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A Storm Is Coming: America's Role in Prophecy

Introduction

Sometimes when I get home, I know that there’s going to be fresh bread because I can smell it before I see it.

Did you know that it works the same way with the grace of God in mission lands?  You see, the people can feel the grace of God before they know what to call it because they experience it in the way God’s people treat them.

But you don’t have to be a heathen for this to happen.  Have you ever met a Christian that you didn’t know was a Christian, but you weren’t surprised when you found out they were because you could see it before they said it?

God’s grace creates an atmosphere around a man or woman who has His grace in their heart.  But God’s goodness doesn’t just express itself through people.  It can also express itself through, of all things…are you ready for this?  Through government!  Listen carefully and you’ll see that it’s so.

Principles of Grace

What is it that changes a person’s life?  Paul once told us:

                “But by the grace of God I am what I am….” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

Grace begins as an attribute of one in authority, because only the one in authority can exercise grace toward those who need it, those in disobedience.

Because grace is an attribute of one in authority, and God is the One in supreme authority, then grace will take on practical expression in His governance of His people.  In other words, the way God rules will express the grace that’s in His heart.  Ok?

Now, the Bible contains the revelation of and the blueprint for the way God reigns over His creatures.  And guess what Paul calls the Bible in Acts 20:32?

“And now, brethren, I commend you to God, and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified.”

What principles of governance do we find in the Bible—in the word of His grace?  What does Christlike/ Lamblike government look like?  In other words, what elements make up a government that grace creates?  Biblical principles will tell us. 

The elements of grace we would find in a grace-based, or Bible-based, government include:

• Truth—John 8:32
• Equality—Deuteronomy 1:17; Galatians 3:28
• Fundamental Rights
  • The Ten Commandments—Exodus 20:3-17
  • Liberty—Galatians 5:13
  • Private property—Exodus 20:15
  • Justice—Ezekiel 18:20
  • Fair trial—Deuteronomy 17:6
• Government without a human king—1 Samuel 8:4-7
  • No oppression—Proverbs 3:31

Wrapped-up all together, what these principles would create is a nation founded upon two overarching strengths: civil and religious liberty.

What we learn by a study of the Bible is that God ordained that both religion and government should reveal His grace to men.  He designed that we should live in the very atmosphere and neighborhood of the righteousness of Christ.  And do you notice what His blueprint for our lives excludes?  It excludes despotism—in all its forms, and injustice, and privileged classes, and everything else that oppresses people.

What would these principles freely bestowed on everyone in an entire country do?  They would unfetter the human potential of everyone and create the most productive, advanced, influential nation on earth!  And best of all, through God’s children in that nation, the light of the gospel would illuminate even the darkest places of the earth!  That’s what they would do!

So, let me ask you: what government on earth has been the pre-eminent embodiment of these God-like, Christ-like, Lamb-like principles of living?  It’s the United States of America.  Hands down.

Did any of the monarchies of antiquity operate on these principles?  Not even Israel operated on these principles once human kings were set over the people.  Even the wisest of all men when he was king over Israel cast off these principles at times:

“Thy father made our yoke grievous: now therefore make thou the grievous service of thy father, and his heavy yoke which he put upon us, lighter, and we will serve thee,” (1 Kings 12:4).

Grace and the American Experience

So, when the people of God escaped from the church of the Dark Ages, when Protestantism moved beyond the reach of the persecutions of the Papacy, to where did they escape?  Crossing the Atlantic Ocean, they escaped to North America.  They migrated from the crowded shores of Europe to the open spaces of our continent.  They came here in search of a land without king, and a church without a pope.  They sought and found civil and religious freedom!

What happened in time?  These newly freed people eventually flexed their muscles, spread their wings, and established what Abraham Lincoln later describes at Gettysburg as, “a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”  --abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/Gettysburg.htm.

Listening to the opening words of the Declaration of Independence, we cannot fail to hear, embodied in these sublime words of American governance, the Biblical principles of grace we looked at moments ago.  Listen:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Look at the way our American government as originally designed fits the pattern of Biblical, grace-based government:

Elements of American Government

• Truth—“We hold these truths to be self-evident”
• Equality—“All men are created equal”
• Fundamental Rights—“Endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”
• Government without a king—“ Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Interesting isn’t?  These are the same elements we found in Bible-based, grace-based government.

When the true church escaped beyond the reach of the medieval church in Europe, identified in Daniel seven, 2 Thessalonians 2, and Revelation 13:1-10, something unparalleled in history and breath taking in beauty and magnitude took place.  A nation was born that was founded upon Biblical principles, unencumbered, untethered, and unmolested by faulty human authority—a nation that was the realization of the unfulfilled dreams of earth’s past oppressed people, the vast majority of her sleeping generations.  America arose, with a prosperity and a power and a speed unequalled by even the greatest of nations that went before her!

As we have already noted in the prophecy of Revelation 12:16, the “earth” that “helped the woman”—the church, is North America.  And from this earth, John saw something peacefully rise in Revelation 13:11,

                “And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb….”

And what does a beast represent in Bible prophecy?  A nation.  So, John saw a nation rising up in North America. 

There is another clue to help us identify this nation John saw rising, and the clue is found in Revelation 13:10.  Referring to the first beast in Revelation 13—the one identified in verses 1-10, we are given the timeframe for the rise of the earth beast we’re studying now.  Verse 10 says:

“He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity: he that killeth with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.”

At the very time when the Papacy received its mortal wound, the time when her political power was destroyed, that’s when John sees this nation rising in North America.  And do you remember the year that the 1260 year political reign of the medieval church ended?  It was in February of 1798.

What nation was rising in North America in 1798 that had a government without a monarch, a church with no pope—i.e., a Protestant nation, that according to Revelation would become the world’s superpower?  There is no mistaking it.  The earth beast John foretold is the United States of America.

America’s prosperity is unparalleled.  Her power is unsurpassed.  Her influence and might are encountered the world over.  But paling into insignificance are her material accomplishments when compared to what God has achieved through her in the spiritual and religious realm!  Right here in the good ol’ US of A, the Bible was unfettered.  It’s truths were rediscovered.  And their influence is being released into all the world! 

From these hallowed shores, the truths of God’s Word, and the message of the grace of God and the righteousness of Christ is being sown broadcast to every nation, tribe, and people!  In every place where heathenism and the apostate church have darkened men’s minds about what God is like, the light of the truth of His gracious character is illuminating the darkness and setting men and women, boys and girls free!  And so long as this nation continues as it has been, God’s truth will continue to go forward, hastening the day of Christ’s return!

But let me ask you: do you suppose that the devil has just given up, that he’s been reduced to paralyzed discouragement and despondency?  Peter answers the question.  Of Satan himself he writes:

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” (1 Peter 5:8)

Peter’s words remind me of some memorable American words:

                “The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

You see, freedom isn’t free.  From wicked and abusive husbands to wicked and abusive dictators, every despotic man will fight against it.

President Lincoln understood the magnitude of what we, the American people hold in our hands, when, in his Annual Message to Congress on December 1, 1862.  He said:

“We say we are for the Union.  The world will not forget that we say this.  We know how to save the Union.  The world knows we do know how to save it.  We—even we here—hold the power, and bear the responsibility.  In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.  We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, that last best hope of earth.”  --abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm.

Truly, America is the last, best hope of mankind.

Lincoln’s concluding words at Gettysburg on November 19, 1863, capture the tenuous grasp on liberty that the human family holds when he said:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”                                                 --abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/Gettysburg.htm

So long as America remain in its virgin purity, so long as the gracious principles embodied in its Constitutions continue unmolested, the light of liberty will not go out on the earth.  Despotism—religious and political, Papal and totalitarian—cannot haul humanity back into the Dark Ages.

That resistance to Satan requires determined vigilance on our part means that on Satan’s part he is not discouraged, but tireless in his efforts to overcome and overthrow whatever God is accomplishing against him—including the keeping of America in her virgin form, a nation founded on a Constitution that assures religious and civil liberty to all! 

But there is one thing that will preserve our Union in its native power, thus preserving its divine influence: unity—unity in recognizing and upholding that America, loyal to the principles embodied in our Constitution and unaltered as given to us by our founding fathers, is the only hope of our world.  This concept is immortalized in the very name of our great nation: the United States of America.  United we shall stand, but divided we will fall.

But alas…such is not to happen.  The Bible predicts that our great nation will lose its way, and repudiate its constitutional form of government—its Biblical form of government. 

The Papacy, the sea beast of Revelation, the beast whose mark is to be imposed on all the world, has been held in check by the presence of powerful, Protestant America: the leading superpower on earth foundational principles are antithetical to her own.  She has been forced to wait for a fundamental change to take place in America that would move this country to her side of the line that separates freedom from autocracy.

The Papacy’s attitude toward America are succinctly expressed in the words of Malachi Martin in his book The Keys of This Blood, pp. 286, 287.  In referring to a group of Protestant churches in which he includes the Remnant church, he writes:

“All of the groups sprang up within Western democracies; and the vast majority of them are homegrown products of the United States.  They have been formed in the very womb of Western democratic principles about the rights of man and the dignity of the individual.  And with few exceptions, they accept the latter-day American interpretation of the “wall” that separates church and state.

“In their eyes, their regard and respect for democratic principles impose upon them the obligation—the religious, as well as the civil and political obligation—to defend every person’s right to be wrong.  Every person must have the right not only to believe in Hell of the Damned and Heaven of the Saved.  Every person must literally be assured the right to choose Hell over Heaven.  That obligation carried to that extreme not only sets the Minimalists apart from John Paul; it sets them against him, as well.

“It sets them apart from the Holy Father, because democratic principles cannot take precedence over divine revelation.  No one can be forced to believe in Heaven of Hell, or to choose the one over the other.  Nevertheless, it is axiomatic for John Paul that no one has the right—democratic or otherwise—to a moral wrong; and no religion based on divine revelation has a moral right to teach such a moral wrong or abide by it.”[i]

Revelation 13 predicts that this Lamblike nation of ours will one day speak as a dragon.

How does a nation speak?  Through its laws. 

Our laws have been Lamblike for years.  They’ve been founded on the gracious principles found in God’s Word.  But God tells us that they will change.  They will lose their Lamblike qualities, and become like the dragon—that great despot of old, Satan..…and tragically, the nightly news has been reporting it.

• Unity has been replaced by the deepest divide we’ve ever seen in our times
• Truth’s existence is denied
• Equality is gone
  • Freedom of speech has fallen prey to “hate speech”
• “Unalienable rights” are being eroded—things like”
  • Freedom of religion is under siege by the LGBTQ movement
    • Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in Lakewood,
      CO has been sued 3 times over his religious beliefs, and labeled the “Notorious anti-gay Colorado cake baker” by the New York Daily News[ii]
    • The religious left is attacking religious liberty
• The Constitution is being redefined as a “living document”

The reason why America is losing its hold on civil and religious liberty is because only Christian people understand the absolute need of both!  And only religious people understand that religious liberty is the mother of civil liberty.

In his book Daniel and the Revelation, p. 592, Uriah Smith writes of our founding fathers when they were framing the Constitution thus:

“These were not only godly men, but they were wise and farseeing men.  When certain religious groups made appeal that “explicit acknowledgement of the only true God and Jesus Christ” be made in the Constitution, their request was denied.  In writing of this incident, Thomas Jefferson said: “The insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend within the mantle of its protection the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination.”

“The House Judiciary Committee, February 18, 1874, in reply to a similar petition, reported: “As this country, the foundation of whose government they were then laying, was to be the homeof the oppressed of all nations of the earth, whether Christian or pagan, and in full realization of the dangers which the union between church and state had imposed upon so many nations of the Old World, with great unanimity [they agreed] that it was inexpedient to put anything into the Constitution or frame of government which might be construed to be a reference to any religious creed or doctrine.”[iii]

Do you realize what this reveals?  People who had respect for God and religion gave respect to those who did not.  They willingly gave freedom to people to not believe.  But that favor is not being returned by the unbelieving today.  The godless among us don’t understand that in giving freedom of religion to a cake baker in Colorado assures them that freedom for their irreligious lives will be extended.  You see, as they labor to oppres religious values, rather than to peacefully coexist, they are creating a culture of intolerance.  And one day, the Bible predicts, that the oppression they are institutionalizing in the laws of our land will one day be wrested out of their unholy hands and used against them!

When our world encounters a problem that is so big that only God can handle it, whether the ungodly among us like it or not, people are going to turn to God en masse!  And when they do, the dragon-like laws that the left is creating today…will be used to crush all that’s  perceived to be ungodly tomorrow!

Do you think it’s possible that planet earth could ever encounter a crisis of universal proportions, one that fills men’s hearts with fear, and wrests from their formerly secular hearts a reaching out after God to help them solve this problem that’s too big for us to handle on our own?  Could that ever happen?.....Does Covid-19 suggest an answer to that question?

Brothers and sisters, the world is going out of control, America is losing its way, and a storm is stealing upon us that will propel us into the final scenes of earth’s history foretold in the Revelation when the mark of the beast will confront everyone.  The fallen church is ready.  All that’s left for this to happen is for America to complete its present descent into that place where its principles match those of the Papacy.  After that, that storm will be able to burst upon us at any time.

The mark of the beast will be Satan’s final attack against God’s people.  The mark of the beast will be the subject of the final installment of this series, next Sabbath.  But take heart: there’s still time to prepare for the coming storm.  There’s still time to prepare for victory.  But mark it down: that preparation must be made in Christ….