America Reads the Bible—but Will It Obey?

This week, United States President Donald Trump read aloud from the Bible from the Oval Office, on camera for the nation to see. It was part of America Reads the Bible, a marathon public reading that is part of the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration, live-streamed from the Museum of the Bible in Washington and other locations nationwide. Prominent preachers, Republican leaders and other Christian supporters have lined up to read and to claim the Bible as the foundation of American life.

The president read from 2 Chronicles 7, a passage about national repentance in ancient Israel. Unlike Vice President Mike Pence during the 2016 campaign, he read the passage accurately, so give him credit for that.

But here is the question that no one in this project wants to answer—or even ask: What happens if you read the Bible, then ignore it?

2 Chronicles 7:14 has become one of the most famous in Scripture. It has been emphasized by Christian American leaders for centuries, from the Tea Party to the post-9/11 era to the Reagan movement to Billy Graham, World War ii, the Civil War, fast day proclamations, the Second Great Awakening and the Revolution.

These words record what God told Israel’s King Solomon after the dedication of the temple. It says: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

Four conditions: Humble themselves. Pray. Seek God’s face. And—this is the one that makes preachers nervous—turn from their wicked ways. It’s right there in the middle of the verse. It cannot be softened, qualified or skipped. Yet so many ministers and commentators breeze right past it. They quote the verse up to “seek my face,” promise everyone the land will be healed, and leave out the very condition God placed at the center of His promise: turn from their wicked ways.

Leave that out, and the passage sounds nice, pious, in touch with the Old Testament even—but it sidesteps God’s command and the basic point! It doesn’t prick the heart, doesn’t demand anything, doesn’t submit to what God actually said.

Why do so many preachers water this down? Herbert W. Armstrong identified the root cause decades ago.

He wrote in Mystery of the Ages that Satan “has deceived this world’s churches into believing that God’s law was done away.” That is the hostility behind the omission.

If God’s law is done away, then there is nothing to turn from. You glide past the concept of wickedness, and you preach a gospel with no repentance and no teeth.

That is not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible says in Romans 6:23 that the wages of sin is death. He defines sin plainly in 1 John 3:4: “[S]in is the transgression of the law.” His law was not nailed to the cross; His Son was. Jesus Christ bore our sins so that we could be freed from the penalty of sinning—not free to go on sinning with impunity. Read Colossians 2 carefully. What was blotted out, what was nailed to the cross, was the debt our sins incurred—the certificate of our guilt. The law itself stands.

If we are honest, the contrast between the Bible reading in Washington and what is happening everywhere else is quite stark.

Isaiah prophesied about the modern-day descendants of ancient Israel, of whom America today is most prominent: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corruptors: they have forsaken the Lord …” (Isaiah 1:4). He also wrote, “The shew of their countenance doth witness against them; and they declare their sin as Sodom, they hide it not. …” (Isaiah 3:9).

Those words were written to describe our time. And what do we see? The sins of ancient Sodom are not just tolerated; they are celebrated with pride!

Jesus Himself warned us of this. In Luke 17, He said that the last days would be just like the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Clearly, He believed the history of Genesis 19 actually happened, and He told us to learn from it. Universal sin, He said, leads to universal destruction. That is the testimony of every prophet and apostle who touched the subject (e.g. Ezekiel 16:49-50; Jude 7; 2 Peter 2:6), including Isaiah—and Jesus Christ Himself.

Jude’s epistle is only one chapter, and he spends a large portion of it on this theme. He writes of the angels who “kept not their first estate” and were reserved in chains under darkness (verse 6). Then: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire” (verse 7).

Example. That is the word Jude uses. Sodom is an example. God put it in your Bible so you would not forget what happens when a civilization descends into perversion. Anciently, the fire came—and it is coming again.

We must turn from our wicked ways.

Think about this Bible reading in D.C. and what the president read from 2 Chronicles 7. God was speaking to Solomon, the king of Israel, about the throne of David. He promised to establish that throne if Solomon walked in obedience—and He warned him that He would “pluck them up by the roots” if they forsook His commandments. This is not merely a promise to a dead king. The throne of David is a living institution. Christ will sit on it when He returns. And God’s covenant with David stands today. Read the detailed biblical and secular history of this throne in your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.

There is something deeply sobering about a modern American president reading those words aloud. My father has written at length about King Jeroboam ii of Israel, an ancient type of President Trump. King Jeroboam i committed a specific sin: He drew the people of Israel away from the throne of David. He built a religious system that looked righteous, but it was built in a spirit of rebellion, designed to keep people away from the government of God.

My father’s booklet Great Again says that this modern-day Jeroboam “gets people to look to him as the solution” rather than to the omnipotent God. That is the spirit of Jeroboam.

It is not the spirit of David, who said in Psalm 51 that he had sinned against God alone and who repented with his whole heart.

The Bible reading this week is surely being done in sincerity. But sincerity and obedience are not the same thing. God is not interested in a nation that reads His Word on camera and does not turn from its wicked ways. He is looking for what He described to Solomon: a people who will humble themselves, seek His face, and—the part no one wants to say—turn from their wicked ways. In that order, nothing left out.

Acts 3:19 says: “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out ….” God doesn’t want to blot out His law; He wants to blot out sin. He wants sin gone from this Earth and from your life. His is calling people out of this sick world and into the way of righteousness.

America is sick from head to toe (Isaiah 1:5-6). Headlines confirm it daily: family breakdown, murder, addiction, perversion, corruption. Meanwhile, a president stands at a podium and reads aloud about turning from wickedness, as preachers across the country quietly edit that phrase out of their sermons.

It is not too late. God’s mercy is real. The promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 is real. And the conditions are also real. If this nation is to be truly healed, then the Bible reading has to become Bible obeying. Repentance has to be genuine. We must actually turn from our wicked ways.

Otherwise, the warning in the second half of that same chapter will come to pass just as surely as the promise in the first: “therefore has he brought all this evil upon them” (verse 22).

God said it. The president read it. The question is whether anyone is listening—and what Americans do now.