I am writing this work as a watchman so that my conscience will be clean and so that I will be free of the blood guilt of any American that reads it. It is my sincere hope that you will heed the warning that this message contains. Our nation will shortly be judged, and the watchman is waking you while there is still time to act. When the judgment is over, the United States that we have known will be gone, along with many of its people. The survivors will have to carry on with whatever is left, and I pray that they will rebuild on the foundation of God’s word. But if you want your family to have that chance to rebuild, you must respond to the Lord’s warning now. Only those who entered the ark with Noah survived, and only those who take heed to the Lord’s warning today will be spared. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:15)
Our founding fathers were given two wonderful gifts: the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the chance to forge a new nation in a virgin country. Seldom, if ever, have any people been given such a chance. The richness of this land exceeds that of the promised land of Israel. Think of the fertile farmland of the Midwest, the redwood forests, the coal seams of West Virginia, the vast herds of buffalo and elk, the beauty of Yellowstone and Yosemite valley, etc. And our fathers had not only the Biblical Law and the Prophets (the old testament) to guide them, but the knowledge of the risen Savior as well! And the United States of America became a truly mighty nation. Blessed with great natural resources and the protection of two large oceans to our east and west, our nation went on to achieve unparalleled heights of economic and military success. The current dollar GDP of the USA is a staggering $20,930,000,000,000.
The log cabins and mud thatch homes of our forebears have been superseded by megalopolis cities full of air-conditioned homes with running water, electricity, high-speed Internet, and every electronic appliance imaginable. Grocery stores are full of fresh food brought to us from all over the world. Every product we could ever wish for is available to us with the push of a button on our smartphones. And we haven’t kept all this abundance to ourselves – unaccountable sums of money have flowed from this land to humanitarian and evangelistic causes. Beyond our economic achievements, we fought a bloody civil war to end slavery. We fought to restore peace and order to Europe (twice). We helped liberate South Korea from communist aggression. And we fought a 20-year war against global terror. Indeed, we pride ourselves on always coming to the defense of peace and freedom across the world. And all this has been done under the aegis of ‘one nation under God.’ So why then would America be under judgment? The answer is that beneath the worldly success, the power, the noble causes, and the veneer of godliness, we have forsaken the Lord God and turned to idols. “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” (Jeremiah 2:13)
God Forsaken
How has America forsaken God? To start, from its earliest days our nation elevated the reason of man above the revelation of God. Thomas Jefferson, the author of our Declaration of Independence, took a penknife to his Bible and literally cut and pasted together those portions of the gospel that he considered reliable. He omitted all references to miracles, especially the resurrection of Christ. Following his lead, our culture systematically denied those verses of the Bible that we deemed to be unreliable, unreasonable, or unscientific. We declared that we were not created by God, but were the result of a naturally occurring evolutionary process. We denied that God ever judged the world by a flood. We mocked the miracles testified to by scripture. We declared the prophetic witnesses of the Bible to be fabrications created after the fact. And we eschew all talk of an eternal judgment. Having discredited in our own minds the Word of God, and hence the God it reveals, we stopped consulting the Bible and its God altogether. We no longer sought counsel from the Lord. We ceremonially invoke His blessings on our decisions, but we never consult or submit to His will in any way. We quote an occasional passage that suits our purposes, but we never humble ourselves before the full counsel of scripture. I doubt that even a fraction of professing Christians (and there are fewer every year) have even read the Bible in its entirety. Do our nation’s leaders search the word of God for answers to our nation’s problems, or at least for perspective on them? Does the word of God carry any weight in our nation’s courtrooms? Are the Ten Commandments displayed any longer in our government buildings? Is prayer to God even allowed in public schools? Do national days of prayer draw any serious attention or participation? Let’s be honest: the only place where scripture is used consistently is at funerals.
Not content to merely ignore God, we set about to intentionally flaunt the laws of God, casting aside the offered forgiveness of Christ. We are an unholy people completely bound up in iniquity. Christ said “Truly, truly I say to you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin” (John 8:34). The words of Romans 1:28-32 so accurately describe the state of this nation: “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice, they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving unmerciful; and although they know the ordinance of God, that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those who practice them.”
Let us take our nation’s sexual morality as an example. The immorality of this nation is breathtaking in its ubiquity and its scope. According to estimates from the National Survey of Family Growth (1982-2002), by the age of 20, 75% of Americans have committed fornication (the number increases to 95% by age 44). In addition, marriages are routinely cast aside for new relationships, even within the church. According to the Pew Research Forum, 28% of evangelical protestants are divorced, compared to 5% of non-Christian faiths. Does not scripture say “What God has joined together, let no man separate?” (Mark 10:9) The nation has gone so far as to espouse and even promote homosexuality, which Romans describes as the end state of spiritual insanity. Leviticus 20:13 says “If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. Their bloodguiltiness is upon them.” But the USA has made homosexual union the law of the land, and 15.9% of those born between 1997-2002 now identify as LGBT (Gallup poll).
But let’s dig a little deeper. The website pornhub.com received over 42 billion visits in 2019 (115,000,000 a day). The country with the most visits: the USA. According to the Barma group, 64% of men who self-identify as Christian (and 15% of women) searched for pornography in the last month. And beyond the use of explicit pornography, who among us can really say that we have never watched a “romantic” movie with a sex scene in it? Even those of us who have not had sex with someone other than our spouse and have never used XXX material give consent to the demonic spirits of sexual depravity when we willingly consume immoral media as entertainment. In decreasing proportions, we give that authority to our hearts, our marriages, our families, our community, and to our nation. Christ told us “You have heard that it was said ‘you shall not commit adultery’; but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28) In other words, lust is the “root” that grows into the “tree” of the grosser sexual sins. And while many of us would not allow the “tree” of illicit sexual acts, we may be nurturing its “root” in our hearts on a regular basis by watching sexual immorality. Furthermore, through this willing consumption, we have become numb to the depravity of sexual sins that would have shocked Americans of previous generations. Is this not why we do not realize that we are a stench in the nostrils of God and deserve judgment for our sexual sins?
Leaving aside how America has flouted God’s law regarding sexuality, let us examine the blood guild of our land. Deuteronomy 19:10 says: “So innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and blood guiltiness be on you.” Since the Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973, over 50,000,000 infants have been killed on US soil. What life could be more innocent than that of an infant in her mother’s womb? And what nation has shed so much innocent blood? The Nazi holocaust does not come close to that figure. And we have increased our bloodguilt by letting murderers live. Numbers 35:33 says “So you shall not pollute the land in which you are: for blood pollutes the land and no expiation can be made for the land for the blood that is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it.” Note this: in every instance where we send a man or woman to prison for murder, instead of to the gallows, we take the guilt of their murder(s) upon ourselves. There were over 19,000 homicides in the US in 2020. I realize that some of these were justifiable homicides, but surely that is a very small percentage of the total. There were exactly 17 executions nationwide. And we don’t just allow murderers to live, we grant them room, board, and medical care at our expense. What total defiance of the law of God and what total absence of fear of the consequences! What if He requires life-for-life for all this bloodguilt? How many Americans alive today will be left?
As a final example of how we have defied God’s laws, let us consider how Americans managed the great wealth and resources God has given them. Proverbs 13:22 says “a good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children. But our forefathers have used up the vast resources leaving little for their children’s children. The vast herds of elk and buffalo are gone, often shot only for sport. The great forests are cut down. The soil is so used up that it only produces crops with the aid of synthetic fertilizers and genetically modified seed. What’s worse, our forefathers and mothers left behind enormous amounts of waste and pollution for their children to deal with. Research the list of EPA superfund sites if you don’t believe me. Even the beautiful American Redoubt is plagued with this pollution due to reckless mining (see the Berkeley pit and Zonolite mountain). To be frank, Americans have behaved like rats, consuming all before them and leaving nothing but their excrement behind. Furthermore, Proverbs 22:7 says that the “borrower becomes the lenders slave.” In 1900 the national debt as a percentage of GDP was near 10%. It is now 100%, and is projected to be 200% by 2050. We started this nation with untold abundance, and within just 250 years, we are selling our children into slavery for our debts. And all this reckless consumption and spending was done to maintain and increase a lifestyle of opulence unheard of in the history of mankind; a lifestyle driven by a lust for entertainment, convenience, comfort, and gluttony. “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:19)
The Broken Cisterns
Now that I have shown you how America has forsaken God, let me return to the second half of the verse quoted earlier from Jeremiah 2: “to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” How many times did God’s old testament people turn to idols? They worshipped the Baals, Asherah, and hosts of heaven. The book of judges describes the idolatrous cycle. The kings who replaced the judges turned to idols again and again. Even when Israel was completely destroyed and the last few refugees had fled to Egypt, the people refused to give up their idols (Jeremiah 44:11-19). We shake our heads in disbelief at the Israelites, not because of their stubbornness, but because our scientific minds can’t fathom bowing down to an image made of wood, metal, or stone. How silly. But is idolatry reserved to the worship of a statue? No. It is the placing of one’s trust in something other than God. An idol is what we think will come through for us, will deliver us, or will provide us with the life we want to live. In short, it is where we put our ultimate trust. And the idols of the USA are not statues, but our government, our economy, and our military.
Many nations are proud of their culture or history, but I know of no other nation that is as proud of its system of government as is the USA. We find it inconceivable that anyone would choose a government other than our representative democracy. In Europe, the Middle East, and Asia we have tried to spread our form of government, often by force of arms. Now the Lord blessed His people when they had no central government at all (the book of judges) and when they had an absolute monarch (the books of kings and chronicles). And the kingdom of heaven will NOT be a democracy (Isaiah 66: 23-24). So why is a “Christian” nation so pushy with democracy? Because we think it is democracy that has given us our success and our freedom. And since the beginning of the last century, government (especially the federal government) has become our first port-of-call in times of trouble.
It is no coincidence that the rise of the welfare state has coincided in direct proportion with the removal of God from the public sphere. The Medicare Act (1965) was passed in the same decade as the Engel vs. Vitale (1962) and Epperson vs. Arkansas (1968) decisions (which ended school prayer and upheld the teaching of evolution in the public schools, respectively). During the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, some were screaming at the government to save jobs and keep the economy running, while others were crying out that the government should mandate masks and lockdown communities. But all seemed to be looking to the government. How few called out to God? And, oh, the anxiety and anger when the “wrong team” gains control over the government! Think of all the anger before and after the last election. Why so much angst? Because we believe the white house, and not the Lord God Almighty, is ultimately responsible for our destiny and will control it.
The American people have also put their trust in their free market, capitalistic economy. I admit that due to the rise of communist ideology and recent market failures that the economy is a fading idol for some, but it is still a great idol for many. There seems to be an incurable belief among most Americans that the stock market will always go up, at least “over the long run.” Isn’t that the core belief behind every investment strategy you ever hear of (e.g. dollar cost averaging, index funds)? Isn’t that why we have put so many retirement ‘nest eggs’ into the stock market via IRAs and 401-k? Haven’t we seen one speculative bubble after another (crash of ’29, tech stocks in the 90s, mortgage crisis in ’07, etc.) result from the core belief that the market in question could never go down? Would we really be comfortable with such levels of government, corporate, and personal debt if we didn’t think that good times ahead would certainly allow us to pay these debts… someday?
Would we have allowed the dollar to be so devalued if we didn’t believe that our economy would always endure and become ever stronger as if by magic?
We teach our children that financial success and security is assured if they stay in school, get good grades, go to a “good” university, and get a “good” job. Why would we relentlessly instill this belief in one generation after another if we didn’t have an unquestioning faith in our economy? Isn’t it the assurance of guaranteed financial success that entices so many to emigrate here? Indeed, the immutability and strength of this economic idol appears to be unquestioned for so many.
This leads to the last great idol for the USA: our military. We take great pride in our armed forces, especially after the defeats of both Nazi Germany and Imperialist Japan in World War II. Since that war we have looked increasingly to our military to drive foreign policy and enforce our will on the world. Sorry – I meant “protect America’s interests and spread freedom around the world.” We looked to the military to stop the spread of communism in Vietnam. We looked to the military to protect our oil supply from the Middle East. We looked to the military to fight global terror. After 9/11, there was no call for prayer, fasting, and repentance. No national soul-searching whatsoever. No, there was a call for our armed forces to exact vengeance. As Toby Keith so aptly put it: “you’ll be sorry that you messed with the US of A, cause we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.” Does the average American ever consider the possibility that the USA could ever be defeated by a foreign power? No – because we’re the good guys. We believe that our forces will always win and will always be able to protect us. In our minds, it is our military that keeps us safe. Now imagine the effect on the national psyche if the USA military ever failed to protect us, was routed by a foreign military, or mutinied and refused to serve in a crisis. The effect would be devastating, because we have put so much trust in our armed forces.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)