Well, we've looked at national sins in the past, particularly over the racial sins of our American forefathers, in the systematic enslavement of Africans, and in the forced removal of Native Indians from the land.

Sobering history here. And you can see what we talked about in the past in the APJ book on page

56. There are some uncomfortable things in America's past that we need to face and deal with.

It's hard to face them honestly. So while we don't often talk about national sins, we do today

in a really interesting question from a listener named Brian in Chicago. In a question built off two statements in the Gospel of Luke in our recent Bible reading that we've seen,

here's what Brian wrote.

Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast.

I've been thinking a lot about the judgment Jesus pronounces on the cities of Corrason,

Betheseda, and Copernium in Luke 10, verse 13 to 16, as well as his declaration of

woe upon an entire generation in Luke 1151.

My question is, what actually happens to these groups of people and the individuals within them

when Jesus condemns a city or a generation?

Does this kind of judgment mean that every person within that group is judged

the same way? Were there faithful believers in those cities who were spared, or does the judgment

apply corporately even to those who might have personally repented? It's hard for me to fully grasp

the weight of this, and I'm struggling to understand whether these judgments were referring to an earthly destruction, such as the fall of Jerusalem in 8070, or if they point to

an eternal judgment, meaning these people would face condemnation after death. How do we understand

collective pronouncements of judgment like this in light of individual accountability before

God? Does God judge people

corporately or individually, and how does that work? Lastly, I want to know how to understand

this in relation to today. How should it shape the way we think about God's judgment,

whether over nations, cities, communities, even over our own time, our own generation. I want to grasp the weight of this sobering reality.

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