More than 120 years ago, Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi of the shortening of the river's path over some 140 years. He joked that, were this trend to continue another couple of centuries, future generations would be able to walk between St Louis and New Orleans; they would become twin cities. And he calculated that "in the Old Oolitic Silurian, just two million years ago last January, the Mississippi must have stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a flyrod." (Quoted from memory; doubtless inexact) Thus he lampooned the common practice of making too much of a trend that appears linear. Yesterday's high in these parts was 81. Today's was barely 75. Give it a week, and we'll have snow! Most trends are in reality parts of cycles.
A human lifetime is too short for one person to experience an entire historical cycle. The 4-5 year "business cycle", which some claim has shortened by half lately, seems long to many. But the cycles of empires that rise and fall take several generations to work themselves out. The four "great empires" of ancient history, Babylonia, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome, swept back and forth across the Mediterranean landscape over a period of nearly a thousand years.
When the Biblical prophets spoke of things happening in "the last days," they were looking at distant events whose relationships were necessarily distorted by their very distance. It is analogous to a New Yorker's view of the U.S., as portrayed in a cartoon I saw years ago (and couldn't find to reproduce here): The lower quarter of the image is Manhattan and the Hudson; another section is east-central New Jersey; then comes the Midwest and the rest of "flyover country"; and a thin rim at the top is California, with the main feature being Hollywood.
In these times, at the other end of history from men such as Daniel, Ezekiel and Zechariah, it is hard to understand the profound difference between their viewpoint and ours. Are we really very, very near the edge of this conceptual continent, or are we really in an early ripple of the Wasatch mountains of Utah, thinking we must be nearly to the Coast Ranges, when there are really four more mountain ranges in between.
One of the early Plymouth Brethren, perhaps J.N. Darby, wrote, "Prophecy was not given to enable us to predict the future, but for us to recognize the hand of God in events as they come to pass, and take warning." (Another near-quote from memory) With this in mind, let us consider Mark Hitchcock's recent book, The Late Great United States: What Bible Prophecy Reveals about America's Last Days. This is but one of several books to take advantage of Hal Lindsey and Carole Carlson's The Late Great Planet Earth.
The basic thesis is threefold. First, a series of long chapters dwell on the idea that the Americas, particularly the U.S., are too important on the world stage to have been ignored by Biblical prophecy. The author successively discharges one idea after another that has been put forward to fill this supposed lack, before stating the second thesis: The U.S. is not mentioned in end-time prophecy because it will not be a world power by the time these events come to pass.
The third thesis is that the judgment of God which will lead to the downfall of the U.S. has begun already, and could be accomplished very swiftly; however, the nation will not become totally impotent until the very, very end, because Israel is seen as a flourishing nation right up to Armegeddon, and that requires U.S. military support to continue.
It is fascinating that he connects the final downfall of North America and the U.S. with the "rapture", the "taking away" of the people of God. In his understanding of eschatology (the study of prophecy), that event shortly precedes a 7-year period called the Tribulation. Consider just this fact: the number of serious Christians in the U.S. is some 60 or 70 million. If all of these good people vanish one day, the economic and social fabric of the nation will unravel.
Whenever the "taking away" occurs, it will cause tremendous social upheaval, there is no doubt. While I expect a different time line, I agree with the basic thesis. And I agree that God's judgment on this nation has begun. His analysis of Romans 1, with God "giving them up" in more than one way, in succession, provides an outline of my generation and the one to follow. What was once too shameful to speak of has become mainstream, considered normal. This is not a cause of judgment, it is a symptom that judgment has begun.
But let us remember that the list of sins that follow God's judgment in Romans 1 is much longer than just the sexual sins: "filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malignity; whisperers, slanderers, hateful to God, insolent, arrogant, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, senseless, faithless, affectionless, merciless…" A society characterized in this way, such as ours, is already being judged, and these things are the evidence. The unjust punish one another.
I began this post intending to dwell on my own rather different timeline for the end times. I think it not necessary at this time. The details of the process are less important than the bigger view. The U.S. is well into a long period of decline, but will retain sufficient power and influence to continue to protect Israel until God sees fit to fulfill prophecies that "all nations", probably including the U.S., will turn against Israel and attack. But I think there is a certain role for the nation to play, which is hinted at in Revelation 12 (a passage Hitchcock does not mention):
To paraphrase, a universal and glorious woman, being pregnant, is being confronted by a dragon. When her son is born, he is immediately taken up to heaven. The angels of God fight against the angels of the dragon, and the dragon is cast to the earth. He attacks the woman, who is carried to "the wilderness" upon eagles' wings. She is preserved there for 3.5 years. The dragon first fights "the remnant of her seed." Then the dragon stands by "the Sea" and in the following chapter, the Beast's career is outlined. Interpreted:
- The woman represents all of God's people, among whom a smaller, stronger portion is pressing toward birth. The dragon represents Satan.
- This stronger portion, her son, is elsewhere called "the overcomers", which are taken up earlier than the rest.
- The arrival of the overcomers in heaven triggers the celestial battle that leads to Satan being deprived of access to heaven.
- Thrust to the earth, Satan attacks the people of God that remain. These are mostly able to escape to "the Wilderness", which I believe refers to America or the Americas. There, they are safe for the 3.5 year duration of the worst of the troubles.
- The "remnant of her seed" then refers either to those left behind when the overcomers were taken up, or to those who could not escape the empire of the Beast to come.
- The taking up and the resurrection of the majority of God's people occurs at the end of the 3.5 years. This is not detailed in Rev. 12, but in 1 Corinthians 15, where the general taking up is said to occur "at the last trumpet". This is the seventh trumpet that immediately precedes the fearful Bowl judgments that close the Tribulation period.
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