America stands at the center of all the strangeness that has enveloped this moment in history. There is no other way to say it that fits the circumstance in which we find ourselves. At least there is no way to say it that I, myself, can offer.

This is what is meant by the title of the commentary.

It is true that the COVID-19 pandemic affects the entire world of humanity, not just the US. It is true that there is economic turmoil not just here, but in every nation on earth. It is true that there is violence based upon racial strife breaking out in major cities around the world, not just in America. But all of these things seem to center in and around, and stem from, this nation.

Perhaps it is just a matter of perspective. Maybe its nationalistic myopia from which I suffer in considering all we are enduring. But I don’t think so.

America, as we have looked at many times, is the holdup to the globalist agenda hatched in the high places of wickedness by the powers and principalities, both human and demonic. My thoughts are stronger than ever in this regard in considering things from our America-centric prophetic perspective.

The most crucial presidential election yet, in my opinion, looms just ahead. One cannot just sense, but see—through minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour actions by the enraged—assaults from every angle against America as founded that the above perspective is the right vantage from which to draw conclusions.

It is the right perspective, not in the geopolitical sense of “right” vs “left,” but the right perspective from the standpoint of what the Bible says about what is coming.

And what is coming is a regime so different from what we have known that it is unimaginable that it could ever happen in the minds of average Americans. It will be a regime that will produce, as Jesus put it, a time of tribulation “such as never was, nor will ever be.” It will be a beast regime—that of the man who will be Antichrist.

The question we who teach, preach, and write about Bible prophecy get practically every time there is a forum for questions and answers is something like: “What about America—is it in Bible prophecy?”

The answer is “No, America isn’t mentioned by name in Bible prophecy.” But, it is always appropriate to follow up with: “However, America is certainly in prophecy in the sense of being among the nations foretold to influence the course of human history while the end of the age approaches and the Tribulation looms.” We can say that, because here we are, right in the mix of things moving the world toward the climax of human history.  And, are they ever moving!

With this nation at the black heart of all the satanically inspired rage, hatred, and determination to bring America down so globalist plans can proceed, I can’t accept that I’m being America-centric unnecessarily. This nation is in the middle of a war, an end-times war in which I believe the Lord Himself intervened miraculously in the 2016 presidential election.

I have no answers to the war’s outcome in the short term. We do know that the globalists will get their “New World Order” at some point. But for now, the battle rages, and the very fact that it does is most encouraging. God is still in the middle of the fight, and there is no better side to be on than that of the omnipotent Creator of all things.  

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 we see developing—matters we see unfolding in daily, even hourly, news reports. In this sense, I believe 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 mankind 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 has 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.

Israel the Real Target

No matter the other exigencies of the hour, it is Israel that is the true target of Satan and his minions in the high places of Ephesians 6: 12. The violent organization Black Lives Matter, despite the media trying to make it look like a force for righteousness in correcting past wrongs, is an anti-Semitic evil based upon so-called liberation theology. We heard the thrust of that theology when Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor in Chicago, told God to God D**** America before the presidential election of 2008.

It is Israel that Satan is aiming at, ultimately. Bible prophecy culminates first with Antichrist declaring himself God in the temple in Jerusalem. He next leads an attack on Jerusalem when he is let out of the bottomless pit at the end of the millennial reign of Christ.

Israel, America’s Saving Grace

This brings us to America’s second reason for existence—toward the purpose of accomplishing God’s great prophetic plan. In my view, this use of the phenomenally powerful American nation is among the most profound indicators we can find that America, indeed, is in prophecy. And, I believe that our nation being in prophecy includes God using it to be midwife in Israel’s modern birth into the land promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob those thousands of years ago.

President Donald J. Trump has been a friend to Israel like no president since Harry S. Truman. This was a stark change from the anger and disrespect with which the Obama administration treated God’s chosen nation.

Genesis 12:1–3 is still in effect. I have to believe that this counts significantly in God’s great economy for explaining why both Mr. Trump and America continue to survive the most horrendous spiritual/supernatural assault yet endured on an American president and this nation.

So, all things considered, it is permitted to be America-centric in the matter of peering into Bible prophecy on the immediate horizon, I am convinced. Continue to pray the prayer of 2 Chronicles 7:14 and to hold fast to Titus 2:13 and Luke 21:28. Our redemption is drawing near.

I remember as a teenager my dad telling me that Papa (his father, whom we grandchildren called “Daddy James”) said that one day there would be a great racial war in America. My grandfather, who was, among many other things, a school teacher and Pentecostal preacher in south Arkansas, apparently was well known in the region and was sought out for his opinion and advice by politicians and many others. His assessment was that the treatment being given black people would one day come back to haunt the nation.

I heard the story many times from my father and from others within our family on the James side. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the memories of those stories at age fifteen, even during the 1957 integration crisis at Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.

That crisis seemed to sort of work itself out, with a lot of help from President Dwight D. Eisenhower and a national guard that the president took out from under the command of Governor Orval Faubus.

As a tenth grader, the racial things just didn’t register very strongly with me. There was complete segregation at the time in my hometown, and Benton High School seemed a continent away from the epicenter of the great controversy of integration vs segregation—although my high school was no more than twenty-five miles from Central High in Little Rock.

The current racial crisis, as I view it as a septuagenarian, finally brings into focus the forward thinker man Daddy James apparently was…

I don’t know how much Bible prophecy played into his thinking. I just knew him when I was a teenager. He died in 1958 and, to me, he was kind of a grumpy old guy with thick, white, tousled hair and white, bushy eyebrows. He was a big, burly, man who sat around at 80-something and grumbled in curmudgeon fashion at us youngsters whenever we tried to get into his violin case in one corner of the room where his favorite chair sat. He was a gifted musician and artist.

I have to think, now, that his observations were somewhat inspired. I’ve always been told that Daddy James was a genius, with few social graces—of which he didn’t wish to indulge, at any rate, because he was inwardly turned.

He was quite the Bible student, family and friends said. This makes me wonder whether Bible prophecy played deeply into his pontification during the rare times he cared to wax eloquent on America’s future racial problems.

Whether he possessed a degree of prescience I don’t know. But here we are, and there is a great racial divide that could break into a civil war of sorts. This especially since of the most volatile areas of the country have governors and mayors who are thinking about defunding police departments, and even about completely doing away with them, in order to correct wrongs done to the black race.

Certainly corrections need to be made in ways that would assure that racial profiling and bigotry are not allowed within police departments. What happened to George Floyd should never be allowed to happen again. But it will. It is inevitable. Whether through deliberate, hate-filled racial bigotry or simply a completely lawful act by a law enforcement official to apprehend someone suspected of a criminal act, it will happen again.

There are always going to be lawbreakers, and there are always going to be bigots. As the saying goes, you can’t legislate morality. You can make laws to enforce compliance, but only God can change spiritual hearts. He does so through the saving of souls one individual at a time.

To want to defund law enforcement is nothing short of insanity, unless we want complete anarchy to rule. And one being does indeed want this scenario.

Satan, of course, is the personage stirring the pot of racial hatreds. He and his minions, both demonic and human, are active. Their chief aim is to bring America into the globalist order for the wind-up of the age, to establish his man, Antichrist, on the platform of control Lucifer the fallen one wants.

Satan’s hatred for humanity is infinitely greater than the leftists’ hatred for President Donald Trump. And this president is the target at the center of this crisis—the one I guess Gideon Johnson James—Daddy James—somehow foresaw.

Or maybe he just took the Word of Jesus, Himself, and extrapolated the evil that he perceived to be on its way to become an incendiary bomb that would explode near the time Christ would return.

I kind of sense that Daddy James read the following and cogitated quite a bit on the things within.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. (Matthew 24:7)

It is stunning, regarding Jesus’ prophecy here. We are experiencing these very symptoms of things the Lord foretold for the very end of the age. They are part of the convergence we have been experiencing for some time during these past several years.

He said there will be famines, meaning famines of unusual dimension and cause. Jesus always spoke in terms that indicated things He prophesied will be far beyond normal levels.

The African continent and some Asian and other areas are experiencing a likelihood of growing famine. This growing probability of famine is the result of the second thing Jesus said in this prophetic verse. There is pestilence. Pestilence in the form of disease runs rampant in those areas of the world mentioned. And, as we know, pestilence in the form of the Wuhan virus is running rampant throughout the world as well.

But, beyond this, pestilence in the form of locust swarms, and even swarms of deadly hornets, the likes of which haven’t been seen since ancient times, are denuding the agricultural lands that feed the populations affected.

All the while the famines and pestilences are devastating broad swaths of the world, the great human plague is developing that has at its center bigotry and racial hatred.

Jesus foretold that “nation shall rise against nation.”

The Greek word for “nation,” here, as we have seen before, is ethnos. This means “ethnic,” of course…race—i.e., races will rise up against other races.

Perhaps my grandfather didn’t have the gift of prophecy—certainly not in the sense of Old and New Testament prophets. There is no such gift today. One thing sure, though, our Lord did and does have that ability. It sure appears He was foretelling this very moment of racial strife.

This is, I believe, all to remind those of us who truly believe every Word in the Bible that His call to us must be near indeed.

For when you see all these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your head, for your redemption draws near. (Luke 21: 28)

Pat Robertson was once heard to say on his TV program that there couldn’t be a sudden disappearance of millions of people. That would cause such chaos and carnage that such a thing just couldn’t happen. I paraphrase, but that was very close to his declaration.

He said that it would mean cars would have massive accidents, airplanes would crash, and the world would just come unglued. This was just not going to happen, he adamantly said.

I haven’t a clue of where he was going with this except to suspect that he was making known his genuine disdain for the teaching of Rapture—particularly of the pre-Trib Rapture. He consistently railed against the teaching at the time.

This isn’t meant to cast aspersions upon Mr. Robertson. But the words I remember him saying do open up my thinking regarding things that will begin taking place immediately when people all over the world suddenly vanish before the eyes of those left behind, or when people are missing the next day where it is nighttime and most people are sleeping when the Rapture occurs.

The matter that sparked this thinking also is the explosion of violence that erupted when George Floyd, an African-American, was killed by the Minneapolis policeman just over a week ago.

Video of the officer pressing his knee into the neck of Mr. Floyd until he died went viral. It appeared to be murder caught in the act—on video recording. Even the victim’s begging to be allowed to breathe before he died was there for the world to see and hear.

Like in the cases of violence in American cities in the previous incidents where black men were killed by actions of white policemen and by a “white Hispanic” man, the city of the killing, Minneapolis, exploded in violence. The white-hot rage spread to many other large cities around America. Police vehicles were damaged and burned; the police precinct building near the scene of Mr. Floyd’s death was invaded and burned to the ground. The police fled the scene and left it to the anarchists for the most part.

Looters entered and stole all they could get, destroying buildings and businesses in the process.

Like in other cases of what was deemed police brutality, the media quickly, in my view, encouraged the violence by giving the rioters camera time and even moral support. The genuine expressions of protestation—the acts of the ones who lawfully assembled to express their anger—were lost in the anarchy that ensued.

Even CNN’s headquarters being targeted for destruction in Atlanta didn’t cause that media entity to come against the rioters to any meaningful extent. To my way of thinking, it was for that news organization, like for the anarchists, yet another opportunity to push the anti-American agenda they seem to champion.

This all, again, brought to mind the belief of those who have opinions on the Rapture—whether it will occur or is a prophetic event that will not happen.

Particularly, I’m interested in examining the opinions of those who believe the Rapture is going to occur, but who think it will have little effect on American life. It will, I’ve heard these say, hardly be noticed when it happens. Their reasoning is that there are so few “real Christians” that their numbers missing will have no significant effect.

It’s dumbfounding to think that those with such a view have witnessed the American inner cities go insane with rage over one incident and used that incident to burn and loot believe that the disappearance of millions will cause but a ripple. And factors even more traumatic than just the disappearance must be considered.

The first is the fact that every child, even those still in the womb, will be gone in that instant. We’ve gone over a number of times why this is so, as God’s very character is at stake. How can anyone believe that the national psyche will remain untouched—or touched very little—by such an occurrence?

Second, and even more importantly, the Holy Spirit will, in that moment remove as the Restrainer of evil, according to 2 Thessalonians 2. If people act as they have in the recent madness by burning their cities and looting at every opportunity, how will they react to the Rapture? Do these who think it will have little effect on society and culture really believe the anarchists won’t go completely insane with their consciences having been shed of all restraint?

We’ve seen, I believe, just a foretaste of what that post-Rapture time will be like immediately following Christ’s call to the Church. It is something for profound consideration. Would anyone want those they love to be left behind to suffer the throes of enragement witnessed within America’s cities the past week? The reality of that time will almost certainly be infinitely worse than what occurred following the outrageous killing of Mr. Floyd on the street in Minneapolis.

To avoid the post-Rapture rage, it is wise to accept pre-Rapture salvation through the grace-gift offer of the God who said:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16)

Questions continue about what is going on in all of this geopolitical and cultural/societal intrigue in terms of Bible prophecy. What does it all mean? Why such a divide? Why such rage and hatred? People want answers, and the answer is spiritual. It is all there in Bible prophecy. It is altogether a major indicator of how near we are to the end of this Age of Grace.

The spirit of Antichrist is indeed surging. It’s most revealed through the globalist mantra—that anyone who is in denial about climate change is, in effect, an apostate within their worldview.

But, in fact, another spirit of denial is the true obstacle to a pristine earth.

It is those who make such accusations against Bible-believing Christian, climate-change deniers who are at the heart of earth’s many problems. Chiefly, the Antichrist spirit denies the Lord Jesus Christ and His very existence. These are the true deniers—those who believe and proclaim that they, not Christ, have a right to control the destiny of this planet He created.

John the apostle and author of Revelation—the vision of the Apocalypse—presents what God gave Him to tell us about the Antichrist spirit.

And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” (1 John 4:3)

Deniers of Jesus Christ—the powers and principalities in high places, those human minions and supernatural minions—and their incessant strategies and determination to keep God out of things manifest the spirit of Antichrist at an accelerating rate.

Christians are battling the Antichrist spirit at the highest levels—the evil within both human and demonic minions. Our would-be rulers (those denying, through being influenced by, the anti-Christ spirit that God should reign) hold powerful positions within the top strata of globalist echelons. It all revolves around worldwide satanic influence on matters involving the so-called deep state. It is Ephesians 6:12 we’ve been watching in action. Nationalism must go…boundaries must be erased. Sovereignty must be eliminated so global government by the elites might rule.

Once again, it’s good to look at the Apostle Paul’s warning:

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

These powers that be in high places of government view the US as the problem rather than the answer to conflict throughout the world. It is the richest, most powerful national entity to ever exist, so must be brought down, its assets given to the global elite to use for their own purposes.

The current presidential administration has, in the obviously enraged opinion of the deep-state and leftist minions, sought to change the way things have supposed to be progressing since post WW II. The global order as run by the high echelon of the diplomatic types and the people with political power have had that drive for ultimate power disrupted. America is, in this internationalist, no borders, view, supposed to be in place to fund the UN and all of its globalist agenda plans.

Making America Great Again is not in their blueprint. This nation, therefore, is the chief obstacle, nation-wise, to Satan’s plans in forming the one-world order he wants to set up for the coming Antichrist. That’s why we’ve endured insane rage while the powers in high places strive to get power back into the formerly established order by getting rid of this president.

The satanic assault against American society and culture can’t be missed by the spiritually attuned. Minions in high places have in recent years inflicted tremendous deleterious effects upon the nation’s moral fiber established by the founding fathers and by Christian church influences. America’s public, and even private, educational systems have become completely corrupted, first by the evolutional model, then by the Marxist educators at every level of the public school system.

The rage makes clear the existence of the Antichrist spirit in high places that continues to do everything to bring America and the world into the configuration Satan wants to establish for his soon-coming Antichrist platform. At the heart of the minions’ (both human and supernatural) effort is destruction of moral values and norms based upon Judeo-Christian precepts/concepts. Cultures and societies throughout the world—especially in America—must be altered drastically to pave the way for the coming Antichrist regime.

These minions in the high places of wickedness are even now using the so-called pandemic in their incessant drive to bring about their version of Heaven on earth. They will succeed for a time, but not until the Holy Spirit as Restrainer of evil removes as God’s prophetic Word foretells in 2 Thessalonians 2.

Just as we witness the Antichrist spirit surging, we, as born-again believers should have a surging sense of excitement and comfort. Redemption is near (Titus 2:13).

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to rule the airwaves, cyberspace, and every facet of our lives. Every story coming across our TV or computer screens continues to scream with the Coronavirus onslaught that has condemned us, potentially, to death, and almost certainly, too, economic depression. The pandemic is all the media want us to think about, and most gladly oblige by adhering to the guidelines demanded by those experts such as Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The figures they parade before our near-panicked eyes are front and center each and every news cycle. One snapshot in time, as the pandemic progresses, presented the following as I perused the numbers. They are taken from a Google search.

United States cases: Updated May 17 at 10:20 AM local

Confirmed: 1,500,148 (+26,733)

Deaths: 89,498 (+1,261)

Recovered: 274,265

Global cases: Updated May 17 at 9:20 AM local

Confirmed: 4,658,651 (+95,193)

Deaths: 312,239 (+4,074)

Recovered: 1,703,322 (+54,047)

There is great alarm over the deaths among these statistics. The number of cases both in America and globally are all-consuming. However, the statistics of recoveries are downplayed to the point they are never mentioned in many newscasts or news postings.

Any death, as the president and all others consistently remind us, is too many. There is a race to move Heaven and earth in order to find a vaccine that will guarantee one cannot get the virus. That is a quest that is, almost all of the experts agree, something that can’t happen for at least another 18 months. Some say there will never be a vaccine found for these types of viral diseases because they mutate constantly. The common flu, for example, has shots but not true vaccines. The shots can lessen the severity of the flu in patients. No vaccine has been produced that guarantees people won’t get any strain of the flu.

Vaccines have been produced that are effective for measles, smallpox, polio, and other diseases but not for the viral illnesses. You will have to ask someone besides yours truly to find out why this is the case. I certainly can’t give you the answer. I just know it’s a fact.

This great, all-consuming concern for our lives, as we have seen, has a raging political agenda attached to it. We can’t open up the economies either of America or the world until that magical vaccine is found. This is the opinion of those such as Dr. Fauci and the CDC for the most part.

Yet no such vaccine is likely forthcoming, despite the efforts of those such as Bill Gates, who, many of our friends with a squinted, conspiratorial eye toward his efforts believe, intends to inject in all of us a tracking device, or worse.

There might develop flu-like shots to lessen severity, but a true vaccine such as in measles or smallpox isn’t likely to be produced.

The satanic influence of all this particularly strikes my suspicion-meter when thinking on how, while there is all this burning concern for making sure no one ever again gets a case of Coronavirus, the most vulnerable and helpless of our kind are given no such concern or protective effort – except for those who are concerned for the sanctity of life.

While we see the figures each and every news cycle of cases and deaths of COVID-19 victims, we never see the statistics of the infanticide we are deliberately allowing to be perpetrated.

Abortion in America has been consistently very near 1 million or more babies per year for decades. Statistics show a slight lessening over the last few years, but still the mark hovers around the 1 million mark. The last time I looked at it, the number since Roe v Wade was nearing 70 million.

The COVID-19 Nazis – I mean officials – have told us that the most vulnerable among us, in addition to the elderly and those with severe health problems, are people of color – mostly meaning those who are African Americans. This is of great concern to, particularly, the progressives, as they prepare their plans for how to twist things in order to get Trump removed from office. They want back the numbers among the darker races they’ve lost due to Trump’s efforts to advance their plight in America.

They blame him for numbers of deaths being so high among people of color, as they put it. The conclusion they make is, of course, ludicrous, as is so much they try to peddle.

In considering facts about concern for African Americans and the Coronavirus, we wonder where the great concern is in the matter of African American babies in the wombs of their mothers. By far, the greatest number of abortions are performed on African American fetuses. They are a minority, but the majority of abortions are performed on black children. Where is the compassion of the Party that claims to champion the black American voter base?

There is great concern to prevent COVID-19, but no concern for helpless children in the womb.

We don’t have to wonder what the Creator God of Heaven thinks about the Pandemic vs Abortion statistical inequity.

Here is what David, a man after God’s own heart, wrote under Holy Spirit Inspiration:

“For thou hast possessed my reins: thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well. My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfected; and in thy book all my members were written, which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalms 139: 13-16).

I continue to believe that when the Rapture takes place and every womb is empty because those little ones are with Christ in that instant, God will have made a Statement about when life begins.

–Terry