19. NO. 2 BEAUTIFUL ATTITUDE CONTINUED

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4).

When judgment is fast approaching a city or nation it is appropriate for that city or nation to mourn and repent. When the citizens of Nineveh heard the message to repent because of approaching judgment, they mourned with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. Jonah 3:5-9 tells us that their pagan king urged them to "cry mightily unto God." The king actually preached repentance to his people, insisting them to repent even more than reluctant Jonah, saying: "Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?" (verse 9).

Verse 10 tell us: "And God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God repented of the evil, that he had said that he would do unto them; and he did it not."

It is high time for all Christian married couples, who are even considering divorce, to repent like the people of Nineveh and turn away from every hard word and action. We must do our own personal effort to seek with all our hearts to put things right where we have done wrong. We must never be so insensitive to God to think that all the adultery, fornication, divorce, as well as abortion, will not invite God's judgment on the land, except we repent.

We dare not kid ourselves that abortion and sexual perversion is not happening in the house of God (the church). Instead, it is gathering momentum. How shameful to hear of Christians who attended "Fifty Shades of Grey." It is indeed time to mourn and grown in the spirit. Do we not care that ever increasing numbers are lining up to have abortions, often accompanied by their "loving and caring" youth pastors?

I do not take pleasure in being an alarmist or some type of doomsday prophet, but the truth is that someone has to sound the alarm. I also do not wish to proclaim that I am some holier-than-thou, pointing-the-finger preacher who wants to condemn all to hell. Far be it. For we all need to repent in some way or other. None of us are entirely guiltless. Nor am I.

Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up and heard the seraphim crying with covered faces, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory" (Isaiah 6:1-3). What was his response? "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts" (Isaiah 6:5).

Ezekiel 9:4 says: "And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. . . Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary." Would you? Would I be one who would receive the mark and thus avoid the judgment?

Joel 2:17 says: "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar, and let them say, Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?"

Be encouraged to mourn and weep for our own sin and the sin of the nation.

Colin Campbell