America's Last Call: A Warning from the Watchman

Welcome, and thank you so very much for joining Carter Conlon for this year's National Day of Prayer special, America's Last Call, a warning from a watchman. We pray that you are stirred by this timely message. Let's join Carter in studio now.

This is Carter Conlon. I want to welcome you today to the National Day of Prayer radio special, where God has put something on my heart. I'm not a prophet. As David Wilkerson used to say, I'm just a watchman that God has set upon the wall with an ability that God gives to be able to see something coming in the future.

In this case, it can be a blessing or it can be a curse. I want to talk to you today about America's Last Call. In Psalm 126, the psalmist says these words, When the Lord brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with singing. Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us.

And we are glad. Bring back our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy, and he who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. Now, this is written after a mercy moment after a season of captivity where this the people of God had been swallowed by a larger and a godless society, and their values were discarded by those who had taken them into their captivity.

They didn't believe after 70 years of captivity that there was a chance that they could ever be become what they had once been. But suddenly, history tells us that a king, a Medo-Persian king called Cyrus issued a decree allowing people to go home and rebuild the testimony which they had lost. That's why the psalmist says we were like those who dream.

Our mouth was filled with laughter, our tongue with singing. And even the nations had to look at the people of God of this time and say the Lord has done great things for them. The nations would have realized that they were too far gone, too deep into captivity for ever having an opportunity to go back and rebuild what was lost from the past. But when they got up to rebuild, those who sat outside the kingdom of God looked at them and said, it's obviously the hand of God that is giving them the ability to go back and rebuild what they once lost through neglect. Now, as a nation in America, we've been sliding rapidly towards spiritual bankruptcy and the social ills that accompany it. The psalmist in Psalm 74 verses one to nine speaks about days like ours. He says, Oh God, why have you cast us off forever?

Why does your anger smoke against the sheep of your pasture? Remember your congregation, which you have purchased of old, the tribe of your inheritance, which you have redeemed. This Mount Zion, where you have dwelt, lift up your feet to the perpetual desolations. The enemy has damaged everything in the sanctuary. In other words, the psalmist is speaking about a season where godlessness came in and began to literally eradicate everything that was good and everything that had been historically good in that society. Your enemies roar in the midst of your meeting place.

They set up their banners for signs. They seem like men who lift up axes among the thick trees, and now they break down its carved work all at once. In other words, there's no regard for history. There's no regard for truth.

There's no regard for the good things that were part of the nation in the past. They come into the land and they want to tear everything down and rebuild things in their own viewpoints. They cast it down with axes and hammers. They've set fire to your sanctuary. They have defiled the dwelling place of your name to the ground. They said in their hearts, let us destroy them altogether. They've burned up all the meeting places of God in the land. We do not see our signs, neither there is no longer any prophet, nor is there any among us who knows how long.

Think of the hopelessness of that moment where we have now just come through a season where a clear warning has been given by God to this nation. If we now persist in drifting from the truth, we're given a taste of the darkness that looms on our horizon. I want you to think for a moment about what's happened in just the last several years where marriage has been redefined, age old understandings of marriage being a union between one man and one woman, where children are born from that union.

They're raised in the nurture and understanding of what is good and what is evil, according to the word of God. But just as the Psalm has said, people came in with axes and hammers and began to smash everything that's been historically understood, not only in this nation, but other nations throughout the world, and begin to redefine what God has already defined. You know, it's amazing because men can say that something is legal, but only God has the right to say it's good.

And they've taken what is good and they smashed it, and they're recreating things in the image of what they think truth should be. I want you to think about sports for a moment in America in the last several years, how we now have men competing in women's sports, men walking around naked in women's locker rooms, men who are just sexually confused, not understanding what gender they're of. And they're allowing that confusion to be normalized.

And we all know instinctively this is not a good thing, it's not a right thing, but yet we've been living through a season where this has been purported to be something virtuous, something of freedom and something of good. We think about the sexual confusion that's so rampant now in our society. Even the definitions of male and female are so obscured that people can't even openly define what a male is or what a female is anymore. We think about the sexualizing of children.

That's probably the one thing that breaks my heart above all other things, where we have men dressed up as women reading storybooks to children in libraries and public places and even in some cases, possibly schools. It's an awful thing that we've had to experience, and we've seen the edge of what darkness can become. We see in our society the mutilation of adolescence. First of all, the confusion is sown in these children's lives, generally in the school systems in some cases.

And then what purports to be a medical profession comes and says, well, Johnny thinks he's a girl, so we now have to remove his genitalia and we now have to give him his heart's desire in his youth. It's almost unthinkable that we have degenerated into such a society as we have become in the last few years. And then on top of it all, the criminalization of what was once free speech. You see, that's the only way evil can propagate itself, because it can't stand against the bulwark of truth. And so it has to punish or threaten violence against those who stand and speak truth, especially truth in the name of God and according to the word of God. It's heartbreaking what has happened in this society in the last several years as you look and you just see, just as the psalmist had said, everything that we held dear, all the values that made this nation one of the places of envy in the world, now being cast down and destroyed and thrown into the streets.

Just as Isaiah the prophet once said in a time that he had experienced where truth has been thrown into the streets. Our children are starving for understanding of what is right and what is wrong. We're now dealing with mental health issues that are absolutely off the chart in our schools and in our colleges. I was in a college recently, a secular college, and one of the counselors said we can't handle anymore the lineup of young people. They're coming into the offices who have lost hope for the future.

They're dealing with anxieties on a level like we've never seen before. Now it brings me to the point that God's given me to speak in this message today being this national day of prayer. We have, in my opinion, one final choice, one final option, one final moment where we can turn back to God as a nation and perhaps see the restoration of things the way that they should be according to the word of God. In Hosea, the prophet Hosea whose wife had become a prostitute, and you think about what happened to America when America was founded on the principles of God. America has been a place where prayer was honored. America has been a country where people fleeing oppression had landed on our shores and they had prayed and they had believed God and they dedicated the nation to the honor and the glory of God and the furthering of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We think of the 51 survivors in Plymouth, Massachusetts from the 103 who landed on the shores just a short time before meeting in a small house and beginning to pray.

They had no plan for the future. Only God could keep them now and God kept them and God gave them the victory. They prayed and miracles started to happen. And from that little gathering in that little house, now a nation of multiples of millions of people, has become the envy of the world. And in the midst of it all, we failed to recognize where our prosperity came from, where the blessing on our homes and families came from.

And just as with nations before us, we are casting away our heritage, we're casting away the word of God and the godless are coming in like a flood into the land trying to just obscure everything that we know is good and we know has stood the test of time according to the word of God. The prophet of Isaiah had experienced this tragedy and having a wife that had left him and become a harlot. But he was a willing prophet.

He was willing to go and buy her back out of captivity. And this is what I feel is in the heart of God. There's a willingness in the heart of God to show mercy if we can recognize the moment we are now in. We're in a moment where we can pray. We're in a moment where we can turn back to God. We are now living in a moment where God is willing, in my opinion, to give us mercy one more time. As is written in Psalm 126, a moment where our captivity is turned back, a moment where love and laughter comes into our mouths one more time, a moment where our tongues begin to worship God, a moment where God does something among us so profound that even the godless nations around would be forced to say the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us, the prophet said, and we are glad. Now, Hosea 14.1, the Lord says through the prophet Hosea, O Israel, return to the Lord your God, for you have stumbled because of your iniquity.

Take words with you and return to him and say to him, take away all iniquity. In other words, remove perversion from our society, remove from us this concept of letting darkness become light and letting lies be received as truth. Receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips. O my brother, my sister, my heart so longs to see the day when the houses of God are filled one more time, when the worship of God is coming from the lips of the people of this nation, where our children can be brought up with an understanding and a nurture that there is a right, there is a wrong, there is a good, there is an evil, according to the word of God.

There is an eternal reward, and there is also an eternal punishment for those who don't turn back to God. Father, help us. Father, help us. Father, help us.

O God, we can't take casually this moment we're now living in. I pray, O God, that this not be just another empty speech on virtue, but, God, that you would begin to burden people's hearts right now as they're listening to this program, that you would cause us to begin to cry out to you, that we would do as the prophet Isaiah said, and we would return to the Lord our God. We would say to him, please take iniquity away from us.

Let it begin with the people of God, those who are called by the name of Jesus Christ. Let us be as the prodigal son, coming home and saying, Father, forgive me. I've not lived right. I've not served you the way I should.

I've not been the kind of person that you had destined my life to be. Father, would you help us to humble ourselves? For you said if your people who are called by your name will humble themselves and pray and seek your face and turn from your wicked ways, you said you would hear from heaven, you would forgive our sin, and you would heal our land. God, help us now. God, help us now.

God, help us now. God, help us now, for the enemies of truth are on all the sides of this nation desiring to swallow and destroy the testimony of God. Swallow and destroy virtue. Swallow and destroy morality.

Swallow and destroy everything. God, that is true and is right and is good. Lord, help us to lift our voices to you because that's where our strength will come from. Oh, God, thank you for hearing our prayer this day.

Take away iniquity, Hosea said. Receive us graciously, for we will offer the sacrifices of our lips. Assyria will not save us. We will not ride on horses, nor will we say any more to the work of our hands. You are our gods. For in you, the Father, let's find mercy. We will not look to other sources but you, Lord Jesus Christ. We will not try to legislate our way out of this.

We will not try to fight with our mouths. Lord God, we will go to our knees, for you told us the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty in God, casting down imaginations, pulling down strongholds and bringing every thought into the obedience of Christ. Father, God, help us to pray again. Oh, Jesus Christ, turn our churches away from the lightness, the treacherous light gospel that's being preached in so many places, not understanding we are in a moment of crisis in our time. Oh, God, I pray, Lord, start speaking to pastors. Speak to them in their dreams. Speak to them, God, when they're walking on the streets. Speak to them when they open the text of scripture.

Talk to them, God, about the power that you are willing to unleash through them into the congregations and cause the people to turn back to virtue and turn back to righteousness one more time. Father, I pray in Jesus' name, fill your house. Fill your house again with young people, Lord. Fill your house, God, with those that are crying out for truth and desperately looking for hope and vision for the future.

Fill your house, oh God, with people who will sing genuine praises to you and turn away from all the other things and all the entertainments and all the things that have occupied so many people's times in this season of crisis that we're now facing. Assyria will not save us and we will not ride. We will not look to any more to mixture or to the ideas of men. We will not look to human strength, nor will we say any more to the work of our own hands. You are our gods. For in you, the father, let's find mercy.

Oh God, we just lift up our young people to you. In our grade schools and in our middle schools and our high schools and our colleges, we ask you, Lord Jesus, have mercy, God, on our children. Have mercy, Lord, and forgive us, God, for allowing darkness to come in and begin to propagate its evil ideas as if they're virtuousness, as if they're truthful. God, forgive us for not standing and defending this young generation. Oh God, I pray, Lord, for teachers. I prayed this day, Lord God, for legislators. I pray, God, for there is an authority that you would put a backbone in those who still have morality and still know there's a truth. And there's a lie.

There's a light and there's a darkness who still believe in God. Lord, give them a backbone now to stand up and begin to fight for our children in our streets who are starving on every corner. Oh God, it's time. It's time, Lord, to have mercy. It's time that we choose your mercy over the curse of continued rebellion against truth. And if we do so, my brother, my sister, listen to what the word of God says in Hosea 14.4. This is God's response to you and I taking words and saying, God, have mercy on us. He says, I'll heal their backsliding.

Backsliding means they're drifting away from truth. They're foray as it is into the lens where evil becomes good and good becomes evil. I'll heal them. I will love them freely.

My anger has turned away. I'll be like the dew to Israel and he shall grow like the lily and lengthen his roots like Lebanon. His branches shall spread.

His beauty shall be like an olive tree and his fragrance like Lebanon. Those who dwell under his shadow shall return. They shall be revived like grain. They shall grow like a vine. Their scent shall be like the wine of Lebanon. Those who turn back to God will be revived. They'll begin to grow. There'll be wholesomeness in our speech, in our lives, in our homes, in our families. Growth will come back again into people's lives as well as into the nation. And there'll be a sweet scent, not a stench.

We will not be the number one exporter of evil ideas and all kinds of immorality. But God, there'll be a touch of heaven come upon the nation one more time. Ephraim shall say, what have I to do anymore with idols?

I've heard and observed them. I'm like a green cypress tree. Your fruit is found in me. In other words, there'll be a turning away from that which is evil and a turning back to that which is truth. Who is wise? Let him understand these things. Who is prudent?

Let him know them. For the ways of the Lord are right and the righteous walk in them. But transgressors shall stumble in them. My prayer for you today, my prayer for this nation today is the Lord would bring back again our captivity. I do believe, my brother, my sister, that we are now in a moment of mercy.

It's a short season, a time of consciousness, a time when collectively we can decide. Like the prodigal son that Jesus spoke about in Luke chapter 15, who just came to himself and said, what am I doing here? Why am I living like this? Why am I feeding pigs in this field when I am my father's son and there's bread in my father's house? And the scripture said he just got up and started to head home and he had gone so far away from the heart of his father.

He didn't even know how to get back. And maybe that's your case today. Maybe that's the case of other people in our community. But if you can hear the sound of the pleading of God in my voice today, my brother, my sister, keep it simple. Just get up and start heading back home.

That's all you have to do. The boy was so far off he couldn't even see his father's house. And I think we've gone so far down the road of calling good evil and evil good that some can't even see the way back into the heart of God. But the beauty of the story in Luke chapter 15 that was told by Jesus is that even though the boy couldn't see his father's house, his father saw him and came running towards him. America, listen to me today as you've never listened before. Listen, listen to the words of this watchman today. God is waiting for you to get up and start moving towards him.

And when you do, he will run to you. He still loves you with an everlasting love. Yes, he says to the prophet Isaiah, a nursing mother could forget her children, but I can't forget you.

I have engraved you on the palms of my hands. He remembers the 51 people in that little room in Plymouth, Massachusetts. He remembers their prayers. He remembers the military generals who bent their knee knowing that without divine help, their freedom could not come, their victories would not come. He remembers the prayers of every person over 400 and something years that have prayed in this nation.

He remembers it all. And it's God's heart that aches to bring you back to himself again. And just as he did with the prodigal son, the Lord will come running to you. America, he will embrace you one more time. He will clothe you again with righteousness. He will empower you to be the people that he wants destined you to be. And he will put shoes on your feet as he did with the prodigal son. And he will call you on a journey with him to be the hand of God's blessing, not just within our own borders, but in the borders of many throughout the world who are desperately looking for help, for freedom, for hope and for truth.

America, get up and come back to God. He will run towards you. He will meet you. He will embrace you. He will bring you back. And you will once again hear him singing over you.

The scripture tells us that the father brought his prodigal son back into his house, called for the musicians, brought out a feast and began to rejoice over his son who had come home. Oh, America, let's not be a foolish people. Let's not be people in our time who had an opportunity for great mercy. And we have it now. We have an opportunity where we can still speak truth. We have an opportunity where we can still recognize that God wants to show mercy and he has power to bring us back. When the Lord turned, brought back the captivity of Zion, we were like those who dream.

Our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with singing. Won't that be a wonderful day when we come back to the house of God and we meet as God's people? And there's a rejoicing in our hearts and there's worship of God in our mouths. When they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. When so many people have desired the destruction of this country because of its relationship with God. And when we come back to God, even the nations have desired the destruction of this country. We'll have to admit the Lord has done great things for them and we will be glad. The psalmist concludes by saying, Bring back our captivity, O Lord, as streams in the south. As you have been God to us in the past, we ask you to be God to us again in the present and in the future. And those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

That's people like you and I who can see the writing on the wall. We begin to understand that without God, we don't have a future. Our hearts are broken and we begin to warn the people around us that there's darkness ahead of us. If we don't take this moment of mercy, the darkness ahead of us is much worse than what we've already experienced. But he who goes forth continually weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing and bringing his sheaves with him.

It's time to pray now. He goes forth into that secret closet of prayer and he has in his or her heart the promises of God. That the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they're mighty in God.

Casting down imaginations and bringing down every stronghold and causing all thought to come into obedience to the word of God through Jesus Christ. I have that seed in my heart, my brother, my sister. I have the promise of God that I will doubtless come again with rejoicing.

And the fruit of the confidence that God has placed in my heart will come with me. God answers prayer. I'm praying for you. I'm praying for your family. Let this be the beginnings of a great, great spiritual awakening in America. In Jesus name. Amen. You have been listening to Carter Conlon and his National Day of Prayer special, America's Last Call, a warning from a watchman. As we conclude this year's special, we just wanted to thank you so much for joining us. For more specials like this one, visit www.carterconlon.com. That's www.carterconlon.com. God bless.