"For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us."
John Winthrop (1630) – City upon a Hill
Do you feel it? Can you sense it? That subtle, almost imperceptible tension, like the faint ache in your knees that stubbornly warns of an approaching storm yet still unseen beyond the horizon. I’m not referring to the political or cultural strife that has sharply intensified over the past two decades. No, this is something deeper—something unknown that appears unrelentingly fated. This unseen tension moves silently beneath the surface of our time, like a powerful undertow, quietly pulling the unsuspecting into the murky depths of inevitability.
For many, the results of the most recent national elections offer a glimmer of hope that the best days of the United States are not behind her, but still ahead. Many point to the landslide victory of both the popular vote as well as the electoral college, as a resounding mandate to reject the long-established status quo which has become corrupted almost beyond repair. Many viewed this victory as a ‘Hail Mary’ pass that was miraculously successful in connecting the quarterback to the receiver in the end-zone. Only this time, it has secured not just the Executive Branch, but that of the Legislative and Judicial as well.
Regarding the 2024 election, I am under no illusions that had the Democrats won, 2024 would have been our last election. At a minimum, it would be the end of our two-party political system. Thus, our victory was absolutely the last-ditch effort to course-correct what would have been a disastrous and definitive conclusion to our Constitutional Republic. But because the left was not successful, this is proof positive to many that America is still that shining city upon a hill, and that we stand on the precipice of greatness; a new, golden age of global dominance and prosperity.
But for others, myself included, there is an ominous and inevitable foreboding that accompanies this victory. Every nation, kingdom, and empire that has ever existed, save two (Babylon, Israel), have come, gone, and are relegated to the dustbin of history. So, what is this unseen yet palpable tension I led off with? It’s the prophetic direction this nation has yet to move into but must. The reality is that this tension is the push and pull between humanity’s Psalm 2-desires of casting off their bonds, and God’s iron-clad prophetic plan.
You might argue, well, it’s man vs. God, of course God wins.
I don’t disagree. But hear me out.
Most of you should be familiar with the Old Testament book of the prophet Jonah.
Wrath Delayed
Now the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amittai, saying, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry out against it; for their wickedness has come up before Me.” But Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. He went down to Joppa, and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid the fare, and went down into it, to go with them to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. Jonah 1:1-3
The story of Jonah is a short, but powerful demonstration of God’s mercy and compassion toward those who repent. God commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh and warn its people of impending destruction due to their wickedness, but hating the Ninevites and wishing for their destruction, Jonah fled, boarding a ship to Tarshish (the opposite direction of Nineveh).
A violent storm arose, and Jonah, recognizing he was the cause, allowed himself to be thrown overboard to save the others. Swallowed by a great fish, Jonah spent three days and nights in the belly of the fish, acknowledging God’s sovereignty before being released onto dry land. Jonah then obeyed and delivered God’s warning to Nineveh, prompting the entire city, from the king to the commoners, to repent through fasting, the wearing of sack cloth and ashes, and turning from their evil ways.
Seeing their genuine repentance, God spared the city from destruction, extending their existence for another century. Jonah, however, grew angry, frustrated by God’s mercy and hoping for Nineveh’s downfall. To teach him a lesson about compassion, God caused a plant to grow and shade Jonah, only to let it wither, highlighting Jonah’s misplaced priorities. God contrasted Jonah’s concern for the plant with His own concern for the 120,000 people of Nineveh, emphasizing the value of human lives and His readiness to forgive. Ultimately, the story illustrates that God’s patience and long suffering to that even to the most undeserving, deserve a chance to repent.
Wrath Resumed
We also know that Nineveh was destroyed a century later by the Neo-Babylonian king Nabopolassar and the Median king Cyaxares, destroying Nineveh during a multi-month siege, and forever ending the Assyrian seat of power.
Nabopolassar’s son, Nebuchadnezzar, would continue this conquest in taking Judah (and Jerusalem) and keeping the Jews in bondage for another 70 years in Babylon...just as it was prophesied by the prophet Jeremiah. Even though God had slated Nineveh for destruction had they not genuinely repented, but allowed them to repent forestalling judgment, even if only delaying it for 100 years.
This tension between true repentance and impending judgment likely resonated throughout the course of that century. However, as is often the case, true repentance at the kingdom/nation/empire-level, rarely lasts. By the time of Jeremiah’s ministry, the Assyrians were no more, their cities had been reduced to rubble, their people absorbed by the Babylonians and Medes, and erasing Assyria as a dominant regional power forever.
I’m pretty sure you can see where this is heading.
The parallels between Assyria and modern America are striking. While the United States may have temporarily averted disaster by rallying against political and cultural evils brought on by the Democrat party, the deep state, and the swamp, the question remains: how long can divine wrath be delayed?
Certainly, the US has way more blood on our hands than Nineveh ever did (60M+ abortions?). Moreover, genuine repentance to the one true God appears tenuous at best in such a theologically diverse and often fragmented culture like ours, where repentance (sincere or otherwise) is frequently directed toward the false gods or ideologies (Islam, Hinduism, New Age, Wicca, etc.). It also seems highly unlikely that America will experience a century-long reprieve, as the prophetic typologies and patterns in Scripture appear to align with the years approaching 2033.
For example, if the 69th week of Daniel’s 70 Weeks prophecy was meant to culminate with Christ’s crucifixion at the end of His first advent, the significance of Daniel’s prophecy would have diminished beyond the point of relevancy had the world moved beyond 33 AD with Christ either still alive or having not yet arrived. The same could be said for our present world to move beyond 2033, without some major validation of God’s word since 2033 would serve as Christ’s two-thousand-year anniversary since His first advent. God’s use of typology and pattern throughout Scripture underscores His absolute dedication to prophetic consistency.
Abraham’s test of faith with Isaac on Mt. Moriah (Genesis 22)
Moses striking the rock a second time in disobedience, barring him from the Promised Land (Exodus 17:2, Numbers 20:10-13)
John the Baptist’s declaration of Jesus as the Lamb of God twice, but distinguishing between the two (John 1:29-31, 35-36)
All these highlight either the pattern or the typology meant to point to Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for mankind. As Hebrews 9:27-28 reminds us, Christ died once for the sins of humanity and will return a second time, not to deal with sin but to bring salvation. Ignoring the prophetic significance of the two-thousandth anniversary of Christ’s advent risks undermining key scriptural time frames by blowing past unnoticed, including those in Daniel 9:24-27, Hosea 5:15-6:3, Matthew 24:32-43, Luke 21:24, Romans 11:25-27, and Revelation 9:15.
Moving past these markers without any kind of prophetic acknowledgment would render watching for the signs of the times increasingly futile, further diminishing the relevance of prophetic scripture and its divine patterns.
What Now?
While we might view ourselves as a nation deserving of divine reprieve similar to Nineveh, we must grapple with the balance between repentance—whether genuine or superficial—and the overarching time constraints set forth by God. As Acts 17:26 reminds us, God has preordained the times and seasons for every nation, which would includes the United States. Even if a segment of the American population were to sincerely repent, it is uncertain whether that alone would alter the divine timetable already established for our country.
As the undercurrent of tension in our age continues to grow, ongoing events (both good and bad) continue to feed the reality that the only certain thing we can all agree on is that the status quo of the last seventy years is about to end. For pessimists, this tension amplifies their darkest anxieties, while for optimists, it heralds the possibility of meaningful and positive change. These are two states of mind on the opposite end of the spectrum.
One thing is for certain though, it will be increasingly impossible to remain neutral about all the goings-on in the world. Things are no longer “business as usual.” The era of the Pax Americana world order, which has defined the global landscape since 1945, is approaching its inescapable end one way or another.
This world order, anchored in the financial strength of the U.S. dollar established as the global reserve currency under the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, is now being challenged on multiple fronts. The world is shifting—either toward commodity-based currencies or some variation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
Moreover, many nations in the world are increasingly eager to move from under the shadow of America’s economic power because of how we weaponized our financial and economic platforms have become. To borrow a phrase from the US Marine Corps, it was believed that our friends had no better ally, and our enemies, no worse foe.
But the paradigm shifts increasingly varied in its extremes from US administration to administration increasingly causing our allies to get geopolitical whiplash. The wild gyrations between the two political extremes has become so apparent in the last 20 years, that the world has grown overly weary of our bi-polar approach to geopolitics.
The Death of Normalcy Bias
The people of the great nations of the past seem normally to have imagined that their pre-eminence would last forever. Rome appeared to its citizens to be destined to be for all time the mistress of the world. The Abbasid Khalifs of Baghdad declared that God had appointed them to rule mankind until the day of judgment. Seventy years ago, many people in Britain believed that the empire would endure forever. Although Hitler failed to achieve his objective, he declared that Germany would rule the world for a thousand years. That sentiments like these could be publicly expressed without evoking derision shows that, in all the ages, the regular rise and fall of great nations has passed unperceived. The simplest statistics prove the steady rotation of one nation after another at regular intervals.
Sir John Glubb, the Fate of Empires
Most sober-minded historians acknowledge one immutable fact of history: every nation, empire, and kingdom, no matter how great or small, rises and falls. The lingering question on everyone’s mind now wasn’t if America’s end would come, but when.
This foregone conclusion had permeated the collective psyche for the past three decades, making the moment Donald Trump descending down his golden escalators of Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy—and his "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) agenda—feel like an electric jolt to the American body politic. Its unfettered optimism was both shocking and polarizing.
For years, the average American had been sold a vision that the good life would last forever. This was done through relentless commercialism and slick marketing selling the same message: work hard, invest wisely, play by the rules, and you’d enjoy a fulfilling life capped off by a peaceful retirement of golf and fishing. This ideal, however, masked a deeper truth: Sir John Glubb's assessment that civilizations are plagued by this perpetual "normalcy bias." The assumption that the American way of life will continue indefinitely, is simply not true.
Few historians and strategists alike could have imagined a path forward for the United States that didn’t involve some level of decline, let alone a resurgence resembling a renaissance. Yet Trump’s MAGA movement, marked by its shocking electoral victories and relentless momentum, challenged that fatalistic narrative.
Winning the last three elections, the MAGA movement ignited a wave of optimism not seen since the Reagan era of the 1980s—a time when Americans dared to ask, “What if?” instead of the defeatist “What for?” This certainly has been amplified here in 2024 when President Trump announced his desires to make Canada the 51st state, acquiring Greenland, or regaining control over the Panama Canal which of course has sent many a world leaders into a frenzy of panic and anxiety.
This American optimism rekindled something long dormant in the American spirit: the belief that the nation could course-correct and in phoenix-like power, rise anew. Trump’s agenda wasn’t just about restoration; it forced Americans to seriously entertain the possibility of an unprecedented second American golden age. Thus, the rebirth of this modern Republican conservatism encouraged the nation to believe not only in recovery but in resurgence. MAGA offered a future brighter than anything in its past.
Déjà vu All Over Again
For decades, most Americans comfortably embraced the normalcy bias of the status quo—the assumption that the United States would remain more or less the same far into the future; that we would remain a stable and enduring superpower. Yet, the Bible’s striking silence on the world's greatest modern superpower has left many in the pre-millennial, pre-tribulation rapture community grappling with a haunting question: how does America’s story end?
In the past, prophecy watchers speculated on what could bring about the fall of such a dominant nation. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union loomed large as the prime candidate for America’s destruction, the “big bad” threat of the age, that was, until the USSR collapsed. But even then, much of what was required to fulfill biblical prophecy, particularly as outlined in Revelation, was still absent. The best interpretations of that era were limited by what is often called the tyranny of the present—an inability to imagine circumstances beyond what was known or possible at the time.
Today, however, the problem has reversed. The prophetic landscape is not constrained by a lack of options for fulfillment but is instead overwhelmed by the sheer number of possibilities.
Technological advancements, geopolitical shifts, cultural decay, and the rise of globalism each present plausible pathways to the prophetic events Scripture describes. As we move further into the 21st century, we face a new challenge: the tyranny of too many choices thus confounding even the best of scholars. The convergence of potential fulfillments creates a kaleidoscope of scenarios, each seemingly plausible, yet collectively daunting to decipher.
Thus, the question of how America fits—or doesn’t fit—into this prophetic picture looms larger than ever. It runs the gambit of total collapse at the Rapture, or at a minimum, the collapse of our current structure as a constitutional republic, to that foOmystery Babylon. With the outright anarchy this present outgoing administration has governed by, and the obfuscation of nearly a dozen head scratcher situations (Drones, Orbs, wildfires, powerful hurricanes, terrorist attacks, and many more), has all but eroded even the most ardent patriot’s belief in their government.
Adding to that, is what appears now to be a solidification of American dominance, not just in the US, but in North America with the Panama Canal, Canada, and Greenland in the crosshairs, it seems inevitable (at present) that this is exactly what will happen. Given Trump’s landslide mandate, his seemingly divine or providential survival against: nonstop barrage of political and legal attacks, and two assassination attempts indicates to this author that he might well get what he wants.
What we do know is that in the world of Revelation 13 (still future), the world appears to be broken up into seven spheres of power, guided by ten “kings” who don’t have kingdoms, but have authority as kings. Three of these kings are supplanted by one, who, with his demonic aide de camp, take control of the whole planet. The move to secure all of North America seems more fitting with what Daniel 2, 7, Revelation 12-13, 17-18, and other prophetic passages state about the organization of the final form of human government right before Christ returns.
Conclusion
I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work. John 9:4
So, what does this mean for the born again, watching, believer?
Well, if the US is Mystery Babylon (i.e., Babylon in its mystery form) then we should see signs for that. We should see the US posturing itself to be hated by the other kings who at the first opportunity, strike America while she’s down (possibly right after the Rapture of the Church). We should see the US stripped of its wealth and weapons, who would then be distributed amongst some (or all) of the other power structures.
If the US is not the Mystery Babylon, then this means we should be seeing the structure for that as well as the ten kings coming into their own. I’m still torn on the matter, however, the US as Mystery Babylon (at least at the present with MAGA on the march) seems to be more and more likely.
And just as many bible prophecy pros and students alike had to redraw their prophecy charts after the major events of the Soviet Union collapsing, the push beyond 10 member nations in the European Union, or the global shutdown caused by COVID caught many in our community off guard, we must remain observant, having eyes to see, and ears to hear what the Holy Spirit tells regarding the unfolding of events each and every day now.
Without a doubt, the United States stands at a crossroads: either rising to unparalleled heights to become a mystery form of global government that suffers’ immense and irreparable loss later, or immediate collapse and destruction at the rapture sooner than many expect. This is that unsettling tension we feel building each day. Either way, what it speaks to us now is that time is running out and getting the Gospel out to the unsaved should be our highest priority.
Thus, in one sense, we have Bible prophecy unfolding before our very eyes which gives us an unparalleled advantage to use these signs of the times as the evidence the increasingly skeptical world needs to finally come to Christ. Lastly, we should not expect a major national or global revival prior to the Rapture of the Church because the numerous passages that say otherwise (Matt 24:1-14, 2 Tim 3, 2 Peter 2-3, Luke 17:26-30, 18:8, 1 Thessalonians 5, Revelation 3:1-6, 14-22). However, after the Rapture, that’s a whole nuther story. Revelation 6:9-11, and 7:9-16 indicate a massive soul harvest that Rev. 7:9 states the martyred saints (not the Church) were “a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues.”
While it seems our efforts here to warn of the impending storm that is coming has met resistance (both human and demonic), complacency, persecution, mocking, and skepticism, it appears our efforts are not in vain. God will use our planting and watering now, giving the increase in the interim, that bears a soul harvest that will seemingly dwarf that any of the entire 2,000-year dispensation of the Church. Therefore, continue to share. Continue to warn. Continue to be the salt and light wherever God has planted you knowing your efforts are not in vain. Because the time is coming, when the time for work will be done, and we will inherit our eternal reward.
Remember, all the kingdoms of man, no matter how great or benevolent, will come to their respective ends. Even the United States of America, that “shining city on a hill” for whom the nations of the world have for so long depended, will also come to her end one way or another. Even now her light is fading faster than we are comfortable seeing. The light the world saw was a nation reflecting God’s glory. But when that nation turns its back on God, the light fades and the world darkens and the time for work will come to its predetermined ending. This encroaching darkness is what has so many on edge. We are not to set our mind on earthly things, but on the heavenly because while we are in this world, we are no longer of this world.
For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. Philippians 3:20-21