Don't tell me 9/11 was not God's judgment on America

September 11 is almost here again and its being the 10th anniversary there are more commemorative events than usual, as well as terrorist threats of course. Pray those are soundly quashed.

A sermon that was given the Sunday right after 9-11 in 2001 was aired on Christian radio this morning, among other things complaining about those who saw the attack as God's judgment on America. Since I'm one who sees it that way I just want to give a brief answer:

To say that it was God's judgment on AMERICA is NOT to say it was God's judgment on the victims that day.

I've always been careful to say this, and nobody else who called it God's judgment blamed the victims either, at least that I heard. That was made up by the preacher on the radio. As a matter of fact there were very very few who even saw the attack as God's judgment at the time, while most sermons seemed aimed at exonerating God from such a charge.

Some, including the radio preacher, also seemed determined to put it in the context of Jesus' teachings about disasters not implying some special judgment of their victims, and in relation to the victims themselves that is perfectly appropriate. The victims were not being judged, AMERICA was being judged. Or at least we can't KNOW if some of the victims were being judged or not. God deals with individuals individually. Some of the victims were His and went to be with Him. God takes us home according to His own counsel, it could be by a national disaster or it could be by any other means chosen by Him at any time also chosen by Him. There were many stories of miraculous rescues --God dealing with individuals individually.

We can't even speculate about the reasons in the case of the individuals. We can't know anything about that. The only thing to be done in relation to the victims is sympathize and offer help.

And on the tenth anniversary of the attack the most appropriate thing to do is sympathize and commiserate and bind up wounds.

If it weren't for that sermon I wouldn't say anything else.

But the same Jesus who admonished His followers not to think of the sufferings of indivicuals as God's judgments also made it clear that God was going to judge the nation of Israel -- not one stone of the temple left upon another -- which He did in 70 AD.

God was not necessarily judging the victims of 9-11 but was undoubtedly judging the nation. To understand how such a thing could have happened to America we have to recognize that God still deals with NATIONS as described in the Old Testament and we are admonished in the New Testament to learn such things from the Old.

And one last statement: The preacher on the radio mentioned that both Right and Left think it was judgment, the Right because of our sins according to the Bible -- that's my position -- and the Left because America deserves it, I suppose for our "meddling" in the Middle East? The Left always sides with America's enemies. That's not what I'm doing. Our enemies' reasons are not God's reasons. I'm looking at it from what I understand to be God's perspective, not our enemies' perspective. God uses our enemies to judge us, and then eventually they will also be judged.