Oh thou misapplied 2 Chronicles 7:14" /> Oh thou misapplied 2 Chronicles 7:14" /> Oh thou misapplied 2 Chronicles 7:14" />

2 Chronicles 7:14   ... 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. 

 

The context of 2 Chronicles 6-7 is the key to understanding why the misuse of this passage is important to expose.  Solomon completed the temple around 950 BC, appropriate sacrifices were offered, God spoke to him, and we ask you to read what God said in full:


2 Chronicles 7:2-22     And the Lord appeared to Solomon by night, and said unto him, I have heard thy prayer, and have chosen this place to myself for an house of sacrifice. If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. Now mine eyes shall be open, and mine ears attentive unto the prayer that is made in this place. For now have I chosen and sanctified this house, that my name may be there for ever: and mine eyes and mine heart shall be there perpetually. And as for thee, if thou wilt walk before me, as David thy father walked, and do according to all that I have commanded thee, and shalt observe my statutes and my judgments; Then will I establish the throne of thy kingdom, according as I have covenanted with David thy father, saying, There shall not fail thee a man to be ruler in Israel. But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; Then will I pluck them up by the roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight, and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations. And this house, which is high, shall be an astonishment to every one that passeth by it; so that he shall say, Why hath the Lord done thus unto this land, and unto this house? And it shall be answered, Because they forsook the Lord God of their fathers, which brought them forth out of the land of Egypt, and laid hold on other gods, and worshipped them, and served them: therefore hath he brought all this evil upon them...


So the context is Israel in the land, and warnings to the people about things which COULD and that DID come to pass. Interspersed in the message was the way back, for restoration. This passage is to Israel, Israel in the land, Israel in covenant relationship with God.  Why is it serious to misquote this, to try to apply it to nations such as America or Britain or what have you?

 

  • The church is given no “land”.  Land promises were for Israel.
  • The church has a heavenly hope, not an earthly one. Believers in this age are strangers and pilgrims passing through the scene of Messiahs rejection
  • God did not give America or Britain to Christians, period.
  • There is no such concept whatsoever in the Bible of a Christian nation.
  • Israel is not the church, the church is not Israel. The church began in Acts 2 while Israel began with the descendants of Abraham and God’s call. Don’t mix promises made to Israel with promises made to the Church.
  • My hopes and anchors are in the wrong place. In a Gentile nation, this becomes home.


Many misapply this text due to understandable concern for the downward moral degredation of the culture. Though such motives may be good, our understanding of scripture is amiss. And in doing so we misapply our role and place in the present age when this is the Times of the Gentiles, a scene where Messiah was rejected and crucified.  This is not Israel’s millennium, nor Augustine’s Kingdom of God on earth.  Take care lest we find ourselves rearranging chairs on the Titanic, and at the end find we fought a little too much for something that was never meant to be ours, and that was not something God wanted us to grasp for -with so much of our energy.
It was written to Israel.


gg


Note: This isn’t a polemic, for example, about believers not voting.