If we as individuals and as a nation of people follow God's commands, we are going to be blessed, but if we do not, then we can be sure that because God loves us He is going to punish us. That punishment is meant to bring us to repentance so that we will get straightened out and hopefully then we can be saved.
I read this primarily because of what the United States is going through right now. We are indeed making efforts to understand what we are going through and why we are going through it as a nation. There are many specifics regarding this that we need to understand especially as it applies to us because, brethren, by us knowing these things the judgment on us is going to be more severe than it is on the Israelites, at least in terms of spiritual responsibility. We do not want to get caught in what the United States of America appears to be headed toward.
I received a sobering but also revealing email from Geoff Preston in Perth Australia regarding the state of this American culture that we live in. The first part of this email is fairly well known but the last half of it consists of a survey that I personally do not recall ever seeing before. The fairly well known portion of it is a conclusion reached by a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh in 1887; his name was Alexander Tyler. He had this to say about the Athenian Republic that ended about 2200 to 2300 years ago. I think you will remember what Profession Tyler said.
There are eight rungs on this ladder. Which rung of the ladder do you believe the United States of America stands upon? Why am I asking you this? Because, brethren, we live here. Following Professor Tyler's observations, the email continues with the results of a survey completed after the most recent presidential election held in 2008. This analysis was made by Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University Law School in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Professor Olson believes that the United States is somewhere between the complacency and apathy phase of Professor Tyler's historic progression chart. Forty percent of the nation's population has already reached the governmental dependence stage - forty percent are living from paychecks received from the federal, state, county, and city governments. This includes forty two million who are living on food stamps and additional millions more who are receiving Social Security, veteran's pensions, and other pensions from state and local governments. Of the remaining one hundred and eighty million, around sixty million are less than adult aged children. That leaves at the very most about forty percent of the population, about one hundred twenty million, the overwhelming majority of which are middle-income people. These are the people who are taxed and keep things running.
I would say that the evidence is beginning to pile up that indeed we are living in the dependency stage and the next thing is the breakup of the government of the United States of America into a dictatorship, if Professor Tyler's conclusions reach that point.
Governments produce no profits. Their total income is from taxation. Governments run on other people's money and yet many, many in this nation who are dependent on the government perceive this money as something owed to them by the government, not the fact that somebody else had to earn that money by working. Are you beginning to see how lopsided things are becoming in the United States of America? There was a time when virtually everybody worked to support themselves and also to pay their share of the income tax. Because of the way things have been run in the United States of America, which is patently unfair to the bulk of the people who are producing, we see more and more people slipping into the dependency state in terms of their relationship with the government, and they are always going to put themselves into a position where they will vote for the one they feel is going to pay them.
Professor Olson goes on … . . .
So there was no rain in Israel because they were practicing idolaters. They needed to see, needed to go through this trial of drought to bring them about. We could go to Amos 4 and see that God does that there as well. But let's go back to Leviticus 26, and we'll see that this is one of the curses for disobedience and idolatry - particularly idolatry and Sabbath breaking. It tends to push God's buttons to make it very dry, as a warning.
That basically means that He will shut up the heavens, and He will keep the earth from producing. Maybe one is the result of the other; but it's pretty dire. Let's go now to Deuteronomy 28 - another chapter of blessings and cursings. We'll see a very similar thing here.
