What Happens to a Nation
That Turns its Back on God?
What Happens to a Nation That Turns its Back on
God? Does a nation that turns its back on God just keep on going forever under
its own power? Where is the Assyrian Empire, the Babylonian Empire, the
Egyptian Empire, the Roman Empire, the Aztec Empire, the Incan Empire, the
British Empire today? All these empires came and passed out. Time is ticking
for the United States, will we be blessed by following the LORD, or will we be
cursed for not following Him? Let us look at Deuteronomy 28 to see what the One
Who Has the Final Word has to say about the subject.
Blessings if you follow the LORD
1
If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I
give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on
earth.
2 All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the
LORD your God:
3 You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country.
4
The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the
young of your livestock—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
5 Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed.
6 You will be blessed
when you come in and blessed when you go out.
7 The LORD will grant that the
enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at
you from one direction but flee from you in seven.
8 The LORD will send a
blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your
God will bless you in the land he is giving you.
9 The LORD will establish you
as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the
LORD your God and walk in obedience to him.
10 Then all the peoples on earth
will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you.
11 The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity—in the fruit of your womb, the
young of your livestock and the crops of your ground—in the land he swore to
your ancestors to give you.
12 The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse
of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of
your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none.
13 The
LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands
of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you
will always be at the top, never at the bottom.
14 Do not turn aside from any
of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other
gods and serving them.
Curses for Disobedience
15 However, if you do not obey the LORD your
God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you
today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you:
16 You will be
cursed in the city and cursed in the country.
17 Your basket and your kneading
trough will be cursed.
18 The fruit of your womb will be cursed, and the crops
of your land, and the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks.
19 You
will be cursed when you come in and cursed when you go out.
20 The LORD will
send on you curses, confusion and rebuke in everything you put your hand to, until
you are destroyed and come to sudden ruin because of the evil you have done in
forsaking him.[a]
21 The LORD will plague you with diseases until he has
destroyed you from the land you are entering to possess.
22 The LORD will
strike you with wasting disease, with fever and inflammation, with scorching
heat and drought, with blight and mildew, which will plague you until you
perish.
23 The sky over your head will be bronze, the ground beneath you iron.
24 The LORD will turn the rain of your country into dust and powder; it will
come down from the skies until you are destroyed.
25 The LORD will cause you to
be defeated before your enemies. You will come at them from one direction but
flee from them in seven, and you will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms
on earth.
26 Your carcasses will be food for all the birds and the wild
animals, and there will be no one to frighten them away.
27 The LORD will
afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores and the
itch, from which you cannot be cured.
28 The LORD will afflict you with
madness, blindness and confusion of mind.
29 At midday you will grope about
like a blind person in the dark. You will be unsuccessful in everything you do;
day after day you will be oppressed and robbed, with no one to rescue you.
30
You will be pledged to be married to a woman, but another will take her and
rape her. You will build a house, but you will not live in it. You will plant a
vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit.
31 Your ox will be
slaughtered before your eyes, but you will eat none of it. Your donkey will be
forcibly taken from you and will not be returned. Your sheep will be given to
your enemies, and no one will rescue them.
32 Your sons and daughters will be
given to another nation, and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day
after day, powerless to lift a hand.
33 A people that you do not know will eat
what your land and labor produce, and you will have nothing but cruel
oppression all your days.
34 The sights you see will drive you mad.
35 The LORD
will afflict your knees and legs with painful boils that cannot be cured,
spreading from the soles of your feet to the top of your head.
36 The LORD will
drive you and the king you set over you to a nation unknown to you or your
ancestors. There you will worship other gods, gods of wood and stone.
37 You
will become a thing of horror, a byword and an object of ridicule among all the
peoples where the LORD will drive you.
38 You will sow much seed in the field
but you will harvest little, because locusts will devour it.
39 You will plant
vineyards and cultivate them but you will not drink the wine or gather the
grapes, because worms will eat them.
40 You will have olive trees throughout
your country but you will not use the oil, because the olives will drop off.
41
You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them, because they will
go into captivity.
42 Swarms of locusts will take over all your trees and the
crops of your land.
43 The foreigners who reside among you will rise above you
higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower.
44 They will lend to you,
but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, but you will be the tail.
45 All these curses will come on you. They will pursue you and overtake you until
you are destroyed, because you did not obey the LORD your God and observe the
commands and decrees he gave you.
46 They will be a sign and a wonder to you
and your descendants forever.
47 Because you did not serve the LORD your God
joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity,
48 therefore in hunger and
thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the LORD
sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until he has destroyed
you.
49 The LORD will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends
of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not
understand,
50 a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for
the young.
51 They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of
your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or
olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are
ruined.
52 They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the
high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the
cities throughout the land the LORD your God is giving you.
53 Because of the
suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the
fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the LORD your God has
given you.
54 Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no
compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children,
55 and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he
is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will
inflict on you during the siege of all your cities.
56 The most gentle and
sensitive woman among you—so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to
touch the ground with the sole of her foot—will begrudge the husband she loves
and her own son or daughter
57 the afterbirth from her womb and the children
she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the
suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities.
58 If
you do not carefully follow all the words of this law, which are written in
this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name—the LORD your God—
59 the LORD will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and
prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses.
60 He will bring on
you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you.
61
The LORD will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not
recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed.
62 You who were as
numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you
did not obey the LORD your God.
63 Just as it pleased the LORD to make you
prosper and increase in number, so it will please him to ruin and destroy you.
You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess.
64 Then the
LORD will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the
other. There you will worship other gods—gods of wood and stone, which neither
you nor your ancestors have known.
65 Among those nations you will find no
repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the LORD will give
you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart.
66 You
will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never
sure of your life.
67 In the morning you will say, “If only it were evening!”
and in the evening, “If only it were morning!”—because of the terror that will
fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see.
68 The LORD will send
you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again.
There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female
slaves, but no one will buy you.
