Most of the time, when God chooses to judge a nation, He does so in such a way that those hard‑hearted objects of wrath can easily explain away the disasters that come as being no more than human mismanagement.
Introduction – Historical Arrogance
One of our favorite activities to engage in when we consider history is to cast ourselves as the virtuous heroes who would have stood for truth and righteousness if only we had been there. Had we been in Europe in the 1930s and 40s, we would have resisted Nazism and safely hidden the Jews among us. If we were around during the period of Southern slavery, we would have been abolitionists fighting to liberate our black neighbors. We would never have informed on our friends during Stalin’s persecutions, would have registered our dissent against witch trials at Salem, and certainly would not have been among those calling for the crucifixion of Jesus. This attitude of historical arrogance is nothing new, even if it is not always so obvious. Most of the time, we attempt to qualify our bravado with false humility, all the while still convinced that, were the same kind of objectionable activities happening today, we would be found on the right side of history. Yet far too often, we are blind and apathetic to the truly vital issues that require attention and action, even as we position ourselves as the courageous reformers and righteous resisters.
Jesus condemned the “courageous conservatives” of His day for this very attitude:
Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, saying, “If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets”…Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town (Matthew 23:29-30, 34).
The Pharisees self-righteously considered themselves superior to their predecessors, who had persecuted the prophets. Were they to experience the warnings of a true prophet, to stare down cataclysmic judgment while being called to avoid it by repenting, surely they would have led the way in turning from sin. The irony, of course, is that these “heroes” would soon murder the true Prophet, the Son of God Himself, and in their unrepentance experience the last great judgment on the nation of Israel. Christians today must take care that we do not fall into the same arrogant delusion as the Pharisees.
The Definitive Political Issue of Our Day
It has been clear for over a decade now that migration is the definitive political issue of this era. Even back to before Donald Trump ran on building a border wall over a decade ago, refugee crises plagued and divided Europe and the United States, in large part paving the way to the paradigm-shifting 2016 elections in favor of Brexit in the UK and Trump in the US. From there the issue snowballed: the so called “Muslim ban” and “kids in cages” controversies of Trump’s first term, Islamic calls to prayer ringing out from London and Paris to Dearborn and Minneapolis, the open border under Joe Biden, the Somali daycare scam, and of course the ICE raids and deportations that have been met with mass protests across the nation.
All of this has dominated headlines and political discourse as much of the nation realigns on this issue. Within the church, the conversation has been between support for the enforcement of just law vs. whether and how the nation is to demonstrate Christian hospitality; on the larger political scene, debates rage between those who herald the glories of multiculturalism and those who observe that the population of America is systematically being replaced, and traditional American culture along with it. While it is not the purpose of this piece to make the biblical case for immigration enforcement and deportation, it should be noted that I fall on that side of the debate over against the open borders spin on “hospitality,” leaving aside any discussion of the particular tactics used. Additionally, it is obviously true that, whether nefariously or naively, immigration policy over the last fifty-plus years has begun to displace the native population and has significantly eroded American culture.
These are important, and even essential issues, and Christians ought to have well-thought-out and biblically defensible positions on them. However, while the self-appointed reformers of the “New Christian Right” and the “America First” pundits go all in on nativism, immigration restrictivism, and the power of the unbound executive to enforce these ideals, they, like the Pharisees, miss the main point.
God’s Judgment on Nations
If America were to experience divine judgment, what would it look like? When we think of God’s judgment, our minds tend to go to the supernatural instances of fire raining from heaven, great global flooding, or the plagues of Egypt. Yet these are the exceptions, the instances that stick in our minds because they are so severe and so inexplicable in human terms. Most of the time, however, when God chooses to judge a nation, He does so in such a way that those hard-hearted objects of wrath can easily explain away the disasters that come as being no more than human mismanagement, and so fixable by man’s ingenuity and problem-solving skills. But in whose hands are these mismanagers? Who is the Sovereign over those sometimes nefarious and oftentimes foolish planners whose policies are destroying our nation? “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov. 21:1). When the folly and wickedness of our rulers lead to social collapse, economic disaster, and military incompetence, it is God who is behind this.
Western civilization is collapsing and disappearing. This is the result of both wicked schemes and simple foolishness, and a variety of factors contribute to it, not the least of which are mass migration and multiculturalism. Foreigners who have no heritage in the West and no desire to adopt its culture are replacing the heirs of the greatest civilization ever forged. Interestingly enough, this is one of the things that God warns will happen to the nation under His wrath:
Your sons and daughters shall be given to another people, while your eyes look on and fail with longing for them all day long, but you shall be helpless. A nation that you have not known shall eat up the fruit of your ground and of all your labors, and you shall be openly oppressed and crushed continually…The LORD will bring you and your king whom you set over you to a nation that neither you nor your fathers have known. And there you shall serve other gods of wood and stone…The sojourner who is among you shall rise higher and higher above you, and you shall come down lower and lower. He shall lend to you and you shall not lend to him. He shall be the head, and you shall be the tail…The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the end of the earth, swooping down like an eagle, a nation whose language you do not understand (Deut. 28:32-33, 36, 43-44, 49).
When God determines to pour out His judgment on a people, one of His primary means of doing so is by foreign invaders. Throughout history, He has used the Hebrews, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Goths, Arabs, Scandinavians, Mongols, Europeans, and others as instruments to bring judgment upon rebellious civilizations. He replaces one people with another, transferring the resources of one to the other, subjecting one under the other, and at times eliminating peoples altogether.
We have come to mistakenly believe in our modern fantasy that this no longer happens. We think that because we have transcended language barriers, agreed to international laws and universal human rights, and have finally become enlightened enough to tolerate any and all customs and beliefs, the time of wars of conquest and mass population replacement is over. Yet this is plainly untrue, and it seems that many are beginning to awake to this fact.
The heirs of Western civilization—Christians (at least culturally) of European descent—are indeed being slowly displaced by Muslims, Hindus, and various other third-world cultures that share almost nothing in common with the civilization that developed through the spread of the gospel. Regardless of the degree to which this “great replacement” may have been premeditated, its reality is indisputable. Just because this has not been the result of military invasion, war, conquest, and captivity, that does not make it any less disastrous than other civilizational collapses, nor does it negate the reality that the same God who has been judging nations for millennia is still at work accomplishing His will.
The gradual and then all of a sudden realization of this seismic demographical shift has led to our current moment, in which migration, deportation, and similar issues are dominant. These are uniquely seen as being the hinge on which the future of the nation will turn, which is in part why the Trump administration’s policies have been met with extreme resistance and violence. All of this matters. Enforcing immigration law matters, deporting illegal aliens matters, restricting immigration matters, and closing the border matters. Yet ultimately, what all this amounts to is man trying to avoid God’s judgment by His own wisdom, and regardless of the level of success attained by the president and his cabinet in stemming or even reversing the tide of migration, it will do nothing to calm the crashing waves of God’s wrath.
The Road to Judgment
Long before Judah was judged with the significant population displacement to Babylon (what we call the exile), God warned them of this impending calamity and gave them ample opportunity to avoid it. The road to Babylon did, to a large degree, begin with righteous King Hezekiah. In his foolish pride, he unthinkingly welcomed Babylonian envoys and gave them the grand tour of all Judah’s riches, sparing no detail (2 Ki. 20:12-15). This was man’s foolishness, making Judah an easier and more enticing target for Babylon. Even worse, when Hezekiah was rebuked for this and warned that all the riches of Judah would be taken away to Babylon (2 Ki. 20:17), the king responded not with dismay and repentance, but with astonishing coldness: “Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?’” (2 Ki. 20:19). This is an example of how the arrogance, short-sightedness, and callousness of man can lead, albeit unintentionally, to serious consequences. We, in our day, can relate to this.
However, Hezekiah’s folly is not what sealed Judah’s doom. His son Manasseh, who was among the most wicked of all the Old Testament kings, brought his nation to the point of no return. God proclaimed during his reign: “Behold, I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears it will tingle…And I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies, and they shall become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies” (2 Ki. 21:12, 14). And what was it about Manasseh’s reign in particular that caused God to finally issue the sentence of judgment? “Moreover, Manasseh shed very much innocent blood, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another” (2 Ki. 21:16a). He built altars to a multitude of false gods, he made child sacrifice endemic, even publicly burning his own son as an offering (2 Ki. 21:6). It was this wickedness which destined Judah for a judgment that even the great reformer Josiah could not turn back.
Yet despite this, God kept sending prophets, kept calling His people to a full, lasting repentance, top-down and bottom-up, all the while warning of the impending judgment to a people who were unresponsive and downright hostile. Even through Jeremiah, the last prophet before the exile, God still pleaded with His people to turn back to Him: “Return, faithless Israel, declares the LORD. I will not look on you in anger, for I am merciful, declares the LORD. I will not be angry forever. Only acknowledge your guilt, that you rebelled against the LORD your God and scattered your favors among foreigners under every green tree, and that you have not obeyed my voice, declares the LORD” (Jer. 3:12-13). He even warned the king directly, right up until the very end, and for it was imprisoned (Jer. 36-38). And, of course, Jerusalem fell, the temple was destroyed, and much of the population was relocated. Even though some reforms had been made, political alliances shifted, and foreign nations called upon for aid, the result was still judgment because the people would not repent. In the end, God’s way is the only way.
Why America is Under Judgment
Military defeat, foreign invasion, and economic disaster are not the things that bring judgment; they are the judgment. Our temptation is to deal with these manifestations of wrath as they appear on the surface through bigger militaries, stronger walls, and better trade deals. Yet we neglect the cause of judgment, and here, finally, we come back around to our “New Right” reformers and their migration fixation.
What is it that actually brings God’s judgment on a nation? In Israel’s case, as we have seen, it was filling Jerusalem with the innocent blood of child sacrifice and “scattering favors among foreigners under every green tree”—sexual immorality—both of which were done in service to false gods. Idolatry, sexual immorality, and the shedding of innocent blood: these are what bring God’s judgment upon a people.
This was not only the case for the unique covenant nation of Israel, but it is true of all nations. The Canaanite nations were driven out of the land for the very same sins—idolatry, sexual immorality, and shedding innocent blood, according to Leviticus 18 and 20—even though they were not the covenant people of Yahweh. These are universal abominations against God and His creation order, and they will receive retribution.
America is guilty of all these in spades. The body count from abortion is upward of 70 million. Our sexual immorality has advanced from rampant fornication to sodomy to transgender madness. And the neglect of the true worship of the living God was rampant long before we began importing pagans and erecting their temples and idols in the public square. This is why we are under judgment, and any attempt to address the symptoms of our judgment while neglecting its root cause will inevitably fall short. If we deported every illegal alien, sealed the border entirely, and immediately outlawed the construction of mosques and Hindu temples without rejecting and fully repenting of abortion and IVF, Obergefell, and all the rest of our rebellion down to birth control and no-fault divorce, we would still find ourselves under wrath. And God will replace us one way or another.
It is easy for us to blame third-world migrants for all of our woes, from housing to job shortages to our cultural crackup, and there is a valid correlation; you cannot have a stable economy with good jobs and affordable housing, with cultural cohesion to boot, when there is a steady stream of unassimilable, cheap labor flooding the nation. But it was white westerners who promoted liberal theology and scientific atheism, white westerners who staged the sexual revolution, white westerners who have filled the nation with innocent blood through abortion and polluted it with sodomy. We brought this on ourselves. And if we do not repent, there is no hope of staying God’s hand.
It is important to address the crisis of migration, and it deserves the attention of both the American government and the people. Christians should discuss it biblically and help others form consistent, godly opinions on it. But there is no courage necessary to pontificate on the hot topic, to give takes on the thing everyone is talking about, to put a finger on the issue that everybody already agrees is fundamental. This conversation is all around us. Now think of the last time you heard one of the big conservative Christian ministries—let alone secular conservative commentators—address abortion. How many are actively standing and calling for its criminalization and equal protection for the pre-born? Has President Trump or Vice President Vance or any members of Congress so much as mentioned abortion during this second term? Who is calling native-born white Americans to take responsibility for our national mess, starting with repentance over abortion?
We have no way of knowing how long this process of national judgment will go on. We do not know if we are already past the point of no return, and the utter end of America is a foregone conclusion. All we can do is echo the words of Daniel: “Break off your sins by practicing righteousness and your iniquities by showing mercy to the oppressed, that there may perhaps be a lengthening of your prosperity” (Dan. 4:27). All we can do is be faithful from where we are today, to humble ourselves and repent of all the sin that brought us to this point. Then, rather than talk about how uncompromisingly we would have stood in the significant conflicts of the past, we can actually have the integrity to engage in the battle God has set before our generation.
Luke Griffo is an elder and member of leadership at Redeemer Church of South Hills in Bethel Park, PA. Click here for more RCSH Blog posts.
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