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A 21-day Spiritual Journey
Day #2, December 2, 2008
America, What Went Wrong? God is Angry!by Yinka Vidal, author Closer Walk With Thee
When I woke up on Tuesday morning of December 2, 2008, I received an urgent message from the spirit realm. The spirit of God in me started to groan. I knew I was getting ready to receive an unpleasant message from the invisible world of God. December is usually the time of year when I am usually visited by a group of divine messengers. They usually follow me everywhere I was going. I still do not quite understand the process, except to describe what tends to happen to me around this time of year. As a result, I set December aside for a 21-day fast. This morning, I sat down to read my Bible for my regular morning devotion. Immediately, I was given three sources to read. This is with the understanding of conveying the Lord’s messages coming from the spiritual realm to the earthly realm. The first source was Isaiah chapter #1. The second was St. Matthew chapter #23. The third was chapter #40 of the Purpose Driven Life book. As it turned out, I was planning to read the last two sources anyway. But the book of Isaiah started shouting at me as if God wanted to convey messages to me through this book.
With the Holy Spirit guiding me while reading through these sources, these are the messages being conveyed to us from the invisible world of the Holiness of God.
Isaiah Chapter #1 – God is Angry!
I was shocked when I read chapter one verses 1 – 15 of the book of Isaiah. I could not believe what I was reading. God is angry and he used this part of the Bible to convey his displeasure to the nation. The spirit of God instructed me to read the rest of the chapter.
"When you spread out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you, even though you make many prayers, I will not hear. Your hands are full of blood," - Isaiah 1:15.
This verse among many jumped out at me because it confirmed what Jesus revealed to me in December 2006. I was told that time, "The spirit of the Lord is groaning in pain because there is too much bloodshed in the world." I documented this in a chapter called the Coming Catastrophe in a book yet to be released in the second volume of my book, Closer Walk With Thee published by Lara Publications Inc. St. Louis MO.
St. Matthew 23 – Jesus Placed Curses in the Earthly Realm
The entire chapter of St. Matthew expressed Jesus’ displeasure over the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his time. Jesus was angry because the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Scribes were groups of religious leaders of the time imposing both religious rituals and traditions causing people a lot of hardship. Yet, they themselves did not obey some of these laws. For example Jesus said, "Therefore whatever they tell you to observe, that observe and do, but do not do according to their works, for they say and do not do. For they bind heavy burden, hard to bear, and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers," – St. Matthew 23:3-4.
The same way the religious leaders of Jesus time were causing people to suffer, the same way the religious leaders today refused to see the economic policies causing an average person to suffer. Inadvertently, Christians today are supporting political leaders who are engaged in the economic policies leading most of the poor and the working class into hardship. However, because of our political positions, we refused to speak out against those policies. We support leaders who engage in the policies of economic genocide causing great hardship for an average family. Only God knows how many families will collapse as a result of this economic meltdown caused by this administration. Thank goodness that administration ends January 2009. Instead of addressing the issues, we want to blame other people for the failed economic policies of this administration. Hypocrisy is the word shouting at me in this chapter of St Matthew as defined by Jesus himself. Instead of preaching the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ, we ended up preaching the gospel of politicians. The gospel of God was polluted from the pulpit for political gains.
Purpose Driven Life Chapter #40 – God’s Solutions
This is the last chapter of the very popular book of Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. He concluded his book by challenging people not to worry so much about what people think about them. They are to live a life of purpose for God by serving others.
However, contrary to the message of this author, many Christians want to be popular. There are Christians talk show hosts who based their programs on serving their own desires instead of serving God’s purpose. They positioned their programs to serve politicians instead of serving Jesus. Unfortunately without realizing the implications of their programs being too politicized, and leaving the gospel of Jesus at the roadside.
Implications of these three Sources
God’s message is glaringly obvious. We repent and change our wicked ways, and God forgives. We refuse to repent and face catastrophic consequences.
This is the first time I directly received three sources to describe the Lord’s message to the nation. Prior to this Tuesday morning, three messages were shouting at me. The first was; Greed, the second was; the suffering of the poor and the working class, and the third was; the bloodshed of the innocent. Just as I was thinking about how to put these topics into writing, the Lord gave me references to confirm his message.
We need to stop telling ourselves lies. If we keep telling these lies, we may never get out of this mess we have created. Not poor people, but the greed of the businesses brought us the economic collapse. This is the result of what happens when the poor people and the working class are continuously being victimized due to economic genocide. What happened to all these monies? Evidently they must have disappeared overnight. Some people got the money in their pockets as the mass of people are currently suffering. As a nation whether we believe or not, we are currently under a giant curse. Only the truth can set us free. Just give all the money to big businesses they will create jobs and wealth will trickle down. Instead of creating jobs, they took the money and ran. Then money stop circulating because a very few of the people got the money. This economic policy of milking the working class for the rich was a colossal failure!
The failure of these economic policies did not happen overnight. Deregulation caused credit card companies to steal money from people. Gas companies were gouging prices. Other businesses were allowed to conduct scams as legitimate business. Even some legitimate credit card companies would place bogus charges on credit card bills, hoping they would escape customers’ notice. Some of the phone companies were in partnership with scam artists from Canada stealing money from people. Consumers were being robbed blind for the past eight years of this administration. Yet, we were wondering why people are afraid to spend money. Groceries prices have gone up and so were other costs of living. Hard working families can no longer make ends meet. Recently the number of homeless families has increased despite both parents are working. The rate of both suicide and depression has gone up. Despite, some Christian leaders claimed they do not know what is going on. Give me a break!
When Jesus himself cried out about the bloodshed of the innocent in December 2006, I knew the nation would eventually plunge into crisis. I did not know how much or how far. I was told that the crime of the nation was like the sin of David against God when he stole a man’s wife and ended up killing him. God was displeased with David just like he is displeased with our nation today. The handwriting is on the wall. As a result, God has placed a staff of correction in our midst. Can we identify this staff of correction? Bottom line, we either follow the direction of Saul, or the direction of David. When Prophet Nathan confronted David of his sin, David repented. But when Prophet Samuel confronted Saul about his sin, Saul responded with excuses. If we look at the Bible, we can almost predict what would happen next in this nation if we refuse to repent. The spirit of God pointed to the stories of different kings in the book of Chronicles prior to the election. When a new king refuses to follow God’s way, that king is eventually removed. The result of the election of 2008 was predicted months before the election-day. How can a nation continue on the same direction when people have been led astray?
Man spends so much time trying to please himself by looking good before others. We sure love to showoff. Don’t we? Eventually that endeavor will fail because we cannot totally please people. At times, we define who we are by our achievements. Yet, such glory never lasted, and such achievements never insulated us from life challenges. Pleasing family members seems to be a winning goal in life as we receive compliments from our children and spouse alike. Then something happens, the entire pride of the family becomes deflated, as everything becomes meaningless. When we set our expectations on false hope, the wall of fake achievements will eventually crash.
Perhaps we tend to forget that every aspect of our life is based on one thing – on God’s purpose for our lives. At times we receive the blessings of God. Suddenly, that blessing dries up. How can this be possible when God never runs out of blessings? The problem was not the economic situation. Economic meltdown was one of the symptoms. The problem was, at the moment we stop following God’s instructions and following his purpose, that is the moment we start to fail. However, that failure may never manifest till years later down the line. When a person falls, it is better to go back and see where he tripped. Usually most people don’t fall where they tripped, they tend to fall miles down the line. Similarly, when the blessings stop, it is better to go back and find where we lost direction. People tend to find excuses to justify their present conditions because they refuse to face the truth and take corrective actions. The truth may sometimes be very painful. Consequently, we ended missing the handwriting on the wall. We failed to see the divine staff of correction.
"If we say that we have no sins, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful, and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness," I John 1:8-9.
As a nation, we need to repent, and ask for God’s forgiveness. The handwriting of God is on many walls. If we keep telling lies to ourselves, and others, we may eventually face a very painful future. The present economic situation may just be one of a series of warning signs from God.