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Yesterday we had our men’s breakfast with Eric Metaxas as our guest speaker. By all accounts it was a great success. That evening I took Mabel to Calvary church to see Eric again, and get a book signed for a friend that I forgot to take with me in the morning. The entire experience was highly motivating for me. One significant point Eric makes is the same I make in my book Building My Faith. There is abundant evidence and testimony about God and Jesus Christ historically, scientifically, and in personal experiences of people, but a vast majority of our society never hears about it. This is a collective failing of the Christian community. This failing has reached the point of placing our nation in peril.
I woke up this morning with two thoughts on my mind. The first thought I call the Judas Iscariot Syndrome. In the book, To Concerned Americans, I point out lessons that apply to nations that God taught us thousands of years ago. Lessons include the need for societies to plan for the future as in the story of Joseph in Egypt, and the need for nations to be faithful to God and follow his ways as seen in the downfall and desolation of Israel and Judah.
This morning, another lesson came to mind from the betrayal of Jesus by Judas Iscariot. Judas apparently lost whatever enthusiasm he had for Jesus’ ministry, and made a bargain with the religious leaders of Judea to betray Jesus. He no doubt felt he was doing the right thing, but later, after he betrayed Jesus, he realized his error. The problem was that it was too late. What he did he could not reverse. He betrayed the Son of God. He could not turn back time to rectify his error.
This was also the case with ancient Israel and Judea. They collectively as nations after decades and centuries of denying God and worshipping other deities, reached the point where they were beyond redemption. Their failure led to their destruction. It affected not just leaders who led them astray, but all citizens of the nation. Men, women, children, babes in arms. The second thought brought to my mind are a couple parallels between our present day and Germany in the 1930’s. In To Concerned Americans, I point out that what happened at the U.S. capitol on January 6, 2021 was clearly not an insurrection. Yet the political leaders presently in power in Washington, D.C., by the thinnest of margins, are clearly trying to use this event to eliminate potential political opponents, including Donald Trump and his supporters, by making it out to be something that it was not.
This is conceptually the same thing that Adolf Hitler did in 1933 after the fire of the Reichstag building. He had barely come into his position as chancellor, and his party did not hold a majority in the government. This event was used as a pretext to secure the party’s control and eliminate the opposition. A second event paralleling Hitler’s rise is the recent Beijing Olympics, which was tightly orchestrated by the Communist Chinese government, reminiscent of the Berlin Olympics of 1936. In both cases you have tyrannical rulers engaged in massive military buildup, severely oppressing undesired groups of citizens, including religious individuals who refuse to conform to the state’s dictates. In both cases they make claims to territories in the possession of other nations.
In 1939, Germany first occupied Czechoslovakia in March, and then invaded Poland in September. If the relative timing of events holds true, the time is very short, perhaps a year, before history repeats itself with violence on a global scale. These thoughts bring to mind two writings that a friend, Greg Zanetti, pointed me to at the time he reviewed my first rough draft of To Concerned Americans in September of 2018. I did not include these references in my book, but their prescience is now strikingly clear. The first is an extended essay by Sir John Glubb titled The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival.1 Glubb briefly reviews the history of empires over the last 3,000 years, and draws some striking conclusions. In his summary these are the first three points he makes:“
a) We do not learn from history because our studies are brief and prejudiced.
b) In a surprising manner, 250 years emerges as the average length of national greatness.
c) This average has not varied for 3,000 years. …”2
The second reference is the Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy.3 The authors look in depth at the cycles that can be recognized throughout recorded world history, and then spend considerable time looking at the details of the cycles seen in the history of the United States. They make a strong case that a society goes through a sequence of four generations, or “Turnings”, that follow a consistent pattern of progression, and the typical duration of the combined four turnings averages about 80 years. The sequence of four turnings is termed a Saeculum. The last full saeculum they recognize they refer to as the Great Power Saeculum. One could argue the specific years they pick, but the general flow of a society through the Saeculum is what matters. The four Turnings they identify in that Saeculum areas follow:
1. First Turning (High) 1865-1886, Civil war ends, slavery is ended, reconstruction, Gilded Age
2. Second Turning (Awakening) 1886-1908, Third Great Awakening
3. Third Turning (Unraveling) 1908-1929, World War I and Prohibition
4. Fourth Turning (Crisis) 1929-1946, Great Depression and World War II
Each Saeculum follows a similar pattern that starts with a societal “high” that follows a period of societal crisis and strong response to that crisis led by the generation of young adults on whose shoulders the burden of responding to and preserving the society lands. These individuals are labeled as the Heros. Thus, the Heros of World War II (The Greatest Generation), become the leaders of society during the First Turning of the next Saeculum. The years following World War II was a time of great social pride and contentment for most of society, the first Turning of our current Saeculum. The book the Fourth Turning was published in 1997. The authors, after defining the previous seven Saeculum that end with the end of WW II, outline the Saeculum we are presently experiencing. This is what they outlined in 1997:
1. First Turning 1946-1964 American High
2. Second Turning 1964-1984 Consciousness Revolution
3. Third Turning 1984-2005? Culture Wars
4. Fourth Turning 2005?-2026? Millennial Crisis
The Fourth Turning is always marked by an initializing event, a Crisis catalyst, which can be catastrophic or seemingly minor. The authors begin their Fourth Turning prophecy with, “Sometime around the year 2005, perhaps a few years before or after, America will enter the Fourth Turning.” I believe the year of the Fourth Turning came in 2001. That is the year of 9/11. That marked a monumental shift in the attitude of the federal government. The FISA court was created in response to 9/11 enabling the federal government to eavesdrop on unsuspecting individuals. Federal spending became unfettered, and ever since has been unconstrained by the proper budgetary processes and prudence that guided our nation for 220 years prior. These and other items opened the door for the exercise of unconstrained power by those in high positions in the federal government, both Republican and Democrat.
The book The Fourth Turning gives much explanation that I don’t have the time for here. They make the prediction that, “It is unlikely that catalyst will worsen into a full-fledge catastrophe, since the nation will probably find a way to avert the initial danger and stabilize the situation for a while… Yet even if dire consequences are temporarily averted, America will have entered the Fourth Turning.” It could be argued that the year we invaded Iraq in 2003 is a more likely Crisis Catalyst. Either way, we clearly now are in a serious national crisis and on the verge of the culmination of our Fourth Turning. The authors point out there is no guarantee of an outcome. It could result in a new age of prosperity, or end with the destruction of the nation. It depends upon how we respond as a society. Remember the burden ultimately falls on the younger adult generation, the millennials and gen X. This likely will not give great confidence to those of older generations. When one puts this together with Glubb’s conclusion that empires last an average of 250 years (1776+250=2026), and with current events parallel to events from the previous Fourth Turning in the 1930’s, it should bring serious pause to all concerned Americans.
I refer several times to the Bible in To Concerned Americans. This is because it represents a profound historical reference, a gift from God from which there are abundant lessons to be learned. The entire Old Testament beginning with Moses is God’s lesson for mankind of what happens when a people/nation loses sight of the first principles God places before them. He warns us explicitly multiple times of what happens when we fail to pass those principles on to our posterity.
Paul tells us Jesus came at the right time (Romans 5:6, Galatians 4:4). The time frame before His coming included all the lessons God’s chosen people meticulously recorded, not necessarily realizing they were preserving this for the benefit of all of mankind. The United States resulted from the uniting of the various New World colonies of England along the Atlantic coast. Had they not been united, their efforts for independence would have failed. When forming the Constitution, after a first trial at confederacy, they studied history carefully, and intentionally drafted a document to adequately provide for the security of the states collectively, while limiting the power and scope of a centralized government to avoid the type of tyranny they had just freed themselves from. They also issued warnings, to those who would follow, of the need for diligence in preserving the freedoms and rights of individuals, because the elements of tyranny are ever ready to take advantage of those who are complacent, ignorant, and unsuspecting.
The reasons cited in the Declaration of Independence for separating from England boil down to taxes and regulations being imposed upon them without representation, and the militarization of enforcement of those regulations upon the people. This is exactly what we see in our nation and other nations today under the guise of saving us from an illness that had existing therapeutic remedies which officials intentionally suppressed (see To Concerned Americans, chapter 144). We have this tyranny today because at least half the population, and in particular our younger generations (Heroes?), do not recognize what is happening. We have failed as a society to teach our children and grandchildren the first principles of Christian faith and the founding of our United States.
The book, To Concerned Americans, ends with the conclusion that the only true hope for America to survive as a bastion of individual freedom, faith, and prosperity is through a united effort of Christians. I suggest one potential uniting effort, but there are many good purposes that may bring congregations in a community, city, or region together for a great cause. Unity is what is essential. Jesus’ last prayer in the presence of the eleven remaining disciples before his arrest, asked God to make those who would follow Him perfectly one. A unified body testifying to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus earlier taught that a house divided will not stand. Personality politics (i.e., Donald Trump),and partisan politics (i.e., Democrat Party), will both fail because they are both dividing, not uniting. Uniting of our nation will require improbable to impossible intervention (i.e., miraculous). It will require forgiveness.5It will require a return to the founding principles of our nation. The return I call for in To Concerned Americans calls upon Christians of all stripes to unite in efforts to overcome the disparities in our nation.
I began this piece with comments about a breakfast sponsored by our church men’s organization. About 75 people were in attendance. The breakfast was not intentionally promoted to gather folks from other congregations, but we ended up with people from 19 different church congregations. This was God’s doing. It is Jesus Christ’s desire that we should be as one. God has been challenging me to organize a community wide effort to evangelize our city, and we see him leading in that endeavor. This is one of many purposes for which we may be led to unite to God’s glory.
The United States of America is a unique nation in the history of the world. I believe it is a gift from God. We are now on the precipice. There is no turning back time. What we have done and failed to do is past. For better or worse, we have burned the ships.6 We either unite and trust God to carry us across the perilous divide we have created, or we allow the tides of time to push us headlong off the cliff to our death as a nation. Time is unforgiving. Time is short. The time to act is now.
