The Strand Study Bible

PROVERBS

970

PROVERBS

14:32 To the believer ( the righteous ), death is a place of refuge and immortality (Phil 1:21-23). 14:34 Today the nations of the world (including America) do not believe that righteousness exalts them, but history bears testimony to it. The pathway of history is strewn with the wrecks, the debris, and the ruins of nations that did not follow righteousness (God’s Word). J. Vernon McGee in Jeremiah & Lamentations notes:

You and I are living at a time which is probably like the time of Jeremiah. Ours is a great nation today, and we have accomplished many things. We have gone to the moon, and we have atom bombs. Although we are a strong nation, within is the same corruption which will actually carry us down to dismemberment and disaster. It is coming, my friend. Revolution may be just around the corner. I know that what I am saying is not popular today. We don’t hear anything like this through the media. Instead, we have panels of experts who discuss how we are going to improve society and how we can work out our problems. Today God is left out of the picture totally–absolutely left out. If the Bible is mentioned, it is mentioned with a curled lip by some unbeliever. The ones who are believers and have a message from God are pushed aside. I know that. That is why I say to you that I think we are in very much the same position that Jeremiah was in. 1

Because America has followed liberalism (humanistic psychology) and forsaken righteousness ( Isa 5:20 & 19:14 ) and has conveniently eliminated the Word of God, prayer, and the Ten Commandments from the public and society, America now leads the world in: 1. personal debt (Prov 22:7) No other country closely approaches the size of America’s crushing mountain of debt. . The public U.S. debt is currently over 17 trillion dollars. Never in history has a nation or empire been so deeply, perilously drowning in red ink. David said in Psalm 37:21: The wicked borroweth, and payeth not again: America, if for no other reason, is wicked because she refuses to pay her bills. And while she makes her citizens pay their bills by taxing them to death, she herself refuses to own up to her own debts. It’s called wickedness. NOTE –The America government is so covetous, so corrupt, and so criminal that she has craftily devised means of exploiting the American people out of their money. This crafty means of extracting wealth from its citizens goes from the “invention” of the Social Security System all the way to legalized gambling (lotteries and casinos). R. C. Sproul in Now, That’s a Good Question! notes: The biggest problem I have personally with casino gambling, and particularly with lotteries, is that they tend to be very poor investments, and inevitably they exploit the poor of the society… Thirty-six million American children have been boiled alive in salt water, had their heads and arms torn off, or been savaged in some other way in the past twenty-five years. More Americans have died like this than were killed in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam and from the AIDS pestilence all combined . 3 Harold Lindsell in The New Paganism notes: Abortion on demand is one of the sure signs that our culture is pagan. 4 3. divorce (Mal 2:13-16) 4. illegal drug use, prescription drug use, and drunk driving fatalities (Prov 20:1 & 23:29-35 and Acts 2:15) Billy Graham in StormWarning notes: The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have reported that antidepressants are now the most prescribed drugs in the United States. In an interview on CNN, one physician stated, “It’s hard to believe that [so many] people are depressed, or that antidepressants are the answer.” 5 5. serious crimes (Eccl 8:11) 6. single parented families (Mt 19:3-10) 7. the abuse of credit cards and credit spending (Deut 23:19-20) 8. foreign debt (Psa 37:21) 9. suicide ( Judg 9:54 and Mt 12:31 ) Tim LaHaye in What Everyone Should Know About Homosexuality claims that 50% of the suicides in America can be attributed to homosexuality. 6 How sad and ironic that these unhappy men call themselves “gay.” 10. sexual diseases (Heb 13:4) – America has ten times as many people with the HIV virus than the people of Uganda (the world’s second leading nation with the HIV virus). According to statistics, one in every 270 Americans now has the HIV virus, which can lead to AIDS ( Prov 5:11 ). 7 When I was growing up, there was already a lottery in Pennsylvania. It wasn’t state owned; it was run by the Mafia, and you could buy a number on almost any street corner in Pittsburgh. The thing that astonished me was that when the state took it over for the benefit of senior citizens, the odds for winning under the state-run system were worse than the odds under the Mafia’s system. So I saw the state taking advantage of people’s desire for the get-rich-quick dollar and exploiting the poor by this terrible form of investment. 2 2. murders (Gen 9:6, Exo 20:13 and Lev 20:9), in abortions (Num 35:31-34 and Jere 1:5a ) R. L. Hymers, Jr. & Christopher Cagan in Preaching To A Dying Nation note: