Who is America's God now? | Repentance

April 18, 2022

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A Proclamation
BY HIS EXCELLENCY
ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

For a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.

Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation;

And whereas, it is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truths announced in the Holy Scriptures, and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord;

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. But we have forgotten God, we have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Can you imagine that proclamation issued today?

Today, words like humiliation and repentance are completely misunderstood. For some, they are associated with shame, guilt, fire and brimstone, and for others, it’s a get out a jail free card on your way back to do whatever you want.

But, it’s neither of those things.

In Hebrew, the word for repentance is Teshuvah — which literally means to turn. It’s about changing what you do, just as much as it is about the condition of your heart. When we repent, we turn around and start over in the right direction — the direction God wants us to go.

That is not easy. It takes incredible faith to humble yourself and repent.

It takes incredible faith to humble yourself and repent.

It’s not easy — but it is possible.

I began this by talking about France. Now, let me take you back to Nazi, Germany.

Hitler was not a Christian but knew he couldn’t take out the Christian church head-on, so he infiltrated from the inside — eroding its values and its relevance from within. Over an afternoon lunch in his headquarters in 1942, he said,

“I do not care in the slightest about the articles of faith… The organized lie has to be broken in such a way that the state becomes the master… you can’t rush things. It has to rot away like a gangrenous limb. We need to get to the point where only idiots stand behind the pulpits, and only old women sit in front of it, and the healthy youth are with us.”

Hitler expected Christianity to slowly suffocate and die under the duress of the state and its own inaction and irrelevance, but in the meantime, he would use the institution to spread his propaganda.

And unfortunately, they did spread it — mostly thanks to a movement called the “German Christians.” Under the influence of the German Christians, the church went to work to de-judiaze their faith, and spread the “good news” of Hitler.

German pastor Hermann Grunner preached:

“Hitler is the way of the Spirit and the will of God for the German people to enter the Church of Christ.”

What’s truly shocking is that the German Christians were at work in the church before Hitler even took power. They were priming the congregations by slowly shifting the focus away from God and the Bible and creating a new Aryan “god.” German Christians insisted that loyalty to the Nazi agenda was, at its core, a matter of faith. It’s hard to imagine that everyone behind the pulpit or sitting in the pews agreed with this, yet so many said nothing.

Miraculously, some did eventually break their silence.

Pastor Martin Niemoller sat back as Hitler installed his dictatorship. He didn’t intervene until the German Christians started to Aryanize the Bible by purging the Bible of all Jewish elements — including the entire Old Testament. They were re-imagining Jesus as a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, anti-Sememtic Aryan. This was the last straw for Niemoller. He helped organize a movement called the “Confessing Church '' — which challenged the German Christians and insisted that Nazism not make demands of the church itself. Although Niemoller was primarily focused on Nazi intrusion into the Church, other prominent leaders of the movement called for the followers to challenge Nazism on every front — including a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Bonhoeffer diagnosed the German church and said they suffered from a theology of cheap grace — they wanted redemption without repentance. They hoped to live any way they wanted and wear the covering of God like a cheap rain poncho.

Then the Third Reich collapsed and the church had no idea how to pick up the pieces.

Reconstruction quickly turned punitive towards Germany. Life for Germans under Hitler was hell, but the hell continued after his failure. The German people had been the victims of unprecedented psychological capture, and for those who woke up, they were not only left with the collapse of their nation — they were shouldering almost unbearable guilt. The international church leaders had a decision to make. Would they ostracize the Germans as their political counterparts had? How should people of God handle these obscene circumstances?

The church, like every German, needed a new start.

So the believers did the only thing they knew would work.

After the Third Reich collapsed, a gathering of Christians took place on October 19th, 1941 in Stuttgart, Germany. At the gathering, Bonhoeffer was praised for his unwavering faith and Pastor Niemoller preached that the Nazis alone were not to blame, but the church itself, saying:

“Would the Nazis have been able to do what they had done if church members had been truly faithful Christians?”

From this event sprang forth the Stuttgart Declaration of Guilt. On behalf of the church, it said:

With great pain we say: By us infinite wrong was brought over many peoples and countries. We did fight for long years in the name of Jesus Christ against the mentality that found its awful expression in the National Socialist regime of violence; but we accuse ourselves for not standing for our beliefs more courageously, for not praying more faithfully, for not believing more joyously and for not loving more ardently.

Following the collapse of Hitler’s regime, the faithful Germans professed that they had failed as a body of believers. Their failure was not extraordinary, we all fail on more extreme levels than we care to face, but what was extraordinary was their ability to look their failure in the face, and choose to change. The Christians of Germany were called to repent on their knees, and, miraculously, some answered that call.

Are we prepared to write our Declaration of Guilt in the future? Are we prepared to do it now?

People of God: Do you want to have to apologize for watching evil rise in our nations and saying nothing?

Religious leaders: can you continue to be silent as God and goodness is attacked from all angles?

America: Have we hit rock bottom yet? This is not working. Conservatives are supposed to conserve the best ideas from the past. Have we done that?

If we continue on this path of least resistance–of non-action, I shudder to think what our apology letter will say:

I apologize for standing by while millions of unborn babies were slaughtered. I said nothing when activists tried to re-segregate our nation. I even helped sometimes. Israel was slandered and attacked and I ignored it. I didn’t protest when my church was shut down and the liquor store was open. I was apathetic to the government trampling my congregations' rights. I couldn’t be bothered to comment as young people permanently mutilated themselves after being told they were born in the wrong body.

I outwardly participated in every destructive social movement to protect myself. I leaned on my own understanding and acted in my own self-interest. I just did what everyone else was doing at the time. I didn’t have the faith to resist. I lacked spiritual countenance. Because of my inaction, the body of God became crippled. The people lived without love and died without hope.

I was not part of the cavalry when it finally came.

I apologize.

May God forgive us.

We DO NOT want to write this letter in the future. Write it today while it’s still bearable and then repent — not just in your heart — but in the way you live.

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Catch up with the rest of the "Who Is America's God Now?" series here:

This post is part of a series by Glenn and Mikayla G. Hedrick exploring Who is America's God now?

The case for mass deportation

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Unchecked illegal immigration into America may be the most dangerous issue our country faces today, and with every day it goes unsolved, the risk of a terrorist attack of 9/11 proportions only increases.

Despite the risk, we can't even touch the subject without the Left and the mainstream media having a meltdown. Even suggesting that the tide of undocumented immigrants may pose some sort of national problem will quickly get you labeled as a racist, stumping intelligent conversation before it can even begin. But as any right-minded Conservative will tell you, calls to close the border and deport the people who stole into our country have nothing to do with race.

In his most recent TV special, Glenn described in detail what sorts of dangers we have let into our countries, with facts and figures that prove that if we don't act soon we will be in deep trouble. Glenn made it clear: we need to conduct a mass deportation or risk being torn apart from within. Here are three reasons that make the case for mass deportations:

Islamic terror cells are forming in South America.

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Congressional testimony from the Committee on Homeland Security in 2011 revealed that Hugo Chavez held a "Secret Summit" involving the Supreme Leader of Hamas, the Chief of Operations for Hezbollah, and the Secretary General of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Caracas, Venezuela. It is clear that ever since (and possibly before) there has been a Radical Islamic Terrorist presence in Venezuela. Right now there is an Iranian beachhead off the Venezuelan coast on Margarita Island, where the Iranian government is running criminal activities and recruiting and training Venezuelan gangs. These gangs have used our border crisis to infiltrate the U.S. The most infamous of these gangs, Tren de Aragua, has been declared a terrorist organization by the State of Texas.

Terrorist-backed gangs are smuggling in weapons and tearing through the country.

John Moore / Staff | Getty Images

What are these Iranian-trained and backed gangs doing in America? As you can imagine, nothing good. Just this year alone an estimated million rounds of ammunition, 1.2 million gun parts, 3,000 body armor vests, and thousands of pieces of other military paraphernalia have been smuggled across the border. On top of that, they have already taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, and are now terrorizing the remaining residents.

It's noteworthy that the gang managed to move into the apartment in the first place because they received subsidies through an NGO that was assisting the Colorado asylum seekers program, using money given to the state by the Biden administration in 2021.

Gangs have attacked military bases.

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It hasn't stopped at apartment complexes either. A leak from the U.S. Army revealed that the gangs have launched probing attacks on military facilities within the U.S. Members have been sighted taking surveillance photos of Lackland Air Force Base, as well as firing multiple shots into the facility. Another military base in Texas, Fort Sam Houston, caught a gang member attempting to gain access to the facility. This coincides with suspicious activity documented within the Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S.

They are smuggling in vast quantities of military equipment, probing and surveying military facilities and key energy locations, and taking over residential areas. What exactly is going on and why isn't the federal government taking it more seriously?

VP debate recap: A Vance victory

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This might have been the most consequential VP debate in recent memory.

For those of you who missed the debate, it was a decisive victory for J.D. Vance and the Trump-Vance team as a whole. Vance presented a calm, collected, and considerate side of the Republican party that compliments Trump and helps to make their platform more palatable. Meanwhile, Tim Walz had a lackluster, though certainly not catastrophic, night. He had a few embarrassing gaffes and came across as overly nervous, but like Vance, kept it civil.

Both VP candidates entered the stage as relative unknowns to most Americans, and by the end, both men had given an accurate representation of their characters. Here is a brief recap just in case you missed the debate:

J.D. Vance looked great

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Vance came out of the gate swinging, with a stellar opening statement that helped set the stage for the rest of the debate. He delivered a concise yet compelling recap of his life, which framed him as everything Walz claims to be: a relatable veteran from humble beginnings who earned his position through hard work and service. He then went on to deliver a clear and palatable defense of Trump's platform and mission while cooly drawing attention to the failures of the Biden-Harris administration.

Overall, J.D. Vance looked incredibly presidential. He presented himself not just as a capable vice president, but as a strong successor to Trump and as a valid replacement if anything should happen to the former president between now and the end of his hypothetical second term. Vance also successfully dispelled the notion that he is "weird" as Walz called him, and if anyone looked strange during the debate, it certainly wasnot Vance.

Tim Walz's gaffes

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While Tim Walz certainly didn't have an awful night, he did not stack up well against Vance. Walz had a major gaffe around halfway through the debate when asked to explain the change in his position on assault weapon bans. Walz then claimed that he had befriended school shooters during his time in office. While that was clearly not the intention of what he was saying, it was embarrassing nonetheless.

Another weak moment was when the moderators asked Walz to explain a claim he had made regarding being in Hong Kong during the infamous Tiananmen Square protest in 1989, which has since been proven false. Walz gave a long-winded, rambling answer about taking students to visit China and how Trump should have joined in on those trips, before being called out by the moderator for dodging the question.

Vance fact-checked the fact-checkers

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One of the conditions of the CBS debate was that the moderators would not fact-check the debaters live, but instead rely on after-the-matter fact-checking. But, CBS couldn't keep to its own rules. While Vance was describing the migrant crisis that has swelled during the Biden-Harris administration, one of the CBS moderators, Margaret Brennan, chimed in with a "fact check." She claimed that the Haitian migrants in Ohio have legal status, to which Vance clapped back by calling Brennan out for breaking the rules of the debate, then proceeded to correct her, explaining that they only had legal status due to overreach by the Biden-Harris administration.

Dockworker strike: Everything you need to know

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At midnight on September 30th, dockworkers across the East Coast went on strike, effectively cutting the country's import and export capabilities in half.

Don't go out and panic buy a pallet of toilet paper and instant ramen just yet. It's going to take some time for the full effects of the strike to be felt and hopefully, the strike will be good and over by then. But there are no guarantees, and this election cycle could get significantly more insane as we draw near to the election. And even if the strike is settled quickly, it shows growing cracks in our infrastructure and industrial capacity that needs to be addressed if America wants to maintain its global dominance.

Here is everything you need to know about the dockworker strike:

What do the dockworkers want?

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As with most strikes, pay is the driving factor behind this situation the country now finds itself in. The longshoremen want more pay, and with rising inflation who can blame them? After all, working the docks is hard and dangerous business, and fair compensation only seems... fair. But when you compare the wage of a dockworker, which is around $100,000 to $200,00 a year to the average income in America of $56,000, suddenly they seem significantly less sympathetic.

How much money are they asking for? For most Americans, a three percent raise is considered high, but the unions are asking up to 15 percent, depending on location. On top of that, they are asking for a 77 percent raise over the next six years. The West Coast dock workers recently made off with a 36 percent raise and were considered lucky. These increases in costs are just going to be transferred to the end consumer, and we'll likely see a jump in prices if these terms are accepted.

The other major ticket item is protection against automation. Autonomous ports are quickly becoming a reality, with major ports in China that are capable of handling vast amounts of cargo being run by a single office, not an army of dock workers. Naturally, the longshoremen are concerned that their jobs are at risk of being replaced by machines that can work harder, longer, for cheaper, and without risk of injury.

How will it affect Americans?

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

Don't panic yet!

It is going to take some time for consumers to feel the effects of the strike and it is possible that a resolution could happen at any time.

Week one should be pretty much business as usual. It might be a good idea to stock up on fruit and other perishables, but there is no need to go COVID-lockdown-crazy yet.

Week two is when you'll first start feeling the pinch. Fresh fruits and veggies will become scarce, along with other imported goods like shoes, toys, and TVs. Prices will start to creep up as the shelves will start to look a little sparse. The supply of tools, lumber, and other hardware materials will also begin to dry up.

By week three, the cracks in the system will really start to show. Entire industries will begin to slow down, or even stop. Factory workers will get furloughed and sent home without pay. Stores will have to ration items, prices will be sky-high, and online orders will come to a standstill. At this point, the strike will have escalated into a full-blown crisis, and even if it was resolved immediately, it would still take weeks to restore everything to working order.

At the four-week mark, the situation will have developed into a national security crisis, and as Glenn describes, a poly-crisis. Small business will be closing their doors, entire brands will be out of stock, and everything that remains will be so expensive it is unaffordable. By this point, the holiday season will be drawing near and there will be a rush on any sort of gift or decor items left. At this point, irreparable damage to our economy will have occurred and it will be months if not years before it can be mended.

While that sounds bleak, with the election just around the corner, it seems unlikely that the Biden-Harris administration will let it get that bad. That being said, their administration has not been characterized by good decision-making and reasonable policy, so there are no guarantees.

What can be done?

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The big question is "Why hasn't Biden already done something?"

President Biden, who ran on the image of a blue-collar, union-worker, has been uncharacteristically absent from the issue. Despite his earlier involvement in a train strike, Biden has declared that involvement in union fights is not a presidential issue unless it getsreally bad.

So where's the line? At what point will he step in? He has to understand that an economic crisis right before the election will reflect poorly on Kamala.

Join Glenn TONIGHT for BlazeTV's exclusive VP debate coverage!

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Join Glenntonight for Vice Presidential debate coverage you do not want to miss!

Tonight is the first (and only) Vice Presidential debate, and it will be hosted by CBS News. But don't be reliant on CBS News or any other mainstream media channel for their biased coverage. Join the BlazeTV live stream tonight to get the uncensored truth alongside top-quality commentary from Glenn and the rest of the world-class panel.

Glenn is joined by Megyn Kelly, Liz Wheeler, Allie Beth Stuckey, Steve Deace, Jill Savage, Dave Landau, and more to cover the CBS News Vice Presidential Debate. Blaze Media subscribers gain access to live chat with the fantastic panel of hosts! If you subscribe today by visiting BlazeTV.com/debate you will get $40 off of your annual subscription with code DEBATE. This is the largest discount ever offered, so take advantage NOW!

See you TONIGHT at 8 PM ET for an event you do NOT want to miss it!

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