God's State of the Union Address

Usually every year, often in late January, the President of the United States gives what has come to be called the State of the Union address. And it's something that's actually required in the U.S. Constitution. However, the Constitution doesn't spell out how, or when, or how often a State of the Union is to be given. So over the years, the timing, the frequency of the State of the Union address has changed, as well as how it is given. For about the first 200 years of our country's existence, the State of the Union address was given in written form by the President to the Congress. And only in about the last century has it been given orally as a speech to the Congress.

And usually the State of the Union address spells out the President's agenda, his priorities, particularly the budget priorities that flow from his agenda. In other words, how the President thinks trillions of dollars of taxpayer money should be spent. And it spells out what the President plans to accomplish, the legislation that he wants to see enacted, and it describes his vision of what the nation ought to be, of what it ought to look like, and how its citizens should act. And the next presidential address is coming up in about two and a half months, usually around late January. And what will be said in that State of the Union address? For that matter, who will be giving the State of the Union address? At this point, we honestly don't know. The vote counting problems, the irregularities, various apparently illegal activity, lawsuits, and so on have made this the most chaotic presidential election of my lifetime by far. And as a result of this, in a little over two and a half months, or about two and a half months, the nation will watch the presidential State of the Union address.

And about half of those watching will be filled with joy, and about the other half will be filled with some variety of panic, and great unease over that. For most of the last forty years, the president has typically started his State of the Union address with this phrase, The State of the Union is strong. And they've started their speeches with that regardless of the actual circumstances. And whoever ends up giving the State of the Union address in about two and a half months will probably say the State of the Union is strong.

Even though most of the people watching and listening will want to believe that, nearly everyone watching it will know that deep down it's a lie. It is simply not true. The State of the Union is clearly not strong. And anyone with a sense of historical perspective will clearly realize this. I've lived for almost two-thirds of a century now, and I've never seen anything like this. What is going on in the nation right now? Some of you have been around longer. And you know that you also have never seen anything like this. The nation has never seen anything quite like this, at least not since the Civil War of the 1800s.

I've never seen the country in a more dangerous and divided place. One thing that has been on my mind a lot over the course of this past year is Bible prophecy. And you know that because I've given a series of sermons on that subject, starting with more than half a year ago going back to the beginnings of the COVID-19 epidemic with a sermon about epidemics and Bible prophecy. What Bible prophecy has to say about that.

I've talked about the Blessings and Curses chapters. And I've talked about Matthew 24 and another sermon about Matthew 25. I've talked about end time events associated with the return of Jesus Christ. And also talked about the Millennium and the fulfillment of some of the prophecies about that wonderful world to come. About the great hope that we have from God's holy days and what they teach us about God's plan and what He's doing.

And how He will work out everything according to His plan. And because of the current state of the nation and the obvious crisis that we are in right now, today I want to continue with another sermon about Bible prophecy. And the title, considering the timing of things right now, is God's State of the Union Address. God's State of the Union Address. What I'm going to do during our sermon time today is to give a State of the Union Address. Not from a political party, not from a political candidate. But I'm going to give you a State of the Union Address from the ultimate head of state, which is God.

God Himself. If He were to examine and to address the nation today about the State of the Union, what would He say? What would He tell us? For several decades now, again, the presidents have traditionally started their State of the Union Address with the State of the Union is strong. Would God say that about our nation today? Or would He have something else to say? I think He would probably start a State of the Union Address with something like, The State of the Union is one of great danger.

The State of the Union is one of great danger. Why do I say that? Well, I say that because in His Word we have recorded a State of the Union Address. To a people who had been greatly blessed by God, to a people who had come from nothing, from their origins in slavery, to become a great power in the ancient world, to a people to whom He had given His Word, the Bible, the Scriptures, and told them to live by that Word, and they would be tremendously blessed above all nations of the earth, and to a people whom also He had warned again and again of the consequences of disobeying Him and rejecting His Word and going your own way.

And today we do understand who prophetically the descendants of ancient Israel are. We know that the modern nation of Israel is descended primarily from two of the twelve tribes of Israel, the tribes of Judah, from which we get the term Jews from Judah, and the tribe of Benjamin, one of the smaller of the twelve tribes. But the other ten tribes were taken away into captivity at the hands of the Assyrians.

And they carried away in captivity in the 700s B.C. and they disappeared from history. Becoming known as the Lost Ten Tribes of Israel. And we know from study of history and prophecy what happened to those tribes, because after many centuries God regathered those scattered peoples there in the British Isles and ultimately here in America, and through them fulfilled the great promises of national greatness and blessing that He had promised to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob that were never fulfilled back in biblical times, but were only fulfilled in more recent times.

And we also know that much of prophecy is dual, meaning that it had an initial fulfillment for the time in which it was written, or an earlier fulfillment, but many prophecies also have a primary, later fulfillment. And this is especially true of the prophecies of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. In fact, when the prophet Ezekiel prophesied what was Ezekiel's status, he was already in exile. The kingdom of Israel had already been defeated and its inhabitants scattered, and Ezekiel was among those people.

When he gave his prophecy, when he wrote the prophecies of his book, the kingdom of Israel was already gone. It was gone into captivity at the hands of the Assyrians. So Ezekiel was not prophesying backwards in time to what would happen to the people. He was prophesying forward to the end time, to our day today, as to what would happen to the end time descendants of Israel before the final coming of the Messiah.

So with that brief background, what would God's State of the Union address to the nation say today? Well, again, he's already given it to us. God did not use a king or a president to give a State of the Union address. He used one of his prophets, the prophet Isaiah. And the book of Isaiah starts with his State of the Union address to his people, Israel.

I'll be reading today mostly from the New Living Translation, which I think makes it a little bit clearer. And it starts off his book of Isaiah, Isaiah 1 and verse 1. Isaiah talks about how he's called by God. And then in verse 2 he begins God's State of the Union address to his people, Israel. So let's read and see this assessment that fits our nation today so well.

He starts off, Isaiah 1 and verse 2, And here, O heavens, listen, O earth, this is what the Lord says, The children I raised and cared for have turned against me. The children I raised and cared for have turned against me.

And again, we know America's identity and Biblical prophecy that we are the descendants of ancient Israel. And just as ancient Israel's existence came about through a series of miracles there, through God's divine favor and blessing and intervention, so did we come about as a nation through God's miraculous blessing and intervention. The United States began as a group of British colonies on the northwestern coast of the United States.

And through the promises given to Abraham and God's faithfulness to those promises, it grew into the greatest and most powerful nation the world has ever seen. But have we appreciated that? Have we appreciated that? For many years our nation did. Many of you are quite younger than I am here, but looking back at my childhood days, throughout my 12 years of going to the same country school during all of that time, every single day we recited a Bible prayer over the intercom of school, every single day in the pledge of allegiance to the flag.

And I still remember that prayer that students recited every single day, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. It's quoted from Psalm 19 and verse 14. And even though in my grammar school days the Supreme Court outlawed prayer and Bible reading in the schools, my school, like thousands of others, ignored that ruling by the Supreme Court and kept on doing it.

Kept on reading the Bible and praying at school every single day. And in my school, prayers were given over the school intercom every day before classes started.

And then the Supreme Court banned Bible reading as well. We continued on doing that as well. We had Bible verses read every day over the school intercom. And I still have, how many of you still have one of the little pocket Bibles that were given by the Gideons back in school? Anybody else? I have two of those on my shelf. That's how different our nation was then, that Bibles could be openly handed out to students, every student in the school. I knew at least twice, because I have two of them still on my shelf at home. Little pocket Bibles were given to every student. And again, we just simply ignored the Supreme Court rulings against that sort of thing. And we had a school Bible club that met every day before classes. And the classroom we met in was packed every day, basically standing room only. Sometimes we had Bible discussions in class. I remember Bible discussions in my Geometry class, and Bible discussions in my Biology class, and Physiology class, and so on. It didn't matter what the class was. Sometimes we just have a spontaneous Bible discussion. It just shows how different the nation was back then. Hard to think. That's half a century ago now. But as a nation, we have changed dramatically from that understanding. And not for the good. As it says here, Isaiah 1 and verse 2, The children I raised and cared for have turned against me. They've turned against me. And then he gives a pretty dramatic example here out of nature. He says, Even the animals, the donkey and the ox, know their owner and appreciate his care, but not my people Israel. No matter what I do for them, they still do not understand.

And what tragic words these are. God says that even an animal like a cow or a donkey or a puppy here appreciates what the master does for them, provides them a barn, gives them food, gives them water, that kind of thing. But God says his people aren't even as smart as a cow or a donkey or a mule. We don't even have the sense to recognize the source of our blessings.

And who has blessed us and taken care of us in that way. And in the Bible, well, the evidence of God's blessing is all around us today. But today, the American people are willfully blind to that evidence that is staring us right in the face.

And in fact, we are willfully squandering the great blessings that he has given us as a nation here and what has made America great. Continuing on with the State of the Union address, he says, Oh, what a sinful nation they are!

They are loaded down with a burden of guilt. They are evil and corrupt children who have turned away from the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel, cutting themselves off from his help. And this also is a sad commentary on where we are as a nation today, that we have cut ourselves off from God and from his help. What do I mean by that? Well, what I mean is simply that in the Bible, God has the answers to our problems as a nation and as a people and as individuals.

The answers are there. They have been there for centuries. But because we have chosen to despise God and to reject Him and to turn our backs on Him, we have cut ourselves off from those solutions. And our problems, rather than being solved, just seem to magnify and expand and grow and get worse and worse and worse. And as God says here, we are not a good people. We'd like to think we are a good and righteous people, but what does God say?

He calls us a sinful nation, loaded with burden of guilt and evil and corrupt children who have turned away from Him and despised His instruction. Continuing on, next verse, verse 5, why do you continue to invite punishment? Must you rebel forever? Your head is injured and your heart is sick.

And the first part of this verse reminds me of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity. What's his definition of insanity? To keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results. It's insanity, but that's what our nation is doing right now. As a nation, we do what has caused our problems again and again, and our solution is to double down and do more of the same, thinking it's going to be better this time.

And of course that doesn't work. And now, depending on how the election results end up here, we might be about to invite punishment on our nation again. What do I mean by that? Well, consider how many people are hell-bent on establishing socialism in the nation here. Interesting polls. I've read surveys of young adults, teens and young adults. A majority of them now prefer socialism to capitalism.

And I do mean hell-bent. I chose that term carefully because that's exactly what socialism brings. A hell on earth. A hell on earth. But politicians believe that that will solve our problems, and they want votes by promising free stuff, so they're determined to do more and more of it while overlooking the history of what socialism and communism have done everywhere they've been tried.

Venezuela being the most recent example, one of the most oil-rich, wealthy places on earth. And it's a hellhole now, where people are reduced to scavenging through the trash or find their next meal. Where people have literally gone to the zoos and killed animals to eat, to keep from starving. That's what socialism brings. But our politicians promise more and more of it because they know it buys them votes. This is not meant to be a political speech, but it's meant to be a common-sense message of causes and consequences, and again, common sense.

So I want to talk briefly about this concept of inviting punishment on ourselves, as God put it here. One of the presidential candidates says that on his first day in office he will issue several executive orders. Just discuss a few of those briefly. One of those is to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. Sounds like a good idea, right? It's good, noble effort to prevent pollution and global warming and all that kind of thing. But if you've been paying attention to what the news really is over the last four years, you know that the United States was one of only a handful, there are literally dozens, of signees to the Paris Climate Agreement.

We are one of only three or four nations that actually kept its commitment to that, to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions and so on. The other nations, the majority of them, European, failed to meet their requirements there. Some of the world's biggest polluters, China and India, were given a free pass. They were actually allowed to generate more and more greenhouse gases and pollution, while the United States, according to those Accords, would be forced to cripple our economy, reducing our economic growth and standard of living.

So that is why we withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord several years ago. So bottom line is that agreement guaranteed that the United States would damage its economy and reduce the standard of living of its people while other nations got a free pass. No consequences on it. And again, that's why we withdrew. I mentioned we actually kept our commitment to reduce greenhouse gases and emissions.

How did the nation do that? Two simple answers. Fracking and drilling for more natural gas. What is the next administration, if there is a next administration, promise to do? Eliminate fracking, eliminate drilling for natural gas. Which means what? Which means greenhouse gas emissions go up or our economy goes in the tank, one or the other. Again, we are bringing punishment on ourselves by these senseless policies here. It makes no sense until you read prophecies like this one here, where we bring punishment on ourselves.

And again, this is not meant to be a political speech to support one party or another or one candidate. It is meant to be a common sense message about causes and consequences. I went over that very thoroughly several months ago in the message about blessings and curses. You do this, you will be blessed.

You do that, you will be cursed. You will bring punishment on yourselves. So that's the purpose. That's why I'm discussing a few of these items here. I'm going to skip over some others. I was talking about another one, another executive order, that we would rejoin the World Health Organization.

WHO? WHO. Sounds great! What could possibly go wrong with rejoining the World Health Organization? Well, WHO, the World Health Organization, is a lot like the United Nations, meaning the United States pays the bulk of the bills, but others get to call the shots and spend the money. The head of the World Health Organization is an Ethiopian politician. He's not a scientist. He's not a medical doctor at all. We have no idea how much he knows about health, other than the fact that he covered up several serious epidemics of cholera and other things in Ethiopia when he was in the government there, so he does not have a good track record.

At the beginning of the coronavirus epidemic, he publicly stated that it was not a global problem, and that there was no need to restrict travel to and from China. It's a matter of public record. You can go back and look it up there. And then, after it became evident that it was a huge global problem, and growing, and thousands of people started dying, then he praised China for how the Chinese had handled it. How did the Chinese handle it? Well, they put no restrictions on their external travel, and thousands of infected Chinese flew, traveled all over the world, and spread it and made it a global pandemic that we've seen.

So again, this is the track record of who. We withdrew from that. We're not going to fund it anymore because it is a politically corrupt organization in bed with communist China. And it is. And it always has been. Well, not always, but at least for the last few years. Then there is also another executive order that is promised on the first day of the incoming administration, is to overturn the ban on people traveling to the United States from certain Muslim countries.

It's been grossly mischaracterized by our dishonest press. It's almost never stated that this ban applies only to five Muslim countries. What do those five Muslim countries have in common? Most of their people hate the United States. Most of them have barely functioning governments at all because they've been in civil wars for years. Which means there's no way to track the background of people who want to come to the United States.

Because the records have been destroyed in the civil wars in these countries. Specifically, those countries are Iran, greatest sponsor of terrorism for decades now, Syria, in the midst of civil war for the last decade or more, Libya, same thing, Somalia, same thing, Yemen, same thing. Each of these countries has one thing in common, huge numbers of Islamic Jihadists who would like nothing more than to fulfill their purpose in life, which is to wage jihad on America and kill Americans.

So, of course, it makes sense to remove the travel restrictions and let thousands of them into the country. But that is the stated policy and goal of some of our political leaders here. And again, this is absolute madness. It is inviting punishment on our nation. It is committing national suicide a little bit at a time. Punishment comes because we rebel against God and His Word. We defy what is logical, what is common sense that anybody ought to be able to understand.

And what we do is innately self-destructive. And the examples I've seen here are just...I could give a dozen like this easily here, so I've only scratched the surface. And as I've been seeing in my sermons on prophecy over several months now, we have been getting one wake-up call after another.

One after another as a nation here. One on the other, one after another. And our nation keeps ignoring those wake-up calls and doubling down on our wrongdoing. So what we do again is innately self-destructive here. And as God says to us here, as we read, your head is injured and your heart is sick. Your head is injured and your heart is sick. The way I read what God is telling us here to put it in modern vernacular, what are you thinking?

What are you thinking? Why are you doing these things that are so self-destructive to yourself here? Our actions make no sense. It's like somebody with a head injury and we cannot think straight. And as God says, our heart is sick. It's just not right. There is something corrupt and wrong and evil and twisted about our thinking here. And we are spiritually blind because of these things. Is the state of the nation strong?

Notice one more verse here from ... Actually, I forgot to include this in here. Isaiah 1 and verse 6 says, We are sick from head to foot. We are sick from head to foot, covered with bruises, welts and infected wounds without any ointments or bandages. So God says here, it's not just one or two little things that are wrong with the nation. It is sick. It is corrupt. It is injured. It is infected from head to toe.

There is no soundness in it there. We are beat up. We are bruised, injured, filled with infection and sores. And there is no way to heal it. There is no healing salve or ointments there available for it. And sadly, we have no idea why. We have no idea why because we have rejected God. And it's incredibly sobering and it's incredibly sad. And it's sad to God also. He doesn't want to see this happen to our nation.

I mentioned earlier that Ezekiel wrote after the kingdom of Israel had already been taken away into captivity at the hands of the Assyrians. So what he wrote could not apply at that time. It had already happened. It was too late. Those people were gone. That kingdom had been destroyed. So it has to apply to a different time, to our time. And let's notice what Ezekiel says. Ezekiel 18 and verses 31 and 32.

God pleads with his people Israel, put all your rebellion behind you, and get for yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O people of Israel? I don't want you to die, says the sovereign Lord. Turn back and live. And this word turn, that's used a number of times in these passages, is a word that we would use that means repent.

What does repent mean? Repent means to turn. To turn from going one direction, turn around and go the other direction. Turn from going your own way and turn to God and following His way. Another passage a few chapters later in Ezekiel 33 and verse 11. As surely as I live, says the sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked people. I only want them to turn from their wicked ways, there's that word again, turn from their wicked ways, so they can live. Turn! Turn from your wickedness, O people of Israel. Why should you die? Again, God is pleading with His people, it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to be like this. You don't have to suffer and die. Turn from your wicked ways, so you can live. Get rid of your heart and stubborn and rebellious heart. And put your rebellion behind you and then you won't have to suffer these things. And what are the consequences of a nation rejecting God and turning its back on Him? I covered some of that in a sermon on the blessings and curses, but I would like to review some of that and illustrate how these specific things are being fulfilled in our nation today. How this prophecy is coming to pass before our very eyes here. And review some of the things about what God said about a nation that turns its back on God and rejects Him. Deuteronomy chapter 28, in this chapter God first lists through the first 14 verses, they are all the great blessings that would come on His people Israel if they obeyed Him. If they followed His word and kept that. Wonderful blessings of agricultural abundance and good weather and good happy children, health, longevity, prosperity, security, peace, that kind of thing. Wonderful blessings that our nation enjoyed in large part for its first 200 years. But then, about halfway through the chapter, starting with verse 15, He starts explaining what would happen to His people, to a nation that rejects God. And He spells out the consequences. Verse 15, and I won't read all the chapter but parts of it, He says, But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God, and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you. Your towns and your fields will be cursed. Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. How does this apply? Are we seeing this being fulfilled today? For decades, for more than two centuries, the United States was a net exporter of food. It's talking about food here, your fields, your crops, your herds, and so on. For decades, the United States was a net exporter of food. When did that change? It changed actually as recently as 2005. 2005 for the first time we became a net importer of food. Meaning we now import more food than we produce. And we do, don't get me wrong, we still produce and export huge amounts of corn and wheat and soybeans, things like that. But everything else we import more than we consume. We can no longer produce enough food to feed ourselves. Which is quite staggering when you consider the tremendously agriculturally productive lands here. The great plains with all our corn and wheat and cattle and things like that. We should be able to, we did for more than the first two centuries there, but we cannot do it any longer.

Our fields, as God says here, our agricultural productivity is being cursed. And we can no longer feed ourselves. Continuing on, verse 19, he says, Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed. The Lord Himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do. Until at last you are completely destroyed for being evil and abandoning me. Anybody seen any curses lately? Any frustration? Any confusion? In our country in recent months? Seen any case, maybe, of our cities burning down for no good reason. Unprecedented levels of attacks on police and law enforcement. How about chants like happen in downtown Denver? It's either two or three weekends ago, don't recall which. Chants of no borders, no walls, no USA at all. Absolute anarchy in our streets. We have been cursed with a spirit of absolute confusion and chaos and frustration and destruction, to the point that many people, even political leaders, are calling for getting rid of the police, getting rid of law enforcement, the very people who maintain the police, getting rid of law enforcement, the very people who maintain law and order, and keep our streets safe. Consider the recent election on a local level, Colorado level, what happened here. Colorado voters chose to continue to allow mothers to kill their unborn babies up to the time of birth.

There is a proposal on the ballot to restrict abortions after 22 weeks after a baby would be viable outside the womb. It was overwhelmingly voted down to allow mothers to continue to abort their unborn children. About two weeks ago, those of you who know me know I love the outdoors, I stay up on outdoor issues and so on. Our highly educated, highly enlightened Colorado electorate approved the forced introduction of wolves into the western part of the state. Not along the front range, although one state senator had the guts to stand up and say, if we're going to reintroduce wolves, let's reintroduce them into Boulder County. Which I think is a brilliant idea, wholeheartedly. I'd vote for that any day, but I say that in jest.

But what is it going to do? You know, I've monitored wolf reintroduction for years, particularly in Yellowstone National Park. East of Conte and I used to go up there about every other year. Stopped going about 10 years ago or so.

What happened in Yellowstone? It's a classic example of government math at work. They thought reintroducing wolves, the wolves would top out at about 50 or 60 wolves. There are now more than 600 government math. Ten times is what they projected. Conte and I basically stopped going to Yellowstone because the wolves have devastated the elk and deer population down to about 10 to 20 percent of what it was prior to that.

If you don't believe me, you can go there. Routinely see herds of 100, 200, 75, 150 elk, several times a day, multiple herds. I was just up there on the way going up to the feast. Most elk I saw was about 75 in a full day. One herd of about 30 and another of about 40 or so. The elk populations, the deer populations, have been mostly wiped out by the wolves. A full grown wolf can eat about 10 pounds, needs to eat about 10 pounds of meat a day. Multiply 10 pounds by 600 wolves in the Yellowstone ecosystem.

Do the math. That's 6,000 pounds of meat a day. Three tons of meat a day that the wolves of Yellowstone consume. Your average animal, an elk, you'd get maybe 300 pounds of meat off of. So that means each day, day after day after day, the wolf packs of Yellowstone need to eat about 30 elk a day. It's no wonder the elk populations have crashed.

So what could possibly go wrong with reintroducing here in Colorado? Well, if you want to see deer and elk in the wild, you'd better see them quickly because they're not going to be there in another decade or so because of this stupid decision. Absolutely stupid decision. And also, it's going to cost millions of dollars to reintroduce them.

It's going to cost millions of dollars in a state budget that's already strapped to reimburse ranchers for the sheep and the cattle that they lose. And it's going to cost millions of dollars. Hunting is a billion-dollar industry in the state of Colorado. It's going to cost hundreds of millions when the hunters come and they can't hunt anymore because there are no animals to hunt.

So that's going to have a huge economic impact. Again, stupidity. Absolute stupidity there. And it all makes absolutely no sense. Is it curses and confusion? You bet it is. Again, I'm not trying to give this as a political speech. I'm just giving common sense. Cause and effect. What happens if you do this? What happens if you do that? And we have lost a connection, a rational understanding of cause and effect in our nation. So we're bringing these curses on ourselves here. And as I've said many times before, when you see things that do not make sense at all on a physical level, you can be pretty sure there's something going on on a spiritual level that we don't see, that we don't perceive, that there are spiritual forces at work behind the scenes, blinding people.

And are we ever seeing that right now? Continuing, verse 21 here where we left off, The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. I'd like to share with you a few statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Six in ten adults in the United States have a chronic disease. Six in ten, that's a majority of American adults, have a chronic disease.

Four in ten have two or more chronic diseases. Forty percent, not quite half, but close to it, have two or more chronic diseases. U.S. annual health care costs total $3.5 trillion. Three and a half trillion, that's approximately $10,000 per person per year. Key lifestyle risks are smoking, poor nutrition, diet, in other words, lack of exercise, excessive alcohol use. In other words, most of these health-related issues, chronic diseases, are self-inflicted.

We do it to ourselves, in other words. Continuing, Deuteronomy 28, verse 22, The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die.

The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed. What's this talking about? Well, it's obviously talking about drought, something we're quite familiar with here in Colorado. We're in one of our worst droughts ever right now. For those of you not familiar with that, try as we might, we cannot control the weather.

But God can control the weather, and He does control the weather. And in our defiance we reach a point that is the end of God's patience, and He decides to withdraw the blessings of good weather and rain and deuces and so on. This will be the result.

Can you grow crops and droughts? Can you raise cattle and droughts? Some of you do that. You know what I'm talking about here. I grew up on a small farm and are familiar with that, too.

And this will be the result. You might think also about the devastating fires. All along the Front Range a couple of months ago we were braving smoke, pretty much day in and day out there. And devastating fires in Colorado here and in California and other parts of the West, Washington and Oregon State and so on. So again, we are seeing some of these curses being fulfilled right before our eyes in the headlines. Continuing verse 25, The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven. You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth.

A little historical lesson for our younger generation here. The last war that the United States really won was World War II. 75 years ago. 75 years ago. And for the last 75 years we have had to keep soldiers stationed literally all over the world to keep the peace, including in Germany. We defeated Germany in World War II.

Korea, the Korean War, came along. I was born near the end of the Korean War. We didn't win that war. It was settled by what? By a truce, an armistice. There, and since then, for decades, we have had to keep thousands and thousands of soldiers stationed there to keep the peace. What happened in Vietnam? In Vietnam we turned it over to the South Vietnamese and went home.

What happened? Vietnam and Cambodia became killing fields. Communist killing fields in which hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered. If you want to see a good movie about it, read or watch the movie, The Killing Fields. Horrible, but that was the reality written by a Cambodian doctor who survived that. It's his story there. And it's just astounding to me that what do we have today? We have people marching in the streets demanding what?

The same kind of socialism and communism that led to those killing fields. Continuing on, a little historical background, we had our first war in Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait back in the 1980s. We defeated Saddam Hussein but then left him in power because there wasn't enough international support to remove him at that time.

So that led to a second Iraq war, which led to us having troops there for nearly 20 years. We had a big bog down in a war there that we didn't win. And now we've been in Afghanistan for nearly 20 years and haven't won.

So what our government policy now is to declare victory and go home. And so yet fall to the Taliban. All these wars brought no conclusive victories. That's what I mean when I say we haven't won a war since World War II. None of these were a conclusive victory. Well, you might say we won the initial war but we didn't win the peace. We didn't win the peace and left it in a huge mess there.

And these wars have cost us trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Why does this happen? We have the most powerful military in the world by far. Best equipment, best trained soldiers, best infrastructure, best bases, best worldwide scope of influence. But it happens because of a prophecy in Leviticus 26 and verse 19 where God says of His people Israel, I will break the pride of your power. I will break the pride of your power because of our sins. We've had the biggest military, most powerful military for the last 75 years but we don't know how to use it. We don't know how to use it.

So we let far lesser powers pick away at our power and slowly defeat us in wars of attrition until we give up and go home. And that's what's happened in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, one war after another there. Sadly, I heard just two days ago that in the new administration, if there is a new administration, a transgender person has been appointed to be the new liaison part of the transition team for the Department of Defense. And that's signaling to our military which direction they want our military to go to become another social experiment for liberal ideas and so on, for leftist ideology as it was for eight years under a previous administration.

Again, not politics. These are, I'm trying to give a biblical perspective on these issues. We are bringing curses on ourselves and I want us to understand why and how that is happening. We are doing it to ourselves. Continuing back in Deuteronomy 28, verse 26, Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away.

The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy and the itch from which you cannot be cured. Notice this tumors here. We have a nationwide epidemic of cancer. One of the great curses on our people, on our nations today. And yet foretold here. Verse 28, The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. Let's look at a few more statistics here. He's talking here about mental health. Transitions from physical curses, physical health to mental health.

What's going on with our nation mentally? A few facts off the internet from mentalhealthfirstaid.org. In the United States, almost half of adults, 46.4%, will experience a mental illness during their lifetime. Almost half. Another bullet, .5% of adults, 18 or older, experience a mental illness in any one year, equivalent to almost 44 million people. It's in one year alone in the United States. Is this normal? By no stretch of the imagination, like the other health statistics I said, is this normal? Is it normal for a nation to have that many chronic health problems?

No, it's not. Is it normal for a nation to have this kind of mental illness? No, it's not. It is part of the curses that God foretold would come on our nation. Last bullet point here. Of adults in the United States with any mental disorder in a one year period, 14.4% have one disorder, 5.8% have two disorders, and 6% have three or more mental disorders. Some more truly frightening statistics. Same source. Half of all mental disorders begin by age 14. That's our children. That's our children. Half of mental disorders begin by age 14 and three quarters by age 24.

Another bullet point. In the United States, only 41% of the people who had a mental disorder in the past year received professional health care or other services. Few other statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 1 in 6, or 17%, of children aged 3 to 17 years were diagnosed with a developmental disability as reported by parents during a study period of 2009 to 2017. These included autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and cerebral palsy among others. So about 1 out of 6 of our children diagnosed with a developmental disability.

Is this normal? No, it is a curse. It's a curse come on our nation. Continuing on, I'm going to skip through a large part of the chapter now down to verse 34. Continuing with this theme, God says, you will go mad, crazy, because of all the tragedy you see around you. The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot. And this is what happens in a nation when health and sanitation and basic systems like that begin to disintegrate.

Disease starts to spread like wildfire. In our country today, we have been seeing over the last 3, 4, 5 years diseases that had been eradicated years ago in our nation. Tuberculosis, cholera, scarlet fever, things like that.

We're now seeing them re-emerging and spreading in homeless camps because we have so many homeless people. Another curse and being brought in from immigrants from 3rd world countries, which our next administration wants to bring more of. We're bringing in curses we had cured and eradicated in the nation decades ago and now we're seeing new epidemics of them, sprouting up here and there.

And new diseases like coronavirus that has totally upended life here in the United States over the last year. Skipping down further to verse 38, It's interesting this prophecy here during the previous presidential administration, during that 8 years, we ran up as much debt in that 8 years as the country had incurred in the previous more than 200 years.

In 8 years we doubled our national debt, in other words. And since then we've added another 20-25% to our national debt. Our national debt is currently about $25 trillion. I'm glad you're all sitting down because that works out to about $75,000 for each and every person in the United States. $75,000 is your share. So you better get to work, come send down. The last time we had a trade surplus in the United States was 45 years ago, 1975. For the last 45 years we have imported more than we have exported in goods and services.

And sooner or later that catches up with you. You cannot sustain that economic status forever. Continuing, verse 45, if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees He has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed.

These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. Again, take heed. Pay attention to these signs.

And then He says, if you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until He has destroyed you.

I'm reminded of the old Bob Dylan song, You Gotta Serve Somebody. You gotta serve somebody. It might be the devil, it might be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody. And that's what God is saying here. He's saying here, you wouldn't serve me in the land that I gave to you with all of its great blessings and wealth and prosperity. So, guess what? You're gonna get to serve somebody else.

You're gonna get to serve your enemies in a foreign land who will brutally oppress you. But this is your choice. You made the choice, now you get to live with it. Skipping down to some more, verse 58, just about done with this section, if you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God, then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues.

These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. And skipping down some more, verse 65, you will find no peace or place to rest, and the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. Your life will constantly hang in the balance.

You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive. In the morning you will say if only it were night, and in the evening you will say if only it were morning, for you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. And that's basically the end of this chapter in this prophecy, a prophecy of great blessings that God promised that our nation experienced and was blessed with for about 200 years.

Blessings of national greatness for obedience, but then also a prophecy of decline and eventual collapse, such as with such horrors that we can't imagine as it says here, for turning our backs on God. Why does this happen? You touch on it a bit through this message here, but basically the descendants of Israel, primarily the United States today, have been blessed unlike any people in the entirety of human history. We've been blessed with great miracles time and time again.

We've been given unparalleled access to God's Word. And we've even, through various missionary efforts, Bible societies, like the little New Testaments I mentioned earlier here, the Gideon Society, we've been instrumental in spreading God's Word to much of the world here. And we were told that we could and should have been holy nations set apart and examples of God's way of life to the rest of the world. But as we're seeing before our eyes now, our nation is actually sinking lower into corruption and depravity and perversion than any other nations on the face of the earth.

Our nation has made collective choices over recent decades. We banned the Bible from schools, as I mentioned earlier, threw it in the trash, told people we don't want your Word. We banned prayer from public life, told God we don't want to talk to you.

We don't want to listen to you. We legalized abortion and told God that we think human life is worthless. We value the lives of murderers and criminals more than we do the innocent unborn. And then we wonder why high school students go out and take guns and shoot up their classrooms and murder their own classmates. We trashed God's instruction about marriage. And we legalized what God calls an abomination. And now in recent months we've seen churches shut down over coronavirus and people told they can't meet together to worship God.

Incidentally, the only reason we have a religious exemption here is because several churches have sued the state of Colorado and they gave in and allow exemptions for churches to meet like this, otherwise we would not be able to. But they've also said at the same time if you want to get together with thousands of your buddies and go out and riot and protest and burn buildings, that's okay. And we've seen politicians get there right in the front lines with them and approve of what they're doing there. Tell them they're doing the right thing. Bottom line is God doesn't have to curse the nation.

We're cursing ourselves, as I hope is clear by what I've been saying today in this message here. We're cursing ourselves because of our own choices, because of our own sins, and we're seeing these prophecies fulfilled before our eyes. One of my favorite quotes from Abraham Lincoln many years ago he said, from whence shall we expect the approach of danger? Talking about the nation. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.

And what we are seeing today is our nation dying by suicide. Nobody else is doing it to us. We're doing it to ourselves. Notice a few other scriptures here as we wrap this up.

Hosea 4 and verse 6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for me. What's he mean by that? Well, God, we didn't cover this passage, but He wanted Israel to be a holy nation, to be a holy priesthood. To show other nations what it was like to follow God's laws and to be blessed by that. So God says, because you have rejected knowledge, I'm rejecting you for the role that I intended, that I wanted you to fulfill.

I've rejected you from being priest for me. Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children. So He tells us in His word how we are to live. He gave us His laws. He told us how to receive His great blessings. And we've thrown it away. And because we've thrown it away, He's going to throw us away. As a nation and a people. Another passage from Isaiah 3 in verse 9.

The look on their faces testifies against them. They parade their sin like Sodom. They do not hide it. Woe to them. They have brought disaster upon themselves. You know, as a nation, we don't even know how to be in lush anymore. We don't even know how to be embarrassed anymore. Today we literally have our Sodomite parades. Literally the exact same thing Isaiah said here. They parade their sin like Sodom. Downtown Denver every year we have a big gay rights parade. This particular one's from San Francisco, but they're all over the major nations of the world now.

We have our gay rights marches and our abortion rights marches the right for mothers to murder their children and our transgender rights marches. Things utterly abominable to God. But we parade it like Sodom and do not hide it. Woe to them, God says, they have brought disaster upon themselves. We started God's State of the Union Address in Isaiah 1.

I want to skip down a little bit from where we left off to verse 15 of Isaiah 1. Things reach the point eventually in the nation where God says this. He says, from now on, when you lift up your hands in prayer I will refuse to look. Even though you offer many prayers, I will not listen, for your hands are covered with blood of your innocent victims. Abortion alone we've killed between 60 and 70 million babies since Roe v.

Wade. 60 to 70 million it's bigger than the population of many countries, it's bigger than the population of England, the United Kingdom. Horrible things. God says this multiple times that things are going to get so bad He's not going to listen to our prayers. Another one, Micah 3, verse 4. Then they will cry to the Lord to God, but He will not hear them. He will even hide His face from them at that time because they have been evil in their deeds. And another from Jeremiah. Three different prophets, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah say this. Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them, nor make intercession to me, for I will not hear you.

That ought to be incredibly sobering. It is incredibly sobering. If it doesn't sober you, I don't know what will. Finally, going back to God's State of the Union address in Isaiah 1, skipping down another few verses to verse 16. He says here that there is hope. There is hope for us.

Wash yourselves, he says, and be clean. Let me no longer see your evil deeds. Give up your wicked ways. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the orphan. Fight for the rights of widows. Come now. Let us argue this out. Let us reason together as we put in the King James. Let us argue this out, says the Lord. No matter how deep the stain of your sins, I can remove it. I can make you as clean as freshly fallen snow.

Even if you are stained as red as crimson, I can make you as white as wool. God has not changed, as He tells us in Malachi 3 and verse 6, and He does not want people to suffer and to die, as we covered earlier here. He doesn't want us to die from continuing in our life of sin and rebellion against God. He doesn't want our minds and our values and our character, what we are, to be polluted with the kind of values we see promoted in the world today, and what is politically correct and normal in this society. He urges each of us to choose life rather than the ways that lead to death and destruction.

So I hope that God will give us ears to hear and eyes to see that we can all wake up to the reality of what is taking place in our nation as we cover today to see what is really going on so that we not be caught asleep, that we not be caught on a weirce, so that we choose rightly and choose life.