The judgments of God are slow in coming, but sudden when they come. We have a tendency, once any state of affairs has continued past three weeks, to consider it our lot in life or our birthright, depending on whether it is hard or easy. This is why we are always surprised—whether the surprise is a deliverance or a judgment. We think that the way it has been is the way it will be, and we frequently have a real failure of imagination at this point.
The average standard of living for the average American surpassed that of the average European in the seventeen hundreds. Since that time, we have never looked back, and so we now think that this is an unalterable reality—fixed in the stars, settled in the decrees of God, and carved in everlasting marble. We think this so deeply that, when we begin to feel the very first beginnings of the stirrings of judgment, we exclaim that something has “gone wrong.” No, a thousand times, no. Judgment is not something going wrong—it is what happens when thing are put right.
We have slaughtered fifty million children legally—I do not say constitutionally, although that is the pretense. Why would the axe of God’s judgment be an instance of something going wrong? Hadn’t it gone wrong already? Aren’t we the ones making it go wrong, and isn’t God the one who is supposed to put it right again?
Our only hope is if there is an Abraham to plead the numbers with God. “If there are seven thousand, I will not destroy it.” In our case, there is an Abraham—the greater Abraham, the Lord Jesus, the seed of Abraham. If He prays for us, there will be deliverance. If He prays for us, this means that He has reserved that number for Himself.
Our prayer should be that God put things right in mercy, but whether there is mercy or not, that He put things right. After all, we do pray for His kingdom to come.