America—What Happened? From Failed Prophecies to Collapse Shane Idleman
Turmoil, chaos, and confusion are running rampant, and that’s an understatement. Those in the charismatic community are wondering how the “prophets” missed it, and conservative Christians are asking, “Why did God allow this election to end like this?”
First, we must realize that no one knows exactly why God does what He does. I rest in the fact that His sovereignty is my ultimate security. The Bible says, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).
Unless it’s clearly revealed in His Word, we can easily run into trouble when we try to figure out God’s will, and especially when we expect His will to be a reflection of our own. This is where I think some of the prophetic voices missed it—they prophesied what they “felt” versus what God was intending. They prophesied what appeared in their own view to be the best plan for America, but God has other plans. Add to this the celebrity status that was building in the lives of many well-known voices, and the danger of missing God’s actual purpose is even greater. All of us must guard our hearts and say like John the Baptist, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).
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Secondly, haven’t most of us been saying for decades that America is ripe for judgment? And how does God often judge nations? He uses foreign enemies from without and allows corruption and rot from within. Many in our land are echoing Jeremiah when he asked, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (12:1), but when we consider the unmasked hatred of all things godly, should we really be surprised?
Again, I don’t know God’s plans perfectly, but it seems that America reached the tipping point. Let’s be very clear: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both” (Dwight D. Eisenhower). We lost our moral compass a long time ago. Historically, we know that God judged those nations who continually tolerated sin; wrong choices have devastating national consequences. Arnold Toynbee, who wrote A Study of History in 1961, said, “Of the twenty-two civilizations that have appeared in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.” And that was written decades ago. What would he say now?
