Race Riots Were Prophesied!
Where are the riots in America leading us? If you look at Bible prophecy, God makes the answer clear. He also makes clear that there is a solution and what that solution is!
People are rioting to protest the death of George Floyd. The officer whose knee was on Floyd’s neck was charged with murder, and if everything is as it appears, he should be convicted. What he did was a terrible sin. If God were ruling the Earth, I’m sure he would be put to death.
But many people do not trust our justice system to handle such matters, and they are resorting to violence. A lot of anger is being directed against the police, and some people are attacking them. Four policemen were shot in St. Louis. A policeman in Las Vegas was shot in the head and was fighting for his life. A retired police chief working as a security guard was killed. Other policemen have died as well. Across the nation this year, more than 100 policemen have been killed in the line of duty. So are the police—white or black—being treated fairly? They are doing terribly difficult jobs, and they are protecting us from chaos and anarchy.
Some have compared our situation to civil war. It certainly seems we are heading in that direction.
Abraham Lincoln led the nation during the bloody, bloody Civil War. He understood from painful experience the biblical principle that “a nation divided against itself cannot stand.”
Lincoln told Americans very directly the reason for that tragedy: “We have forgotten God”!
During that terrible time, Americans had a certain measure of repentance. As we have said for many years, slavery was one of the greatest sins ever committed by a nation. Many knew that. Lincoln knew that. He freed the slaves. But the racial problems persist.
President Lincoln pointed to the nation’s real sin. The problem was spiritual: We have forgotten God! If he was right about Americans then, how much worse is it now?
Bringing God in gives you clarity! Studying into His Word gives you the solution! I have done that for many years, over and over, and I know it is true!
Many Americans consider themselves religious, but they don’t know their Bibles and they don’t actually know God! Some people are praying, but if our prayers are not being answered, that is an important indicator that we need to get to know the true God much better!
‘A Burning City on a Hill’
The book of Isaiah is prophecy for the end time (Isaiah 30:8). It is for the descendants of ancient Israel, which today include the United States, Britain and several other modern nations.
Here is one of those specific prophecies: “Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers” (Isaiah 1:7). God says that if we do not bring Him into the picture, our problems will grow worse and worse!
Neither side is going to win the coming civil war. People on both sides may think they will win, but none will!
God will use this terrible destruction to punish us for forsaking Him and for our sins. Over 100 Bible prophecies say that, and we have been proclaiming them for more than 74 years.
Look what has become of America today! One British journalist brutally said that recent events have “exposed America as a failed state. … The idea it can be considered a viable model of governance to follow is now patently absurd! As I sit typing this, troops are deployed on the streets of cities across the country, their Humvees still painted desert tan, as looters smash and burn and ransack shops …. It is surely impossible to view the U.S. at this point as anything other than a burning city on a hill, which evokes only desire for our own society to avoid its fate” (Aris Roussinos, UnHerd, June 1; emphasis mine).
That is sad but true! Our founders wanted to make America a shining city on a hill—but we have become a burning city on a hill before the world!
In 1992, Los Angeles police officers beat a black man, Rodney King, during an arrest but were then acquitted. Major riots erupted, and more than 2,300 people were injured and 63 people were killed. At the time, I wrote: “As the economy grows worse, the rioters are going to burn more and more because God’s wrath is upon us! And God is far more wrathful toward the white people in Israel than He is with the black people” (Philadelphia Trumpet, June 1992). Because this nation and the British people have a history with God!
The white people in America actually descended from Israel, which had a personal history with God Himself! God chose them not because they were better or because He wanted to give them special favor, but to use them as an example to other nations. Their failure and our failure to be a shining city on a hill to lead people to God and to happiness hurt not just ourselves but all other nations!
In that article from nearly 30 years ago, I wrote: “The problems are going to intensify until our people repent [of their many sins]. … The Los Angeles rioting is just a type of what is going to happen to the whole nation!”
How could I know this problem would get so much worse? Bible prophecy tells. We were forsaking God! This is not just a racial or political problem, where one side is right and the other wrong. This problem is spiritual! We will never solve this until we realize that.
America doesn’t just have divisions within, it also has powerful enemies without! Vicious nations have been waiting for decades and decades for something like this to happen to America! They want to destroy—not just windows and monuments, but this entire nation!
We have forsaken God. When the ancient Israelites did that, He punished them with invasions by foreign nations. God doesn’t want this to happen to us. He wants us to listen to Him! But President Lincoln told us, God does punish for forsaking Him.
Speaking Like a Dragon
Al Sharpton is treated like an expert on race relations in America. At a memorial service, he said, “George Floyd’s story is the story of black folks.” He likened the policeman’s knee on Floyd’s neck to the way whites have treated black people in America for 400 years. Is that true?
Ben Crump, who became the Floyd family’s lawyer, wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post about Floyd’s death saying that all these incidents are starting to feel like “genocide.” He wrote a book last year called Open Season: The Legalized Genocide of Colored People. Genocide is the deliberate extermination of a people! Is that happening in America? Do you see white people trying to put black people to death?
In all of last year, police killed 28 unarmed black people, according to mappingpoliceviolence.org. (Some news agencies have reported that number as being only nine, but that only counts unarmed blacks shot by on-duty officers.) In nearly all of these cases, the people were fighting against the police in ways that got them killed. That is unfortunate, and policemen do make mistakes, but it is hardly deliberate extermination! How can a lawyer call that genocide? He knows that is a lie. If that isn’t satanic and racist, I don’t know what racism is!
Former President Barack Obama praised the protesters and blamed the eruption of lawlessness on the nation’s history of slavery and institutionalized racism, which he called the “original sin of our society.” The idea of original sin is sin that is inborn within us because of our ancestors. Mr. Obama has previously said that racism is in America’s dna. How do you solve that? Did Abraham Lincoln, who at great cost passed a constitutional amendment to end slavery, have racism in his dna? What about the millions of men who fought in the Civil War, and the more than 100,000 who sacrificed their lives, in part to end slavery? Does Mr. Obama have any gratitude for what it has taken to achieve the equality in America today?
Throughout America’s history, race relations have seen dramatic improvements in people blending together and getting along. You never hear about that from these men.
Al Sharpton ridiculed President Trump for holding up a Bible, and said he needed to get into the Bible. Then he started advocating rebellion against the government. Well, in that Bible Sharpton says we should get into is Romans chapter 13, which says you are to be subject to the government of the land! Mr. Sharpton is not about to be subject to the government—he wants to overthrow it!
Mr. Sharpton did say that he was against looting and burning. But just days earlier, he said he wished the rioters would not burn the black people’s businesses. Doesn’t that imply that he was fine with their burning buildings owned by whites?
Jesus Christ said we should be peacemakers and make peace (Matthew 5:9). Mr. Sharpton says he wants peace, but at every opportunity, he tries to draw attention to evil deeds by the police, but in most of those cases the police were exonerated, and I think rightfully so. Will those kinds of statements bring peace? He is always trying to divide the races and make war!
Al Sharpton tries to look like a lamb, but he speaks like a dragon! His words are right out of the mind of the devil!
God Bless America
From the beginning of human history at the Garden of Eden, human beings never had the ability to rule rightly over other human beings. Human beings do not have the answers. Still, we rejected God and built our own governments, our own educational systems, our own religions—and look at what our societies have become.
Where is the hope for solving the injustices and divisions? Where is the hope for saving our country from destruction? Only in God! If we brought God into the picture, if we repented and obeyed Him, God could solve all these problems instantly! The Bible is full of the history of Him doing exactly that! God blessed America in the past, and Britain before that. He miraculously solved huge problems our forefathers faced.
We again face terrible problems. People are praying. People sometimes sing, “God Bless America.” And God does want to bless us. But if we are not receiving those blessings, we have to ask ourselves honestly, why? It’s because we will not acknowledge that those blessings were from God. We don’t believe God, and we don’t obey God. We have forsaken God!
Abraham Lincoln acknowledged that. He often quoted the Bible. He read it and knew it well, and he could see that God does love us—but because of our sins He must punish us.
Amos 7:8 describes God actually measuring out the nation’s destruction, and saying “I will not again pass by them any more.” Through His Church, God has “passed by” with His message of warning (and hope) for many years. He says we are all guilty of sinning against Him, and He will give us one more time to repent, to change our attitude toward Him. But after this, He “will not again pass by.” So if we don’t repent now, we are going to plunge into the worst suffering ever!
“And the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword”—an attack from another nation (verse 9). Look at the destruction that will result if we don’t hear this last warning!
Jesus Christ called this coming time of suffering the “great tribulation” (Matthew 24:21). That time is now at the door!
Notice what is said about God’s prophet in Amos 7:10: “[T]he land is not able to bear all his words.” Are you able to bear God’s words? If you believe in God and pray to God, but He is not blessing you, are you willing to listen to what He is telling you?
A minister who is serving God has the duty to speak God’s words, not just words people like to hear. It is up to you whether you will find them unbearable, or accept God’s correction before the disaster comes. Beyond the 3½-year Great Tribulation, there is still tremendous hope. Even for those who have died and will die, there is hope! But God wants you to turn from forsaking Him without having to face suffering and death.
Measured Destruction
The terrible problems in America are ultimately spiritual. And they are being fueled by evil from the spirit realm. The Bible makes clear that Satan and his demons are active in the world today—“the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2). These evil spirits are stirring up destructive attitudes and violent actions.
They are behind the murders committed by policemen—and behind the murders of policemen! We must be aware of these malevolent forces, or we are terribly vulnerable to them (2 Corinthians 2:11).
Only God can protect us, and He will not do that when we are living in rebellion. The answer is not to attack the other ideology or political party or race. The answer is to admit your sins! As a nation, we all have sins. We have all forsaken God. Only those who wake up and hear and can bear how God is correcting us can be saved from the unprecedented suffering to come.
Do you really know God? Hebrews 10:31 says, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”
Isaiah’s prophecy begins: “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children [or sons], and they have rebelled against me” (Isaiah 1:2). God wants everyone in the universe to hear this!
The “children” God has “nourished and brought up” are the modern-day nations of Israel. He is talking about America and Britain—the nations descended from the 12 tribes of ancient Israel. He is also talking about spiritual Israel: God’s true Church. Even the vast majority of God’s people have forsaken Him! And for them, their eternal lives are under threat!
“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity [lawlessness], a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger …” (verse 4). Do you believe God could be provoked to anger and wrath? Many scriptures give us a resounding yes.
“[T]hey are gone away backward. Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint” (verses 4-5). Physical and spiritual Israel today is sick, faint of heart, lacking real courage. Why? Because they do not know the true God!
Verse 7 describes our cities being burned and devoured by strangers—non-Israelites. You cannot know who they are unless you know who Israel is. And it is really talking about those who will not keep the law of Israel. In the ancient nation of Israel, God did not forbid immigration, as long as people kept the law and religion of Israel.
When Lincoln spoke of the dangers of “a house divided against itself,” he was quoting Jesus Christ. The Bible records three times when Christ said that a kingdom divided against itself ends in desolation! (Matthew 12:25; Mark 3:25; Luke 11:17). Do you believe Jesus Christ?
Do you really believe God would allow us to keep forsaking Him until we lose our eternal lives, without shaking us, getting our attention, and imploring us to repent? God pleads with us in Ezekiel 33:11: “[T]urn ye, turn ye from your evil [wicked] ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” That message was not for the people around Ezekiel. He recorded it in a book for our day! It applies to you now and is being delivered to you now. “And when this cometh to pass, (lo, it will come,) then shall they know that a prophet hath been among them” (verse 33).
Listen Now
Who is going to win the civil war? Only God! This is a spiritual struggle, and God will win! He is using this to punish us, but He is punishing us to turn us to Him!
In fact, the same prophecies that reveal how bad our national sickness will get, killing millions of people, also reveal that this terrible time leads directly into the Second Coming of Jesus Christ! All these terrible events are tied to that incredibly great news! There is no hope in man. There is hope—in spite of man!
Some few will learn this lesson now. Others will not learn it until the Great Tribulation. And many, many others will not learn it until they are resurrected far in the future.
Learn the lesson now: We have forsaken God. Repent and turn to Him!
It is terrible that we so stubbornly choose to turn to Satan and allow him to spiritually influence us to be so selfish, ungrateful, unbelieving, disobedient, hateful and violent. Satan would turn us completely away from God forever if he could. But God is going to allow us to be punished powerfully by Satan’s wrath and then His own wrath! And there is great hope in that—because it will lead to people’s repentance.
In the end, Jesus Christ is going to win! Christ will return and establish His absolute authority over all the Earth. He will end the destruction, the riots, the murders. That will be the reality of the wonderful World Tomorrow.
The question is, do you believe God?