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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, FEBRUARY 26, 1982
PAGE 11
"The United States is...a great nation, in many ways the greatest nation of
all times •.••very few imitators have understood that the secret of the
United States' tremendous success is not merely technology, know-how, the
work ethic or greed. It was a spiritual wind that drove the Americans ir
resistibly ahead. Behind their compulsion to improve man's lot was at
f�rst an all-pervading reli � iousness, later � he sense of duty, the submis
� to� God-given code o personal behavior, the acceptance of a God
given task to accomplish ancf'of all the necessary sacrifices. Few foreign
ers understand this, even today. The United States looks to them like the
triumph of soulless materialism. The religious fervor and the Protestant
ethic that were so blantantly evident in the past are certainly less visi
ble now. But they are still there, even if few Americans mention them.
They are feebler, discredited� intellectuals, corroded by the doubts of
these impious times, but without them, or what is left of them, America
would not be what it is." And without God's blessings and favor, an immoral
America cannot stand before its enemies. The future is far more bleak than
contemporary "impious America" realizes. Perhaps it was best foretold in a
letter from a woman in Pasadena to the editor of the LOS ANGELES TIMES on
February 24, 1982:
"I would ask those who criticize our government's policy in El Salvador to
reconsider. Do they want the United States to ultimately have to go to war
to defend our own border--at ££E. very border? Could they, their children
and grandchildren, in some way, become boat people in the not too distant
future?"
Americans� "boat people"? Read Ezekiel 5:5-8, leading up to the end of
verse 12--"and a third part I will scatter to all the winds and will un
sheathe the sword after them" (R.S.V.).
Who else but this Work of God is showing the "Morality Connection" between
obedience to God's laws and the reward of national blessings and protec
tion?
--Gene H. Hogberg, News Bureau