Americans went into this year’s midterm elections angry. Two thirds of them said their nation was headed in the wrong direction, and the president’s approval rating had sunk into the 30s. Yet instead of looking for steadier hands, many voters reached for the extremes. Just days before the election, half of registered voters told pollsters they would cast a ballot for a democratic socialist. The Democratic Socialists of America boasted of dozens of victories this year, with its candidates advancing in states from New York to Florida. The mood of the electorate is unmistakable: Americans have lost faith in the people running their country.

Britain is now on its sixth prime minister since 2016. Keir Starmer was forced out in July after his party was routed in local elections, and Andy Burnham took over the Labour Party without a single challenger. The British electorate has splintered so badly that Labour, the Conservatives and Reform UK have each been polling at roughly a fifth of the vote, while a new party splits the right even further.

Israel’s October 27 election left neither Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc nor Gadi Eisenkot’s anywhere close to the 61 seats needed to govern, while Arab parties surged to 19 seats. A nation surrounded by enemies is once again stuck in political deadlock. The nations that produced George Washington, Winston Churchill and David Ben-Gurion can no longer produce leaders their people will follow. Voters sense that something has gone badly wrong, and they are lashing out. But the problem runs far deeper than any single election.

Proverbs 29:2 supplies this wisdom: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” Wise, strong leadership is a blessing. Its absence is a curse.

George Washington guided America’s new experiment in republican government through its fragile first years. Abraham Lincoln held the Union together and ended slavery. Winston Churchill pulled Britain through its darkest hour to victory. David Ben-Gurion forged modern Israel out of chaos. Each put national strength and moral clarity ahead of personal ambition. Men of their caliber have all but vanished today.

The Prophet Isaiah foresaw this crisis thousands of years ago. Isaiah 3 records God’s judgment on the end-time descendants of Israel: Britain and its Commonwealth, the United States and the Jewish nation of Israel. Because of their disobedience, God warned He would remove the leaders who give society its strength. In their place, He said, “I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them” (verse 4).

That prophecy is being fulfilled before our eyes.

Disappearing Statesmen

America’s founders knew that no government could survive without virtuous leaders. “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt,” wrote Samuel Adams. The truest friend of his country, he argued, is the man who promotes its virtue and refuses to let anyone but “a wise and virtuous man” hold political power.

Isaiah 3:2-3 list 11 types of leaders a nation needs: the mighty man, the man of war, the judge, the prophet, the prudent, the ancient, the captain of fifty, the honorable man, the counselor, the cunning artificer and the eloquent orator. America, Britain and Israel once had admirable men filling these roles. Today, few men have the character to prosper in the offices they hold. Why?

One major reason is the collapse of fatherhood. Statesmen are not born; they are raised. Many of history’s great leaders were shaped by strong fathers who took the time to train them in true virtues. In America, these included John Marshall, John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams Sr., Calvin Coolidge, Douglas MacArthur and George S. Patton. In Britain, they included William Pitt the Younger, Sir Robert Peel and William Gladstone.

Theodore Roosevelt credited much of his success to his father, calling him “the best man I ever knew.” The elder Roosevelt taught by example. He helped found the Children’s Aid Society and the Newsboys’ Lodging House, where he spent Sunday evenings encouraging the boys. He helped establish the American Museum of Natural History, and helped create the New York Orthopedic Hospital to care for children with disabilities. When his own son’s health faltered, he challenged the frail boy: “You have the mind, but you have not the body. … You must make your body.”

The discipline and sense of duty Theodore learned in his father’s home shaped the man who would lead the nation. Roosevelt saw public office as service, not a career. “It is a dreadful misfortune for a man to grow to feel that his whole livelihood and whole happiness depend upon his staying in office,” he wrote. Such a man, he warned, cannot truly serve the people and is tempted to trade his convictions for his seat.

Selflessness is the mark of a true statesman. As 19th-century minister James Freeman Clarke observed, “A politician … is a man who thinks of the next election; while the statesman thinks of the next generation. The politician thinks of the success of his party, the statesman of the good of his country.”

When statesmen disappear, others fill the empty seats. Isaiah warned who those would be. In place of the mighty man, judge and counselor, God said He would give “children to be their princes.”

Fake Conservatives

Many religious people in America, Britain and Israel look to their nations’ conservative parties to lead them into the future. Movements like Make America Great Again are pushing back against the worst extremes of secularism. Yet today’s conservatives are very different from the conservatives of the past.

The 2024 Republican Party platform promised to seal the border, carry out the largest deportation operation in American history, end inflation, make America the world’s dominant energy producer, and stop outsourcing U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas. It pledged to keep men out of women’s sports, ban taxpayer funding for sex-change surgeries, and stop taxpayer-funded schools from promoting gender transition. But unlike the party’s 2016 platform, it did not define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, nor did it call for overturning the Supreme Court’s same-sex “marriage” ruling. Conservatives have surrendered these battles to the radicals.

Worse yet, many Republicans have turned to celebrities and popular entertainers to win over younger voters. This is deferring to the priorities of children. It is not strong moral leadership.

Republican leadership on the economic front hasn’t been much better. The willingness to delay gratification for a greater reward is a mark of maturity. Adults devise a plan and follow it; children do what feels good. A rising national debt often signifies immature, childish leaders.

There is no statesman today. Many politicians govern by opinion polls and career objectives rather than by principle, and grift is rampant. Large majorities of Americans consistently say corruption is widespread in government. The Government Accountability Office has estimated that fraud costs federal taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year—as much as 7 percent of federal spending. Washington itself concentrates the problem: It has the highest density of public employees of any federal judicial district and, by some measures, the highest rate of public corruption convictions.

Britain’s Conservative Party has done no better. In 2013, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron championed a bill legalizing same-sex “marriage,” even though more Conservative members of Parliament voted against the bill than for it. The party promised to cut net migration to the “tens of thousands.” Instead, after more than a decade of Conservative rule, net migration hit 872,000 in 2022.

Israel’s right-wing Likud party has also compromised. In 2022, Likud lawmaker Amir Ohana became Israel’s first openly homosexual speaker of the Knesset. In 2005, Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon uprooted every Jewish community in Gaza, even though Likud members had rejected the plan in a party referendum. Hamas seized Gaza two years later and turned it into a terrorist zone from which to destroy Israel.

Past generations of conservative leaders in America, Britain and Israel managed to promote family values, balance budgets, and defend borders. Through a mix of incompetence and corruption, today’s leaders cannot. They are exactly the kind of childish rulers Isaiah warned would replace the mighty men of old.

Childish Rulers

Young people have noticed that the older generation doesn’t have the answers to the crises society faces. They are inheriting high costs of living, trillions in debt, little opportunity and major world problems. Many have concluded the system is rigged against them.

Some are going so far as to turn to socialism. Gallup’s 2026 survey found that 57 percent of Americans ages 18 to 34 have a positive view of socialism, compared with 34 percent of those 55 and older. Some are going further still. A 2025 Cato Institute-YouGov poll found that 34 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 view communism favorably. On America’s 250th birthday, the Democratic Socialists of America passed 120,000 members, making it the largest socialist organization in U.S. history. Its growth was fueled in part by Zohran Mamdani’s 2025 election as mayor of New York City.

Communist regimes killed tens of millions of people in the 20th century. That a third of young Americans now look kindly on such a system shows how little history they have been taught.

In that 2025 election, exit polls showed three quarters of voters under 30 backed Mamdani, including 82 percent of young women. His campaign promised fare-free buses, a rent freeze and city-run grocery stores, funded largely by higher taxes on the wealthy. Socialist leaders have no plan to pay down America’s debt or revitalize its economy. Their plan is to seize wealth from those who have it and give it to those who do not.

This is no solution. It is class warfare.

God foresaw this too. He described the society these childish leaders would produce: “And the people shall be oppressed, every one by another, and every one by his neighbour: the child shall behave himself proudly against the ancient, and the base against the honourable” (Isaiah 3:5).

Such a society is not a free-market society focused on production; it is a dystopian society focused on theft. The political class in America, Britain and Israel is more concerned about winning elections than about solving national problems. But the generation rising up against that class is even worse.

In 2020, Kyle Jurek, a field organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s campaign, was secretly recorded by Project Veritas saying: “There’s a reason Joseph Stalin had gulags, right? Actually, gulags were a lot better than what the cia has told us that they were. Like, people were actually paid a living wage in gulags; they had conjugal visits in gulags. Gulags were actually meant for, like, reeducation. Greatest way to breaking a … billionaire of their, like, privilege and the idea that they’re superior: Go out and break rocks for 12 hours a day. You’re now a working-class person and you’re going to … learn what that means, right?”

This is one example of a childish man exalting himself against the honorable. Most American socialists don’t praise police-state networks of prison camps, but they are still pulling the nation in that direction. Socialists are still a tiny fraction of the population, yet the political spectrum is shifting left because America’s leaders lack the will to stand up to the radicals.

Civil War

In The United States and Britain in Prophecy, the late Herbert W. Armstrong explained that the peoples who settled America and Britain descended from the ancient Israelites. God made an unconditional promise to Abraham to multiply his descendants, make them into great nations, and bless them with power and wealth to enable them to become exemplary nations to the rest of the world. Mr. Armstrong showed that God kept this promise by giving the U.S. and Britain nearly three fourths of the world’s usable resources at the peak of their power. But God did not promise to keep blessing these nations if they disbelieved and disobeyed Him.

He prophesied curses for disobedience, including a leadership crisis that would drive the nations of end-time Israel toward civil war. Isaiah 3:5 describes a nation turning on itself, neighbor against neighbor. Verse 6 shows the result: a society so ruined that people beg anyone to “be thou our ruler, and let this ruin be under thy hand.” In verse 7, the man asked to lead refuses: “I will not be an healer.” The ruin is so severe that no one wants to be in charge.

Isaiah 1:5 describes the same condition: “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” The head of a nation is its government. When legitimate authority collapses and factions reject shared rules, internal conflict follows. Verse 7 describes the result: “your cities are burned with fire ….”

This is already happening. In 1992, after the Rodney King verdict, Los Angeles burned for days as rioters torched more than a thousand buildings. In 2014, after the grand-jury decision in the Michael Brown case, arsonists in Ferguson set roughly two dozen buildings and vehicles ablaze. In 2020, rioters in Minneapolis burned a police precinct, and unrest spread to Kenosha, Portland and beyond, becoming the costliest civil disorder in U.S. insurance history. In 2025, vehicles burned in Los Angeles streets. In Britain, rioters set London ablaze in 2011, and fires returned to towns from Southport to Sunderland in 2024. In Israel, riots between Arab and Jewish citizens of Lod in 2021 left synagogues, homes and cars in flames, forcing the government to declare a state of emergency.

Political violence is rising too. In 2017, a gunman opened fire on Republican congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game and critically wounded Majority Whip Steve Scalise. In 2024, a gunman nearly killed Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. In 2025, conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus. Such violence will continue to intensify if these nations don’t turn back to God. Ezekiel 5:12 prophesies that two thirds of the population of end-time America, Britain and Israel will die from violence and famine.

The major reason the U.S. survived its first civil war was the leadership of Abraham Lincoln. In one of his proclamations calling the nation to a day of fasting and prayer, he declared: “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” (March 30, 1863). Today, there are no leaders of Lincoln’s stature who will call on the people to repent.

This is why the leadership vacuum in America, Britain and Israel is so serious. It is the cause of these nations’ other problems. Isaiah 3:12 says, “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” With the right leaders, a nation can survive debt, division and war. Without them, it cannot survive at all.

Righteous Leaders

The leadership crisis in America, Britain and Israel will lead to the worst suffering in human history. Jeremiah 30:7 calls it “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” a day so great “that none is like it.”

Yet this period of intense judgment will purify and restore these nations.

Isaiah 4:1 paints one final, devastating picture: So few men survive that there are not enough husbands and fathers. Then the tone shifts. “In that day shall the branch of the Lord be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the earth shall be excellent and comely for them that are escaped of Israel” (verse 2).

The “branch of the Lord” refers to the Messiah, a royal descendant of King David. Isaiah 11:1 describes Him as a Branch growing “out of the stem of Jesse.” Jeremiah 23:5 shows He is the righteous leader these nations lack: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth.”

This prophecy will be fulfilled at the return of Jesus Christ! And both Old Testament and New Testament show that He will not rule alone. Isaiah 32:1 prophesies, “Behold, a king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment.” In place of the children ruling today, God will install princes of proven character: the saints, resurrected at Christ’s return to “reign with him a thousand years” (Revelation 20:6). God promises, “… I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellors as at the beginning …” (Isaiah 1:26).

Like the fathers who raised history’s great statesmen, God is training His children now for leadership positions in the World Tomorrow. In Chapter 7 of Mystery of the Ages, Mr. Armstrong showed that the Bible explicitly states that Jesus will return to establish a literal, world-ruling Kingdom. Those given authority in it will not be carnal human beings but perfect spirit beings serving under Christ. The point will have been proved: Man cannot rule man—only God and His Family can.

“No human will be given any government office,” Mr. Armstrong wrote. “All in government service will then be divine Spirit beings, in the Kingdom of God—the God Family. All officials will be appointed—and by the divine Christ, who reads and knows men’s hearts, their inner character, and abilities or lack of ability.”

Why must these nations suffer before God appoints righteous leaders? Because as long as people still believe their own way will work, they will not accept God’s government.

The Prophet Jeremiah saw this reality as few men do, and humbly prayed: “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jeremiah 10:23).

The leadership crisis is proving this hard truth on a national scale.

God is not punishing out of cruelty. On the contrary, not punishing for sin and rebellion would be cruelty. God is a loving father who corrects His children for their own good. “… I will correct thee in measure,” He promises Israel, “and will not leave thee altogether unpunished” (Jeremiah 30:11). The correction will work. “[I]n their affliction they will seek me early” (Hosea 5:15). Once humanity exhausts every alternative, people will welcome God’s leaders: “And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord … and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths …” (Isaiah 2:3).

God is preparing the next generation of leaders while the world learns it lacks the answers. The statesmen of the past are no more, and the children now ruling cannot replace them. But the greatest era of leadership in human history is ahead. The crisis Isaiah foresaw is the prelude to the government God promises in Isaiah 9:7: “Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end ….”