$19,855,796,275,198. That’s almost 20 trillion dollars. This is the amount of the national debt. Actually, it was the amount we owed when I wrote this article. Since then it has increased by millions. Who can fathom these numbers?
While 20 trillion dollars may stagger our minds, there is a debt in America that is far more serious. We say that people should pay for their crimes, and this is true. Many in our society no longer believe this but it is biblical. With this concept in mind, consider what God said in the Old Testament about murder:
“Moreover ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death: but he shall be surely put to death…So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are: for blood it defileth the land: and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed therein, but by the blood of him that shed it” (Num. 35:31, 33).
Here we have an important principle in the affairs of a nation. When murder is committed, that land is defiled. The only way to cleanse the land is to bring the murderers to justice—to execute them (Gen. 9:6)! To put it another way, when men commit murder, they ought to pay for it with their own lives. If society does not make them pay, then the debt stands.
God hates hands that shed innocent blood (Prov. 6:17). Manasseh, one of the most wicked men in the Bible, ran up a huge national debt in this regard. He “shed innocent blood very much” (II Kings 21:16). That debt could not go unpaid forever; the demands of the scales of justice required payment. And pay the Jews did. The Lord sent the brutal Babylonian army upon Jerusalem “for the innocent blood that he shed; for he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood; which the Lord would not pardon” (II Kings 24:4). Tragically, it was over 40 years after Manasseh’s death that the nation of Judah began paying on this debt, and it took them 70 years to pay it. It is a fact of life that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for the mistakes of our generation just as we are paying for the wrongs of those who went before us.
There have been over 59 million abortions in this country since 1973. The whole nation of Israel was just a few million when God warned them about defiling the promised land with murder! This is the kind of national debt people need to be worried about more than the almost 20 trillion we owe in dollars. If we could pay off our financial debt in our lifetime, we would still have far more serious debt with much more severe consequences hanging over our heads. This debt, like the debt Manasseh ran up, will have to be paid. This nation will have to pay this note. Divine justice demands it.
– Kerry Duke, Vice-President of Academics & Academic Affairs
