The following "Question" was asked by a member of the congregation at Grace Community Church in Panorama City, California, and "Answered" by their pastor, John MacArthur Jr. It was transcribed from the tape, GC 70-23, titled "Questions and Answers--Part 51."  A copy of the tape can be obtained by writing, Word of Grace, P.O. Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412 or by dialing toll free 1-800-55-GRACE. Copyright 2001 by John MacArthur Jr., All Rights Reserved.

Question

Answer

Yes, I think the judgment that’s defined in Romans 1.

Question (continued)

Now I know there’s tons of wickedness and evil around us, but sir, it seems to me there’s a lot of godliness! Look at the people that are here. There’s hundreds of thousands of dedicated Christians in America, and don’t you believe that right now we are seeing some of God’s blessings on America? I.e., (and I don’t want to get political) Bush barely got in by the skin of his teeth. That was due to Christians praying--I mean, that’s what I think. Look what we’re doing to the Taliban. Bush is surrounded by godly men, you know. The missionaries got free! Whoever would have thought the missionaries would have been freed? So, tell me your opinion. It seems to me that God is blessing!

Answer (continued)

Well, I will respond this way: God will always bless his people. He will do what He wills for his people, but He will show himself faithful to his people. Those girls over there, we would have said, if they had been killed by the Taliban, that God had a purpose and took them to glory--that would have been the greatest blessing possible! We could conclude that for his own glory and to show himself faithful and to show that He’s a God who hears and answers prayer, God has been glorified in their release. It’s also true there were six other people released and we could have concluded that this was a testimony to the faithfulness of God to his people.

The issue is, does God somehow have some obligation to a nation as an entity? And the answer to that is “no,” certainly not this nation and certainly not a nation that is dominated by the evil that we are dominated by. I mean, understand this. God is going to bless George Bush who is his child. I really do believe that God allowed him to be here for such a time as this. I don’t want to get political either, but I would hate to see the Clinton corps trying to run the world at a time like this. I would hate to know what the whole Al Gore thing would have looked like in a time like this. We need mature men, men of statue, men of statesmanship, men of vast experience on a national level to provide what needs to be provided in a time of crisis for the sake of our national safety. And that’s fine, but I don’t believe, in any sense, that God has done anything that I could interpret as a categorical blessing on a nation of unbelieving people who have done everything they could, worked very hard, to make sure God is completely out of the public discourse.

But I do believe God will bless his own, as He sees fit to bless his own. He will do that in any time. He will gather his own, as the last book of the Old Testament, Malachi, says, “In the day of his judgment, He will collect his own. He will gather his jewels,” he says, “that day, and no judgment will fall upon them.” As God blesses certain of his own children in effective places, in high places, in significant places, the blessing may spill over on others. It’s like being married to a believer--a non-believer married to a believer--in I Corinthians 7 “is blessed in the household of the believer” because of the spillover effect. But don’t for a minute think that because you are seeing a sort of a groundswell of interest in God that this is tantamount to some real turning to God! I don’t see that…I don’t see that happening. God will always bless his own people, but when you look at the spiral in America, you’re not going to see it change; at least, predictably, I can’t see anything that’s going to change it.

When the war cools down--and I don’t know that it’s God that’s defeating the Taliban. I mean, whoever’s got the biggest guns and the most bombs is going to win that one. And whoever’s up above when you’re down below is in the catbird seat. So there are very obvious human factors for that. But I believe that when all of this quiets down, the now-silent, immoral leadership and influence group of this country, including the media, are going to rise right back into the same place they were before and the old agendas are going to just be reasserted again. I would like to think that’s not going to happen.

We just need to be faithful to continue to proclaim the truth, but know this: in the midst of all of this, God for us is a shelter in a time of storm. He is our rock, He is our defender, He is our shepherd--He leads us in quiet places by still waters and green pastures and He brings us to our eternal home. We will be blessed in the midst of all of this.

Added to Bible Bulletin Board's "MacArthur’s Questions and Answers" by:

Tony Capoccia
Bible Bulletin Board
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