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It should make perfect sense to those believers who trust God to be in absolute control at all times: He has never sent judgment and wrath without pleading, corrective attention-getting measures and unmistakable warning signals of impending doom to those rebels who shake their fists in His face, then turn their backs to the only One who knows the end from the beginning. America and the world are almost surely at the latter end of the divine yardstick of judgment, which measures the extent of the Lord’s lovingly generous--though not infinite--patience.
Most who study Bible prophecy have, through the years, rolled the thought over and over in thinking upon things to come: “Why is America not mentioned in Bible prophecy?” Many have concluded that the United States must suffer a catastrophic fate, either from the outside or from the inside. The nation’s destiny is either one of implosion or explosion–detonations which, in either case, will spell the end for the most technologically advanced country in the history of the human race.
Surely, God will not allow the American ship of state to slip beneath the crushing waves of the times without unmistakably clear signals that she is nearing shoals that cannot be navigated.
A foretelling by Jesus himself brings to mind current crises gripping the U.S. and, by extension, the entire world. It is quite familiar to the student of prophecy: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring…” (Lk. 21: 25).
Whether considering this combination of end-times signs figuratively or literally, a case can be made that the present national and world circumstances might be the time of which Jesus spoke.
This generation of earth dwellers has seen, and continues to see, wonders in the sky. Man has accomplished space adventures in going to the moon and other planets with machinery. He has witnessed astrophysical phenomena through the Hubble telescope, gigantic sun eruptions, fantastic photos of a comet slamming into Jupiter, loss of the Challenger and the Columbia. Then, there is the coming astronomical alignments of 2012 and of 2015, with the predicted blood moon manifestations that some see as portentous, so far as Bible prophecy is concerned. The signs in the sun, moon, and stars are there.
The latter part of the Luke 21:25 prophecy also leaps to the forefront of thinking about the present hour. We have recently seen the figurative and literal seas roaring. Figuratively, all nations seem in great turmoil, with their peoples in societal and cultural tumult. The literal, roaring waves have produced the most costly devastation in recorded history along America’s Gulf coast within just the past months. However, it is the middle part of the prophecy that most dramatically speaks to this generation.
Jesus foretold that the nations will, near the time of His return, be in perplexity. The leaders will be floundering for answers to the profound dilemmas confronting them, is the implication. The perplexity will only cause them to go farther into rebellion, we can gather from the psalmist’s prophecy: “The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us” (Psa. 2:2-3).
Fact is, we are in a time of unprecedented “perplexity” so far as my memory serves. The pundits, from the president of the United States and the top Senate and House leaders to the Fed chairman and even former Fed chairmen, tell us that we face economic Armageddon if something is not done to straighten out the fiscal train wreck some of those same “leaders” have been primary in causing. In all of the scrambling, finger pointing, and doomsday rhetoric, one fact is powerfully obvious by omission: None of them has been heard calling out to God. Not one mention of soliciting help from the God of heaven has been forthcoming, so far as I’ve heard. Certainly, asking God’s help hasn’t been heard in a public way.
As I write this, America’s “leaders” are “fixing” the economic disaster. We will see how it plays out. In a larger context, the swift economic movement currently taking place is not without its prophetic significance, God’s Word assures. There is coming, according to Bible prophecy, a completely satanized (if that is a word) economic order. We are seeing a major start to that coming global rearrangement. The fiscal problems will get “fixed,” ultimately. I’m convinced it will happen during the time that follows the rapture of the Church. But the peoples left on this judgment-bound planet won’t like the change the decisions of the politicians of the world –apart from God Almighty—will produce for them.
The luciferian machinery of enslavement is churning America and the nations she so traumatically affects, in terms of economic equilibrium, toward the beast-system of the tribulation.
“And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six” (Rev. 13:16-18).
