Lessons from America
“I myself will lift up your skirts over your face, and your shame will be seen.” (Jer 13:26)
Preamble
As a child of parents who lived through WW II, there wasn’t anything much America could do wrong in our house. Going to uni in the period of the Vietnam War gave me a completely different view. Years later, in Argentina, the Lord called me to repent over an ingrained attitude against “the States”. This has been helped through befriending some excellent American Christian brothers (like D.S.) in recent days. Hopefully, this brief word is largely unbiased and true to the Lord.
Introduction
At various times in history this teaching could have been titled “Lessons from Babel/Nineveh/Jerusalem/Athens/Rome….” I remember being at the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado, a mountain nearly twice as high as Australia’s largest point. The views of the Great Plains are so majestic they inspired Katharine Lee Bates to pen America the Beautiful, a song as popular in the U.S. as Waltzing Matilda here. What struck me at the time were these lines on a plaque at the summit, “America! America! God mend thy ever flaw/ Confirm thy soul in self-control Thy liberty in law!” I could not but be struck then, even more now, by how the true natural beauty of land and nation had been corrupted into an incredible ugliness. How is it that the richest nation on the planet has a death rate from COVID around 30x that of Australia. The answer is: “inequality”! As to being the superpower, Christ’s prophecy is swiftly coming to pass, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.” (Matt 12:25). The sheer political mayhem in Washington demands a supernatural explanation.
Seeing in the Spirit
The ever-patient Lord of all has “handed over” in wrath America’s citizens to their own choices (Rom 1:24. 26, 28). This truth applies to “any nation” (Jer 12:17), and the decree is unalterable excepting there be national repentance for rebellion (Jer 18:7-10 cf. Jonah). America failed at the time of 9/11to heed the discipline of the Lord. At that hour the Lord gave me Isa 26:9, “when your judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world learn righteousness” (Isa 26:9). But neither Church (1 Pet 4:17) nor nation have en masse turned from their wicked ways. Therefore, America is being tortured because God loves her people and has not forgotten her many visitations of grace, and obedience. The end however is not yet. Though Bob Fraser publicly prophesied in my hearing in Kansas City in 2007 that an upcoming financial crisis (later known as the GFC) would mark the end of the sole global superpower status of the U.S. This predication is gradually being fulfilled.
Where is the Cross?
It is unlikely I would have written this article if I hadn’t come across the fact that there were wooden crosses and huge JESUS 2020 banners at the invasion of the Capitol in Washington recently (https://religionunplugged.com/news/2021/1/6/some-history-behind-the-christian-flags-at-the-pro-trump-capitol-coup ). These Americans (Like those who display the bumper sticker, “God, Guns and Guts made America Great, Let’s keep all three.”) apparently think that Jesus is the means to make America great again. They do not understand the cross as the place where God loves us more than he loves himself (Torrance) by voluntarily dying for selfish wretches not like himself. When I saw a photo of US soldiers praying on mass as they crossed the border into Iraq in 2003, I sensed the Lord saying that a “crusader spirit” had taken over sections of America. This spirit has been roaring powerfully of late across. As back then, it is now resisted by equally ferocious pagans and heretics. The United States needs our prayers, because it is humanly impossible for an alpha mindset to become an omega disposition. I am of course referring to the name of God and Christ (Isa 48:12; Rev 22:13).
The Secret of Nothingness
When a brother sent me a list of the Trump’s achievements I replied, “If only he gave all the gory to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ instead of himself. He is indeed a high achieving idol worshipper.” There is a gift virtually no politician will ever impart to their country. Let me illustrate. In response to national recognition of his key role in a revival that transformed both human and ecological communities in Fiji a local apostolic leader remarked, “I celebrate my nothingness.” (http://cross-connect.net.au/experiencing-nothing/) This wasn’t false humility, simply being unselfconsciously like JESUS whose banner is the cross. Christoform leadership (Phil 2:7) is needed today by America, and every other state and Church, more than ever! Paul warns those in danger of thinking they had an exceptional special destiny in themselves, “if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself” (Gal 6:3 cf. Rom 12:3; 1 Cor 8:2; 13:2). To share in the cross’s unique quality of nothingness means to “count others more significant than yourselves” (Phil 2:3). Where is this found today??
What about the Skirts?
In a culture riddled with shaming, we are seeing the sovereign Lord lift the skirts of America to expose her like a (spiritually) adulterous woman or a harlot (Isa 47:2-3 cf. Jer 13:22; Nah 3:5). As per Israel, a truly “beautiful flock” (Jer 13:20) may cry out “‘Why has this happened to me?’” (13:22), but will have no healing answer until she sees her sin for what it is. She has powerfully denied that glory is found only in the crucified Lord (Jer 9:23-24; 1 Cor 2:8). In this sort of corruption, “I need nothing” (Rev 3:17) the churches of America have led the way.
Conclusion
The empires of this world rise then uncontrollably spiral down to their end. America has for decades been degenerating as an economic, moral, and spiritual power. In seeking prayer support from Indonesia recently I wrote, “For some time now it has been evident that the centre of the work of the Spirit (on earth) has been moving east.” We must be praying as earnestly for events in Jakarta and Beijing as for those in Washington. Whilst every people group has a “manifest destiny” in Christ (Matt 28:19; Rev 5:9), few grasp that greatness in human eyes (Jer 45:5) must (Luke 24:26) be followed by a period of being sovereignly humiliated by God for the higher purpose of exaltation to everlasting glory. Whilst I see beauty streaming through the shards of a broken creation with particular intensity through the natural blessing endowed on the U.S., without submission to the nothingness of Christ’s cross her glories can never last beyond this passing cosmos. This is not a teaching about a temporary entity called “America”, it is the message of the “everlasting gospel” for the world (Rev 14:6).