Now Is the Time

Tomorrow may be too late. Now is the time to call upon the name of the Lord. “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts…” (Heb. 4:15). The urgency to call upon Jesus sounds forth for both individuals and nations.

As individuals we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). The Bible further says that the wages of our sin is death and hell (Rom. 6:23). Indeed, many are on broad road that leads to destruction (Mt. 7:13). If “nothing impure will ever enter [heaven], nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful” (Rev. 21:27), and if “all of us have become unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6), then we’re all individually destined for the eternal judgment of hell – unless we repent and call upon the name of the Lord.

The time is now to turn away from sin and receive the gift of everlasting life by believing in Jesus Christ, receiving Him as our Savior and following Him as Lord.

And as a nation who can deny that we’ve sinned against a Holy God? In our generation we have in essence told God that He is no longer welcome to influence our culture. We no longer acknowledge Him as the Creator who has endowed us with certain unalienable rights, as the signers of our Declaration of Independence did, nor do we claim firm reliance upon His protection as our Divine Providence. As a nation we no longer fear the Lord, nor do we urge one each other to humble ourselves before Him in repentance and seek His face as we once did.

When faced with perhaps the greatest crisis this nation has ever faced, the Senate adopted and President Abraham Lincoln issued a resolution proclaiming a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. Lincoln’s proclamation in 1863 contained some powerful language and a note of urgency appropriate for their day. I believe that urgency is equally appropriate for ours. In part the proclamation reads:

“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 truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

“And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People? We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. 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.”

There was a crisis in the land, and our leaders urged the nation to turn for help to Almighty God. Now is the time for our nation, likewise, to turn for help to God. We’re witnessing spiritual and moral decay like never before, and the problems plaguing our country today may well be “but a punishment inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation.” We need to pray now, because tomorrow may be too late. The ultimate downfall of our nation may occur in our generation – unless we repent and call upon the name of the Lord.

Lincoln’s call to humiliation, fasting and prayer ended with a word of confidence that God would hear and answer their cry for help: “All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”

May we repent and call upon the name of the Lord with the same urgency and hope in the God who answers prayer.