Anywhere you look in America right now something is going wrong. A few weeks ago there was the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 kids and two teachers were murdered. The shooter was a disturbed, violent, fatherless teenager. To make matters worse, police stood down for 58 minutes instead of storming the classroom. This was the second case of an 18-year-old inflicting mass casualties within two weeks.

Inflation is rampant, teachers are working to indoctrinate kids with radical gender propaganda, and leaders are actively trying to undermine the Constitution of the United States. Everywhere you look there is bitter affliction.

Why is this happening? Is there one cause or multiple causes converging at once? The Bible is the only place that explains why all of these terrible events are happening today.

From the 1930s until his death in 1986, the late Herbert W. Armstrong warned of all these disasters striking America at once. In the 1980s, Mr. Armstrong was the most prolific and popular televangelist in the United States. For over 70 years America has had access to his warnings, but most people have not heeded that message. Using Bible prophecy, Mr. Armstrong identified several problems that would eventually be the undoing of America, and one overall cause for everything. All of these warnings have now come to pass.

Will you start listening?

Breakdown of the Traditional Family

In 1964, Mr. Armstrong published God Speaks Out on ‘the New Morality.’ The Western world was being swept up by loosening attitudes and morals toward sex and family. Families were being fundamentally altered in the two generations after World War ii, and parents seemed defenseless to protect their children in the wake of the new morality. In 1971, Mr. Armstrong changed the name of the book to The Missing Dimension in Sex, in which he wrote:

The so-called “New Morality,” first unleashed by World War i, intensified by World War ii, completely KO’d Western civilization during the decades of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. …

Everywhere sex came to be freely talked about. Morals relaxed. The “New Morality” became accepted by society. Divorces escalated. Family and home life became almost nonexistent—yet a solid family structure is the very foundation of a stable and enduring society.

After World War ii, families were decimated. And the baby boom generation embraced the new morality. An anti-family lifestyle started to become mainstream, and the bulwark of civilization, the traditional family, was cast aside. That generation passed on the new morality to their children, and so on, until we come to America today. We are living through the deadly effect of embracing the new morality.

From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate doubled from 9.2 divorces per 1,000 married women to 22.6 per 1,000. This brought on a generation that has been less and less interested in marriage. Family life transformed and never recovered. Mr. Armstrong wrote: “Family life has undergone a radical revolution! … Parental responsibility is totally neglected. In due time parents are going to be brought to account for this neglect of basic responsibility.” The Uvalde school shooter is a perfect example of this. Yet there are many other tragic examples of how generations of broken families have created generations of disillusioned, characterless young people who have been taken advantage of by another force working inside America.

The Communist Infiltration

One of the deadliest forces at work in America today was identified by Mr. Armstrong in the 1950s.

“During and after the Second World War, Mr. Armstrong dogmatically proclaimed the biblical truth that Russia would not attack America militarily before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ,” we write in He Was Right. “Instead, he revealed that Russia would wage a psychological warfare of propaganda, infiltration, subversion and demoralization.”

Communism hates the Bible-based Constitution of the United States and seeks to destroy the birthright blessings given to America (please read The United States and Britain in Prophecy to learn more). Mr. Armstrong wrote in 1956:

It’s a kind of warfare we don’t understand, or know how to cope with. It uses every diabolical means to weaken us from within, sapping our strength, perverting our morals, sabotaging our educational system, wrecking our social structure, destroying our spiritual and religious life, weakening our industrial and economic power, demoralizing our armed forces, and finally, after such infiltration, overthrowing our government by force and violence! All this, cleverly disguised as a harmless political party! Communism is worldwide psychological warfare!

The Communist infiltrators first gained control over the educational institutions and injected their anti-America, Marxist education into the minds of the generation that embraced the new morality in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. The generation that embraced the hippie movement, political activism and Marxist universities are now the leaders of the United States.

This Communist attack on America has culminated under the leadership of Barack Obama, who is fundamentally changing the country. The rampant inflation, weak military, stolen election, radicalized Federal Bureau of Investigation, and oppressive policies are all an effect of this infiltration. America was warned for over 70 years that this attack was underway, and now the nation is teetering on the brink of oblivion.

Perverse Media

The invention of television coincided with a revolution in American pop culture. The new morality transformed movies and music. Sex and violence became the centerpieces of American entertainment. Mr. Armstrong wrote in a May 1981 Plain Truth: “The concern is not for what viewers ought to see, but for what the largest number will prefer to see. And television experience shows that the public wants, not what is good for it, but what will entertain. The American tv diet would not be filled with violence, murder, crime, illicit sex, if the viewing public did not prefer that to a diet of education, instruction, useful information. The profit motive rules.”

He wrote in The Missing Dimension in Sex: “The movies bring ‘pleasures’ through the sense of sight and of sound. Kids spend hours a day before the ‘one-eyed monster.’ It provides a ready-made daydream. And misuse not only dulls the mind, television has been a prime medium by which the anti-family conspiracy has injected its deadly poison into juvenile and adult minds.” With modern technology, it is even easier to become addicted to screens and have unfettered access to perverse media. The content has also become more extreme.

The National Institute of Mental Health wrote a report in 1982 that examined decades of research on how violent media affect children. The report concluded that children become less sensitive to the pain and suffering of others, they become more fearful, and are more likely to behave in aggressive or harmful ways toward others. The younger they start and more violent media they consume, the more likely they would be violent as a teenager or adult. And it’s not just violence: Any number of bad behaviors are reinforced through consuming perverse media. Yet very few parents have taken action to protect their families from these evils.

Another area identified by Mr. Armstrong was pop music. He wrote in 1980: “In a way the Beatles started this modern trend in a new Satan-influenced lifestyle of a degenerating culture and sense of social values. But John Lennon was the mind-leader in this. It picked up what had been started by Frank Sinatra, when teenage girls ran screaming half out of their minds for his autograph. It was revived and intensified by Elvis Presley. Then the Beatles delivered Satan’s knockout blow to any public sense of social values in the world.” The Beatles started with that same generation that also encountered the new morality. Most grandparents today in America were young people when the Beatles first came on the scene.

Music was a major vehicle to destroy the virtues of Americans. Today modern pop music has become so violent and sexualized that the Beatles seem conservative in comparison. Mr. Armstrong concluded: “The hippie fad followed. Down went morality, rising triumphantly was promiscuous sex, ‘pot,’ drugs, divorce, broken homes.” That is the fruit of American pop culture; that is what is glamorized in front of the whole world.

Some of the modern versions of media and entertainment were not around during Mr. Armstrong’s lifetime, but the principles still apply. Social media, video games, television, music, streaming—all dominate the lives of people today, and for the most part, it is a constant stream of anti-God, anti-family, anti-character messaging. Now America’s most popular creator of children’s media, Disney, is committed to indoctrinating children in radical gender ideology.

The Drug Epidemic

One crushing crisis that the radical left and media turn a blind eye to is the rampant use of drugs. Thousands of Americans overdose each year on fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, methamphetamine and cocaine. In 2021, more than 107,000 overdose deaths were reported. Among the worst are those who abuse opioids. In 2019, 1.6 million Americans had an opioid disorder, and 70,630 died; 10.1 million people misuse opioid prescriptions every year. This is destroying families and impoverishing generations of Americans.

Mr. Armstrong identified how the new morality lifestyle brought in drugs and curses: “Accompanying sexual indulgence has come, in teen life, alcohol, drugs, tobacco, modern X-rated movies, gangsterism, violence. They look for every pleasing, stimulating sensation. … But as the smell of tobacco smoke becomes addictive in the nostril, and affects body and mind in the lungs, so ‘pot’ (marijuana), opium and other smoke affects the mind, and stimulates. One gets ‘high’—experiences new sensations. Heroin and other hard drugs even more so. Nearly all who become hooked on the hard drugs started on marijuana.”

For many people, marijuana is the gateway to these hard drugs. The legalization of marijuana has started millions of people down that path. Around 12 percent of Americans say they use marijuana regularly, and 49 percent admitted to trying it in 2020. But that is only the beginning, as many governments are decriminalizing hard drugs.

When Americans loosened their morality on sex and family, it opened the door for other curses, such as drug addiction, to became mainstream.

Seven Times More

Not only did Mr. Armstrong identify all of these important prophetic trends—family breakdown, the Communist infiltration, perverse media and drugs—he also identified why all these curses were going to plague America. In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, he explained that America is descended from one of the biblical tribes of Israel and that God would make America a superpower in order to fulfill the birthright promises to the patriarch Abraham. Mr. Armstrong wrote:

After the national birthright had been withheld 2,520 years and then bestowed; after God gave our peoples that national power, and has now, because of our national rebellion against His laws, broken the pride of our power; after He shall have punished us with unprecedented drought and epidemics of disease in its wake, then if the British and Americans still continue in their evil ways—still refuse to repent and turn to their God—He warns: “… I will bring seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.” Read that in the Revised Standard Version: “… I will bring more plagues upon you, sevenfold as many as your sins” (verse 21). … Or, as the Authorized Version says, “seven times more plagues upon you according to your sins.” Sevenfold intensity of punishment—of correction!

All of these terrible curses coming on America have one origin: rebellion against God’s law. The Bible teaches that sin causes negative effects. Mr. Armstrong continued: “What people do not seem to realize is that sin does bring upon the sinner the consequences of sin—the plagues of suffering. The Bible defines sin as the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4), and the law of God is a spiritual law (Romans 7:14).” He warned that all these plagues of suffering would keep intensifying if Americans did not repent of their rebellion. Several generations later, we can observe that as the sins increased, so have the curses.

One of the most dramatic ways these curses intensified was on the very day Mr. Armstrong died. Bible prophecy indicates there was a seismic spiritual event on Jan. 16, 1986, that changed America and the world. To learn more about this all-important event, please read our new, expanded book by Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry, America Under Attack.

America is a cursed nation because it is a nation in rebellion. Yet you can be protected from the terrible punishment that will continue to come on the nation. Mr. Armstrong continued in The United States and Britain in Prophecy: “But you need not have to suffer this intensified correction, greater than any trouble ever suffered by humans. By God’s direction and authority, I have laid the truth before you! To neglect it will be tragic beyond imagination! To heed it will bring blessings, happiness and glory beyond description! The decision is now yours!”

To learn more about the legacy and work of Mr. Armstrong, please read our booklet He Was Right and order a free copy of America Under Attack.