Where Will America Be at the End of Time?
The Hand of Judgment
In Implosion, Rosenberg, a former adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Forbes magazine Publisher Steve Forbes, examines whether the nation is headed for catastrophic collapse or another Great Awakening.
“There are moments in history, and we know this from Scripture, in which God removes His hand of grace and puts His hand of judgment on a country,” says Rosenberg, who was described as a “modern-day Nostradamus” by U.S. News and World Report for writing a novel about a hijacked jet on a kamikaze mission into an American city nine months before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “It’s not a pretty picture. How soon? I don’t know. But I fear it might be a lot closer than most people, even I, realize.”
In his new book, One Nation, Under Attack: How Big-Government Liberals Are Destroying the America You Love, the late Grant R. Jeffrey argues America is being systematically plundered by international financiers and powerful socialist forces both within the U.S. and overseas. (See “Grant Jeffrey’s Final View of America,” p. 38).
“In a very short time, the United States will be pushed to the sidelines of world events,” Jeffrey wrote. “All of this is taking place just ahead of the emergence of the prophesied Antichrist. Satan’s representative on earth will consolidate his power and establish his dictatorship, first over the revived Roman Empire and soon after that, over the entire world. And the American Empire, which rose to power with the blessing of God, will be so weak that it won’t play a notable role in the culminating events of the ‘last days.’”
Rosenberg cites several polls that reveal Americans share similar concerns about the nation’s future. A 2011 CNN poll found nearly half of all Americans fear the U.S. is heading for another Great Depression. A 2010 Fox News poll revealed that nearly 80 percent of Americans believe the U.S. economy could collapse entirely.
This year, a worldwide Reuters News poll found that 14 percent of people believe the world will end in their lifetimes. In America, the percentage is 22 percent—the highest anywhere.
One in five Americans believes the Second Coming will occur during his or her lifetime, with 79 percent saying they believe Jesus will return to Earth someday, according to a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life poll.
Meanwhile, the Rapture Index, a “Dow Jones Industrial Average of end-time activity” recorded by RaptureReady.com, hit a record high of 184 in early September. Todd Strandberg, a retired U.S. Air Force staff sergeant who founded Rapture Ready in 1987, attributes the index’s all-time high to a variety of factors: the debt crisis spreading around the world, global arm sales reaching new records, the worsening U.S. drought, rising food prices, extreme weather, record floods and a spate of “super-earthquakes.”
“It just seems like America should have imploded economically a long time ago,” Strandberg says. “It’s so odd that we can keep piling debts upon debts and why we haven’t seen the Middle East explode. It just seems God is holding things together for some event. As time goes by, we think it’s the rapture.”
Indeed, Rosenberg, Cahn, Graham, LaHaye, Hitchcock, Stone, and many other Bible prophecy teachers and faith leaders say they believe God is sending a series of escalating warnings that the nation is in growing danger of judgment unless it repents.
“I think 9/11 was a wake-up call for America,” says Anne Graham Lotz, author of Expecting to See Jesus: A Wake-Up Call for God’s People and the daughter of evangelist Billy Graham. “I think Hurricane Katrina was a wake-up call. I think these record-breaking fires and some of the other things happening are warnings God is giving us, and if we don’t heed these warnings, then something more severe will happen.”
This summer, evangelist Billy Graham, who has preached to more people than any Protestant in history (2.2 billion), issued a letter calling America to repentance. In it, Graham wondered what his late wife, Ruth, would think of the country today, where “self-centered indulgence, pride and a lack of shame over sin are now emblems of the American lifestyle.”
“My heart aches for America and its deceived people,” wrote Graham, 94. “The wonderful news is that our Lord is a God of mercy, and He responds to repentance. In Jonah’s day, Nineveh was the lone world superpower—wealthy, unconcerned and self-centered. When the prophet Jonah finally traveled to Nineveh and proclaimed God’s warning, people heard and repented. I believe the same thing can happen once again, this time in our nation.”
Hope for a Turnaround
Seeking to ignite such a revival, Graham is asking millions of Christians to participate in the My Hope with Billy Graham evangelistic outreach set for Nov. 7, 2013—his 95th birthday. Graham hopes Christians will invite family, friends and neighbors to their homes to watch the “Living Room Crusade” on their TVs, tablets or smartphones. His association hopes to mobilize millions of believers to undergo training to share their faith with others during the event.
The good news, Rosenberg says, is that America has experienced two great spiritual awakenings in the past and could experience another one, based on 2 Chronicles 7:14, where God says: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”
“We desperately need a Third Great Awakening,” Rosenberg says. “We need to beg and plead with God to pour out his Holy Spirit and save us, to turn our hearts away from sin and back to our faith in Jesus Christ. If we don’t have a Third Great Awakening soon, this country will implode. I can’t say when. I can’t even say how. But I’m laying out a number of possible scenarios.”
Franklin Graham says the church has been asleep for far too long—more interested in trying to be “relevant to the culture” than teaching and preparing Christians for Jesus’ return.
“I would encourage pastors in churches to begin to preach and to prepare and to warn their congregations that God is going to judge sin,” Graham says. “We as a nation need to repent and we need the churches calling for repentance.”
An award-winning reporter and editorial writer at the Los Angeles Daily News, The Press-Enterprise and other newspapers for two decades, Troy Anderson writes for Reuters, Newsmax, Charisma and many other media outlets. He lives in Irvine, Calif.
