Twenty-five years ago, my Uncle Mark was visiting New York City. His Canadian software company was looking for space to set up an American office, and my uncle’s job was to scout suitable high-rises. During his tour, he visited one iconic skyscraper in the Manhattan skyline that was initially a top contender. He even toured the observation deck at the top of the building. He boarded his flight back to Vancouver, British Columbia, on Sept. 9, 2001. Two days later, another New York flight commandeered by al Qaeda terrorists rammed into that same building, sending the World Trade Center to the ground with hundreds trapped inside.

If the timing of his visit had been a little different, I would have lost a family member. This was reality for the relatives of 2,997 people who died in New York, Washington and a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.

The 9/11 terror attacks shook the collective American consciousness. For the first time in decades, Americans weren’t seeing footage of a war zone on their televisions; they were in one. John Maloney, a security director for a business in the World Trade Center, told the New York Times that day: “I don’t know what the gates of hell look like, but it’s got to be like this. I’m a combat veteran, Vietnam, and I never saw anything like this.” Another bystander shared his thoughts with the Times: “It’s Pearl Harbor. It’s war.” President George W. Bush in his address to the nation vowed: “America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.”

Twenty-five years later, it is clear America has lost the war on terrorism. America didn’t win in Afghanistan. America didn’t win in Iraq. America is still in danger on the home front.

One man saw this coming—even as the World Trade Center lay in rubble—even before the attacks occurred.

Predictions

Since its beginning in 1991, the Philadelphia Trumpet has used Bible prophecy to analyze world events. Most prophecy is for today, and much of it directly concerns the United States. (Request a free copy of The United States and Britain in Prophecy for more information.) Prophecies relevant for modern America include Leviticus 26:19-20, where God says that if His people disobey Him, He will “break the pride of your power” and “your strength shall be spent in vain.” Jesus Christ prophesied in Matthew 24:6-8 of signs leading to His Second Coming: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

Based on prophecies like these, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has emphasized that curses such as foreign attacks and defeats on the battlefield will continue and worsen unless America repents of national sin toward God.

A year before the 9/11 attacks, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry commented on the start of the Lockerbie trial in April 2000, over Libyan terrorists bombing a flight flying over Scotland in 1988. The trial only went forward with shameful shows of appeasement to Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi, exonerating him of any involvement even though it was clear Libya sponsored the terrorists. Mr. Flurry wrote:

Britain and America insist on the trial as a show of strength. But all we are doing is parading our pathetic weakness before the world. Almost every adult on this planet knows that the mass murderer is colonel Muammar Qadhafi. So Britain and America advertise to the world that a terrorist leader can attack our peoples and go unpunished. That is the real story of this trial! Mr. Qadhafi is not being held personally responsible for what he initiated and orchestrated. So expect terrorism and violence to intensify against our peoples! That is the inevitable fruit of our shameful weakness.

After the 2001 attacks, Mr. Flurry wrote for our 9/11 special edition:

The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in New York; the Pentagon is the largest office building in the world. These were citadels of the greatest financial and military power in the world. They symbolized America’s greatness. But their destruction is just the beginning of sorrows.

In another article in the same issue, he emphasized: “As surely as the ocean tides ebb and flow, a rising tide of terrorism has begun sending its grisly waves of death and destruction through the world. We are facing a high tide of unprecedented violence.”

The U.S. government wasn’t expecting to lose the war on terrorism. President Bush in his speech said he directed “the full resources of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to find those responsible and to bring them to justice. We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them.” The “shock and awe” displayed in toppling the Taliban in Afghanistan and then Saddam Hussein in Iraq made it appear the U.S. would win. America, still coasting on its victory in the Cold War, seemed ascendant. Surely ragtag militias and tinpot dictators couldn’t defeat the strongest military the world had ever seen.

The King of Terror

Another Bible prophecy informing Mr. Flurry’s analysis was Daniel 11:40. This prophecy describes an end-time “king of the south” provoking world war by clashing with “the king of the north.” Based on the Bible and current events, Mr. Flurry since the early 1990s identified the Islamic Republic of Iran specifically and the radical Islamist movement in general as this king of the south. The context of the prophecy points to the king of the north as a united European power. (Mr. Flurry’s book The King of the South explains in detail.)

As America got more involved in Middle Eastern wars, Mr. Flurry recognized that it was avoiding war with Iran, though Iran even by the early 2000s was already recognized as the leader of radical Islamist terror and even had a role in the 9/11 attacks. Because America refused to tackle the source of the world’s radical Islamist problem, Mr. Flurry saw the wars in Afghanistan ending in disaster.

In that 2001 issue, the Trumpet thundered: “Realize what this means: The U.S. won’t be the victors in this war. … As we now examine the facts emerging from this war, we can see unequivocally that the terrorist snake will survive America’s aggression—head intact, and stronger than ever.”

Mr. Flurry wrote in our February 2002 issue: “It appears we now have plans to attack Sudan, Somalia and other ‘mosquitoes.’ But do we have the will to take on Iran …? America and Britain lack the will to challenge the king. That is why we cannot win our war against terrorism!”

In the June 2003 issue, Mr. Flurry made an even bolder prediction: that America’s invasion of Iraq would lead to Iran taking over Iraq. He wrote:

Saddam Hussein was the only leader that Iran feared. Now the U.S. has taken him out of the way. But does America have the will or strength to guard the spoils of war? Prophecy states that it does not. Have we now cleared the way for Shiite Iran to rule over Shiite Iraq?

Circumstances seemed relatively calm for several years. Then, in the early 2010s, a terror group calling itself “the Islamic State” began taking over massive sections of Iraq and Syria. The U.S. under President Barack Obama led a campaign to defeat it. The Islamic State’s brutality—including infamously videotaping the beheading of “infidels”—made it look like the new “big fish” of Middle Eastern terrorism. But in a February 2015 Key of David program, Mr. Flurry stated: “[I]f you look at isis, well they don’t even have an air force. And they in many ways are a distraction. Now they are dangerous—no question about that. But in many ways, they are a distraction of what is happening in the Middle East through Iran.”

The Middle East today is in a very different state than it was in 2001 or 2003 or 2015. America left Afghanistan in a disastrous, disgraceful withdrawal in 2021. It is currently in the middle of a quieter but still significant withdrawal from Iraq—with Iran having taken over. The victory against the Islamic State feels like a distant memory now. America finally went to war with Iran this year—but accomplished none of its objectives, gave Iran greater control over the Strait of Hormuz, and depleted its own missile stockpiles.

All of this is continuing fallout from the war declared by al Qaeda on Sept. 11, 2001.

Where to Now?

“A great people has been moved to defend a great nation,” President Bush said in his address. “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve.” Yet a quarter of a century later, looking at the state of America and the Middle East today, it is clear the steel of America’s resolve has been shattered.

In the attacks’ immediate aftermath, the nation came together for a moment. Church attendance spiked. But looking at American society now—the division, the immorality, the rejection of God’s standards—it is apparent there was no fundamental change in direction. America leads the world in abortion, pornography and family breakdown. Far from being a “city on a hill,” America is leading the world in rebellion against God.

America’s problems in the Middle East are not a cause. They are a symptom of wider national sickness.

The truth is, America will never win the war on terror—unless it turns to God. Mr. Flurry wrote in “Why We Cannot Win the War Against Terrorism” in November 2003: “Our ultimate success will be determined by our relationship with God. If God is for us, we can’t lose. But if God is against us, we can’t win. And Bible prophecy relates that God is against us and is cursing us.”

Ultimately, America’s problems with terrorism aren’t a matter of policy direction or political partisanship. They are God’s attempt to get America’s attention. The Bible says the curses will only get worse—far worse—until the people heed.

Mr. Flurry tied the 9/11 attacks to “the beginning of sorrows” of Matthew 24:8. The events of the chapter’s early verses lead to Matthew 24:21-22: “For then shall be great tribulation [the Amplified Bible says “pressure, distress, oppression”], such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved ….” Moffatt translates it as “not a soul would be saved alive.”

Leviticus 26:27-28 say: “And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins.”

This is what is facing America today. God let the 9/11 terror attacks happen as a wake-up call. He has used the succeeding 25 years to demonstrate that Bible prophecy stands. God’s word stands. As Herbert W. Armstrong wrote in 1961 regarding the same prophecies: “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 handwriting is on your wall!”

“The terrorist attacks of September 11 were quite unsettling to me,” Mr. Flurry wrote in our 9/11 special edition. “Yet I know what God says is coming, and it will be many times worse than those attacks. It’s been said that the devastation at the World Trade Center looked like a nuclear winter. We are about to see a real nuclear winter that we cannot even imagine—if our people don’t repent.”

The Way Out

The Bible also prophesies that God will cut short this time of suffering. Matthew 24:22 concludes: “[B]ut for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” Leviticus 26:40-42, 45 read: “If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me; And that I also have walked contrary unto them … Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land … that I might be their God ….”

God would like to give this kind of deliverance now. He says in Ezekiel 33:11: “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

This is the big lesson of the past 25 years: Unless the nation repents, far worse times are coming. But God offers His blessing and protection to individuals as well as nations. Luke 21:36, a companion prophecy to Matthew 24, reads: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” Individuals can be accounted worthy to escape the coming time of suffering.

The 9/11 anniversary should be more than a time of national reflection. It should also be a time of personal reflection regarding one’s relationship with God and if one is taking His warnings seriously. Even if the nation as a whole doesn’t repent, God invites individuals to come under His protection. But there is only a limited time to act.