A Dread Sovereign

I believe the Church has stepped in some mud puddles in this generation regarding who God is. One of the greatest mistakes the Church has made in this country during the last sixty years is doing away with the living God of the Bible. Our God would never send anybody to hell, much less bring corrective judgments down upon them.

We just don't believe in a God who will punish sin, because we've shrunken God down to our size and smaller, and placed him on our level. And because of this, our concept of God today is wrong-headed, and we are ignorant of his dealings with mankind today. Perversion spills out across the land like an open sewer.

Television transmits nudity and sex into every home in America, and the nation lies in a drunken stupor of lust and sin, when sinful and corrupt practices in the land bring down the judgment of God upon the land. It is the Church's duty to view God biblically, and to preach sermons on repentance and reformation, to appease an angry and dreaded sovereign. We just don't think God will judge us today, because our concept of God is perverted.

Mass evangelism over the last several decades has broadened the way of salvation, and shrunken God down to man's level. It's changed the way we view God. Listen to me, brother pastor, God's not on your level.

In the book of Job, we find the Almighty demanding of Job to answer Him for the following declarations about Himself. In Job chapter 38, God speaks to Job, beginning in verse 3, Gird up now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if thou hast understanding, who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? Who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the foundations fastened? Or who laid the cornerstone thereof, when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? I will stop there, friends.

Here God declares His marvelous works a creation that makes mortal man look like an ant. The church in former days used to maintain an elevated view of God, at least in this country about three hundred years ago, where the pastors in the land recognized the judgments of God in the land through natural disasters like earthquakes. And they preached sermons acknowledging God's displeasure in the land.

They preached revival sermons to turn the hearts of the people back to God. Ministers were wiser then and held a high view of God, unlike us today, who put God on man's level. Allow me to give you an example, friend.

Listen to a sermon preached by a leading pastor in Boston in 1755, when an earthquake shook the city, making the church bells ring. Listen to the title of his sermon, Earthquakes, the Works of God and Tokens of His Just Displeasure. Being a discourse on that subject, wherein is given a particular description of this awful event of providence made public at this time on occasion of the late dreadful earthquake, which happened on the 18th of November, 1755.

The text of the sermon was Psalm 18, 7. Then the earth shook and trampled. The foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth. But we don't view God like that today.

Our God would never be wroth with us. We believe we are his fair-haired favorites, so we can sin all we want to and get away with it. The wrathful God is an out-of-date version of God, found only in the Old Testament.

At least that's what we've told ourselves. But we're ignorant of our Bibles and ignorant of our concept of God, for in the New Testament we see a wrathful God suddenly appear, as seen in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 7-9, which declares, And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, with his mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power. But I'm afraid, friends, that if we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that many today have gotten out their pocket knives and have whittled out a God for themselves, who won't get in the way of their daily living.

Natural calamities fall all around us in rapid succession, and we suffer beneath them in ignorance because our church leaders refuse to stand tall in the pulpit and fear God instead of man and call sin black and hell hot and warn their hearers that a provoked sovereign is displaying his hot displeasure in the land through natural calamities by way of remedial judgments upon a sin and people who refuse to bow the knee in fear of him and who refuse to turn from their wicked ways in repentance towards him. What terrible catastrophe will have to befall America from a dread sovereign to get our attention? Heaven help us all!