Is America at the “end of its road”?
Can America recover from its present crisis?
Well the fact is that the United States had been in more serious situation than this – and survived. It had been through civil war, the great depression and the two world wars – and came out all the stronger. But one need to ask: Is America in good shape to handle its present challenge?
First of all let’s be aware of a basic fact – that God make and unmake nations:
Isa 46:10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
The prophet Daniel reveals:
Dan 2:21 And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding:
God makes and unmakes nations according to His plan and purpose. Like any nation or empire that had come and gone, America is no exception. However, America is unique and its role is not meant to be fleeting – and the late President Abraham Lincoln, somewhat realized this fact when he issued a proclamation appointing a National Fast Day. In this proclamation he declared:
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.
What makes the United States unique is not so much what it has achieved – but what and who they really are as a people. It is no mere coincidence or luck that America finds itself in perhaps the richest place on earth. Few people realize that the Americans, together with the British people [which itself, at its peak, ruled over one-fourth of the world] are the “covenant people“ of the Bible.
This goes back to God’s promise to Abraham almost 4000 years ago:
This promise to Abraham was reiterated or “confirmed” to Isaac [Abraham's son] and then to Jacob [later renamed Israel]. To Jacob, God promised:
Has there been a great “nation and company of nations” like the United States and the British Commonwealth of Nations in history? Is it mere coincidence that the Americans are the biggest distributors of the “Jewish” Bible [8.5 billion copies as of latest count], rather than the Jews themselves?
In Deuteronomy 28:1-14 we read of the blessings that God promised to His people, but beginning with verse 15 God gave a series of warnings against sinning. Unfortunately, before they can fully receive the full measure of the promised blessings, Israel sinned repeatedly, which resulted in God sending the Assyrians to punish them.
The Assyrians shipped the Israelites out of their homeland and brought them beyond the Euphrates river on to Assyria [2 Kings 17:23], from which they never returned home. These tribes effectively got lost in mainstream history – thus the term “lost tribes of Israel”. But there is enough information that can be gleaned from history and archaeology that would help us trace the movement of the lost tribes from Assyria, which I will cover in the next post. In simple words, the lost tribes ultimately settled in various European lands. But the most notable of this is the group that settled in what is now Britain. The lack of information about the early Britons by way of direct written history is the result of a strange belief (or superstition) of the ancient Celts who prohibited written record of its history, philosophy, genealogy and science (page 9, The Celtic Empire by Peter B. Ellis) – something that God may have put in their mind, precisely to hide their identity until the end time. This loss of identity of the exiled lost tribes may also be the result of the cessation among these tribes of Sabbath-keeping, which the Bible shows to be an identifying sign between God and and His people (Ex.31). By contrast the Jews who continued to keep the Sabbath, never lost their identity, even in their scattered condition.
From Britain some people migrated to the “New World” which became now the United States. All of a sudden Britain [and later America] burst forth into unprecedented power and prominence. This as I said, is no mere coincidence. It is the fulfilment of God’s unconditional promise to Abraham. As we see, somehow America even felt a sense of mission or responsibility in the global community, as in the concept of “Manifest Destiny”.
The fact is that God made Israel a model nation and example to the world:
Deu 4:7 For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
Deu 4:8 And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?
This role was never fulfilled by the “Jewish” people, who until now, had mostly been spread thin around the world in a kind of “diaspora” – and for the most part reviled and paid little regard by other nations. In fact its very existence in the Holy Land is presently hanging in the balance. America on the other hand, had assumed this role since it ascent into world domination around the turn of the twentieth century. But with this role comes a corresponding grave responsibility:
The danger sign for America today is not so much the gloomy economic and financial figures or the security threat. The danger sign is the present moral climate. I was shocked to see when I came to America not too long ago, the extent to which extreme liberal ideas had eroded the character of America as a nation. Americans are clearly, still mostly a God-believing and God-fearing people, but it is clear that a force that intends to stamp God out of American consciousness had taken over most key institutions – the media, entertainment, education and government itself. The danger for America are not the forces that attempt to attack it from without. The greatest threat are the degenerative forces that had penetrated its bloodstream. It is saddening to see America virtually in the grips of forces whose ideology runs contrary to its nature as God’s people. With the legalization of infanticide [a.k.a. abortion] and sexual perversion [remember Sodom and Gomorrah], the disregard for God’s laws and the disrespect for God — no state-of-the-art weaponry, no amount of military hardware and manpower and no amount of money can save America from the inevitable result of these evils.
It is not too late for America, but America needs to wake up – and it probably would take an ever graver threat and another Abraham Lincoln to wake it up to the danger it had drifted into – that is, away from God. In the midst of a world that is extremely hostile to her, America cannot survive apart from God. It needs to come back to God at least like it did during the time of President Lincoln. But sadly and by all indications, she probably would not.
The comforting fact though is that God is not through with America. America will ultimately come back to God – actually forced to come back to God – but only with harrowing experience and painful lesson.
May that distressing pain not become necessary.
More about America and its future in Prophecy Watch.
Related article: What is the New Covenant?