“Second American civil war.” A generation ago, that concept was so improbable that it wasn’t even startling. One of the few places you could find it, if you were for some reason looking, was the Philadelphia Trumpet. Trumpet writers discussed it seriously, knowing few would take it seriously.
Now the serious prospect of a second American civil war is coming from outlets besides the Trumpet: the New York Times, the Economist, the Financial Times, Politico, Time, the New Yorker, Tablet, Salon, Vice, the Telegraph, the Independent, the Guardian, cnn, msnbc, National Public Radio, Brookings and others. On Fox News a few years ago now, a former speaker of the House of Representatives said Americans should “take the threat of civil war seriously” and either unify or “start digging bunkers and graves.”
Eurasia Review named as the “top risk” in the entire world for 2024 “the United States vs. itself.” It documents American confidence in all three branches of government, government-run schools, news organizations and organized religion falling to historic levels over the past generation, and political enmity rising to historic highs. It warned of global destabilizing effects of the loss in America’s credibility.
A Public Religion Research Institute survey of more than 8,000 Americans last year found that more than 10 percent think there will be civil war here “in the next few years,” and 7 percent said political violence will become necessary. More than 30 percent said they think violence is necessary for the sake of important political principles, and 1 percent said it’s likely that they will shoot someone.
Of course, “prominent voices” say a lot of things. Institutes, consultancies, publications and networks have news cycles to fill and payroll to meet. So if Americans are worrying about civil war, they will post something about civil war.
But the purpose of the Trumpet is to provide the right explanation of Bible prophecy to the largest audience possible, whether or not the concept is trending in the news this week or this decade.
And the Trumpet is here, still, to warn you that significant effects are coming from significant causes such as unrestrained materialism, breaking our marriages and families, betraying our friends and rewarding our enemies, allowing perversions among our leaders, pandemic pornography, sacrificing our children to deviancy, accruing debt by the trillions; erasing the border, weakening the military; suppressing rights, breaking the Constitution, and rejecting the Bible. We are breaking the physical, mathematical, physiological, familial, social, civil, mental, emotional and spiritual laws of cause and effect.
As our president justly warned us during our first Civil War, “We have forgotten God.”
That warning came from the Bible. And today, the purpose of the Trumpet is to provide you much the same warning.
But with the hour so late and the nation imploding, how can a man make a stand? Not by acquiring a uniform, drilling with a long gun, and marching to Gettysburg. And, no, not by political activism; nor by hiding in the woods with dwindling quantities of food, water, fuel, gas masks, and medical kits; nor by stockpiling firearms and ammunition.
We cannot vote or wait or shoot our way out of this. We get out only by reversing the way we got in. And we got to the brink of civil war by rejecting the Bible and breaking the laws of cause and effect. We got here by forgetting God.
Even with all the supplies a four-wheel drive can haul, you would still be powerless against the mass-scale riot, race war, factional struggle, failed revolution, foreign intervention, humanitarian disaster, famine and inescapable wasteland that would be a modern First World civil war.
But you actually have the power you need. Because you have power over your own mind, your own devices, your own time, your own home, your own marriage, your own family. This is the war—not across the country but across your own life. You have power to turn to God and seek out the causes of self-destruction, otherwise known as sin. If you do, that same Bible promises protection for your physical life, and, more importantly,
it explains the purpose for having physical life in the first place.
“… Whereas it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon, and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord: And insomuch as we know that by His divine law, nations, like individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world …. It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national [and personal] sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” —Abraham Lincoln.