This Election Disaster Is Not America’s ‘Best Hope’

In November, it appears American voters will choose between two of the most loathed presidential candidates in the nation’s history. The factor that determines the next president will likely be which one voters hate less.

Cynicism, pessimism, even fatalism hang like a pall over much of the electorate. Conservative website Townhall.com ran this remarkable headline: “I Am Going to Vote for Trump Though It Makes Me Want to Projectile Vomit.” In the Wall Street Journal, former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal explained his plan to vote for Mr. Trump as “the second-worst thing we could do this November.”

In both parties, many have pledged to not vote for their candidate. Columnist Bret Stephens wrote, “The best hope for what’s left of a serious conservative movement in America is the election in November of a Democratic president, held in check by a Republican Congress. … If the next presidency is going to be a disaster, why should the gop want to own it?”

“For conservatives, a Democratic victory in November means the loss of another election, with all the policy reversals that entails,” Stephens explained. “That may be dispiriting, but elections will come again. A Trump presidency means losing the Republican Party. Conservatives need to accept that most conservative of wisdoms—sometimes, losing is winning ….”

So even as he recognizes that there is almost nothing left of “a serious conservative movement in America,” Stephens holds out hope: This election is hopeless—but maybe we can turn things around in the next one. Inspired yet?

Every four years, Americans get swept up in political promises of hope and change, reform, shaking things up, taking the country back, making America great again. Then we are disillusioned for another four years. Now, this time around, many people seem disillusioned even before the general election campaign has begun. The slogans are ringing hollow, even for many partisan voters.

Is hope for America just one—or two—elections away?

Look at the even broader picture. Every political cycle in every democracy and republic, masses of voters get swept up in political promises of change. In fact, this promise has motivated almost every election, putsch, coup and revolution in history, whether it’s the French in 1789, the Bolsheviks in 1917, the Iranian hardliners in 1979, the Nazis in 1933 or the Islamic State in 2016. No leader ever sets out to create a legacy of same-old, status-quo failure. Yet that is exactly what they achieve. Or worse. None of our forms of government—monarchies, despotisms, tyrannies, oligarchies, democracies or republics—have worked. None of the political economies—feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism—have worked. None has brought about or sustained peace or prosperity, let alone happiness. Not one has made good on its promise.

Among these innumerable experiments in governance, the republic of the United States stands as the greatest. Yet after less than two and a half centuries, we are staring collapse in the face. We have presidential candidates who surge in the polls by addressing broad discontent and anxiety among the electorate and, like generations of politicians before them, promise change.

With thousands of years of failure to look on, why then do we cling to our conviction that a solution is almost in sight?

Whoever is elected, what do you really think the next four years will really bring? Perhaps you regard yourself as a cynic or a realist—yet you think that even with another bad presidency, America can turn it all around two elections from now, or maybe three or four ….

By now, the political slogans should be ringing more hollow than ever. But here is a statement that rings true: “Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusts in man.” We have placed our trust in man, and as the Prophet Jeremiah wrote, we are suffering for it.

It’s not delusional to think that this nation is cursed. In fact, it’s delusional not to. Can you recognize it? The Bible prophesies that America is facing a cursed future, politically, economically, morally and militarily. This is how it describes America’s coming days: curses befalling a nation that has turned itself completely away from the God who gave it its abundant blessings in the first place. For a thorough scriptural study of these prophecies—and to see the ultimately inspiring reason for which God is bringing them to pass—request a free copy of Herbert W. Armstrong’s book The United States and Britain in Prophecy.

This sequence of curses is already beginning to ravage the U.S. at an accelerating tempo. It is not difficult to imagine that, despite Mr. Stephens’s hope, there won’t be a “next election.”

But thankfully, that is not the end of the story. Change is coming. Hope is coming. Yes, even greatness is coming. But not from politicians.

“The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord, and of his Christ; and he shall reign for ever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). That truly is change you can believe in.

After saying you’re cursed if you trust a man, Jeremiah then said, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is.”

In whom are you placing your trust?