If God in His wisdom were to send a prophet to us today, to stand on the courthouse steps and preach to us like Jeremiah did to the ancient Israelites, what do you suppose that prophet would have to say to the United States and Canada and to the English speaking world today? What would his message be?

Now in the first place, the mere presence of a prophet is reason to become apprehensive. God does not usually send a prophet to tell us how well we are doing. Now that makes sense. If we are doing fine, God doesn't think we are earning any points, we are just doing what is good for us. No reason to send a prophet down here to us to pat us on the head and say, "You are a wonderful people and you're doing a great job."

So when the prophet shows up and begins to speak, it's time for us to sit up and take notice because God is not happy with something.

I think the prophet that God might send to us today would say, "Thus saith the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, who gave you this good land. You have become staggeringly rich. There has never been a nation as rich as you are and yet you never ask, "Where does all of this come from? You never ask "Why do we have all this while the rest of the world goes hungry?" Half of the people you call poor in your land own their own homes. Three quarters of them have air conditioning. The living space of a typical poor American family actually exceeds the living space of the average individual living in London or Paris or Bonn or many other major cities in the wealthy European nations. Three quarters of the people you call poor own a car or a truck and a third of them own two. Virtually 100% of poor households own a refrigerator, and a color television. Half of them have two or more color televisions, while about two out of three have a clothes washer and a cable or satellite television. Three of four poor households have a microwave and a VCR or DVD player. And these are your poor people."

"By world standards, even your poor are rich. Do you know that the rest of the world can only imagine what the rest of you live like? Do you remember long ago, what I said to a people just like you? "

I said, "It would come to pass that if you would listen to me carefully and observe all my Commandments attentively that the Lord your God would set you on high above all the nations of the Earth and just look at where you are today. You stand alone as the world's only super power. There is no nation like you." I said, "That these blessings would come on you, if you would just listen to the Lord your God." I said, "Blessed shall you be in the city, Blessed shall you be in the field, Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, and the fruit of the ground and the fruit of the cattle, the increase of your cattle, and the flocks of your sheep. Blessed would be your babies. You would have babies being born, and your sheep would be having many young lambs. Blessed shall be your basket in your store. You would be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. And the Lord shall cause your enemies who rise up against you to be smitten before your face. They will come out against you one way in a single column and flee before you seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon you and your storehouses and all that you set your hand to do. He shall bless you in the land which the Lord your God gives you."

"Look at where you are today. Look at what your armies are able to do. Look at the power you're able to project around the world. I said I would establish you as a special people to myself, a people apart, if you would keep my Commandments and walk in my way. And all the people of the earth would see that you are called by the name of the Lord, and they would be afraid of you. That's what I was after, that the nations of the earth would look at you and wonder what made the difference? They would look at you as a people and say, "Those are God's people. Look at what a difference it makes if you follow their God." "

"I said I would make you plenteous in goods and look at you now, you have so many goods that they have spilled over into the houses of the poor. You have so much food that some of you have to waddle through the marketplace. I said I would open to you my good treasure. You would get rain when you needed it so that you would be able to lend to all the nations, and look what you have been able to do with what you call foreign aid. Just imagine, if all those nations receiving your largess, your liberal giving, knew that I am your God, and that's the reason why you have enough to give them what you give them."

"I said I would make you the head and not the tail. I said that you would always come out on top and not underneath. I said all of this, if you would just obey the Commandments of the Lord your God. Do you remember that I said all these things?" You can find it in Deuteronomy 28.

"But then I went on to say what would happen if the people didn't obey my laws. And because I have not changed, I would say exactly the same thing to you today, because you serve not the Lord your God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all things, therefore, you shall serve your enemies which the Lord will send against you, in hunger, and thirst, and nakedness, and in want of all things, and He shall put a yoke of iron on your neck until He has destroyed you, because you served not the Lord with joyfulness and gladness of heart for all the wonderful things He has given you. And one wonders if one of the reasons why we don't do it is because of the abundance."

"It seems impossible, doesn't it? But it seemed just as impossible to the people I said this to the first time and it happened to them anyway. How is it possible for a nation so great to have so great a fall? It's easier than you might think, for it is the wealth, it is the power, it is the greatness that contains the seeds of its own destruction."

Now how is it possible for a nation so great to have such a great fall? It is easier than you might think.

Let's go back to the courthouse steps and hear what another prophet might say to us in the modern world.

"Thus saith the Lord, long ago, I sent a prophet to a people just like you. His name was Hosea and he warned them what would happen if they didn't repent. Hear the word of the Lord, for the Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land."

It sends a little shiver down the spine to consider how a great nation could fall so low as the prophet will now tell us they have fallen. "The people are unmerciful. They have lost the knowledge of God entirely, when once they knew who He was."

"Now God is not present in your public life. You don't want to hear about God. By swearing and lying and killing and stealing and committing adultery. They break out, and the blood of one crime runs into the blood of another crime. Therefore, shall the land mourn, and everyone that dwells there shall languish with the beasts of the field and with the fowls of heaven. Yea, even the fish of the sea shall be taken away."

Now that's staggering, the abundance of the sea. You would think, wouldn't you, that there would be enough there to last forever. There would be no way a man could fish out the seas and yet here you are actually endangering the survival of many species of food fish and you come to the place where you go to fish and they will not be there.

"Let no man strive to reprove another for your people would even argue with the priests, therefore shall you fall in the day, and the prophet shall fall with you in the night, and I will destroy your mother. My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you, that you shall be no priest to me, seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children" (Hosea 4:6).

"This is where we reach the bottom line. There is a way to live that is encompassed in the law of God, the Ten Commandments. "

"For 200 years and more in your country, there was no problem with having the Ten Commandments posted in a public place. You could have it in the Supreme Court. You could have it in any courtroom in the land. Now, you don't want to see it. There's no argument here with the constitutional issues involved, I am just pointing out the obvious."

"The people of this great nation don't want to be reminded of God's law. If you did, the courts would not be making the decisions that they are making."

There are a few statements, I can imagine, that are as frightening as the one we just read, "Seeing that you have forgotten the law of your God, I will also forget your children and because you have forsaken the basis of all law, your people will increasingly forsake the rule of law all together. Your leaders, your mayors and governors will flout the law of the land, just as the mayor of San Francisco feels free to disobey the law, so all the citizens of his city will begin to decide which laws they will keep and which laws they will not."

And why shouldn't they? If it's good enough for the mayor, it's good enough for them. Can you begin to understand how a great nation, a wealthy and powerful nation could be brought low by forsaking the rule of law?

Hosea continues, "As they were increased, so they sinned against Me, therefore will I change their glory into shame. You see, my people, there is a direct correlation between the growth in your wealth and the growth in your sin. They eat up the sin of my people. They set their heart on their iniquity, and there shall be like people like priest, like people like Mayor, like Mayor like judges, and I will punish them for their ways, I will reward them for their doings, for they will eat and not have enough. They shall commit whoredom and not increase because they have left off to take heed to the Lord. They will come to the place that they never have enough. They eat but they are not satisfied, they grow fat and they want more. They are so wealthy. They have so much to eat that they sometimes can not get through the doors of our marketplaces. They have sex like no people ever had, and yet their population is in decline."

"Whoredom and wine and new wine take away the heart. My people ask counsel at their stocks. Their staff declares unto them, for the spirit of whoredom has caused them to err and they have gone whoring against their God."

There's a fascinating comparison here between the whoredom of the flesh and the whoredom from God. They seem to go together and in our society drugs along with wine and new wine are systematically cutting away the heart of our people.

The prophet continues, "They sacrifice upon the tops of mountains and they burn incense upon the hills under oaks and poplars and elms because it's a good place, because there is shade there and they were comfortable. Therefore, your daughters shall commit whoredom and your spouses shall commit adultery. You have turned your women lose like no society has ever done in the history of man. They have become, to use your term for it, HOs, but I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your spouses when they commit adultery, for yourselves are separated with whores and you sacrifice with harlots. You're not any better than the women, you're not any better than your daughters or your spouses. There's no particular reason why I should correct them, when you are no better."

"Therefore, the people who do not understand shall fall."

If Hosea were here, he would say to us further, "Though everyone around you is playing the harlot, don't get drawn into that, though everyone else is acting like a heifer in heat, don't make that mistake yourself. Don't let yourself get drawn down that path."

"Listen to this you preachers, you priests, you senators, you of the administration of the country. Judgment is toward you because you have been a snare to this people. You in positions of leadership commit whoredom and the whole country is defiled. You people will not frame or direct your doings to turn to God. Why? Because the spirit of whoredom is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord."

I think Hosea's phrase, the spirit of whoredom pretty well sums up what is wrong with our land today, through all of our music, our arts, our entertainment, our diversions, even our education, the spirit of whoredom dominates.

Listening to Hosea again, "They will not frame their doings to turn to their God, for the spirit of whoredom is in the midst of them, and they have not known the Lord. The pride of this people testifies to their face, says God, and the time is going to come when they will seek the Lord and will not find him, because he has withdrawn from them."

I wonder how close we are to that time, to the place where we will turn and look for God and will not be able to find Him.

Continuing with the prophet, "They have dealt treacherously against the Lord. They have begotten strange children. Now they'll be devoured in a months time" (Hosea 5:7).

Strange children. Do you know what he is talking about? He's talking about fatherless children. Children who are being born of women with no idea of who their father is.

"Your people are oppressed and broken in judgment because you willingly walked after vanity. You thought, we know the difference between right and wrong. We don't need God to tell us what it is. If you wonder why your justice system is broken, look to yourselves. You have willingly pursued your own way, regardless of what God says."

This is what the sovereign Lord says, "I will go and return to my place until they acknowledge their offense and seek my face. In their affliction, they will seek me early. You will come to the place where you will look for God, and not find Him. In your affliction when everything is coming down around your ears you are going to call out to God and for all of the years you haven't wanted to know, for that many years you won't be able to know. God will not be found of you."

Now this is what I think God might say to us, if He were to speak to us through a prophet, but alas God does not seem to be speaking to us.

Now let's move to another courthouse in another town and let's find on the steps of this courthouse a new prophet in the spirit of a man named Amos. What might Amos say if he were to speak to us today? "Behold, the days come, saith the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, not a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord, and they will wander from sea to sea from the North even to the East and they shall run to and fro, and they will seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it" (Amos 8:11-12).

The important thing to know about God from all this is that He doesn't change. These prophets spoke a long time ago to a very different people. Well, no, they really weren't so very different from us. In fact, there are so many ways in which they were terribly like us. Their technology was not as advanced as ours, but otherwise, why should we think that we can live like they did and not come to the same end?

It may take a while. For some of the prophets, it took a lifetime. But sooner or later, the things we are doing are going to come home to roost.

We live in the age of the bottom line. Shall I bottom line this for you? Hosea bottom lined this for us. He said this, "My people are destroyed for a lack of knowledge, because you have rejected knowledge, I will reject you, that you shall be no priest to me. Seeing you have forgotten the law of your God, I will forget your children" (Hosea 4:6). So here we sit. A people with the greatest Constitution in the history of man, a people who at one time knew God, recognized God, acknowledged that God is the giver of every good and perfect gift.

We are a people who have in the past prided ourselves on the rule of law, and we seem now to have no concept of the roots of the ideals that underlie our Constitution and the rule of law. It's odd, no one seems to understand that the concept of the rule of law derives from the Bible, as does the foundation of our entire legal system.

"We do hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights."

From the beginning, we recognized our Creator. We recognized Him as the foundation, the pillar, upon which all of our rights stand and upon which they depend. When you remove the foundation of the law of God, by what authority can we withstand the assaults on the Constitution and the rule of law? When we have no basis, then we have no roots to our system any longer. We say no, no, we don't believe in God, there is no Creator, we simply evolved to the present state we are in, and now we will move onto the next stage of evolution. We will abandon the old law and we will begin to make our own. But you see the authority that lies behind our laws and our rights is God. Without Him we have no guide, except our own whims.

Now let's go to another court house and we may find a prophet in the spirit of Jeremiah and we might hear him speaking to us today, saying, "How can you claim to be wise and have the rule of law, when your lawyers and your judges have made the law vain. The wise man should be ashamed and dismayed."

"Look, they've rejected the word of the Lord and what wisdom is in them?" This is where we are. If you reject the foundation, if you hack away at that pillar of law that underlies everything we've got , then all you have left, is what ever wisdom we have in us.

The truth is that the only wisdom we have, that is worth anything, has been that which was founded upon the law of God. Where are we going to go? Our prophet, in the spirit of Jeremiah, answers us, "Therefore I will give their wives to others and their fields to them that shall inherit them" (Jeremiah 8:10).

"Everyone of them, from the least unto the greatest is given to covetousness. From the prophet to the priest, everybody is dealing falsely, for they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly saying, "Peace, peace when there is no peace." Were they ashamed when they committed abomination? No, they were not ashamed. They couldn't even blush. Therefore they shall fall among them that fall in the time of their visitation, they shall be cast down, saith the Lord, you are going to come to the place to where you will not even be able to blush."

Now there is something important for you to remember in all of this. In the days when these prophets spoke the first time, not everyone was like this. There were good people. There were people who trusted God. There were people who wanted to do the right thing.

But the spirit of the age is reflected in the words of the prophets and all you have to do is look around you today to see the spirit of our age. It is the spirit of whoredom.