2 Chronicles 7:12-14 “Then the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said to him: "I have heard your prayer, and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. (13) When I shut up heaven and there is no rain, or command the locusts to devour the land, or send pestilence among My people, (14) 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 I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
Sadly it is only when a nation begins to experience the judgement of God that many saints for the first time, begin to pray in earnest for the nations in which they reside. Their motivation is normally sparked by fear, as they see the way of life that they have taken for granted start to change for the worse. And so when the church finally begins to pray, they petition the Lord to reverse His judgement on the nation so that their lives can go back to “normal”, and they use the above quoted passage of scripture as the scriptural basis for their prayers. Sadly because the saints and many ministers of the gospel do not rightly divide the word of truth in this area however, they use this passage erroneously and their prayers therefore prove to be ineffective. In this passage of scripture God is addressing the nation of Israel and not the church. We need to recognise that fact in order to understand what God is saying, for God clearly promises to reverse His judgement pronounced upon the nation of Israel if they will meet certain requirements. God says to Israel that if they “as a nation”, will humble themselves before Him, seek His face and repent of their wickedness, then God’s response is that He will forgive their sins and reverse the judgement that He has pronounced upon them and heal their land. And so the church mistakenly takes this passage out of context by applying it to themselves, for their viewpoint is that they are God’s people who are called by His name, and they therefore qualify. And so they humble themselves, seek His face through prayer and repent of their wicked ways, thus expecting God to reverse the judgement that He has pronounced on the nation and heal the land in which they reside. There are two problems with this viewpoint however. Firstly, unlike the Jews, the nation that the saints reside in is not their land, for they are just sojourners in a foreign land and their citizenship is in heaven. Secondly, just like the Jews, God pronounces judgement on the citizens of the nation i.e. the unbelievers, and not on the church. And so it is that unless the citizens of that nation humble themselves, seek His face and repent of their wicked ways, God’s judgement will stand and no amount of praying by the church will change that, for the whole purpose of the judgement is to bring the citizens of that nation to a place of repentance.
Michael E.B. Maher
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