Recently 2 Chronicles 7:14 has became the central verse for mobilizing the Religious Right … and it happened not long after President Obama won the White House:
If my people, who are called by my name, will 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.
Ever since Obama and the Democrats took over, the Religious Right has become convinced that the election was the result of our nation’s wickedness and the only way to cast off this curse is for its people to humble themselves and plead with God to heal our land.
Thus, this passage has been the foundation of Janet Porter’s May Day 2010 Prayer Rally, the Global Day of Prayer, the National Day of Prayer, and the FRC’s upcoming Call 2 Fall event. And it was also the central theme of Richard Land’s recent address to FRC’s Watchmen on the Wall conference, where he warned that without revival, this country was on its way to becoming fundamentally unrecognizable:
American Christians will one day not recognize their country if a movement of God that begins with a revival among His people does not occur, Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land told a pastors briefing in the nation’s capital.
“If we don’t have a revival that becomes an awakening and ripens into a reformation, many of us — if we live out our full lives — are going to walk the streets of our neighborhood, drive the roads of our city and our state, and, oh, we’ll recognize the place names, but the America we’ve known will be gone,” said Land, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “We’ll be strangers in our own land….”
Land spoke at the annual Watchmen on the Wall pastors briefing sponsored by Family Research Council and attended by more than 500 people.
He spoke on 2 Chronicles 7:14, which 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.”
“All great movements of God,” Land said, “start with God’s people getting right with God.
…
Washington “has been, is and always will be a caboose,” he said. “It’s never been, and it never will be, a locomotive. Washington is what sociologists call a lagging social indicator. When the country changes, Washington will change. Washington’s not going to change the country. We’re going to change Washington.”
