Mark Hitchcock - The Late Great United States: What Bible Prophecy Reveals about Americas Last Days

I think there is an unspoken subtext in our national
political culture right now.
In fact I think it's a subtext to our society.
I think that a lot of people are carrying around in
their heads, unarticulated and even in
some cases unnoticed, a sense that the wheels
are coming off the trolley and the
trolley off the tracks.

Peggy Noonan,Wall Street Journal

We are in a country in debt and in decline
not terminal, not irreversible, but in decline.
Our political system seems incapable
of producing long-range answers
to big problems or big opportunities.

Thomas L. Freedman,New York Times

The world has shiftedfrom anti-Americanism
to post-Americanism The distribution
of power is shifting, moving away from
American dominance.

Fareed Zakaria,Newsweek

THE QUESTION
EVERYONE'S
ASKING

I turn back to your prophets in the Old Testament
and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if
we are the generation that is going to see that come about.
I don't know if you have noted any of those prophecies lately but
believe me, they describe the times we are going through.

President Ronald Reagan, 1983

S uppose someone wrote and published the ultimate compendium of music history but left out any mention of Beethoven, the Beatles, or Garth Brooks.

Or the French produced a video tour of Paris with nary a glimpse of Notre Dame, the Louvre, or the Eiffel Tower.

Imagine a math textbook containing an entire year's curriculumnever once using or discussing the number one.

When an authoritative resource claims expertise in a particular field of knowledge, we usually expect it to touch on the most prominent subjects within its purview. That's why so many Christians read their Biblesand biblical prophetic passages in particularfully confident that it must somehow reveal something about the role of America in the end times. After all, God, who exists in all times, who sees the end of history from the beginning, who indeed sovereignly governs every moment of historyGod, who reveals key end-time events in the prophecies of Scripture, can't possibly have omitted from His opus the most powerful, most influential, and by many counts most God-blessed of all nations that have ever risen.

Can He?

By any standard of measurement, America occupies center stage in the world arena. No one disputes the fact that America has a distinctive history, during which it has risen to dominate global affairs. In a quarter of a millennium it has become a nation unlike any other in the history of the world. It has superseded nations with much longer histories. No nation in the history of civilization has exercised greater influence than the United States of America politically, militarily, economically, culturally, linguistically, and possibly even religiously. As the old saying goes, When America sneezes, the world catches a cold.

Most of Americas ascent has happened in less than one hundred years. Americas awe-inspiring rise to superpower status in the twentieth century accelerated to maximum upward velocity in the aftermath of WWII. In an ironic twist, the war's tragic losses delivered America from the poverty of the Great Depression. The United States emerged from WWII better off militarily, politically, and economically than any other nation. Even during the dark days of the cold war, America had the upper hand on the Soviet Union, as was finally proven in the early 1990s when the Soviet Empire unraveled at the seams and America found herself alone at the top.

Today America prevails as the world's lone superpower. The last contender standing. But the champ's reign hasn't been the smooth ride that many optimistically envisioned. From the 1950s through the 1980s, many believed that the demise of the Soviet Union would ensure greater global security. Americans envisioned a brave new world free from the tyranny of Soviet communism. Like many dreams, top-dog status hasn't been what most people expected.

We inaugurated the single-superpower era with the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Operation Desert Storm was a glowing success. The future looked bright. But then the real trouble started. The underground-garage bombing of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993, was the first assault of Islamic terror on American soila dark omen of things to come. Gathering storm clouds loomed closer with the suicide bombing attack on the USS Cole in 2000.

Then dawned the darkest day in American historythe devastating attack of 9/11plunging America headlong into the age of radical Islamic jihad. Radical Islam declared open war on the United States. The stunning attack gripped the nation, a portent of many more to come.

America and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and launched the Iraq War in 2003a war that has cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives.

And most recently? Economic meltdown. Skyrocketing oil prices. The subprime mortgage crisis. The dollars devaluation to all-time lows. Foreign nations, awash in oil money, buying major U.S. financial institutions. Runaway deficits and an out-of-control federal budget. Smothering debt. The looming threat of radical Islam.

And the worst fear of allweapons of mass destruction on American soil.

Many are openly saying that anything less than victory in the currently festering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will weaken Americas resolve, embolden the jihadists, and force the United States to abdicate its role as world leader and to retreat into isolation.

Americas past is glorious and inspiring. Its present is unstable, yet studded with glimmers of cautious optimism.

But what of the future? Is there any sure word?

The increasingly frantic tempo of change in modern life fosters a global sense of impending crisis. People everywhere fear that the world is moving rapidly toward some calamitypossibly even a finale. I'm sure you've sometimes wondered what's going to come of all the danger, uncertainty, and instability. How long can the tensions be held in check? How long until the lid blows off? Terrorismthat Bad Thing that used to happen in other placeshas rudely intruded into the life of every American. U.S. troops are still in Iraq, still in Afghanistan. Some predict that we might realistically be there for ten years or longer. The epochal conflict with jihadist terror is still in its infancy. What happens when it grows up?