Chapter 125

This verse:

3 For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest on the land allotted to the righteous, lest the righteous stretch out their hands to do wrong. [Psa 125:3 ESV]

Surely this is the conditional under which Israel existed.  They did not have a blank check any more than we do.  BUT, I think God deals with ungodly nations differently than he did with Israel.  God blessed Israel through nature - the rains came, the livestock reproduced in quantity, disease stayed away, and so on.  God did all these things for Israel, and if and as they strayed, so He measure out the withdrawal of His hand from these things.  They were supernaturally protected, so "the random" results of a corrupt and sinful world did not affect them...unless they did wrong.  We in the US did not have this supernatural protection on a natural basis to start with.  We, like all countries besides Israel, are alive on the planet, but we are completely and totally subject to the random.  Our fate is based on individual righteousness, not on national righteousness.  God blesses the righteous, and He punishes the unrighteous - in general.  However, the rain falls on the evil as well as the good, and the sunshine likewise.  So the upshot is that a nation where there are almost no righteous people is going to have very little of the intervention of God.  He only intervenes with individuals, and not with the whole nation.  Remember the Assyrians and the Babylonians.  They had great empires though they were almost entirely evil, but ultimately, because of the horrors those people practiced, they were wiped out.  A stronger nation conquered them.  They fell because all nations fall.

I seem to be blabbering.  This subject could use a lot of study.  There is a difference in God's treatment of Israel, and God's treatment of other nations.  There is a difference between God's treatment of nations and His treatment of individuals.  There is a difference between God's treatment of those under the Old Covenant and those under the New.  There will be consistency that crosses all these lines.  I would just like a better understanding of God's working in each of these situations.  Especially in light of the rioting, burning, looting and lawlessness that seems to be growing like a cancer in this country.  The evil is in "spots", tumors if you will, and seems to spread more widely every day.  It is metastasizing.  How can we treat it, eliminate it, kill the cells, then the tumors, so that we are whole again?