Where is the United States in the End-Times Scenario?

When I look at Bible prophecy, one thing that is of great interest to me, and of great concern, is the absence of the United States. It is interesting to note that a number of nations are mentioned in the Bible that will be active in the last days. Libya is mentioned by name. Persia, which became modern Iran and Iraq, is mentioned. Ethiopia is specifically mentioned. Quite possibly China and Russia are mentioned. And certainly Israel is mentioned. But the one nation that is strangely absent is the United States of America.

Where is the United States? Why are we not in the last-days scenario? Why is it that we can read of nations like Iraq and Iran and Libya and that we possibly can find China and Russia mentioned, but we cannot find the United States?

I would like to offer three plausible answers.

One, perhaps the United States may not be mentioned in Scripture because it might be devastated by a nuclear war. It is a horrible scenario and one that none of us would want to see, but we cannot rule it out as a possibility. There is no guarantee this could not happen. The possibilities of it have never been greater. Some would think that because the former Soviet Union dissolved, the threat is gone. But many nations have nuclear weapons. It could indeed be a rogue terrorist nation with nuclear capabilities, or even a terrorist group that could set off the dominoes falling onto each other. I hope this isn’t the case, but we cannot rule it out.

Rome was once the reigning superpower on earth. They had the most powerful military anywhere. But before Rome collapsed externally, she collapsed internally. I think we would do well to look at the soul of our country right now. I am for a strong military. We need to take seriously any foreign threats. But having said that, what about an internal collapse?

The second possible reason our nation may not be mentioned in Scripture is that perhaps we will simply decline as a world power. As our country becomes more and more secular, systematically eliminating God and the Bible from our education system, courts, and the arts we will begin to reap the inevitable results of sin. We will begin to rot from the inside.

Historian Will Durant pointed out that a great nation is not destroyed from the outside until it has first fallen apart on the inside. Certainly you can see the moral decay in America today. The Bible says, “Godliness makes a nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34 NLT). If we forget God and abandon the Bible, which is his Word, then we will reap the inevitable results of sin. I think to some degree, we already have as we have seen the breakdown of the family, rampant crime and so many other problems that have come from disobeying God.

What once was freedom of religion seems to have now become freedom from religion. We have succeeded in getting God out of our schools, out of our sporting events, out of our public places and out of our workplaces.

Christmas – which was once, at least to some degree, a celebration of the birth of Jesus – now has simply turned into Happy Holidays and Seasons Greetings and for some, even winter solstice. Good Friday and Easter, which are times to remember the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus, have now turned into spring break.

But here is the thing we need to remember. The freedom we enjoy is built on the foundation of absolute truth. And when you remove that foundation, this freedom actually can turn into anarchy.

But there is a third possibility, which I find a lot more hopeful: a great revival takes place in the United States. That is not to say a revival would eliminate us as a world power. But if our nation had a revival, it would affect us. Think about this. Let’s say, for example, that one-fourth of all Americans are believers. This would mean that we have approximately 78 million true believers in our country today.

When the Rapture of the church takes place, don’t you think there would be an impact on the United States if 78 million people disappeared? If people in every level of government, the military, the economic sector, business, agriculture, medicine and communications suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, it undoubtedly would have a crippling effect on our infrastructure as a nation. For all practical purposes, when the Rapture takes place, it will impact every nation. It will cause the entire world to suddenly shift. This could be the scenario for the United States in the last days.

I would only hope and pray that we will have some kind of revival in America and that we would turn to God on a scale such as we have never known before. That is what we need to pray for in our country today. We need to pray for revival.

When I say that our nation needs God, I don’t mean that we need whatever god everyone happens to believe in. Interfaith prayer services have become quite popular today, with clerics and ministers from various religions calling on their various gods and reading from the Bible, from the Quran and so forth. But this is not what God is looking for. He is not looking for us to just call out to whomever we perceive some supreme being to be.

The only hope for America is when we turn back to the true and living God – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who gave us the Bible as the revelation of who he is, the God who loved us so much that he sent his own son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross in our place.

This is the God we called upon when we originally founded the United States. Don’t let the revisionists throw you. Our nation was founded on biblical principles. There is no question that Christianity was a major part of the founding of the nation, and it is a major part of our heritage, evidenced by the fact of Americans turning back to God during times of crisis. We need to call upon God and get right with God. That is our only hope.

(This article is from my weekly column at Worldnetdaily.com)