I thought it appropriate, as our nation celebrates its 250th birthday, that no one deceive themselves into believing there is another 250 years ahead. Or even another hundred. Nor fifty. Not twenty. Not even 10.
Behind the flurry of national celebrations, behind the fireworks, the flags and patriotic symbolism filling every square inch of marketing space, one unrelenting truth remains unchanged…
…America’s days are numbered.
It is hard to imagine that level of Babylonian vulnerability (think Daniel 5), especially when social media is filled with the surprised reactions of European visitors rediscovering America’s greatness during the World Cup. It is hard not to feel a measure of pride in what our nation has accomplished over the past 250 years, or in the political course corrections unfolding at breakneck speed under the Trump administration.
While there are many, many injustices that are flooding our newsfeeds and causing us to lose faith in humanity, it’s also an extraordinary time to be alive, as a wave of new technologies promises to transform life on Earth in ways once thought impossible. For many, it is hard not to be optimistic.
But we should resist that impulse. It is a trap.
My intent here is not simply to present the view of a stick-in-the-mud doom-and-gloomer. It is simply the result of taking the Bible for what it says, and for what it does not say.
To me, that is realism.
From a biblical perspective, there are only two possible outcomes. The United States either disappears from the world stage at the Rapture of the Church, or it ultimately becomes the great geopolitical mystery known as Babylon the Great. Given the extraordinary military power, financial dominance, geopolitical influence, and natural advantages America possesses, including two vast oceans protecting its borders, there simply is not enough time left in human history for the nation to evolve into something entirely different. It will either no longer exist in its present form, or it will become something altogether unprecedented.
“And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17, NKJV).
As the old ‘Spider-Man’ saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Undisputedly, the United States of America is the greatest national power the world has ever seen. However, when that great responsibility becomes neglected, great power turns into an even greater liability. After decades of moral and spiritual neglect, those liabilities have now become eventualities.
Truth be told, the only way to address the systemic corruption and mounting existential challenges facing our nation on every front and at every level is through a complete overhaul.
That is where I believe we are headed.
The United States is simply too large, too interconnected, and too burdened by unraveling systems to continue indefinitely as the constitutional republic and capitalist economy we have known.
As historian Will Durant observed:
“A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.”
Caesar and Christ (1944), Epilogue, p. 665
Some will object to this notion. They will say that America has survived a revolution, a Civil War, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Cold War, countless natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and deeply divisive politics, and she still stands.
That is true.
However, today we face new realities humanity has never encountered before.
- The internet, providing global access to information.
- Social media, delivering worldwide news instantly.
- Artificial intelligence, enabling exponential information processing.
I believe the prophet Daniel may have been shown something regarding this time in which we live.
“But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase” (Daniel 12:4, NKJV).
In 1900, the global population was around two billion people. By 2022, the global population had crested eight billion. The Wright Brothers mastered manned flight in 1903. By 1969, we were launching men into space. In 1914, men rode into battle in World War 1 on horses, and came out the other side (1918) in tanks and planes. A single computer once required the space of an entire room in the 1940s; now, a computer 1,000X more powerful fits into your front pants pocket.
Inarguably, across nearly every sector, category, spectrum, and level, man has advanced more in the 20th-21st centuries than in all the previous centuries combined. I say “nearly” because the sectors in which mankind has not progressed but, in fact, has regressed are the spiritual, moral, and ethical.
Indeed, mankind is more powerful than he has ever been, yet is at his most morally compromised. This is the world we inhabit today…and the world faces unprecedented systemic challenges:
- Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS)
- Global surveillance networks
- Rising demand for Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)
- Ever-expanding wireless infrastructure
- Satellite megaclusters
- Genetic manipulation
- Abortion on demand
- Normalizing Euthanasia
- Increasing cosmic anomalies
- Global jihadism
- Radical ideological movements
- Right-to-repair conflicts
- Massive data center expansion
- $40 trillion in national debt
- Unsustainable immigration
- Weaponized migration
- Declining birth rates
- Multicultural fragmentation (tribalism)
- Aging infrastructure
- Countless vulnerable points within critical systems
- Expanding corporate power
- Deepening political division
Even many of the strengths that once helped make America exceptional may become our greatest liabilities during a national crisis. The prophetic warning by the second President John Adams in 1798 was that the Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people” and is “wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” In the best of times, these below were designed as a safeguard against government tyranny. In the rest of times, these same safeguards would work against the people because of political corruption.
- The Bill of Rights functions best within a morally grounded society. It’s abused in any other.
- Separation of powers was designed as a system of checks and balances. In our day, it causes systemic governmental paralysis.
- Religious liberty also permits competing worldviews that often reject biblical truth.
This is where we find ourselves.
The most powerful nation in human history stands on the edge of profound transformation, perhaps even collapse. We know it. Our adversaries know it.
Ultimately, however, the deepest problem mankind faces is neither technological nor political.
It is sin.
Humanity remains in a fallen condition. Left to itself, mankind cannot permanently solve its own problems because every heart is bent toward self-interest. As Scripture teaches, we naturally seek our own welfare before God’s. It’s our default setting, and unless we are reprogrammed by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which only happens when we place our faith and trust in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross, we cannot be changed from death unto life.
Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Conclusion
“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).
As I said, I’m not a doom-and-gloomer. The great news is that a Golden Age is, in fact, coming. It simply will not arrive through American greatness. As Chuck Colson once famously observed, “Our salvation is not returning on Air Force One.”
As believers in Christ, we are no longer citizens of terra firma. We are sojourners and ambassadors behind enemy lines whose true citizenship is in heaven. In other words, we are strangers in a strange land. We are former citizens of the physical world, but once we are born again, our eyes are opened, and we are awakened to the spiritual and eternal nature of the spiritual realm.
“…’cause there ain’t no future in living in the past.” – BlackHawk, “Like There Ain’t No Yesterday,” (1995)
We should not spend our days looking back and longing for the days of yesteryear. What lies ahead is of far greater consequence and peace than whatever lay behind us. We cannot unscramble the eggs of man’s present station concerning technology, geopolitics, and our millennia-long moral failings. As Christ followers, we should be looking ahead to what (or rather Who) is coming.
The redemption of mankind, first for the Church, then for Israel, will finally restore the earth to its Edenic-like reality, and restore those of us saved believers to our final, uncorruptible and immortal positions, not so that we can be exalted, but so that we can finally dwell with our Creator God forever in perfect joy, happiness, peace, and purpose.
I love America, and you may love the country you are from, but our true citizenship is not this nation or world. Our kingdom is coming, and soon!
“And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding from the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the middle of its street, and on either side of the river, was the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, each tree yielding its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. And there shall be no more curse, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and His servants shall serve Him. They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads. There shall be no night there: They need no lamp nor light of the sun, for the Lord God gives them light. And they shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 22:1-5).