Today is our nation’s birthday. Possibly you won’t read this Strength for the Day until days after, but you can still reflect on what the birthday of our nation means for you. Heaven, of which you are also a citizen, has no birthday which we are aware of, except when the first believer died or when Enoch “walked with God and was not. But the “courts of heaven as God’s abode, if you will, has no beginning and no end. However, for us there will be a transition from heaven to the new heavens and new earth when God creates it.
I imagine this is the merging of two spheres of abode into one. It is beyond us now what place of being the angels will live in the new heavens and new earth. The “courts of heaven, however, will be in the new earth because God has declared His dwelling will be with us.
Presently we live in a world still awaiting a consummation. Much is yet to transpire within her. A lot of it will be cataclysmic with the unveiling of Satan’s final onslaught. What place does the birthday of a nation have when it is currently dying before our eyes?
Historically, America has in many ways been a type of oasis in the midst of a fallen world, though certainly a real part of this sinful society and culture. While she has certainly been fallen herself, she has been an instrument of God for reprieve against many horrendous evils.
She has provided for the raising up of Christian mission throughout the world, the spreading of God’s Word in far flung corners of the earth. Trillions of dollars of resources to support the world-wide church have come from the pockets of believers within her borders. She has been a bastion of prayer warriors with their prayers going heavenward, uplifting the kingdom of God on this benighted sphere.
Of course, little of this has found its way into the national and international means of producing news. God’s truth is disseminated “under the radar, so to speak, reserved for the unveiling of the church’s inexorable march throughout Satan’s domain. “The gates of hell will not prevail against her, the Bible promises. We will not know of all God’s triumphs among the myriad members of His church until it becomes broadcast at the Great White Throne Judgment. Until then, we only perceive it by faith with attention to God’s written promises, not by sight.
What we celebrate this July 4th is God’s prodigious use of America as His instrument to accomplish His ends in the world. It is not as though He has not used His children in many places elsewhere to build His church and further His kingdom, but America has been used by God for a number of recent centuries before the Lord’s return to accomplish and defend His righteousness on the earth.
This is what you should celebrate today on July 4th. Celebrate what God has done in His use of America and through His use of those believing saints who have been privileged for a time to be citizens here. America will die with the fallen earth, but our home in heaven and the new earth will last forever. Men and women from every race, language, nation, and tribe will make up the diverse citizen rolls of those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. We will then be solely known as God’s forever family!
“The King there in His beauty without a veil is seen; it were a well-spent journey though seven deaths lay between. The Lamb with His fair army doth on Mount Zion stand, and glory, glory dwelleth in Emmanuel’s land.
(Second verse of Anna Cousin’s and Samuel Rutherford’s hymn, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking, 1661 and 1857)
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