Christian apologist and author Ravi Zacharias has warned America it is suffering from a "deep crisis of the soul" that is "killing us morally" and said the only way out of the "grave" in which the country has buried itself is through Jesus Christ.
"Whatever happened to the American soul? We are truly at the cliff's precipitous edge and the fall could be long and deadly. Why? We have a deep crisis of the soul that is killing us morally and we have no recourse," Zacharias, chair of the Oxford Center for Christian Apologetics (OCCA), wrote in an Independence Day blog post on his website.
"We are at war but not only with an enemy. We are at war within our own culture, and whether we will ever win over the enemy depends on whether we win this war within our own souls," he added.
The author charged that the United States is battling not only enemies overseas, but is also fighting for its own identity, and allowing the "tragic extermination" morality, truth, and reason.
"We are sliding into the future with evil stalking us but no morality, no truth, and no reason to guide us. America may be flirting with a self-inflicted mortal wound. Or it could well be a killing that is designed by a postmodern ideology masquerading as political correctness," he continued.
"When liberalism, whose legitimate child is relativism, has played itself out it will be a Pyrrhic victory to find ourselves in the hands of those whose identity is no longer in doubt. And when they are in control, the very means they used to hide their identity will be silenced as well."
The "Walking from East to West" author contended that the only hope for America is to turn to God and His Son, and encouraged Americans to "dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left."
"We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought," Zacharias wrote.
"That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us," he added.
Last year, Zacharias warned that the US Supreme Court's decision to legalize same-sex marriage has brought the divide between Christians and the secular world to its "breaking point.
"We are always near the breaking-point when we care only for what is legal and nothing for what is lawful. Unless we have a moral principle about such delicate matters as marriage and murder, the whole world will become a welter of exceptions with no rules. There will be so many hard cases that everything will go soft," he wrote.
In this time of moral relativism and uncertainty, the Church must be a place where sermons are not merely heard but are also seen, Zacharias argued: "The outreach of love will then be embodied and not be mere talk. The Church must not be a fortress guarded by a constabulary but a home where the Father ever awaits the return of each of us who is in the far country."
