‘America Is Becoming Sin Nation’

Good morning!

Anyone excited about America’s religious resurgence should read Axios’s top story this morning: “Scaling Sin.” “America is quickly becoming Sin Nation,” it says, and continues:

[BRIEF]

Once-forbidden vices—weed, gambling and porn—are no longer confined to back alleys or the desert.

They’re ubiquitous, digitized and rapidly spreading past social and regulatory guardrails.

Governments didn’t turn a blind eye to most of this behavior. They encouraged it. We’re intentionally scaling sin in real time.

It sounds like a Trumpet article. We take seriously the directive of Isaiah 58:1: “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins.”

• In our staff meetings we focus on the need to expose not just the egregious wickedness of the Jeffrey Epsteins and lecherous politicians but also the more common, even universal sins. That’s just what this Axios article does.

The facts and statistics on these three rapidly spreading vices are eye-popping.

Marijuana: 40 states allow medical use (which the “conservative” Trump administration just loosened federal restrictions on); 24 states plus D.C. have legalized its recreational use. Axios says marijuana now “serves as a primary tax engine for nearly half the country”:

States have collected nearly $25 billion in cannabis tax revenue since the first legal sales began in 2014, according to the Marijuana Policy Project ….

Gambling: Since the federal ban on sports betting was lifted in 2018, the practice has exploded in America. As McKay Coppins wrote in a recent riveting Atlantic article (“Sucker: My Year as a Degenerate Sports Gambler”):

Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong?

• The majority of 18-to-49-year-old men in America have an account with an online sportsbook, polls show.
• “Prediction markets” are exploding, enabling people to place bets on everything from the weather to celebrity tweets to Jesus Christ’s Second Coming.

Pornography: Already huge, but now supercharged by AI deepfakes. Axios writes:

The average age of first exposure to online pornography is now 12, and 15 percent of kids first see it at 10 or younger, according to a Common Sense Media survey of 1,300-plus teens. …

Our shattered information ecosystem means there’s no common authority left to set norms or apply social pressure. The government, rather than policing the entrance, has become the cashier.

These are ugly realities the optimists want to overlook. But they provide a truer picture of America’s moral state than the slight bump in church attendance or the increased use of Jesus’s name in public.

America will never repent of its sins until it acknowledges them. For a penetrating study into the laws of God that define sin, and to better evaluate yourself, read our free booklet The Ten Commandments.

Iran War Update

• The United Arab Emirates launched direct strikes against Iran during last month’s war, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday. The U.A.E. hasn’t publicly acknowledged the strikes. But Iran hit the U.A.E. hard in the conflict, and the U.A.E. said it reserved the right to respond to hostile acts. This follows previous rumors Qatar did the same thing.
• The ceasefire with Iran “is on massive life support where the doctor walks in and says, ‘Sir, your loved one has approximately a 1 percent chance of living,’” President Donald Trump stated yesterday.

Labour Civil War to Determine Fate of Britain?

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to resign after Labour’s defeat in the local elections last week. He has been in office for less than two years.

Over 85 of Labour’s 403 members of Parliament have called on Starmer to go.

• Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood is the most senior government minister to call on him to resign. So far, only six cabinet ministers have publicly backed him.
• Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister, and Miatta Fahnbulleh, a communities minister, have both resigned from the cabinet.

Starmer is refusing to jump, indicating this morning that he would fight it out at least for a while longer, saying, “The Labour Party has a process for challenging a leader, and that has not been triggered.”

Two broad camps are vying to replace Starmer, complicating the push to oust him:

• Health Secretary Wes Streeting is the leading candidate of the more moderate parts of the left-wing Labour Party. His supporters want a quick, palace-coup-like transfer of power.

Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham leads the more radical faction. He is not currently in Parliament and is thus ineligible for the job of prime minister. His supporters want to keep Starmer around for a few more weeks to buy time for Burnham to run for Parliament.

• Burnham is likely to win a leadership contest—if he is able to participate in it.

Britain’s borrowing costs reached their highest level since 1998 as investors fear the hard left is about to take over.

Meanwhile, Reform UK posted its largest lead over the other parties in a YouGov poll held on May 4 and 5:

• Reform UK: 28 percent
• Conservatives: 17 percent
• Greens: 16 percent
• Labour: 16 percent
• Liberal Democrats: 13 percent

If the poll is accurate, Reform would likely win an election, but Labour is free to change prime ministers without calling one.

Eurointelligence wrote: “Sir Keir’s political crime is that he let a whopping political majority go to waste because he never really knew what he wanted to do with the power that came with the job.”

Britain is suffering from a lack of leadership and vision. The Proverbs warn, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Britain, with its five prime ministers in the last 10 years, is demonstrating this in action. The nation badly needs saving—that starts with repentance and turning to God for the vision it needs to truly be great.

Californian Mayor Was a Chinese Spy

Eileen Wang, mayor of Arcadia, California, resigned yesterday following an announcement by the U.S. Department of Justice that she had been charged with operating as an illegal agent for the People’s Republic of China.

• Wang pled guilty to the felony charge. She faces a potential $250,000 fine and up to 10 years in prison.

Doing China’s bidding: Wang and her ex-fiancé, Yaoning “Mike” Sun of Chino Hills, collaborated with China’s ruling Chinese Communist Party to disseminate pro-Chinese propaganda through U.S. News Center, a website masquerading as a news source for the local Chinese-American community.

• Wang and Sun “executed directives” from the Chinese government, according to the charges, and sent screenshots and article view counts back to their handlers as proof of performance.

In June 2021, a Chinese government official sent Wang and others a prewritten propaganda article through an encrypted WeChat group.

• The article denied all allegations of genocide and forced labor in Xinjiang, China, where it is well established that the Chinese Communist Party is committing genocide against and profiting from the forced labor of indigenous Uyghur peoples. It accused critics of spreading rumors to “defame China.”
• Within minutes, Wang reposted the article to U.S. News Center and sent the link back to the Chinese official to show that she had obeyed. Others in the WeChat group quickly followed suit, and the official replied: “So fast, thank you, everyone.”

Not disclosed: John A. Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said about the case:

Individuals elected to public office in the United States should act only for the people of the United States that they represent. It is deeply concerning that someone who previously received and executed directives from [People’s Republic of China] government officials is now in a position of public trust at all, but particularly so because that relationship with that foreign government had never been disclosed.

China’s infiltration of America is significant in Bible prophecy. In a 2021 article titled “Wake Up to the Threat From China,” we wrote:

That this nation would aggressively target the world’s dominant superpower should not surprise us. But the extent of its success, and the fact that America has not only allowed it but seems unconcerned, is appalling. In fact, viewed in the context of biblical prophecy, it is a potent symbol of nothing less than a historic global shift occurring before our eyes: the end of the Anglo-American era and the beginning of a short, dark period that will mark the final years of the age of man.

IN OTHER NEWS

European Union foreign ministers agreed to sanction Israeli settlers on Monday. The bloc has tried to do so in the past due to concerns over attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank but had been blocked by Hungary. Now Hungary has a new leader, and the bloc unanimously agreed to the sanctions. Europe often positions itself as Israel’s friend, but stories like these, connected with Bible prophecy, show its real intentions.

Spain accused of mishandling covid funds: Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his government misused at least $10 billion from European Union covid funds to cover pensions and other social programs, El Mundo and other Spanish newspapers reported last week. Notably, the largest share of those funds came from Germany, which means this scandal could increase German pressure against Sánchez and possibly help bring in a more militant Spanish leader who will better fit in with the rising German-led European empire.

Poland calls for accelerated militarization: Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said Wednesday that nations in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must reach their defense spending goals of 5 percent of gdp by 2030 instead of 2035. He said European militarization is “today’s priority” and that even 2031 “may be too late.” Poland plans to spend 4.8 percent of its gdp on defense this year. Bible prophecy says Europe will continue to militarize into an unprecedented superpower.

Japanese refiners buying Russian oil: Japanese refiner Idemitsu Kosan bought crude oil from Russia, the company told Russian state media on Friday. This is the second Japanese company to buy oil from Russia since America’s war with Iran began. A company spokesperson said the purchase was made at the behest of the Japanese government. The Bible prophesies that Japan will soon become a major military ally of Russia.

North Korea’s first nuclear-armed warship is almost ready for service, state media announced on Thursday. The Choe Hyon-class destroyer reportedly completed successful tests of its missile and weapons systems recently, and the rogue nation claims to be fitting out its first nuclear missile submarine. Only six or seven other nations have naval nuclear launch capabilities, and three of them are China, India and Russia. The Bible warns that Asia’s formidable militaries will soon unite into the strongest force in human history, and North Korea’s advancements will likely contribute to its mass-destructive firepower.

Major escalation pushes Ethiopia toward war: The Tigray People’s Liberation Front essentially broke its peace agreement with the Ethiopian government on May 5 by reinstating a government it had in place before the eruption of the 2020 Tigray War, perhaps the deadliest of the 21st century so far. That war concluded with an agreement that a Tigray government would no longer rule the region, so its reinstatement exacerbates an already tense situation, and many fear it could plunge the region back into war. The Bible prophesies that Ethiopian politics are about to experience a dramatic upheaval.