Thousands of people gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on Sunday for “Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise and Thanksgiving.” This was a White House-backed rally, part of the America 250 celebration. Its purpose was to call the nation to renew its dedication to God.

It was an accurate reflection of America’s dedication to God.

Yes, there was an event. Yes, some people showed up. Yes, some conservative leaders made an appearance. JD Vance, Pete Hegseth and Marco Rubio appeared—via prerecorded video messages. President Trump read 2 Chronicles 7, also in a prerecorded video from the Oval Office that basically recycled a Bible-reading marathon from a month prior. He did not attend in person, opting instead to go golfing about 45 minutes away. He posted on social media: “I hope everybody at Rededicate 250 is having a good time.”

People who were desperately hoping America would truly rededicate itself to God were not having a good time.

Seats were visibly empty, including rows of empty chairs near the stage. After the president’s prerecorded message ended and the nine-hour program continued into the afternoon heat, the crowd seemed to thin further. Attendance was estimated at 15,000, less than 2 percent of the capacity of the National Mall, which can hold and has held more than 1 million.

The chairs were empty, and the president didn’t bother to show up. Rock concert music echoed off the Washington Monument, while stained-glass imagery fused the Founding Fathers with a white cross. Only one prominent voice was willing to get up and address the subject that would actually begin to rededicate America to God: repentance of sin.

Franklin Graham stepped up to the podium and read aloud from 2 Timothy 3: “… in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (verses 1-5; English Standard Version).

“It seems,” he said, “this could have been written to describe America today.”

Then, Graham went further: “America has become morally rotten, completely sick with sin.” He named sexual perversions and violence. He called for actual repentance and said there can be no revival without prayer and repentance.

But these few minutes of pointing out obvious truths and reading the relevant verses were somewhat lost even within the event itself. For those 15,000 or so who attended, much of the day was about feeling good about being Christian and ignoring God’s law and our need to repent of breaking it.

Paula White-Cain, Trump’s spiritual adviser, quoted 2 Corinthians 3:17—“where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty,” as though Americans have true liberty and therefore have God’s Spirit, despite the open rebellion that even most believers have against obeying God’s law!

“Just as we in the beginning dedicated this land to your most holy name, today, Lord,” Speaker Mike Johnson prayed, “in the 250th year of American independence, we hereby rededicate the United States of America as one nation under God.”

These are fine-sounding words. But the Bible has something to say about rededication without repentance. Lou Engle, who led the prayer on the National Mall, spoke of “releasing repentance” across the nation. He told the crowd to get on their knees, to forgive those who had betrayed them, to seek God. But what was conspicuously absent from nearly every message—and from the event’s entire design—was the hard half of 2 Chronicles 7:14, the part about turning from our wicked ways.

That passage, the one President Trump read in his Oval Office video, reads: “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.”

Turn from their wicked ways.

We have wicked ways! Yes, the enemies without and within this country have wicked ways, but so do American conservatives, so do American Christians!

God’s promise for the healing of our land that we desperately need is conditional. It requires turning from wicked ways. Not celebrating them, not tolerating them, not altering true Christianity to try to accommodate them, but turning from them.

But we don’t turn from our wicked ways because we like them. We don’t even think they are wicked. When we hear “wicked ways,” we think that applies to someone else.

How could Americans in 2026 turn from their wicked ways?

Not with a nice-looking, underattended event with mere rock music, pageantry and absent leaders sending recycled videos and hoping everybody is having a good time.

Repentance means each of us accepting that God’s law is what defines good and evil, admitting that we sin, finding where we have violated His law of love and righteousness, and tearing those sins out of our lives even though it feels harder than anything we’ve ever done!

There is a reason why President Trump and American leaders throughout our history have read 2 Chronicles 7:14 in speeches and at national events. God said those words to “my people,” the kingdom of Israel under Solomon.

The United States descended from Israel.

You can prove this from the Bible, from world history and from America’s extraordinary national history. (Request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy to know where to find this proof in the Bible and secular history.)

While the Mall rally was underway, we had our own rededication here at the Trumpet offices in Edmond, Oklahoma, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Herbert W. Armstrong College. For 25 years, this college has trained young men and women not in the religion of this age but in the religion of the Bible.

The world’s ceremony promised blessings without obedience. Ours focused on the belief and obedience to God’s law that produces fruit.

In my commencement address, I spoke about how you must prune even healthy branches, even fruitful branches, to maximize a plant’s yield of fruit, the miraculous edible portion that gives life.

This is the message America does not want to hear. The nation wants the blessings without the pruning. It wants God’s covenant without God’s conditions. It wants to disallow the law of God; then systematically remove Him from its schools, institutions and government; then count an underwhelming and less-than-biblical event as a rededication.

True repentance is not happening on the National Mall. It is not happening in the institutions of this nation. But it can happen. Make it happen in your life: Start by reading one of the most powerful short booklets you can read: Repentance Toward God.