Some Christians are saying America is stronger, more religious, more Christian and closer to God than ever before. One such moment came at last month’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., when Paula White-Cain, senior adviser to the White House Faith Office, praised President Donald Trump as “the greatest champion of faith that we have ever had in the executive branch.”

After years of relentless liberal attacks on basic beliefs and truths held dear by millions of Americans, public and political promotion of faith in the God of the Bible feels refreshing.

But this so-called religious resurgence is actually a deception unless we Americans bitterly repent of our horrible sins. And sadly, that is not happening.

Jesus asks in Luke 6:46, “And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” In other words, there is a lot of pious-sounding religion that overlooks repentance, that does not aim at obedience—religion that tolerates and even commits horrible sins!

America’s sickness is deeper than President Trump and his spiritual advisers admit. They say, in effect, that God will bless this nation just as it is.

That is not in the Bible!

Consider one egregious example: We are allowing child rape to exist in the United States of America!

The National Prayer Breakfast, where preachers reaffirm that America is “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all,” is just one thing happening in Washington lately. Another is a congressional hearing on child sexual exploitation. What is “child sexual exploitation”? In many cases, it is the manipulation, coercion, confinement, transportation and sale of children for sexual abuse.

This is happening! In America!

This is not something that’s easy to talk about or write about. It is some of the worst evil you can imagine. How is it that the entire nation hasn’t stopped and addressed, attacked and eliminated this evil? How badly has American Christianity failed if our nation is tolerating this evil?

Retired professional football player Tim Tebow visited Washington to urge Congress to pass the Renewed Hope Act of 2026, which is an attempt to address child sexual exploitation. He mainly pointed out the shocking statistics that reveal how many people in America are involved in and tolerating some of the worst perversions imaginable.

It is estimated that 20 percent of pornographic images on the Internet involve depictions of children. Tebow showed a statistics-based map that identifies more than 338,000 unique device addresses in the U.S. as having traded child pornography in the last six months alone. That means child pornography is big business in the United States of America!

How bad does it have to get? How sinful do we have to be, how badly does our “Christianity” have to fail, before we acknowledge our evil, attack it and destroy it?

“Turns out we don’t have to travel to Iran to see heartbreaking violation of human rights,” reported Fox News host Laura Ingraham on March 3. “It’s happening right here in the United States every day, at the evil hands of cartels, criminal gangs and other twisted freaks. And the targets range from toddlers to teens. A repeat sex offender in Maryland pleaded guilty to making and distributing child porn. In Alabama, five men were just busted in a child sex trafficking ring. And in New York, a 57-year-old man was charged with possessing graphic images and videos of child sex abuse. That’s just from this week. So data from the Internet Watch Foundation reveals that 2025 was the worst year on record for depiction of online child sexual abuse. And the sad truth is, of course, we have no idea how many children are being exploited and victimized in America.”

The Jeffrey Epstein files have gained a lot of publicity in the U.S. because of the high-profile people involved in his sex-trafficking activities, yet Epstein’s many sordid crimes account for a very small percentage of all the child sex trafficking that occurs in the United States. Older data from the U.S. State Department and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation suggest that nearly 200,000 children are trafficked in the U.S. each year, and most criminal analysts believe that sex crimes against children are underreported.

These are crimes that President Trump’s religious advisers need to address!

The late Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in his 1964 book God Speaks Out on the New Morality that the “downward plunge” in morals was “rapidly becoming a greater threat to humanity than the hydrogen bomb.” This is because while a hydrogen bomb destroys your body, sin destroys the human spirit, mind and heart.

Many people today are understandably concerned about the possibility that the Islamic Republic of Iran will obtain a nuclear weapon and start World War iii. Yet God promises in Leviticus 26:3-8 that if His people “walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them,” then “five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.”

Verses 15-20 of the same chapter warn that “if ye shall despise my statutes, or if your soul abhor my judgments, so that ye will not do all my commandments,” then “I will break the pride of your power; and I will make your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: And your strength shall be spent in vain ….”

In other words, it is God who determines the outcome of wars. So whether or not American citizens are protected from nuclear-armed terrorists depends more on American righteousness than it does on American military strategy. The Christians praying over President Trump in the White House are taking for granted that God will grant the president wisdom and victory because America is “one nation under God.” Yet for the past eight decades, America’s military has spent its strength in vain because America is one nation under sin.

The biblical prophets warned the ancient nation of Israel about the dangers of sin in a way that no mainstream religious leader in America today does. Even President Abraham Lincoln, who was not a minister, told his countrymen that they had become intoxicated by prosperity and success, and he warned that they needed to repent for their sins during the Civil War. Yet who today is warning the American people about their sins?

Mr. Armstrong warned in 1961, “Unless or until the United States as a whole repents and returns to what has become a hollow slogan on its dollars: ‘In God we trust,’ the United States of America has won its last war!” God will not grant America victory in Iran, no matter how many Christians pray over President Trump, because the nation has not repented of the sins for which it is being cursed.