Declaration of a National Day of Prayer and Repentance
(based on the Holy Spirit’s inspiration to have Abraham Lincoln call the nation to repentance)
“Whereas, “We, the People” of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, have designated and set apart a day for National Prayer and Repentance.
And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.
And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamities which now desolate our land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the Lord, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
Now, therefore, we, in compliance with the request and fully concurring, do, by this proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 4th day of July, 2024, as a day of National Prayer and Repentance, and we do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion.
All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of our Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace. In witness whereof, we have hereunto set our hand to this declaration on Thursday, the 4th day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty four”.
Washington, DC, United States of America – July 4th, 2024
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https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:098b55b1-f0fb-465a-a686-cc15b448e734