnessed this giving over by God in the early days of President Obama’s administration, when the floodgates were opened to make lawful such inverted sins. The first stage of “giving up” by God was in the realm of the perverted sin of fornication. In contrast, this second stage is in the context of the inverted sin of fornication.…
In this stage of apostasy men are given over unto “vile affections,” or passions of dishonor. Romans 1:26, 27 is a clear description of sodomy, of homosexuality, of lesbianism, and all evil, inverted forms of that realm of darkness. Paul calls it, “that which is against nature.”
(3) The third stage (Romans 1:28) is where God gives them over to a reprobate mind:
I believe this has taken place in the past three years. Now insanity rules the leadership, the courts, the schools, the businesses, the music, the art world, the economy, and every part of the government. Our country is in the final judgment; it must, apart from a miraculous delay of providence, go under overthrowing itself. Such a people had some kind of God-consciousness at one point; now they have turned away from Him…. They rejected God, and they rejected Him for every part of their lives. Therefore, God will reject them and give them over to a reprobate thought life. Our nation’s leadership hates God; it refuses to acknowledge God in anything or for anything. Because of this and the evils of the first two judgments, God now has given them over to a mind void of judgment. At this time in our country, we cannot expect leadership to think rightly and rationally; God has now made them incapable of sane judgment.
We concluded the article with these observations:
The average American does not know how severe these judgments of God have become in our country. And any restraint by the remaining conservatism of our country is merely a hand trying to keep back a tidal wave of destruction. The only reason we have not totally collapsed into ruins is the mercy of God for His remnant. Will we as true Christians experience the full collapse of this country before the secret coming of Christ for the Elect, or will we go through it as a prelude to the coming Tribulation Period? America, as we have known it, must die. And its death will be the worst in history, for we have had the greatest light of biblical truth through many stirrings of awakenings and revivals. But alas, those days are both gone and despised by the present generation, yea, even the present generation of the institutional Church. To be a “true” Christian today makes us a prey for the government and for the nominal church. To be a “true” Christian makes one an enemy to society and to the new age of man to come.
The Prophet’s Final Words
As Habakkuk realized the inevitable judgment, he stated in 3:16,
When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops.
This condition is where we stand today in the light of what is coming to America. It is now impossible to pray, “God bless America,” for we would be praying for blessing upon its sins. There may be a cry for God to “save America,” but it is beyond the will of man to change the sins that have been woven into the warp and woof of the very fabric of present society. Perhaps we could pray for God to have “mercy” on the remnant within the divinely-appointed judgment. In the days of this prayer by the prophet, the impending judgment quickly followed.
We think of the words of the English poet Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford for writing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism (1811). He espoused in this work that “mankind had only to will that there should be no evil and there would be none.” We have come to that hour in America when the leadership has tried to will evil out of existence. We also remember the words of Marquis De Sade: “The goal of humanism is the death of God. Man will not be free until God is abolished, until there is total freedom to believe and live anything and everything contrary to the Bible.” This has become the heart of America.
Yet, we must see the fixed heart of God’s prophet in all of this sobering message from God to him.
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places (3:17–19).
May God grant to us the spirit, the heart, and the vision of these last three verses for they become another cry of the remnant, revived and coming to know that in God all of our springs will be found.
Oh, how great the difference between the opening and the closing of this prophet’s burden! He begins as a man in a holy anger over a city in deep sin, a man bewildered, confused, and in a great perplexity. But, it is evident that he closes as one who has found the answers to all of his perplexities, coming to rest in God Himself.
Yes, the soul cries, “O Lord, How long!” God will answer prayer in bringing the worst judgment we have ever known through the destruction of all that made America great. But no matter what happens when it comes, when God strikes the natural resources, the economy, the national heritage, the banks, the businesses, and the past “great American dream,” may we come to a revival of heart that although all of the greatness of America collapses and comes to nothing, we will rejoice in the Lord God of our salvation. May we rise to live above this mess of hopelessness—we are seeking a city whose builder and maker is God!