News pundits have pontificated in every direction since President Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016.

We have been told about building the wall on our southern border –how it is inhumane. We hear about the president’s powering up the Obama-era, faded U.S. military –how it makes us a bully on the world scene. We were told his doing  away with many of the executive orders that he believes have helped bring the American economy and social structure to an unacceptable status will be detrimental to the have-nots of the nation.

The president’s achievements in accomplishing many of his  priorities, of course, have turned this country around, economically and in other important ways. We welcome new direction as we sense reprieve from the God of Heaven that 2016 election has brought. The prayers of God’s people, as I’ve pointed out previously has, I believe, helped win that reprieve from what seemed impending judgment.

Perhaps correction would be the most appropriate term. God’s people prayed that God would hear from Heaven and would put the nation on a course correction.

This, He seemingly has done.

He intervened a century ago to make a profound course correction following the raucous Gay Nineties and the debauched era following World War I termed the Roaring Twenties.

Writer John Steinbeck captured this corrective era in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. And, it was indeed an era when the crops of corrective judgment, whose seeds of refusing to follow the God-designed course for America had been planted more than a decade earlier, came to fruition.

Again, the tremendous Dust Bowl of the 1930s, I’m convinced, was a corrective measure while God prepared the American people for the Second World War–a conflict God didn’t cause, but certainly used to temper and harden this nation to make it ready to meet its destiny.

That destiny was primarily to bring modern Israel to birth on May 14, 1948. Also, to spread the gospel to the world through advancing communications technologies. The United States was blessed, economically, from that point, making it the wealthiest and most technologically advanced nation that has ever existed.

So, while Mr. Trump’s political agenda is important, even critical, to achieving worthy, laudable goals in turning America in the right direction, Heaven’s priorities are truly the matters for which God’s reprieve have been so mercifully given.

Of course, the Church (all born-again believers) should take this reprieve as a mandate to recapture moral ground–to roll back some of the social evils the Obama administration brought forth–most through executive fiat. It is that very church which has, in my estimation, allowed this slide toward the moral abyss through her acquiescence.

However, that said, I am convinced that the same two major issues are involved in this God-given reprieve.

Heaven’s priorities with the 2016 election, again, involves 1) seeing to it that the gospel message is carried forth throughout the world; and 2) that the nation Israel continues to have the most powerful nation on the planet as an ally and protector.

It is beyond argument that God doesn’t need the United States to protect Israel. But, it is also beyond argument–to my way of thinking, at least–that the Lord has used America to act first as midwife in birthing Israel into modernity and then to act as guardian during decades since that rebirth. The Lord of Heaven has chosen America for this specific function, it is likely, for as long as the planet remains in the pre-Tribulation era.

There will come a time when Israel will be under the wrathful hand of Antichrist and the rest of the world. God will intervene directly at that time. Daniel the prophet, passing along the angel’s words, puts it this way:

“And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time: and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.” (Dan 12: 1)

So, while we watch the unfolding of post-election aftermath, let us view things through the prism of Bible prophecy. We are not about to go into an era that offers prospect of the church building Heaven on earth as the Kingdom-Now purveyors would have it. All is further stage-setting for the Rapture of the Church and the appearance of the son of perdition .

But, it is a reprieve from Heaven we are witnessing and living, so let’s keep in mind Heaven’s priorities.

The Great Commission is still the top priority. Bringing as many lost people as possible into God’s family before the time of tribulation is our 2016 election mandate. Let us pray that the Lord sees fit to continue the reprieve He has granted until He calls the church to Himself.