AP

The title of this article may sound hyperbolic, but it’s not. It is my contention that the nation of Australia is currently experiencing the wrath of God. This is demonstrated by the prevalence of wickedness which exists throughout our land. While things could always get worse, it’s my hope in writing this that in the Lord may use it to lead his people to repentance and so revive the work of the Gospel in this place (2 Chron. 7:14).

The reason I believe that we are as a nation under judgment can be found in the apostle Paul’s words in Romans 1:18ff. Note that Paul says that “the wrath of God is being revealed”, i.e. at this present time. How exactly is this demonstrated? By God giving us over to the sinful desires of our hearts – in particular, withdrawing the goodness of His grace which restrains us from doing whatever our sinful desires want to do.

In the context of Paul’s letter to the Romans this is expressed sexually when men and women become inflamed with lust for one another, and is an integral component of what Paul means that we are receiving in ourselves the “due penalty for their perversion” (Rom. 1:27).

All sexual acts outside the holy and sacred covenant of marriage are wrong. But there is something ‘unnatural’ about homosexuality and thus, particularly degrading and even shameful. However, it’s not just homosexuality which is an expression of God’s wrath and righteous judgment. Paul goes on to write:

Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practise them. (Rom. 1:28-32)

This is an apt description of the people in every nation throughout the Western world today, including for those of us who live in Australia. I completed an undergraduate liberal arts degree, majoring in anthropology, at a Lutheran university in the United States of America. In my course, we learnt that there were four main ‘rites of passage’ which every culture throughout the world observes. These involves ceremonies surrounding birth, puberty, marriage and death.

The Culture of Death

Just consider what has taken place then throughout the West since the turn of the twenty-first century:

a) Regarding birth we now have late term abortion even for psycho-social reasons where the mother’s mental health is viewed as being at risk.

b) Regarding puberty we have politicians and doctors championing transgenderism where children are being surgically castrated and permanently sterilised.

c) Regarding marriage we have the misnomer of ‘gay marriage’ involving people of the same biological sex when they cannot naturally form a family.

d) Regarding death we have doctor assisted suicide or, as it’s appropriately referred to in Canada, M.A.D. ‘Medically Assisted Death’.

Western civilisation has entered into what is appropriately referred to as a ‘culture of death’. Not even Aldous Huxley in his dystopian classic Brave New World perceived just how morally depraved we would quickly become.

Learning from God’s Word

There is a biblical precedent to all of this which is especially apt. And that is the horrific incident found in the book of Judges chapter 19. The sordid tale involves a Levite (who was from the tribe of Israel which provided religious scribes and priests) and his concubine whom he callously allows to be sexually abused throughout the night by a group of Israelite men who were initially trying to rape him.

Even more shocking than this is his completely disregard for her well-being the next morning. Not only does the Levite fail to go out looking for her, but when he sees her collapsed at the door of the house where he was staying, he simply says: ‘Get up, let us be going’ (Judg. 19:28). When there is no response from the woman, he unceremoniously loads her onto his donkey and carries her body home.

As if all of that were not bad enough, when he arrives at his house, he takes a knife and divides her body into twelves pieces, sending her throughout the land to the twelve tribes of Israel. Then follows:

And all who saw it said, ‘Such a thing has never happened or been seen from the day that the people of Israel came up out of the land of Egypt until this day; consider it, take counsel, and speak’ (Judg. 19:20).

The chapter in which this event occurs opens with an important phrase, “In those days, when there was no king in Israel…” (Judg. 19:1). It is found in various forms four times throughout the book (17:6; 18:1; 19:1 and 21:25). Significantly, the full expression is as follows: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

This is precisely the problem with the people of Israel spiritually. Rather than doing what was right in the eyes of the LORD, they did whatever they wanted to do. They did not submit either to an earthly king, or to the Lord God Almighty as the true and perfect King that He is (e.g. 2 Kgs. 14:3). The results though, were clearly disastrous.

The De-Civilisation of the West

Sadly, a similar kind of thing is happening across the Western hemisphere generally today. In rejecting the millennial reign of Christ Jesus, our nation has progressively lost its moral compass. We are at such a nadir spiritually that the drastic prophetic actions of the immoral Levite are what might even be needed.

Over 70,000 children are dismembered through abortion each year in Australia. If the death of one woman is horrific, how much more the treatment of those whom we have been entrusted to love and care? There is none more defenceless than a baby, and so the callousness and cruelty associated with how they are currently being treated is all the more reprehensible.

Another shocking passage in the Bible is found in the book of Psalms. It expresses the heart-wrenching cry for justice from God’s people as they are taunted by their Babylonian captors. It concludes as follows:

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

Happy is he who repays you

For what you have done to us –

He who seizes your infants

And dashes them against the rocks

(Psalm 137:8-9).

Tragically, what is happening today is people are happily destroying their own children. It is not their enemies who are doing it to them, but they themselves!

Western civilisation is  presently embroiled in a state of systemic injustice and as such we Australians, as part of that, are ‘de-civilising’ as a nation. The problem is not just that as Christians we have lost cultural influence or social power. The real issue is that the existence of such practices is evidence that we are under the righteous judgement of God.

Like the Gentile city of Nineveh, many in our community are not able to tell their right hand from our left (Jon. 4:11). For they have exchanged light for darkness, goodness for evil, and sweet for bitter (Isaiah 5:20). Like the Israelites of Isaiah’s day, they have become wise in their own eyes, shrewd in their own sight, and heroes at drinking wine (Isa. 5:21-22). And so have no regard for the ways of the LORD.

Praying for the Unborn

For the current situation to change something drastic has to occur. People need to “consider, seek counsel and speak”. But this process has to begin with praying to our Father in heaven.

What follows is a prayer which has been produced by Jason Summers, based on Psalm 94 and 139. Would you join in praying for the end of this abominable practice? For the Lord to have mercy on us as a nation and to enable us to once again be convicted about what is right and wrong?

Holy Lord, you are God on high, but you look upon the lowly. You are the Father of the fatherless and the protector of widows. You execute justice for the oppressed and give food to the hungry.  You are exalted in justice and seen in righteousness, you love righteousness and hate wickedness.  O Lord how long shall the wicked exult in their evil?  They pour out their arrogant words and even boast in their evil.  They crush the unborn, they kill the innocent, and they murder those who have not seen the light of your glory.

You formed all the parts of these little ones; you knitted them together in their mother’s womb.  All praise to you for every child in the womb is fearfully and wonderfully made.  They are not hidden from your sight for you made them in the secret place when they were intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  In your book every day was written for them before they were even born.  These are the children of your creation.

Lord, we confess to you a great wickedness within our nation.  We kill the unborn, we leave them to die alone, we sacrifice our children to the idols of our hearts.  We have sinned greatly, and the guilt stains our nation.  Lord, rescue our children from the hand of the wicked, from the grasp of cruel men and women. Raise up leaders who will uphold justice and stand against this evil. You O Lord are our hope, and we trust in you. Visit us in mercy and not in judgment, uphold justice that you will be exalted and save the lives of the innocent for your name’s sake. We ask this in the merciful and mighty name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

– prayer by Jason Summers; article by Mark Powell