2 Samuel 21:1–6 (ESV)  1 Now there was a famine in the days of David for three years, year after year. And David sought the face of the LORD. And the LORD said, “There is bloodguilt on Saul and on his house, because he put the Gibeonites to death.” 2 So the king called the Gibeonites and spoke to them. Now the Gibeonites were not of the people of Israel but of the remnant of the Amorites. Although the people of Israel had sworn to spare them, Saul had sought to strike them down in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah. 3 And David said to the Gibeonites, “What shall I do for you? And how shall I make atonement, that you may bless the heritage of the LORD?” 4 The Gibeonites said to him, “It is not a matter of silver or gold between us and Saul or his house; neither is it for us to put any man to death in Israel.” And he said, “What do you say that I shall do for you?” 5 They said to the king, “The man who consumed us and planned to destroy us, so that we should have no place in all the territory of Israel, 6 let seven of his sons be given to us, so that we may hang them before the LORD at Gibeah of Saul, the chosen of the LORD.” And the king said, “I will give them.”

This largely ignored passage of Scripture coupled with another like: Proverbs 28:2 (ESV) “When a land transgresses, it has many rulers, but with a man of understanding and knowledge, its stability will long continue.” – ought to give us great pause.

Recently, MSNBC ran a video op-ed by Lawrence O’Donnell regarding the current Native American protests over the oil pipeline proposed to traverse the Dakota territory. YOU CAN VIEW IT HERE – it is only a tad over 4 minutes.

What O’Donnell reminds us of in this piece, is the abominable way in which much of American history is stained with Native American blood, as settlers and pioneers invaded lands that were not their own.

As I watched, and contemplated things like the way in which our forefathers (in many cases) thought nothing of dispossessing and sometimes slaughtering whole people groups to take the land they wanted, I grieved. This too, is part of our American heritage. One of which we ought to be nationally ashamed and repentant. As the piece goes on however, we are reminded of how those wrongs have never been dealt with in any satisfactory way.

Then I considered the way America was plunged into the darkness of antebellum slavery. And I rejoiced that that institution was broken apart. But I also trembled at how in the aftermath, we’ve enslaved a vast part of the African American people group through government sponsored programs that rob so many of them of the dignity of work. Producing a deliberately handicapped segment of society, caught in a cycle of poverty, ignorance and moral decay.

And, I thought of abortion. Over 50 million children slaughtered in their mother’s wombs, with hearty government approval and assistance. Of unjust wars, where we did not come to the aide of those victims of genocide and ethnic cleansing, except where it impacted our financial bottom line.

And yet I rejoiced at how we entered the fray against the rise of Nazism and other fascist movements.

All said, I do fear the reality of how our national sins, unrepented of, are not somehow outweighed by the good we’ve done. Though there has been much and unprecedented good.

God does not ignore unrepentant sin, because one does good too.

And America, is in the larger case, unrepentant for her sins.

The beginning signs of judgment abound. Unbridled sexual immorality, rampant secularism, personal autonomy to the exclusion of all other authority, and bloated government of such proportion as to be unsustainable.

We do not need a new leader in the Whitehouse.

We need mass conversion to Jesus Christ as Lord; praying and pleading Christians and; a Spirit informed grief that leads to national repentance.

Apart from these, make no mistake – America WILL fall.

Sooner, rather than later.

Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus.