Lately, I have been reading the book of Ezekiel. In some of the early chapters, I have been struck with the manner in which the events and visions described in God's Word parallel events that we see in America today.

Like Judah in Ezekiel's day, America has become an unholy nation. Our rejection of the Lord may not be complete, but it is widespread, thorough, and entrenched. Our mainstream culture embraces a shallow, unholy, sinful lifestyle, while those who love and follow the Lord have been shoved to the fringes of society. These characteristics were shared by the people of Jerusalem, to whom Ezekiel ministered. It is possible that modern-day America will suffer a similar fate.

Chapter 7 of the book of Ezekiel consists of apocalyptic poetry. These verses express God's anger at His children, as well as His intentions, and many are quite chilling:

'An end! The end has come upon the four corners of the land.
Now the end has come upon you,
And I will send My anger against you;
I will judge you according to your ways,
And I will repay you for all your abominations.
My eye will not spare you,
Nor will I have pity;
But I will repay your ways,
And your abominations will be in your midst;
Then you shall know that I am the LORD!'
Ezekiel 7:3-4

'They will throw their silver into the streets,
And their gold will be like refuse;
Their silver and their gold will not be able to deliver them
In the day of the wrath of the LORD;
They will not satisfy their souls,
Nor fill their stomachs,
Because it became their stumbling block of iniquity.
'As for the beauty of his ornaments,
He set it in majesty;
But they made from it
The images of their abominations--
Their detestable things;
Therefore I have made it
Like refuse to them.
I will give it as plunder
Into the hands of strangers,
And to the wicked of the earth as spoil;
And they shell defile it.'
Ezekiel 7:19-21

'Therefore I will bring the worst of the Gentiles,
And they will possess their houses;
I will cause the pomp of the strong to cease,
And their holy places shall be defiled.
Destruction comes;
They will seek peace, but there shall be none.
Disaster will come upon disaster,
And rumor will come upon rumor.
Then they will seek a vision from a prophet;
But the law will perish from the priest,
And counsel from the elders.
'The king will mourn,
The prince will be clothed with desolation,
And the hands of the common people will tremble.
I will do to them according to their way,
And according to what they deserve I will judge them;
Then they shall know that I am the LORD!'
Ezekiel 7:24-27

The Lord does not speak idly of abominations. In chapter 8, He takes Ezekiel to Jerusalem in a vision and shows him exactly what His children are doing in His house:

The Spirit lifted me up between earth and heaven, and brought me in visions of God to Jerusalem, to the door of the north gate of the inner court [of the temple], where the seat of the image of jealousy was, which provokes to jealousy... Furthermore He said to me, "Son of man, do you see what they are doing, the great abominations that the house of Israel commits here, to make Me go far away from My sanctuary? Now turn again, you will see greater abominations."
Ezekiel 8:3, 6

He said to me, "Go in, and see the wicked abominations which they are doing there." So I went in and saw, and there -- every sort of creeping thing, abominable beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel, portrayed all around on the walls. And there stood before them seventy men of the elders of the house of Israel, and in their midst stood Jaazaniah the son of Shaphan. Each man had a censer in his hand, and a thick cloud of incense went up. The He said to me, "Son of man, have you seen what the elders of the house of Israel do in the dark, every man in the room of his idols? For they say, 'The LORD does not see us, the LORD has forsaken the land.'"
Ezekiel 8:9-12

So he brought me to the door of the north gate of the LORD's house; and to my dismay, women were sitting there weeping for Tammuz.
Ezekiel 8:14

So He brought me into the inner court of the LORD's house; and there, at the door of the temple of the LORD, between the porch and the altar, were about twenty-five men with their backs toward the temple of the LORD and their faces toward the east, and they were worshiping the sun toward the east. And He said to me, "Have you seen this, O son of man? Is it a trivial thing to the house of Judah to commit the abominations which they commit here? For they have filled the land with violence; then they have returned to provoke me to anger."
Ezekiel 8:16-17

The sins of the Judeans, and even the priesthood, are reflected in the apostasy of today's church. Our Christian (and, in many cases, Jewish) leaders have abandoned the Word and the true faith to chase after power, wealth, and other sins of the flesh. One can scarcely find a church that does not stray from the Word in some significant way. In these passages, the Lord makes it clear that He takes the state of His church very seriously.

In chapter 11, we see descriptions of the political leaders of Jerusalem:

The the Spirit lifted me up and brought me to the East Gate of the LORD's house, which faces eastward; and there at the door of the gate were twenty-five men, among whom I saw Jaazaniah the son of Azzur, and Pelatiah the son of Benaiah, princes of the people. And He said to me: "Son of man, these are the men who devise iniquity and give wicked counsel in this city, who say, 'The time is not hear to build houses; this city is the caldron, and we are the meat.' Therefore prophesy against them, prophesy, O son of man!"
Ezekiel 11:1-4

I was struck by this passage in part because it mentions building houses. I could not help but think of our current financial crisis involving mismanagement of the real estate market. Like the "princes of the people," our leaders have grown fat from giving "wicked counsel" to the people of America. Now we will suffer the consequences of this evil.

When the men say, "this city is the caldron, and we are the meat," they mean that they believe Jerusalem will be safe from the coming destruction. The Lord makes it clear that this is a false hope:

"This city shall not be your caldron, nor shall you be the meat in its midst. I will judge you at the border of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD; for you have not walked in My statutes nor executed My judgments, but have done according to the customs of the Gentiles which are all around you."
Ezekiel 11:11-12

It does not matter where you are; there is no place that is beyond the reach of the Lord. America was once a great and holy country, but its past greatness is no protection against the fury of the Lord when He is roused to anger.

Perhaps the most troubling and tragic part of Ezekiel's vision is the glory of the Lord departing from above the mercy seat, where it had dwelt for many years, and its removal to the Mount of Olives:

Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and paused over the threshold of the temple; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of the LORD's glory.
Ezekiel 10:4

Then the glory of the LORD departed from the threshold of the temple and stood over the cherubim. And the cherubim lifted their wings and mounted up from the earth in my sight. When they went out, the wheels were beside them; and they stood at the door of the east gate of the LORD's house, and the glory of the God of Israel was above them.
Ezekiel 10:18-19

So the cherubim lifted up their wings, with the wheels beside them, and the glory of the God of Israel was high above them. And the glory of the LORD went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain, which is on the east side of the city.
Ezekiel 11:22-23

I have always found this to be a profoundly sad passage, more so because it was avoidable. The Lord does not withdraw from us; we drive Him away. He wants to be close to His children, but He cannot abide unholiness. The inevitable result of prolonged and unrepentant sin is the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit, and with it His blessing and protection. This, I fear, is what America has wrought for herself.

Even in the midst of the Lord's divine retribution, we must never forget the message of hope that Ezekiel, and indeed all of Scripture, presents to us. For example, we see in chapter 9 that, even as the Lord prepares to kill everyone in Jerusalem, He sends an angel to mark those who remain faithful to Him:

And He called to the man clothed with linen, who had the writer's inkhorn at his side; and the LORD said to him, "Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it." To the other He said in my hearing, "Go after him through the city and kill; do not let your eye spare, nor have any pity. Utterly slay old and young men, maidens and little children and women; but do not come near anyone on whom is the mark."
Ezekiel 9:3-6

Furthermore, let us not forget Ezekiel's later vision, described in chapter 43, in which the glory of the Lord returns to the Millennial temple, there to dwell forever:

Afterward he brought me to the gate, the gate that faces toward the east. And behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east. His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory.
Ezekiel 43:1-2

The glory of the LORD came into the temple by way of the gate which faces toward the east. The Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple.
Ezekiel 43:4-5

The glory of the Lord returns to the temple from the Mount of Olives, the very place where Messiah will return to earth.

I have seen modern day America in these verses, but I want to clearly state that I am not claiming that these passages in Ezekiel prophecy America's destruction. Nonetheless, while America's destruction may not be prophesied in the Scriptures (and I believe it is not), Ezekiel reminds us of the consequences when a society turns its back on the Lord. America has all but rejected the Lord, and the Lord does not take such things lightly. He is very slow to anger, but when He does anger, He acts, and decisively.

There are two things that we, as believers, must do as we face these troubling times. We must pray for the mercy of the Lord, and we must maintain our trust in His promises to His children. As for the prayer, Daniel has presented us with an excellent model:

And I prayed to the LORD my God, and made confession, and said, "O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. Neither have we heeded Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land. O Lord, righteousness belongs to You, but to us shame of face, as it is this day -- to the men of Judah, to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which You have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you.

"O Lord, to us belongs shame of face, to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against You. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, though we have rebelled against Him. We have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God, to walk in His laws, which He set before us by His servants the prophets. Yes, all Israel has transgressed Your law, and has departed so as not to obey Your voice; therefore the curse and the oath written in the Law of Moses the servant of God have been poured out on us, because we have sinned against Him. And He has confirmed His words, which He spoke against us and against our judges who judged us, by bringing upon us a great disaster; for under the whole heaven such has never been done as what has been done to Jerusalem.

"As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us; yet we have not made our prayer before the LORD our God, that we might turn from our iniquities and understand Your truth. Therefore the LORD has kept the disaster in mind, and brought it upon us; for the LORD and our God is righteous in all the works which He does, though we have not obeyed His voice. And now, O Lord our God, who brought Your people out of the land of Egypt with a mighty hand, and made Yourself a name, as it is this day -- we have sinned, we have done wickedly!

"O Lord, according to your righteousness, I pray, let Your anger and Your fury be turned away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people are a reproach to all those around us. Now therefore, our God, hear the prayer of Your servant, and his supplications, and for the Lord's sake cause Your face to shine on Your sanctuary, which is desolate. O my God, incline Your ear and hear; open Your eyes and see our desolations, and the city which is called by Your name; for we do not present our supplications before You because of our righteous deeds, but because of Your great mercies. O Lord, hear! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, listen and act! Do not delay for Your own sake, my God, for Your city and Your people are called by Your name."
Daniel 9:4-19

Daniel does not pray just for himself, but for all of Israel -- indeed, all of those who love the Lord. He shows us that we may make confession and supplication for an entire nation. This we must do, and often.

Our second task is to maintain trust in Him, regardless of any "birth pangs" we may feel. Recall the words of Yeshua during His Sermon on the Mount:

"Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?

"So, why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

"Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."
Matthew 6:25-34

In the end, Yeshua and Ezekiel were saying the same thing: trust God, and do what He says.