America’s Stunning Economic Recovery and the Spirit of Complacency
This year, the American economy faced a historic crisis, yet—even with the threats of covid-19, rioting and political civil war still ongoing—it has mounted a recovery that is equally historic. How big has the recovery been? The Department of Commerce reported on Thursday that gross domestic product grew 7.4 percent in the third quarter, the equivalent of 33.1 percent on an annualized basis. Even the New York Times admitted that this “was by far the biggest since reliable statistics began after World War ii.”
President Donald Trump tweeted:
“GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close. Next year will be FANTASTIC!!! However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all. So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.”
On Fox News, Charles Payne said on Thursday, “I’m sitting here going through the data because the headline doesn’t do it any justice. Durable goods up 45 percent … nondurable goods up 82 percent … investing, homes, 59 percent … these numbers are absolutely remarkable …. [I]f you look at the details, it’s even better than the headline.” Larry Kudlow said, “[W]e’ve never had anything remotely close to this” and called it a “V-shaped concept” that was not a temporary surge but a “strong, strong recovery” with “momentum going into the fourth quarter.”
Even liberal host Joe Scarborough of msnbc admitted, “Yes, the economy is growing … it’s a historic number …. Donald Trump is going to be able to run around and say the economy grew at a record rate, the highest rate ever. Period. End of sentence.”
What a stunning turnaround! American politicians—some of whom have a radical, revolutionary agenda—used an epidemic as a pretext to shut down entire sectors of the United States economy and literally prohibit people from going to work or doing much of anything else. And you have to admit that President Trump was basically the only one pushing to get the nation working again.
So you can see why he’s drawing attention to these huge numbers. Comparing the U.S. to other nations like Germany, he said at a rally in Tampa, Florida: “[L]ook at our numbers, look at our recovery—fastest recovery—we went down the least economically, went down by far …. As much as it’s painful and terrible, we went down the least. … Thanks to our policies, America is experiencing the fastest and biggest recovery …. [W]e’re having the best recovery anywhere in the world. No other country small or large is recovering like us.”
This is a real economic resurgence. And we at the Trumpet have been forecasting a major American resurgence, led by President Trump specifically, for years. My father wrote that he was being used to literally save America from the radical left. Now we have seen and are seeing that! But my father also wrote this will be temporary. So what are we about to see?
In “Saving America From the Radical Left—Temporarily” (Trumpet, May-June 2018), my father wrote that 2 Kings 14 is not only the history of God using an ancient king (Jeroboam ii) to save the ancient nation of Israel, but also a prophecy of God using a modern leader to save the modern descendants of Israel. (To learn which nations, including the United States, descended from ancient Israel, request your free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy, by Herbert W. Armstrong.)
A lot of Americans and others who reject radicalism and socialism have rallied to President Trump, but they should not get complacent! “The resurgence in America today is causing some people to grow complacent,” my father wrote this year. “That is a grave mistake. This temporary revival is just God giving people one last chance to repent! And that includes religious people. … Because of the progress he is making, many people believe that the danger is past and the nation is heading in a new direction. But sadly, this will not change the country’s direction. The only thing that would do that is repentance before God—and that is not happening” (“America Has Been ‘Fundamentally Transformed,’” Trumpet, March 2020).
“This modern-day Jeroboam fights for many good causes,” my father wrote in Great Again in 2016. “But in the process he gets people to look to him as the solution—not the omnipotent, all-powerful God!”
The Trumpet has forecast for decades that the sin of the people as a whole is our fatal flaw, not just the radical socialism God has used President Trump to restrain. Here too, Americans—even religious ones—are like their ancestors in ancient Israel: complacent, sinning and far from God! And just as with ancient Israel, we are heading for internal strife and external attack! In fact, the Bible prophesies that the nation that descended from ancient Israel’s conqueror, Assyria, will be the nation that conquers us!
Interestingly, President Trump mentioned that nation at his Tampa rally: “Germany said the other day, they like Barack Hussein Obama—and they should, because Germany is delinquent in their nato payments—very delinquent. They’re at a half a level, and they’re very rich—they can do whatever they want. It’s not like they don’t have the money. And I call them out—I say, ‘If you don’t pay, we’re going to start taking our troops out,’ and these people go crazy.”
Behind all the headlines about American politics, this is another major prophetic event happening right now: the trans-Atlantic split. Germany is becoming more and more openly opposed to America and especially President Trump.
Most people, whose thinking has been shaped by a socialistic educational system, write prophecy and the Bible and God Himself right out of history. But the only way to understand what’s going on is to write God back in! Isaiah 10:5-6 state: “O Assyrian, the rod of mine anger, and the staff in their hand is mine indignation. I will send him against an hypocritical nation, and against the people of my wrath will I give him a charge, to take the spoil, and to take the prey, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.”
If you are the descendants of Israel, you must pay attention to this! This is not just the history of what happened to the kingdom of Israel—it is also prophecy for what will happen to the nations that descended from it! Other prophecies (e.g. Daniel 2 and Revelation 13 and 17) forecast the resurrection of a 10-nation European empire led by Germany. It is God who gave us our nation, our history, and this current resurgence, and it is God who will take it away because we have rejected Him. And He will do it using the modern Assyrians!
If Americans, including churchgoers, do not repent of rejecting God and His laws, He will reject us and send the rod of His anger against this hypocritical nation and against His rebellious Church. People might assume that God is for us no matter what, but Ezekiel 5:8 says that God is against us! He does love us, but He will do whatever it takes to cause us to finally repent of our complacent, self-destructive sins.
If you believe the Bible, you know God is love. You know He sent His own Son to die for all mankind. But you also know that God hates sin—because it destroys us! You also know that God will afflict us, punish us, correct us for our sins. The Bible shows that God will specifically use Germany and a 10-king European power as a punishing club. This is what it takes for modern-day Israelites—Americans, British, Jews and others—to finally turn! It won’t happen until we realize that God is doing the afflicting.
This is the sure word of Bible prophecy! This is why the Trumpet has known from the beginning that Britain was on a collision course with German-led Europe. (Brexit is another major trend unfolding right now, an outcome that my father and Herbert W. Armstrong before him have prophesied for 47 years—literally since before Britain entered the European bloc.)
Isaiah 10:7 continues: “Howbeit he meaneth not so, neither doth his heart think so; but it is in his heart to destroy and cut off nations not a few.” The European power rising up right now will sincerely believe that what it is accomplishing in destroying America will be for the good of many people. The Europeans talk peace, especially right now, but they will cut off nations—plural!
The world is in turmoil right now, but it’s about to see a lot of destruction. Men who are inspired to destroy are already in power. My father wrote in “America Has Been ‘Fundamentally Transformed,’” “[T]here are three end-time leaders prophesied to come in the deceptive, destructive spirit of Antiochus. All three Antiochuses … seek to blot out the name of Israel, physically and spiritually!”
What is it that leftists have attacked and largely transformed? It’s what little remains of America’s biblical heritage! They are attacking the existence of God, His role in history, His definition of human beings and human nature, His standards and laws, the Constitution (for being largely founded on biblical principles), the rule of law, law enforcement, and the very existence of the descendants of ancient Israel. They are attacking God’s creation of marriage, family and even biological fact.
But this anti-God ideology is not new. It began affecting even those who consider themselves “conservative” generations ago! Even conservatives and religious people have allowed their minds to become “fundamentally transformed”—though not to the same degree as the radicals.
Our problem is much deeper than what one election can fix!
Radical leftists are launching a political war—and worse—over the confirmation of Amy Coney Barret to the Supreme Court. This is the second such attack in as many years. In 2018, they tried to prevent Brett Kavanaugh from being appointed using completely non-credible, outrageous slander. In “The Kavanaugh Hearings Reveal America’s Lawless Spirit” from the November-December issue of the Trumpet that year, my father wrote, “When you see the way that Satan’s influence is growing right now, and how the devil is getting Americans to attack the foundations of this nation and tear society apart, it becomes far easier to see how vulnerable we are, and how close we are to seeing those prophecies fulfilled.”
Do you notice a spirit, an attitude, a hatred in America right now? It’s not a military or economic weakness that makes us the most vulnerable; it’s a spirit!
My father wrote, “God is watching over and guiding events in America. If He were not, this nation would already be destroyed!” (ibid).
Many Americans have a spirit of hatred, and many others have an attitude of complacency.
George Friedman has noticed a spirit rising in America. And that stands out to me, because he is a news forecaster, and he doesn’t generally get worked up about the more sensational headlines, the culture and the division in America. He typically would say that America has always had divisions, that we always think it’s the worst ever, but we’ve been here before: Alexander Hamilton died in a duel, after all. But now he’s writing that he is worried about America’s level of hate. He wrote on October 29:
But there is something different here, something that alarms me without causing me to be frightened, at least not yet: a hatred of supporters.
In every election there are candidates, and each is generally loathed by their opponent’s constituents. That’s not new. … But beginning in 2020, supporters of one candidate began to despise the supporters of the other candidate with visceral rage. A marker for this was Hillary Clinton’s condemnation of Trump supporters as “deplorable.” It is no longer that the candidates might deplore opposition supporters (not a great strategy) but that their supporters hate each other. In a poll a while ago, about 75 percent of New York liberals said they would refuse to date someone who supported Donald Trump. …
Each camp has come to see the other as contemptible. The contempt is expressed as Trump voters being racists or the like, and Biden supporters wanting a powerful government to strip people of their rights. Each is seen as morally depraved, and each is shunned by the other. …
[After the election a] vast part of America will continue to loathe another vast part of America. To me, what is frightening is that this time it won’t go away. It has in the past, but I don’t think it was like this in the past. …
What troubles me is the hatred and contempt we show our fellow citizens who might once have been friends. I voted for Ronald Reagan, and I had friends who voted for Jimmy Carter. We disliked the candidate but not each other. The same could be said of the election between Barack Obama and John McCain. I am sanguine about the future of the republic, but our inability to remain friends with those who vote differently is growing and alarming.
Even George Friedman is worried about what our attitudes are doing to our society. And truthfully, he should not be sanguine about the future of the republic!
Vice is not a great news source, but it had an interesting headline last week: “Is the U.S. Already in a New Civil War?” The Trumpet forecast a new civil war in America decades ago. It may have sounded outlandish back then, yet now people consider it a realistic possibility! The Vice story states:
The signs of a coming conflict are everywhere. Political polarization is up, gun and ammunition sales have spiked, killers such as Kyle Rittenhouse are being lauded by their political allies, and protests are widespread in American cities. Police kill unarmed people in the street, the government is polarized and corrupt, and our institutions are failing. …
Some on the far right are talking about another civil war. Some experts who have studied sectarian violence in the United States and other countries think we’re already in one.
According to several experts I spoke with, a new civil conflict will look nothing like the first American Civil War. It’s not likely that clear sides will be drawn up with massive armies of Americans marching towards each other as drones strike from above. An insurgency is more likely—a period of sustained and distributed conflict where non-state actors carry out violence to achieve a political goal. Several said they believe we’re already in the early stages of one, a period before large-scale political violence the cia defines as an “incipient insurgency.” …
“We are in a state of civil war, whenever, in more than one geographical location in the United States, it becomes commonplace for multiple non-state armed groups to fight each other with deadly force. When that is an occurrence that is common in more than one location in the country, that’s a civil war,” Robert Evans told me over the phone. Evans is a conflict journalist who’s reported from Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq. His work has appeared in Bellingcat where he reports on modern American extremist movements. He’s also a podcaster and his 2019 podcast “It Could Happen Here” described the possibility of a new American Civil War.
“To most people, the idea of a second American Civil War feels more like science fiction than a possible future,” Evans said on “It Could Happen Here.” “It feels silly when I stand in line at the dmv or hop onto a public bus or train. The systems that govern our lives here are so seemingly intricate, so stable, and so settled that any kind of mass upset feels impossible. Fantastic even. But I have walked through the cities where the busses still run, just without windows because the blast from mortars have blown them all out. I’ve watched people stand in line and fill out forms in government buildings while howitzers shake the foundations and machine guns chatter half a mile away. I have seen systems collapse. Everything I’ve seen and everything I’ve read over the past two years has convinced me that the United States is closer to that kind of terror than anyone is willing to admit.” …
“Collapse,” [Adam Isaacson, director of the Defense Oversight Program at wola,] said, “is not evenly distributed. … I’d say there’s a real danger that [America] is going to see sustained political violence.”
But Isaacson noted there are important differences between Colombia and the United States. In Colombia, the conflict happened mostly in the country and the different sides took and held territory. “In America, it will be more urban. It’s not going to be about controlling territory,” he said. “A lot of it will be, like terrorism, an effort to display a show of force and make a statement. It’ll be more performative than what you’d see in Colombia where the guerillas really did intend to take over the country.”
Of course, being Vice, there’s a fair bit it gets wrong. It’s a liberal outlet, so it attributes a lot of the problem to “right-wing” people and ignores Antifa and the other leftist revolutionaries who have already been committing sustained destruction and violence in major U.S. cities for months. But taken as a whole, it shows that an American civil war is not a fiction but a clear and present danger.
Americans are complacent. They feel comfortable sitting at home in lockdown watching movies. They see a man holding back a radical revolution, they see an incredible resurgence in the economy, and they are complacent. Even conservative Americans are complacent. Even religious Americans are complacent. Even those who have been in God’s true Church are complacent! All of us have to fight complacency—or it will overtake us!
Is it possible that even you are complacent? Is it possible that you keep up with the news, read theTrumpet.com, and react (or fail to react) with complacency? Yes, God is love, and He is fighting to help us repent from the sin in our lives. For most of us, complacency and other sins are so ingrained that nothing less than the rod of His indignation will snap us out of it—if we ever do. What about you?
Listen to Stephen Flurry’s October 30 Trumpet Daily Radio Show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6nIOFSmmA0&feature=emb_logo