An Article of Faith

Today marks the birthday of our sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln.

The following proclamation serves as an example from the history of our nation when her national leaders called the people of our country to repent of their individual and national sins. The Congress and President Lincoln sensed the Civil War they were facing was the result of God’s righteous judgment on the nation for its sins. The division of our nation was great. However, the leaders called the nation to prayer and repentance. The war came to an end, the nation was reunited and the land was healed. This is a testimony of how God can bring a deeply troubled nation to repentance and restoration.

God promises, “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” (2 Chronicles 7:14).

President Lincoln issued the following proclamation Aug. 12, 1861: “Whereas a joint committee of both houses of Congress has waited on the President of the United States and requested him to recommend a day of public prayer, humiliation, and fasting, to be observed by the people of the United States with religious solemnities, and the offering of fervent supplications to Almighty God. ...

“It is fit and becoming in all people, at all times, to acknowledge and revere the supreme government of God; to bow in humble submission to His chastisements; to confess and deplore their sins and transgressions, in the full conviction that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom [see Proverbs 1:7]; and to pray with all fervency and contrition for the pardon of their past offenses. ...

“Whereas when our own beloved country, once, by the blessing of God, united, prosperous, and happy, is now afflicted with faction and civil war, it is peculiarly fit for us to recognize the hand of God in this terrible visitation, and in sorrowful remembrance of our own faults and crimes as a nation and as individuals, to humble ourselves before Him and to pray for His mercy. ...

“Therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do appoint the last Thursday in September next as a day of humiliation, prayer, and fasting for all the people of the nation.”

Pray that God would once again raise up leaders in our nation who understand these spiritual truths and who have the courage to call for national repentance.

Pray that God’s people and spiritual leaders will begin the process of returning to the Lord before our nation has to suffer an increasing intensity of God’s judgments that would bring us to such desperation (see Amos 4:1-13).

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,” wrote the Psalmist, “The people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance” (Psalm 33:12).

(Jessie J. Charpentier Sr. is pastor of Jenkins Memorial Baptist Church in St. Martinville.)