Warning a Nation in Decline

We received a letter recently from a subscriber in Australia, taking us to task for being too hard on the United States. He was distressed at us for regularly referring to the U.S. as “depraved, sinful, oppressed, greedy, lustful, full of idolatry….” I’m not sure that we said it that way, but his point is fair enough.

He went on to describe how he sees the U.S.: “There are in excess of 50 cultures living within America, proving to the world that people of different backgrounds and religious beliefs can live together in harmony. Americans are proud of their country. America rescued Australia from the Japanese invasion in World War II. America… saved Great Britain and Europe from the tyranny of Germany in the Second World War.” He also listed other positive traits, such as our freedom of speech and thought, and called the U.S. “the most giving and generous country in the world.”

And we believe that, in general, his observations are correct. The U.S. has been an exceptional nation, offering hope to millions through “the American dream.” Instead of building walls to keep citizens in, as the Eastern Bloc had to do during the days of the Soviet Union, the U.S. debates whether to build walls to keep citizens of other countries out—as rich as it is, there is still a limit to how many huddled masses it can absorb all at once.

What is it that we are missing? Or is it our dear reader who is missing something?

Dying Freedoms

We at Tomorrow’s World—including the many Americans—love our countries. We could fill this whole magazine explaining everything we appreciate about the U.S., but the freedom to worship as we please tops the list, alongside our freedom of speech and association. We appreciate that our country’s economic system generally rewards hard work and perseverance. We love that our grocery stores are filled with an incredibly wide variety of fruits, vegetables, meats, and beverages. We love that most of us have clean water, comfortable homes, and safety from violence.

But the U.S. is changing—and these changes did not start yesterday. The secularization of the U.S. has been underway for decades. It was never a truly righteous nation, but even the pretense of biblical values is rapidly disappearing as we erase God from our textbooks and remove His commandments from public display.

One of the great myths pawned off on the public is that secularism equals neutrality while biblical values equal bigotry and therefore must not be expressed outside of church—thus, freedom of expression is dying. But secularism is anything but neutral. It is a value system largely antithetical to the Bible. To say that abortion represents “a woman’s right to choose” is seen as neutral, but calling it what it is—murder—is seen as dogma that needs to be censored.

Secular society welcomes nonmarital sex in almost any context, but don’t be caught in the classroom suggesting that it should be confined to marriage between a biological man and a biological woman—even if the facts show that this produces healthier outcomes, as even homosexual activists have admitted: “Relationships between gay men don’t usually last very long.... Part of this is due to the characteristics of male physiology and psychology, which make the sexual and romantic pairing of man with man inherently less stable than the pairing of man with woman. (Sorry if the truth hurts)” (Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen, After the Ball).

Frankly, my friends, we live in a bizarre world of restlessly shifting values. Even recent “heroes” of political correctness find themselves cast aside as one cultural tribe eats another. Martina Navratilova is clearly one of the greatest female tennis players of all time. She is also openly lesbian, a lifestyle once sacrosanct in secularism—but she fell from grace when she spoke the scientific truth that biological men have greater physical strength and that their competing in women’s sports creates havoc for female athletes. “Athlete Ally, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ inclusion and equality in sports, has severed ties with Martina Navratilova following Sunday’s controversial op-ed, in which the tennis star called transgender women who compete in women’s sports ‘cheats’” (NBCNews.com, March 20, 2019).

The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution may “guarantee” freedom of expression and the right to speak freely—but don’t count on it in today’s “cancel culture.” While some views are celebrated, others are censored and punished, and it does not matter whether you have science on your side—that all depends on which politically correct view of “science” you hold. We at Tomorrow’s World decry the loss of free speech in the U.S., and are equally concerned when we see Tomorrow’s World telecasts censored in Australia and the U.K.

Living Truth

We love our countries, but sorrow over the sins that are bringing us into a dark age indeed. History is being rewritten, monuments of our past are being torn down, and anarchists are burning and looting almost freely in our streets. The fact is that America and the other British-descended nations have been on the wrong path for decades and, as we have been warning, this path is leading to national disaster. Accepting his party’s 1936 nomination to run for reelection, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed, “This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny” (June 27, 1936). Roosevelt’s words came during the Great Depression, a time of great trouble. And so does our generation have its own rendezvous with destiny in our troubled world.

There was a time when Western culture generally retained a certain consciousness of God, but even that is being lost as a new anti-God generation of nihilists exerts its influence over society. The U.S. is no longer the country it was in my youth. Change takes time, and for decades we have seen a deterioration of the values held by most in Western civilization.

It is within this picture that those who understand Bible prophecy find themselves. We are not prophets, but we read the words of the prophets, and their message of the near future is not encouraging:

But if you do not obey Me, and do not observe all these commandments, and if you despise My statutes, or if your soul abhors My judgments… I also will do this to you: I will even appoint terror over you, wasting disease and fever.... And you shall sow your seed in vain, for your enemies shall eat it. I will set My face against you, and you shall be defeated by your enemies. Those who hate you shall reign over you, and you shall flee when no one pursues you.... I will break the pride of your power; I will make your heavens like iron and your earth like bronze (Leviticus 26:14–19).

This is where the U.S. and many other nations are headed. Rather than pretend otherwise, we will cry from the housetops to warn the peoples and nations we love. The prophets warned of disaster if Israel and other nations would not turn from their wicked ways. That is no doubt the reason why the prophets were seen as traitors, thrown in prison, and put to death—and that is why our message is rejected and despised by many. Yet we cannot ignore this warning from the prophet Amos: “… prepare to meet your God” (Amos 4:12).

We will continue to call for our peoples to turn from their wickedness and return to their Creator. Sadly, we do not expect that our nations will—but a few of their citizens will, and we will not hide the truth from anyone. In doing so, we will continue to give hope beyond the coming crisis, pointing to when Jesus Christ will return to establish a better world—tomorrow’s world!