Authors note: This article appeared some time ago. American culture and societal corruption continue down a dark and dangerous pathway toward judgment and Sodom-like destruction.

Sudden destruction is certainly foretold following the removal of believers, Jesus said, just like when Lot was taken out of Sodom. And that destruction was total, as modern-day archeologists are proving as they dig in near the Dead Sea.

But has the final Word been written in Heaven’s pronouncement on earth’s nations, especially considering our own beloved America? I prayerfully hope not.

America—Sheep or Goat?

Will the United States of America be a sheep nation or a goat nation? That is perhaps a Shakespearian question in the vein of “To be or not to be?”.

The question, of course, is rooted in context of the Millennium, at the beginning of which Jesus Christ will judge which will be, symbolically, a sheep nation, or a goat nation—based upon how these entities dealt with God’s chosen nation, Israel. Believers in Christ who survive the horrendous Tribulation will inhabit the sheep nations. All who survive the Tribulation but who have not accepted Christ will be placed in the goat nations, then be cast into what is described as “outer darkness,” and will remain in that state until the white throne judgment at the end of the one-thousand-year reign of King Jesus upon the millennial earth.

Our quest here is to wonder just a bit on whether America is destined to be a sheep nation. You can guess without much speculation what I, personally, hope is the answer.

One thing that comes to mind in these contemporary times regarding the United States is its magnetic attraction to peoples around the world. This nation might be likened to the planet Jupiter. It is huge in most of the ways human beings see as alluring, giving it the greatest gravity—materially speaking—of any nation-state to grace earth’s surface. God has indeed blessed America “from sea to shining sea.”

While all other nations orbit this one, realization about the liberty that is synonymous with the US to worship, move about, work, play, or even just be slovenly doesn’t escape even those kept from knowing much about things going on around the rest of the planet. Indeed, America’s gravity dynamically has drawn all peoples toward its irresistible opulence. With the exception of very few, no one makes noises about leaving this nation to live elsewhere.

Billions look in America’s direction as the “shining light on the hill,” as President Ronald Reagan once called it.

Even the defectors who sought to dodge the draft during the Vietnam era have since done all they could to come back to the nation they deserted. The Hollywood types—like Barbra Streisand, for example—who periodically threaten to leave America because they don’t get their way, politically, decide to stay when it comes down to the moment of leaving or staying. In southern parlance, they know on which side their bread is buttered.

Perhaps to get right to the heart of what has made America the center of the universe of nations, and to try to determine its status so far as involvement in Bible prophecy might be concerned, I would like to consider a well-known historical observation by a man outside this country—a Frenchman, no less.

French social philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, while touring the United States in the 1800s, said about America: “America is great because America is good. If she ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.” De Tocqueville no doubt was speaking of how he viewed cultural and societal good. But, upon observing the nation’s Christian church foundation he encountered, he must have based his conclusion on the fact that America’s goodness in the societal sense was a result of Christianity running throughout the country’s cultural fiber. What he likely didn’t understand was what that “goodness” really means in God’s economy.

God’s Word speaks of this “good”: “And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? [there is] none good but one, [that is], God” (Mark 10:18).

Jesus was not saying to the man who fell on his knees before the Lord that He, Jesus, was not “good,” but the Lord was acclaiming that God, alone, is the only good. Jesus was—and is—the only “good” flesh-and-blood person to ever walk the earth’s surface following the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. That is because Jesus IS God.

De Tocqueville now looks from the past at America’s once pretty face, and his words of warning are reverberating: “If America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”

America, A Golden Cup

Again, is the name “America” given anywhere in Scripture? Of course not. But, the influence this nation has exerted since coming to its full bloom as earth’s greatest superpower in history makes it a prophetic nation. The Creator of all things continues to use America in His mighty hand to accomplish two very distinctive, supernatural purposes. As a matter of fact, the United States, in my view, has an overwhelming presence in Bible prophecy. Its place is at the very heart of the end-times things that we see developing—matters unfolding in daily, even hourly, news reports. In this sense, I am of the conviction that God is speaking of America—in type, if not by name, when His Word tells us the following:

Babylon [hath been] a golden cup in the LORD’S hand, that made all the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad. (Jeremiah 51:7)

Certainly, the United States of America has been a “golden cup” in the Lord’s hand. No other nation of modern vintage can come close to claiming that achievement.

Some nations of Europe were formative in bringing forth Christianity into the world, thus shedding a degree of gospel light into a world of sin-darkness.

But, it is America that, despite its great shortcomings and more recent degeneration, has been a shining beacon, reflecting from that golden cup in God’s hand.

Being the first nation in spreading to the whole world the gospel message—that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross makes possible the only way to redemption for lost humankind—is a feat no other country can claim. This, ultimately, has been done not by the offices or under the auspices of American ingenuity, but by the omniscience and the omnipotence of the One holding the “golden cup.” It is God’s grace and mercy that have put America as a beacon of God’s light upon that mountain of gospel dissemination. God’s providence gave this nation the industrial and technological genius—a fact that is denied, or that is so taken for granted today.

All of the grace God has shed upon America from sea to shining sea, it must now be noted here, means nothing in addressing the question we are seeking to answer about whether America will be a sheep nation or a goat nation.

The United States has been extremely generous with its wealth at every turn. Whether rebuilding war-torn nations far away, such as through the Marshall Plan, or providing billions of dollars whenever there are tragedies to be funded, our country has seemed to be the Good Samaritan. But our largesse as a people also will not determine whether America is destined for sheep-nation status.

Again, according to the prophetic Word, it seems national status in this regard is to be based on how other nations have dealt with God’s chosen nation, Israel.

It is based upon this factor—US/Israeli relationship—that I have great hope in trying to answer our question.

America was chosen by God, Himself, I have absolutely no doubt, to act as national midwife in Israel’s rebirth into modernity. Any true reading of history will attest to this reality. The revisionists, the Marxists, the evil from the mind of Satan cannot change this fact. America, despite its egregious acts of late against the God of Heaven, has been friend and protector of the fledgling Jewish state as it entered again as a nation at mid-twentieth century.

Will America face God’s judgment? Again, there can be no doubt. We have allowed the murder of more than sixty million children in their mothers’ wombs, just as a start on listing the absolute wickedness we have seen recently. God will judge this nation.

But there will be a glorious rebirth for America, I’m believing, once its sins are purged and the Lord again counts our nation as “good.”

Let me assure at the outset of today’s venture into the blogosphere, I by no means intend to be disparaging of or demeaning to those with hereditary or other mental disorders of any sort. It is spiritual health I refer by the use of the article’s title, not physical health.

That said, I state without reservation that there’s a growing insanity in this nation and world. It is hereditary in nature–rather, I should say, it is hereditary in the supernatural sense. The loss of normal sensibility becomes more apparent with each news cycle.

The cause of the insane condition is as ancient as the time of the first humans. Adam and Eve suffered the beginning of the spiritual mentality breakdown the moment Eve fell victim to Lucifer’s lies and Adam to his own choice to disobey God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree. All of their progeny have the infection God calls sin.

The gene that causes the insanity affects each and every one of us until the cure is accepted. We must receive that cure voluntarily, as surely as our human father Adam voluntarily received the deadly gene when he disobeyed his Creator’s warning.

The cure is, of course, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and His sacrifice on the cross at Calvary. He died for the sin of humankind and resurrected to life so that all who believe this truth and accept Jesus’ cleansing blood are instantaneously healed of all unrighteousness–forever.

However—it’s sad to have to say—the vast majority of humanity throughout the ages have not accepted God’s cure—His belief system for salvation. Thus humanity remains untreated. And now, at this late prophetic hour, the spiritual insanity is manifesting in ways that cannot be missed.

One recent article makes the point.

In 2016, Ash Williams became pregnant for the first time. Williams wants to be a parent eventually — but he wasn’t ready for a child then. He didn’t know much about what an abortion entailed, and he needed a ride, so he called up a friend who drove him. When they got to the clinic, Williams, who is trans, remembers the people working there didn’t care enough to get his name right — using, instead, the name on his license. Never mind asking about pronouns. “Working with the actual provider was really [expletive deleted] up, too,” he says. “I just remember he didn’t say one word to me, and I felt sad about that.”

It’s all there, isn’t it? In a single paragraph, we have all of the most insane and insidious progressive views on display. There’s the fiction of the “pregnant man.” There’s the “pregnant man” getting an abortion — that is, a gender-dysphoric female having her child killed by an abortionist. There’s the fact that the abortion clinic staff is faulted not for facilitating feticide but for paying insufficient attention to pronouns…

It’s a potent, eye-watering ending to a profile that manages to showcase everything wrong with our culture in 2024. “Pregnant men.” “Abortion showers.” For that matter, “abortion doulas.” Celebrating someone for an abortion (“Congratulations — it’s dead!”) People “deserve” abortion. It reminds me of a line from Proverbs 8: “All those who hate Me love death.” (“‘Pregnant man’” becomes ‘abortion doula’ to assist others who want to kill their babies,” LifeSite, Jonathon Van Maren, 6/5/24)

When considering such as reported here, one’s end-times thinking might go to Paul’s 2 Timothy chapter 3 “perilous times” prophecy: “In the last days…they will be without natural affection…”.

Certainly nothing is more natural than a man being a man and a woman being a woman, unless it is a woman having a baby and wanting only to love and nurture that little one. Yet, today, a broad swath of humanity prefers the murder of millions and millions of babies in the wombs of their mothers–even up to the moment of birth, and in some cases, just beyond the actual birth.

For example, in listening to the Chris Plante Show one morning recently, I heard him report on those protesting at an abortion clinic who were arrested for blocking a young woman from going into the clinic.

Whether they actually did so or not, I don’t know, but the story told was that the young woman was on the floor in the last stage of giving birth. She was in heavy labor. She was going to the clinic for an abortion. The pro-abortionist prosecutors were charging the pro-life protesters with interfering with the birth of the young woman’s child (thus charged even though she was trying to get into the clinic to have her child murdered).

Is there any doubt, upon hearing report after report of such craziness, that the insanity gene inhabits humankind?

We consider again God’s Word on that insanity gene, its cause and effect:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient…” (Romans 1:28)

There is forgiveness for the heinous sins of abortion and homosexuality, as well as all other anti-godliness. Here is the cure for the insanity gene that rules the reprobate mind. It will cleanse and change all into the mind-likeness of Christ, which saves the soul and makes any person acceptable for dwelling with God in Heaven for eternity.

That if you will confess with your mouth the lord Jesus, and will believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10:9–10)

With growing worldwide pressure surrounding God’s chosen nation in news reports hourly, the word picture drawn by the prophet Joel comes ever-clearer into focus:

For, behold, in those days, and in that time, when I shall bring again the captivity of Judah and Jerusalem, I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land. (Joel 3:1–2)

This indictment by the God of Heaven, when dissected, is against the entire world of nations. The history of the Jews and the diasporas they suffered is well documented. This hatred poured out on the Jewish people is inexplicable…apart from Jesus’ Words:

All these are the beginning of sorrows. Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another. (Matthew 24:8–10)

The world of nations, used by Satan to assault God’s chosen people with his hatred, have, throughout history, driven the Jewish people out of the land God promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob forever. They have scattered and divided God’s land of promise to the four winds of the earth. They have divided that land, just as the prophet Joel said.

For this reason, God will bring all nations of earth to the Valley of Jehoshaphat—that is, to the killing field of Jezreel or Armageddon.

The modern-day leaders of the nations hostile to Israel are carrying out Joel’s prophecy. They are the “Armageddon architects.”

The exponential ramping-up of hatred of Israel on a global scale–even among Western nations—is a sure signal of where this generation stands on God’s prophetic timeline. One recent report of such anger against the Jewish State–disguised as wanting only to secure peace for Israel and its Israel-hating neighbors—makes the point that God’s judgment as given in Joel 3:1–2 can’t be far off.

Spain’s socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez led a group of European states in recognizing Palestine as a state on Tuesday, saying the move was a step towards focusing “all our efforts to implement a two-state solution and make it a reality.”

Spain, Norway, and Ireland recognized Palestine as a state on Tuesday, making official by writ the announcement made by the group last week. The Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sánchez, was the first among the group to move on the morning, claiming his position was that giving Palestine international recognition would “help Israelis and Palestinians achieve peace.”

He said Palestine includes “West Bank and Gaza connected by a corridor,” and has its capital and “legitimate government of the Palestine National Authority” in East Jerusalem…

Israel responded, saying the group is “rewarding terrorism” by giving Palestine the veneer of legitimacy around the world so soon after the October 7th terrorist attacks. Foreign Minister Israel Katz said in a message addressed to Sánchez: “You are complicit in inciting the Jewish genocide and war crimes”…

Speaking in Madrid on Tuesday, Sánchez defended the outrage-provoking move by insisting he was working for peace. Further, he said, asserting Palestine is a state puts Spain in a club with “more than 140 countries that already recognize Palestine” worldwide. (“Spain, Norway, Ireland Formally Recognise Palestinian Statehood,” by Oliver JJ Lane, Breitbart News Network)

But God is not mocked, nor is He fooled. The nations of the world are led in this genocidal madness by the god of this world—Lucifer.

There is only one remedy for such hatred and rebellion: Joel says God will deal with the Israel-haters and all other anti-God forces on the plain of Megiddo, which Napoleon called the greatest natural battlefield on earth.

The rebellious globalist architects who want to build a world apart from God’s governance will lose this battle instantly, when the returning King of all kings simply speaks the Word with the all-powerful sword of His mouth. Again, I believe those words will be the same He spoke that calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee those millennia ago: “Peace, be still.”

One of the most false and cutting accusations launched at the belief that the Bible teaches a person cannot lose his or her salvation when truly born again (John 3:3) is: “If you believe once saved, always saved, you are saying people can live any way they want without fear of punishment.” Or so the line of condemning criticism goes.

The absolute assurance of eternal security, of course, engenders no such thought within the mind truly regenerated by the saving power of Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that the Lord convicts His children in their spirits, and that habitual, unrepented-of sin will result in severe penalties–even physical death, in some cases. The Heavenly Father’s patience is longsuffering, but it is not infinite.

A person who is a child of God cannot sin without severe repercussions if repentance isn’t forthcoming. But, that person will never be kicked out of God’s family. Never.

A kindred sort of accusation is thrown at those who believe in the pre-Trib view of Bible prophecy. The pre-Tribulation view, of course, is the one those of us here believe God’s Word teaches. It is the view that Jesus Christ will call all who are born again to Himself before the Tribulation, which is the last seven years of history leading to the Second Advent (Rev. 19:11).

The angry diatribe against the pre-Trib Rapture view–by even genuine Christians, in many cases–usually goes something like this: “People like you, who believe that the Lord is going to rapture them before the Tribulation, think you can live however you want, because you think and teach falsely that you are going to be rescued before God’s judgment and wrath fall, no matter what.”

The non-Christian accusers have their own version. It goes something like: “Christians who believe like that don’t care anything about making the world better. You even hope for things to get worse and worse. You wish for earthquakes, famines, pestilence, war in the Middle East, and for Armageddon to hurry up and get here so you will go to your pie in the sky, and watch the rest of us get ours.”

Although the first criticism is absolutely not true, I have to admit that, regarding the second, too often I’ve sensed–even heard–such sentiments from some of those who believe in the pre-Trib rapture. And, it is entirely the wrong attitude for the Christian to hold. There are no excuses for wanting the Christ-rejecting world of nonbelievers to be the recipients of God’s judgment and wrath. It is only by God’s unfathomable grace that every one of us isn’t headed into that time of unprecedented horror.

No matter how–to use Lot’s King James Version word–“vexed” we becomes by the debauched, debased actions of the lost world around us, our job as Christ’s children–His representatives here on earth–is of a completely different nature than wanting to see them “get what’s coming” to them. The changed nature produced by being born again into God’s eternal family should make you and me do just the opposite of wanting them, in our vexation, to get what we see as coming to them.

The Christian whose spirit is attuned to the Holy Spirit’s desire for the lost doesn’t want to see them “get what’s coming to them” either during the Tribulation or upon death. Rather, we want to do all within our power to keep them from having to go through the coming time of God’s judgment and wrath. That’s what Christ’s Great Commission to His disciples before He ascended to sit at the Father’s right hand is all about, you see. That is what God’s love–love that those who have Christ indwelling them possess–is all about. (Read Matthew 28:18-20.)

In the same vein, that’s what Bible prophecy is all about. Prophecy given in God’s Word has purpose–profound purpose. Bible prophecy has at its center the commission from the Lord to forewarn of God’s judgment and wrath to come upon all who oppose Him–the Lord of Heaven and Creator of all things. It is not the hatred of God for the lost people of this fallen planet that drives prophecy. It is the love of God that powers His prophetic Word. It must be the Christian’s desire, therefore, to study Bible prophecy and put forth those forewarnings out of a spirit of God’s love, not through an anger-filled abhorrence of those who are lost.

Christians who do study prophecy–and they seem to be few these days, I’m sad to have to say–are often heard wondering about when Christ will call the Church (born-again believers) in the Rapture. Everything seems so ripe for His plucking His people from this sin-darkened sphere.

Nothing and no one can change God’s timing for His next catastrophic intervention into earth’s history. It will happen exactly on time, as He has determined since before the foundation of this world. However, we might as believers look to ourselves for the Lord’s–often in our view–delay in calling us as outlined in 1 Corinthians 15:51-55 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

The Apostle Peter gave the heart of the reason Christ hasn’t raptured His church: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

The purpose of Bible prophecy is to show the love of God to a lost and otherwise doomed world. God is not willing that anyone should perish (die in his or her sins), but that all should come to repentance (accept Jesus Christ as the one and only sacrifice for sin that God will accept).

The Lord is “longsuffering.” The reason, I’m convinced, the Lord seems so “slack” to many in His coming is because those same people have neglected their duty to share the love of God with the lost–the lost whom God loves so very much that He sent His only begotten Son in order that they not perish.

It is well past the time for God’s people to begin investing in getting the message of the love of God to those who will otherwise not hear the warning of deadly things soon to befall this Christ-rejecting planet. Considering these times that so dramatically are signaling the coming Tribulation, Bible prophecy can and must be used as a productive tool for evangelism.