The Greek philosopher Aristotle once said that tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society. My understanding is that he is using these two virtues (tolerance and apathy) with a negative connotation in mind. Meaning that they are the predominant attitudes of a society on its way to decline and ultimately, extinction. Meaning that any nation that tolerates or is apathetic to that which is antithetical to existence is destined for destruction. While this article is primarily aimed at my American audience, there are two truth-isms I want to convey to everyone.
The first is that almost every generation has thought they were the last generation.
Imagine you were a Roman citizen alive when the barbarians were at the gates and the Empire began to fall apart. Presumably, this scenario would seem every bit as disturbing as an erupting Mt. Vesuvius, where the only thing on the horizon was smoke and fire.
Imagine you lived somewhere in Eastern Europe, or perhaps the Mediterranean in the pre-800s. One minute you are enjoying a quiet life in your town or village, and the next it is being leveled by Moslem hordes or Nordic Vikings. Families are torn apart and either killed or sold into slavery. Everything you had worked for was either taken from you or being set on fire. Again, your way of life has just come to an abrupt and radical end.
Imagine being a European peasant or commoner during the years of the Bubonic Plague. Life at that moment, I imagine, would have seemed very apocalyptic. How about being a Jew, Waldensian, or Anabaptist during the height of the Catholic Inquisitions? How many countless hundreds of thousands were dragged out of their houses, imprisoned, tortured, and killed in the name of the same God you worship. What about those countless millions affected by war, whether it be the American Civil War, World War I, or World War II?
We here in the 21st-century New World have had the luxury of foregoing much of what has plagued mankind throughout most of its existence, primarily, that of misery. It seems foreign to us; as if it were some long-lost word from a dead language, we can no longer pronounce, much less define.
We have grown up in the modern era with all its trappings (electricity, televisions, air conditioning, fast food, etc.), and somehow reconstruct reality to think that it has always been this way. Even our wars today are fought in places most Americans could not even find on a map. Modern academics pick through and either criticize or dismiss historical events as mere footnotes, missing the reality of the pain, suffering, and misery that often accompanied our predecessors. Hardship was always on them like a stench they could not wash away. However, it more often than not produced a people that came to accept hardship as a rite of passage to be embraced, rather than shunned.
We are not those people.
Corresponding to that is the second truth-ism.
Every kingdom, whether it be a nation or an empire, only has a certain amount of time and space set aside for it.
And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings Acts 17:26
Every nation/kingdom/empire, from the Sumerians to the Americans, has preappointed times and boundaries set aside for it. It does not matter what a nation does to try to extend or stave off that ending (petrodollar anyone?), when the time comes, their fate is sealed. With that said, however, there is one kind of exception shown to us in Scripture, that being of the famed wicked city of Nineveh. Remember God’s reaction when everyone from the king of Nineveh on down repented in reaction to the prophet Jonah’s message of coming destruction?
Then God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it. Jonah 3:10
Granted, their destruction still came around a hundred years later as prophesied by the prophet Nahum, but at least that generation (Jonah’s) was able to assuage God’s wrath due to their sincere repentance. However, Nineveh seems to be the exception, not the norm. Many secular historians and academics tend to dismiss the divinely preappointed view as nothing more than cyclical and natural. They have cataloged the normal lifecycle of an empire as being:
Age of Development
Age of Expansion
Age of Conflict and Crisis
Age of Growth/prosperity
Age of Decline
John J. Xenakis’s Theory on Generational Dynamics further develops this by adding to the overall cyclical nature of empires, the periods of crisis. What this means is that corresponding to the overall accepted cycle of empires (as seen above), every 80-years (plus or minus ten years), you had massive, genocidal wars. He distinguishes between the mid-cycle wars (those wars which we choose to fight in usually a limited capacity), and the crisis wars (those genocidal wars we are inescapably drawn into). Therefore, that 80-year timeline looks as such:
(+/-20 years crisis)- (Mid-cycle war) —–60 years—– (+/- 20 years crisis) – (Crisis War)
80-years is significant because this is right around the time that all of the previous generations have died off, and the next generation has no physical memory of the last, horrific, genocidal event. Thus, as the atheist George Santayana once noted, those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.
Empires may in fact run cyclically as noted above. But they do so only because God has already set the boundaries by a) limiting man’s life to 70-80 years (Psalm 90:10), and b) giving us the pattern by which a nation assures its own destruction (Genesis 12:2-3, Romans 1:16-31), and c) the order and time for which they will come and go (Daniel 2:31-45, 7-9). Since the Bible predates Aristotle, Carroll Quigley, Santayana, John Xenakis, and all other historians and academics, we see that they are then simply confirming what Scripture has already said would happen. Nations (by that I also mean empires and kingdoms) cannot go beyond what God has already foreordained.
My earnest hope here is not to come off as the perpetual doom and gloomer, but to project a sense of soberness and even optimism. Those two might not sound like they go together, but I suppose it depends on the audience. For those who understand the times in which we live, there is strong sense of optimism. That is because there is the realization that we are in fact, the last generation. So how do I qualify my statement that we are the last generation, when I had just previously mentioned that every generation believed they were the last?
Two words…
Convergence & Israel
So if my next statement seems bold, so be it.
Our nation is doomed.
The United States, like the Babylonians of yore, has been weighed on the scales and been found wanting. The US has promulgated a number of severely grievous sins for which the world has followed our lead. At the very top of that list, is our legalization of the killing of the most innocent among us, the unborn. If just one man’s blood (Abel’s) cried out to God from the ground (Gen. 4:10), imagine how loud the cries of the 60M+ dead babies are. Not only that, but we have become the most hopelessly materialistic, hedonistic, apostate, post-Christian, and pagan nation on the planet. I do not need to sell any of you on this, simply turn on the news and see for yourself. It is not just me saying this, but men like Peter Marshall, Dave Wilkerson, and many others for the past 70 years have been warning us that judgment is coming.
So what is next?
At present, we are in the final stages of being given over to a reprobate mind. I believe that God gave us a brief reprieve with the election of Donald Trump. However, God did not give us Trump to right all the wrongs, and we were foolish to think so. God is using Trump at present to put Israel back on the center stage of world events.
Since there is no America-like world superpower found in the pages of Scripture, something must cause the United States to decrease, while this beast from the sea increases (Rev. 13:1-2). I believe that something to be the Rapture of the Church. What other event could remove the Bride of Christ (the blood-bought Church), which in turn removes the need for a Restrainer, while simultaneously reordering all the world powers in the blink of an eye?
It is my earnest belief that after the Rapture of the Church, the US will be in chaos and ruin. What remains of the US, will be systematically dismantled and our remains divided amongst the final kingdom of man upon the earth.
I know what some of you are thinking. Come on Pete quit being such a sensationalist! People have been saying that forever and still nothing has happened!
I know my regular readers will already know which Scripture deals with this reasoning. For those who do not, listen to what the Apostle Peter said about those people championing the lunacy of the normalcy bias,
Knowing this first: that scoffers will come in the last days, walking according to their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter 3:3-4
At some point, God’s longsuffering will have reached its limit. At present, we are 2,000+ years into God’s longsuffering; I cannot imagine it continuing for much longer. Aside from Israel during the reign of King Solomon, the US has been the most blessed nation to ever exist. The fact that He has not already come back and initiated the end-time events, is perhaps even more frightening.
The non-intervention of God bears very heavy interest, and He is greatly to be feared when He does nothing. He moves in long orbits, out of sight and sound. But He always arrives. Nothing can arrest the judgment of the Cross, nothing shake the judgment-seat of Christ
(P.T. Forsyth in The Justification of God).
The other factor for the delayed destruction of the United States is so that technology can catch up with where God said the world would be at the appointed time. We know that this final, ten-nation (or region) confederation will arise in the last days and that ultimately, just one man, the Antichrist, will come to head this confederacy. He will be able to do what no other leader in all of history could do, completely control the earth. This man is also known as the rider on the white horse (Rev. 6:1-2), the little horn (Dan. 8:9), the man of sin (2 Thess. 2:4), and the Beast (Rev. 13:1-2). Here is what the Bible states he will do,
It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. All who dwell on the earth will worship him (Rev. 13:7-8)
…for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God (2 Thess. 2:3-4)
He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name (Rev. 13:16-17)
Every previous tyrant, conqueror, and would be despot that has ever existed (Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, etc.) have had this authority granted to them on a limited basis, but there were all restrained to a certain degree. This final leader, Mr. Antichrist, will have full backing, power, and authority to wage total war and total control over everyone economically, militarily, and politically. In other words, he has the power to square the circle (do the impossible) because he will have the full support of Satan and every dark principality in existence. Remember what Satan told Jesus during the Wilderness temptation,
Then the devil, taking Him up on a high mountain, showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to Him, “All this authority I will give You, and their glory; for this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Luke 4:5-6
So how do we get from where we are today, to that day as described in the Bible?
Next up, Part II