Many Christians can quote this verse and even know where it is in the Bible, but how many of us take the time to realize it is the second part of a sentence, and bother to read the paragraphs leading up to it, or keep reading afterward? Let's look at the whole thing:

"When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command the locust to devour the land, or send pestilence among my people, if my people who are called by my name 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. Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayer that is made in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that my name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time. And as for you, if you will walk before me as David your father walked, doing according to all that I have commanded you and keeping my statutes and my rules, then I will establish your royal throne, as I covenanted with David your father, saying, 'You shall not lack a man to rule Israel.'

"But if you turn aside and forsake my statutes and my commandments that I have set before you, and go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will pluck you up from my land that I have given you, and this house that I have consecrated for my name, I will cast out of my sight, and I will make it a proverb and a byword among all peoples. And at this house, which was exalted, everyone passing by will be astonished and say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land and to this house?' Then they will say, 'Because they abandoned the LORD, the God of their fathers who brought them out of the land of Egypt and laid hold on other gods and worshiped them and served them. Therefore he has brought all this disaster on them.'"

2 Chronicles 7:13-22 E.S.V., emphasis mine

It's funny (or really sad) how this WHOLE thing is not a popular passage of Scripture to preach on every Sunday morning! Whenever a natural disaster happens in a city known for blatant and public sin, if a minister of the Gospel got up and quoted this verse without citing the reference, he'd be (and has been) condemned by most of the modern evangelical and charismatic community, and almost all of society. But deep down inside we all know better, but don't want to admit it.

We all know that if it weren't for the grace God and the shed blood of His Son Jesus Christ, God would leave us to the consequences of our sin, in an eternal punishment of hellfire. How come this truth is not as popular as preaching on tithing or sowing to receive your hundredfold return?

Be very aware--God will hold the Church accountable for all she allowed to happen in her nation of influence. Ezekiel 33:6 says the watchmen who see the sword coming on the land but do not warn its inhabitants, the Lord requires their blood at the watchman's hand.

When people are spending their eternity in hell, they won't be so happy with you in that day for having avoided offending them in their lifetime--for not ruffling any of their feathers. People appreciate warnings to avoid crossing a street if they don't notice a truck is about to hit them--you don't gently say "sweetheart get off the road." Better to have people offended with you now and rattled a little bit but have heard the truth that has power to saved them from the wrath of God and set them free from the bondage of their sin, and forgive them and empower them to live this life free from it. Better that than to have them live how they want but thought that praying a prayer and going through '4 spiritual laws' and checking yes to all the right questions but going on living the same way as before and "really believing in their heart" was all it took to be a Christian, void of any demonstration of repentance.

At least when the people of Noah's day drowned in the flood and tried one last time to claw their way into the ark, they KNEW already what they were facing because they'd been warned many times for many years.

Let's not have the blood of a nation on our hands, no matter how much against the grain such a message may be.

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