We are dealing with the question of whether America appears in prophecies related to the coming seven-year Tribulation. Bible scholars typically have asserted that America is absent from prophetic teachings related to that period of history future. I have asserted that people fail to find America in prophecy because they are looking for a previous America, the shining city on a hill, and not what America has become or the America that will emerge if it continues on its present trajectory.
We have been discussing where America went wrong, which took us to a discussion of the two Supreme Court decisions in in 1962 and 1963 removing prayer and Bible reading from public schools. I have been making the point that after God’s blessing of America above all nations on earth since its inception, expelling Him from our public schools and other areas of public life comprised a horrendous insult. That conclusion prompted the issue of whether God would chasten America for such an affront. We noted that many Christians assert that love comprises the core characteristic of the nature of God, and therefore He would not retaliate against America because of our ingratitude and insults. That perspective prompts us to query whether this view of God is compatible with the teachings of Scripture.
Arguably, next to God, the most powerful force in the universe might be culture. I say that because for most people, their culture determines truth for them. For a typical man in Saudi Arabia, Islam represents truth. Or materialism, the view that only matter and energy exist, defines truth for a typical MIT professor. Substantial evidence can be marshaled to demonstrate the fallacies of both of these worldviews. However, those holding them are committed to these perspectives because their cultures convince them that they represent truth.
Evangelicals also embrace a culture that represents truth for them. Fortunately, much of it is grounded in Scripture and therefore embodies actual truth. However, evangelicals also tend to be influenced by secular culture and consequently aspects of their belief system can be warped.
One component of the evangelical worldview that has come under the influence of secular culture entails the evangelical perspective of God. The book of 1 John twice teaches the truth that God is love. Though this comprises a major component of the nature of God, Scripture reveals many other facets of the nature of God that contemporary evangelicals tend to overlook. For example, one very well-known and very popular evangelical wrote this about God’s love:
His love remains intact and perfect. If you could somehow chart the love of God, it would show as a straight line across the top of the graph, never dipping, never plunging, but remaining constant, with a value of infinity. Any variance is simply imaginary, the result of our ignorance or inability to feel His love.
In essence, this author makes God’s love an absolute, asserting that every other characteristic of the nature of God is shaped by it. However, this raises the question of how we might explain God’s love in relation to the flood, when God drowned all but eight of the inhabitants of the earth. Or we might ask the same question regarding His destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lest we assume these are acts of an Old Testament God who was more inclined toward judgment, and that since the cross that inclination has mellowed, we need only to consider the array of judgments described in the Book of Revelation, with hundred-pound hailstones crushing human beings, to expose the error of that line of reasoning. Then we have the ultimate challenge to the theory that all of God’s actions are instigated by his love, the teaching of Scripture regarding an eternal hell. Some well-known evangelicals seek to reconcile that scriptural reality with God’s love by asserting that God sends people to hell because He knows they would not be happy in heaven. That explanation reveals the desperation of those seeking to reconcile hell with God’s love. It also fails to explain why, if God’s objective was the happiness of those not enjoying heaven, He made the alternative hell instead of a resort in the Bahamas? The fact is that those asserting that all of God’s character is subservient to His love must somehow contend with passages such as Psalms 11:5-6, “The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. Let him rain coals on the wicked; fire and sulfur and a scorching wind shall be the portion of their cup.”
Let me suggest that while love (agape) comprises a salient component of the nature of God, He revealed His dominant characteristic in Isaiah 6 where we find the seraphim crying, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” We even find God’s holiness as the dominant feature of His nature at the cross since without His holiness the cross would not have been necessary. Instead of sending His Son to die, He could have merely swept our sins under the rug, extend forgiveness without payment. However, God’s holiness would not accept such an arrangement.
Once we view holiness as the predominant characteristic of the nature of God, it becomes obvious that America’s hostility toward God in the face of His countless blessings on our nation would result in God’s judgment falling on America. It is only surprising that God’s wrath has not already fallen on our nation, which is guilty of aborting millions of innocent babies.
I believe that judgment will reach its apex during the coming seven-year Tribulation. At least in one sense that is good news because that conclusion suggests that God might withhold His ultimate judgment on our nation until that time, and that those of us living in America between now and the Rapture will be spared that extent of God’s wrath.
I have been suggesting that the America that has developed since the Supreme Court decisions of 1962 and 1963, and continues in its downward spiral, appears in the Book of Revelation. However, those court decisions only represented the beginning of sorrows. To find America in the Book of Revelation, we need to consider the moral decline of our nation since those decisions. You may wonder why we need to describe that America since we live in it. The answer is that being immersed in that culture, we tend to grow accustomed to its degradation without considering the level of pollution in which we are immersed. Therefore, America present and future comprises the topic of the article ahead.