Implosion (13 page)

In 1998, R. A. Coombes published a book titled
America, the Babylon
. One prophecy expert said it “offers the most extensive, in-depth treatment of the American Babylon view that I’ve been able to find.”
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The list could go on and on.

Are there similarities between the U.S. and Babylon? Unfortunately, there are. Is the United States becoming Babylon-esque over time, in the sense of being both enormously powerful and spiritually apostate? Tragically, she is.

But the prophecies in question, together with events happening today, indicate to me that the “Babylon” found in End Times Bible prophecy really refers to the nation of Iraq and the actual ancient city of Babylon, which was once the thriving and powerful capital of the nation of Babylon (also known in history as Babylonia in Mesopotamia). Babylon is not the United States or New York City or Rome or Moscow or any of the many other speculations people have made over the years.

Prophecies found in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Revelation indicate that Babylon the country and Babylon the city will, in fact, be resurrected and rebuilt in the last days, much as Israel and Jerusalem have been resurrected and rebuilt in recent decades. Indeed, the Bible indicates that the city of Babylon will not only be fully rebuilt but will actually become the wealthiest and most powerful—and eventually the most corrupt and wicked—city on the face of the planet. That may be difficult for many to picture or accept, but it was also difficult for many to picture the “dry bones” of Israel being rebuilt until it happened in the twentieth century.

What’s fascinating to me is that such prophecies are already beginning to come to pass in our lifetime.

In my 2006 book,
Epicenter
, I wrote an entire chapter on Saddam Hussein’s efforts in the 1980s to begin rebuilding the ancient city of Babylon and on the new Iraqi government’s plans to continue and dramatically expand the work that Saddam set into motion. I quoted a story that appeared on the front page of the
New York Times
on April 18, 2006, saying that “Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected, and roughly occupied. . . . But Iraqi leaders and United Nations officials are not giving up on it. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon, home to one of the Seven Wonders of the World, and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park.”
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I also cited my interview with then–Iraqi finance minister Ali Abdul Ameer Allawi, who told me, “Cultural, religious, archaeological, and biblical tourism is a big opportunity for Iraq. I think rebuilding Babylon is a wonderful idea, as long as it is not done at the expense of the antiquities themselves.”
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Since
Epicenter
was published, much more has been done to rebuild Iraq and establish peace and security in the once and future Babylon. I have had the opportunity to travel to and minister in Iraq four times since the fall of Saddam Hussein, and each time the country was safer and more prosperous than the time I went before. Just as remarkable is that more steps have been taken to rebuild the actual city of Babylon as well, even with American assistance. On February 14, 2009, I wrote a blog post under the headline “U.S. to Help Rebuild City of Babylon in Iraq.”

The government of Iraq is moving forward with plans to protect the archaeological remains of the ancient city of Babylon, in preparation for building a modern city of Babylon. . . . The Obama administration is contributing $700,000 toward “The Future of Babylon” project through the State Department’s budget. “Officials hope Babylon can be revived and made ready for a rich future of tourism, with help from experts at the World Monuments Fund (WMF) and the U.S. embassy,” reports the Reuters news agency. “‘The Future of Babylon’ project launched last month seeks to ‘map the current conditions of Babylon and develop a master plan for its conservation, study, and tourism,’ the WMF says. ‘We don’t know how long it will take to reopen to tourists,’ said Mariam Omran Musa, head of a government inspection team based at the site. ‘It depends on funds. I hope that Babylon can be reborn in a better image.’”
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Two years later, in January 2011, I pointed readers of my blog to another
New York Times
story, headlined “A Triage to Save the Ruins of Babylon.” “The Babylon project is Iraq’s biggest and most ambitious by far, a reflection of the ancient city’s fame and its resonance in Iraq’s modern political and cultural heritage,” the article reported, noting that “in November, the State Department announced a new $2 million grant to begin work to preserve the site’s most impressive surviving ruins.”
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The article also reported that “the American reconstruction team has refurbished a modern museum on the site, as well as a model of the Ishtar Gate that for decades served as a visitors’ entrance. Inside the museum is one of the site’s most valuable relics: a glazed brick relief of a lion, one of 120 that once lined the processional way into the city. The museum, with three galleries, is scheduled to open this month, receiving its first visitors since 2003. And with new security installed, talks are under way to return ancient Babylonian artifacts from the National Museum in Baghdad.”
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Clearly, Bible prophecies are coming to pass. Babylon is rising again. Unfortunately, too few people are paying attention, which brings us back to the question of America.

So, Is America Ever Mentioned in the Bible?

As we have seen, there have been some very creative—and at times, very bizarre—interpretations of the Scriptures by a wide range of people trying to find America in the Bible. But none of them hold water. The United States is not one of the “ten lost tribes” of Israel, as some have suggested. We are not the “land of whirring wings” mentioned in Isaiah 18 or the “young lions” or “merchants of Tarshish” mentioned in Ezekiel 38, as others have suggested. America is not the “great eagle” mentioned in Revelation 12. These and similar arguments are simply not credible.
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Are there lessons America can learn from the histories of other nations in the Bible? Yes. Are there commandments in the Bible that all nations, including the United States, must obey? Yes. Are there promises of blessing made to all nations, including the United States, if they follow the Lord? Yes. Are there punishments promised to all nations, including the United States, that turn away from the Lord and his Word? Yes. All these points are important. But those who try to extract more out of Scripture—who try to force the Bible to say more than it does—are standing on shaky theological ground.

The truth is, the United States of America simply is nowhere to be found in the Bible. This may be painful for many to hear. This may be difficult for many to accept. Nevertheless, the fact remains: The U.S. is never directly mentioned or specifically referenced in Bible history or in Bible prophecy. It just isn’t.

If Not, Why Not?

When I tell Americans that the United States is not mentioned in Bible prophecy at all, much less as a key player in God’s plan and purpose for the last days, some have a hard time accepting it at first. Here’s how such conversations often go:

“Joel, you believe we are living in the last days, right?”

Right.

“And you’re saying the signs in the Bible that are evidence of the last days are coming to pass, right?”

Right.

“And you believe that the rebirth of Israel is the super sign, the one that proves beyond all doubt that we’re moving deeper into the last days, right?”

Right.

“And all kinds of countries are mentioned in the Bible—Egypt, Iran, Iraq, even India and Russia, right?”

Right.

“Then how is it possible that America—the wealthiest, most powerful country on the face of the earth in the history of mankind—is not even mentioned in Bible prophecy at all, much less as a key player in the End Times?”

That’s a good question, and the answer is: I don’t know. The Bible doesn’t say. If the Bible spoke directly, clearly, and precisely to our future as a nation, then I would say so, but it doesn’t. So the next question we have to ask, then, is this: “If not, why not?” If America isn’t mentioned in the Bible, then why isn’t it? What happens to us?

I draw two possible conclusions from the absence of a clearly defined biblical role for the U.S. in the last days:

• First, something happens to the United States in the last days that strips us of our status as the wealthiest, most powerful country on the face of the earth in the history of mankind.

• Second, other countries emerge wealthier, more powerful, and more dynamic than we are, replacing us as the global leader.

We know clearly from Scripture that Israel will emerge as the epicenter of global attention in the last days. Other key nations that will rise and fall include a revived Roman Empire, Russia, Iran, and Iraq, to name just a few. We know, therefore, that nations other than the U.S. will be emerging in the years ahead as more powerful players than ever before. That I have no problem with. However, as an American citizen who loves this country very much and is deeply grateful for the freedom and opportunities my family and I have received and experienced here, it is terribly painful to come to the conclusion that my country will wither, fade, or outright implode.

No American wants to believe such things. I certainly don’t. But these are the conclusions I have come to after studying and praying about these questions for many years.

Often when I answer these questions at a conference or in a church or during an interview, the next questions are variations of the following: What do you think could happen to the U.S. to strip us of our status as the world’s economic and military superpower? What could cause America to wither or fade or utterly collapse?

Without clear scriptural guidance, it is very difficult to say, of course. So long as you realize that I am speculating at this point, not teaching specific Bible prophecies, here are four scenarios I believe are possible that could make America unable—or unwilling—to play a key role in the unfolding prophetic events of the last days:

•
Economic Implosion
—The United States implodes financially and economically.

•
War or Terrorism
—The United States is devastated by a surprise military or terrorist attack or series of attacks.

•
Natural Disasters
—The United States is devastated by an unprecedented series of natural disasters.

•
The Rapture
—The United States suddenly loses millions, or tens of millions, of people when the Rapture happens, leaving the rest of the American people devastated and triggering any number of cataclysmic events.

Of course, these are not the only things that could lead America to implode. Political paralysis is a real and present danger as well—we could become frozen in partisan political gridlock or be sidelined by widespread political apathy or a new wave of isolationism. But I believe these four scenarios pose the biggest and most dangerous threat to the American way of life as we have known it. In the next four chapters, we will take a closer look at these scenarios and attempt to assess the degree of danger each one poses.

Bottom Line

In the Old Testament book of Job, there is a very important verse about God’s sovereignty over men and nations: “He makes the nations great, then destroys them; He enlarges the nations, then leads them away” (Job 12:23).

Some might say the Lord made America great because our founders built this nation upon the teachings of the Scriptures and because the American people responded to the First Great Awakening and the Second Great Awakening and other periods of moral and spiritual renewal. Others would say the Lord allowed America to become great for a time, despite our many mistakes, errors, and sins. Either way, we have now come to a point where people are actively discussing whether the Lord will proactively judge and destroy us or remove his hand of grace and blessing and let us implode, or whether he might give us a second chance—at least for a season—with a Third Great Awakening.

One thing seems clear, however, to nearly all Americans: we are in grave danger both economically and spiritually.

CHAPTER NINE

THE FINANCIAL IMPLOSION SCENARIO

It’s a scary feeling to wake up each morning without a job. Or to fear you’re about to lose the job you have, especially when you don’t know how you would get another one that could adequately provide for your family. It’s scary to be so deep in personal credit-card debt that you wake up in the middle of the night seized with anxiety and with no idea how you’ll ever climb your way out of the hole you’re in. It’s a scary thing not knowing whether you can still afford to pay the mortgage on your house, to fear the bank will foreclose, to see the value of your house collapse to the point where you literally can’t afford to sell it because you’d still owe the bank money when the transaction was all finished. It’s scarier still to already be past that point and to have seen the bank take away your home, to feel the shame of failure and try to explain to your spouse and your children that somehow—though honestly you don’t know how—it’s all going to be okay.

Far too many Americans have experienced such fears firsthand in recent years. They know all too well that the U.S. economy is in serious trouble. They want to believe that with the right leadership in Washington and on Main Street and on Wall Street, we can turn this thing around. But they have also seen the politicians and the bankers and the CEOs blow it time and time again. And they sense intuitively that the situation could get much, much worse. They fear that even if leaders do emerge who demonstrate good ideas, solid experience, strong personal courage, and resolve to make bold changes, perhaps America has passed the point of no return. They worry that the problems we face might be so enormous that no matter how diligent we are as a nation in making critical changes, it might be too little too late. Americans don’t want to believe we are on the financial
Titanic
, but many fear we might be and that, even as we see the icebergs dead ahead, we may not have time to change course before we crash. Ocean liners don’t turn on a dime. Neither do nations.

These are not minor fears held by a small percentage of Americans. As we noted earlier in this book, nearly eight in ten Americans in the spring of 2010 feared the U.S. economy could collapse entirely,
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and in the summer of 2011, nearly half of all Americans feared the U.S. was heading for another Great Depression.
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At the end of 2011, nearly eight in ten Americans believed the country was on the wrong track.
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Even should these numbers recede somewhat in the short run, Americans will continue to worry about our nation’s long-term prospects.

Yet honestly, most Americans don’t know the half of it. At best, they are aware of only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. If every person in the U.S. truly understood the magnitude of the icebergs we are racing toward at full steam, I suspect the number of Americans fearing our economy could collapse into a Great Depression would skyrocket.

“Economic Disaster on an Epic Scale”

It is difficult to overstate just how much trouble the American economy is in. According to a growing number of experts, if we don’t drastically reduce government spending, balance the federal budget, and make sweeping, fundamental reforms to save and protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—just to name a few of our biggest fiscal challenges—then the federal debt will continue to explode, and the American economy will soon implode. Consider just a few such experts’ statements:

• “These deficits are like a cancer [and] they will truly destroy this country from within if we don’t take care of them,” warned Erskine Bowles, the Democrat cochair of President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010.
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• “We are accumulating debt burdens that will rival a third-world nation within ten years,” warned David Walker in 2010. Walker was appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve as the comptroller general of the United States—essentially the nation’s chief financial auditor—and served in that role from 1998 to 2008. “Once you end up losing the confidence of the markets, things happen very suddenly and very dramatically. We’ve seen that in Greece, we’ve seen it in Ireland, and we must not see it happen in the United States.”
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• “We are steadily becoming more vulnerable to economic disaster on an epic scale,” said Simon Johnson, a highly respected economist at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management and an advisor to the Congressional Budget Office, in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee in 2010.
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• America is on an “unsustainable fiscal course” after going through the “worst economic crisis since the Great Depression,” wrote the Turkish-born American economist Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at New York University’s Stern School of Business, in an October 2010 op-ed in the
Financial Times
. Roubini, who accurately predicted the collapse of the housing markets and the financial disaster on Wall Street in 2008, believes the U.S. is heading toward a “fiscal train wreck” and that “the risk . . . is that something on the fiscal side will snap.”
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• “The United States cannot go on borrowing at projected rates,” warned Alice Rivlin, a Democrat on the president’s Debt Commission and the founding director of the Congressional Budget Office, in testimony before the Senate Budget Committee in 2011. “Without major policy changes, we risk a debt crisis that could severely damage our economy and weaken our influence in the world. . . . We face the prospect of debt crisis and economic disaster if we do not act.”
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• “It is only a matter of time until our financial house collapses,” wrote Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation in his 2011 report, “Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity.” “We are living on borrowed time and risk an economic catastrophe unless somebody in government exercises real leadership to reduce spending and borrowing.”
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• “We know we’re going to have an economic collapse if we stay on the path we are on,” Wisconsin’s Republican congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, warned in a 2011 interview with Christiane Amanpour of ABC’s
This Week
. “And so to me it’s unconscionable as an elected representative of people to know that that’s coming and not try to do something to prevent it from happening.”
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• “This debt is a mortal threat to our country,” warned Ohio’s Republican congressman John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, in a 2011 interview. “It is also a moral threat. It is immoral to bind our children to as leeching and destructive a force as debt. It is immoral to rob our children’s future and make them beholden to China. No society is worthy that treats its children so shabbily.”
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How Bad Is America’s Economy Today?

In a moment, we will look at the specific numbers and fiscal projections that are causing so many experts to warn of the very real possibility of a coming financial implosion. First, however, let’s look at a snapshot of just how much Americans are hurting economically.

• In 2011, nearly 14 million Americans were unemployed, and an additional 8.5 million Americans were underemployed, meaning they were working part-time because they couldn’t find a full-time job.
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• Since 2006, more than 3 million American families have suffered foreclosures—that is, they have seen their houses repossessed by banks because they could not keep up with their mortgage payments.
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• In 2008 alone, foreclosures shot up 81 percent—a single-year record—resulting in 861,664 families losing their homes.
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• In 2009, another 918,000 American families lost their homes to foreclosure.
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• In 2010, another 1.05 million American families lost their homes to foreclosure, shattering all previous records.
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• In 2011, another 804,423 American families lost their homes to foreclosure, and nearly 1.9 million American homeowners received notices from their banks that they were in danger of foreclosure.
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• An estimated 7 to 8 million homes in the U.S. now stand vacant or in the foreclosure process.
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• Even those Americans who still own their homes have suffered significant losses, as average home values across the country in 2011 plunged back to 2004 levels, a loss of some 33 percent from peak values.
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• Americans’ household net worth has plunged precipitously in recent years, driven down by the implosion of home values and by huge losses in the stock markets. According to Federal Reserve data, between 2007 and 2009, household wealth plunged 23 percent.
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• Approximately 7 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy between 2006 and 2011, and the rate shot up by more than 150 percent during that time.
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• Since 2001, some 42,400 American factories have closed their doors.
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• A record 45.8 million Americans used government-funded food stamps in 2011 to help put food on their families’ tables.
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Tragically, Washington has been deeply divided as to how to turn the economy around and get the private sector growing again. Democrats have by and large insisted that trillions of dollars in new federal spending would jump-start the stalled economy and create millions of new jobs—even if that money had to be borrowed from foreign lenders. Republicans have argued that such massive spending has not significantly lowered the unemployment rate or triggered sustained economic growth and that extensive new federal regulation—including President Obama’s aggressive environmental regulations and restructuring of the American health care industry (“ObamaCare”)—has severely harmed American companies, especially small businesses and entrepreneurs. As the political debates have gotten hotter and the rhetoric has grown more intense, many Americans have become concerned that Washington may not know how to restore the conditions for private-sector growth and job creation, exacerbating fears not only about how America can fully recover, but whether we can. Compounding these fears even further is the issue of our staggering national debt.

How Bad Is America’s Debt Crisis?

For the first two hundred years or so of our history, Americans hated the notion of Washington overspending and borrowing, except in extreme national emergencies. Now, we are addicted to both, and the debt crisis has become its own national emergency.

America’s Debt History

Let’s make sure we begin by putting current events in context. In the first sixty years of our national existence—between 1789 and 1849—the U.S. government accrued a budget
surplus
of some $70 million, according to a report from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Over the next half century—between 1850 and 1900—a series of emergencies such as the Spanish-American War and the Civil War required Washington to spend more than it took in, and we accumulated a federal deficit of nearly $1 billion. Yet once the emergencies were over, Washington wisely moved to get its fiscal house back in balance.
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“Between 1901 and 1916, the budget hovered very close to balance every year,” the report noted. “World War I brought large deficits that totaled $23 billion over the 1917–1919 period. The budget was then in surplus throughout the 1920s. However, the combination of the Great Depression followed by World War II resulted in a long, unbroken string of deficits that were historically unprecedented in magnitude. As a result, federal debt held by the public mushroomed from less than $3 billion in 1917 to $16 billion in 1930 and then to $242 billion by 1946. In relation to the size of the economy, debt held by the public grew from 16 percent of GDP [gross domestic product] in 1930 to 109 percent in 1946.”
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The good news is that once Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were defeated and World War II ended victoriously for the U.S. and our allies, the Greatest Generation returned home to start growing families and businesses. As a result, the American economy boomed. Tax revenues to Washington surged. Budget deficits were minimal—there were often surpluses—and the federal debt as a percentage of our economy dropped dramatically. But then came the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and the first Gulf War. As a result of these wars, but also of the compounding effects of the New Deal and Great Society policies in Washington, federal spending grew enormously, as did the federal deficit and national debt.

By the early 1990s, Americans were deeply frustrated by the overspending. In the 1994 fall elections, the Democratic Party lost control of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, though President Bill Clinton, also a Democrat, was reelected in 1996. The battle between congressional Republicans and a Democrat in the White House created a dramatic freeze on spending, with both sides resisting each other’s spending priorities but also pledging to balance the budget. By 1998, bipartisan efforts in Washington succeeded, and the federal government posted its first surplus ($69 billion) in decades. For four straight years, the federal government continued to post budget surpluses, hitting a high of $236 billion in the year 2000.
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