Signs of the times
"When the heavens are shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against You, when they pray toward this place and confess Your name, and turn from their sin because You afflict them, then hear in heaven, and forgive the sin of Your servants, Your people Israel, that You may teach them the good way in which they should walk; and send rain on Your land which You have given to Your people as an inheritance.
“When there is famine in the land, pestilence or blight or mildew, locusts or grasshoppers; when their enemy besieges them in the land of their cities; whatever plague or whatever sickness there is; whatever prayer, whatever supplication is made by anyone, or by all Your people Israel, when each one knows the plague of his own heart, and spreads out his hands toward this temple: then hear in heaven...."
1 Kings 8:35-40
But God's people forgot to trust and pray. Just as the American public now welcomes spiritual compromise and self-made religions, Israel traded truth and God's loving favor for a seductive imitation of Canaanite spirituality -- cloaked in Biblical terms. Even so, God loved them and called them back to Himself -- but they turned a deaf ear:
For thus says the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel:
"In returning and rest you shall be saved;
In quietness and confidence shall be your strength."
But you would not...."
They rebelled -- in part -- because their sensed no conviction for sin. Jeremiah 8:10 describes the condition well:
"...they have healed the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly,
Saying, ‘Peace, peace!’ When there is no peace.
Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination?
No! They were not at all ashamed, nor did they know how to blush.
Therefore they shall fall....
Those who still trust and follow God can count on His strength, peace and comfort -- no matter what happens:
"These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world."
John 16:33