America and Judgment
By Rev. D. Earl Cripe, Ph.D.
It was the winter of 2006. I was sitting was sitting by the fireplace one day in my big leather chair in my office at the church. At that point in time I was a pastor emeritus, having retired in the fall of 2005 and having turned the position of Senior Pastor over to Dr. Michael Miller. But I still had duties to perform because I continued to be the commentator on our media broadcasts that required a number of programs to be produced and sent out to the four corners on a weekly basis. I was listening to a heavy rain falling and felt very mellow, almost drowsy, as I thought about the program I was about to record. At some point in the next hour a conviction came upon me which was troubling. I felt I should warn the listening audience of the approaching judgment of God upon our nation in particular, and the world in general. This was a time when the economy was booming, people were changing houses almost as often as cars, the housing market was at an all-time high and there seemed to be no end of it, and there was a feeling of invincibility in the land when it came to domestic security and economy. If I said what I had in mind to say it would be sure to invoke a wagging of heads and a disdain. It would be looked at as an old prophet who was trying to say something that would attract attention to himself in a society that really did not care.
My conviction was a biblical one. Many centuries ago the apostles, and the Orthodox fathers that followed them, concluded that with the rejection and the crucifixion of the Christ by the nation of Israel, God had turned from an interest in this world to a program that focused on new birth and new life in a New Creation and a New Kingdom. For many years, I have taught that God is no longer interested in what happens to America, anymore than He was to the Parthians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, the British Empire or any other ascendant civilization in this world. In our view, the notion that America was ever Christian is simply misguided. There is no question that in the early days of our republic there was a greater reverence for God and for morality than there is now. Even so, one must be a revisionist where history is concerned if he does not understand that Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin, Scott, both of the Adams' and many of the other movers and shakers of the American Revolution were not Christian. The men just mentioned all identified themselves as Deists. By that they meant to say that after creating the earth and creating man, God went off and left us to our own devices, not communicating with us and not having any interest in what happened to us. If they were alive today they would acknowledge that they were atheists, but you could not get by with that in those days and still function as a public figure. Even so, the record is clear. Jefferson was in a running battle with the Christian Church. He did not consider Christ to be divine or the Bible to be the Word of God, and he labeled the apostles as a ragtag band of commoners who played fast and loose with the truth and wrote from the bias of poor memories and views that were convenient to the project of the moment.
Had anyone bothered to listen, John Dewey, the father of public education in America, spelled out clearly what was coming. "We will turn every classroom in America into a laboratory of humanism," said Dewey. They (the high priests of this new religion of higher education) would dispel old myths and establish the education of our young people upon provable scientific facts - Dewey said. The "scientific facts" to which Dewey made reference were the damnable satanic religion of anti-God, anti-Bible, anti-Christian church, anti-rules, anti-Judaic Christian morality of the Church and of decent men in the Western civilization since the days of Christ. In our time free speech movements, inalienable rights and the corrupting of words like love and tolerance have created a no-absolute, situation-ethics society where the only thing that is wrong is that which is right in the eyes of God and the Bible. Everything else is individual rights and should not be interfered with. In my lifetime I have watched our society go from a respect for the moral law were adultery was illegal and promiscuity was a jailing offense to a complete breakdown were the deviant, decadent corruption of homosexuality, drugs, amorality, and a steady diet of violence and videos of how to murder people in the most heinous of ways and how to derive the greatest pleasure from it are being pumped into our children constantly. It is true that the governing of society is not the business of the Church. But it is also true that the residual affects of the preaching of biblical morality by the Church once kept our culture fairly well in line. All of that is gone by the boards now. Without getting into a lengthy examination of the Scriptures it is evident to anyone who is a good Bible student that there comes a time when the judgment of God falls upon a society that has turned its back on Him, His Word, His moral law and His Church.
The things I warned about in that radio program were that judgment was coming upon this country in the form of economic collapse, fires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and pandemics where new diseases would outstrip the ability of pharmaceutical laboratories, doctors and hospitals to treat. I scarcely need to remind anyone of the things that have surged to the forefront since the winter of 2006. Our economic meltdown is such that we very well may not recover, we have had hurricanes in the south that are more destructive than anything we have seen in the past. We have had snow storms and floods in the east that have devastated states as well as towns and counties. We have had horrendous fires in the Southern California area that have wiped out tens of thousands of homes. We have had earthquakes offshore and around the world that have caused tsunamis, brought down entire towns, killed tens of thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless. We have had major volcanoes that, for the first time in the history of the world, have so filled the atmosphere of an entire continent with volcanic ash that it has interfered with commercial flights for weeks on end. Just recently my doctors have told me of bacteria that can longer be treated by any presently existing antibiotic and that are inevitably fatal to anyone who contracts them. They say what is obvious to me; it is going to get worse, and fast.
I do not tell you these things to impress you with how introspective or wise I am. It is true that I am an ordained prophet and have the right and authority to make these observations, but that is not the direction in which my gift of prophecy has gone through the years. I am one who has been able to see into the deep things of the word of God and make them known in lucid and plainspoken language that can be understood. I am not a predictor of the future. I simply lay out for you this scenario to make the point that I am not a Johnny-come-lately who has tried to cash in on the tragedies that have befallen us in the last few years and act as if I knew that it was coming and at what time. I point out to you that I made these observations at a time when no one expected the situation that we now experience. The reason for these judgments has nothing to do with me or my ability to see what others cannot. It is simply the result of being a friend of God and sticking close to the Scriptures. In His Word, God has warned us that these judgments were coming. What is the solution? The answer is that there is no solution. I will say again what I have often said to the displeasure of many: God is not interested in what happens to America. God's concern is only for the Mission of the Church and His mediatorial rule in this earth is only designed to slow down the onslaught of evil long enough for the Church to get Her work done. When that is accomplished, said the Apostle in the third chapter of the Second letter of St. Peter, the end will come and God will put the torch to this old creation. No society in the history of the world has ever survived blasphemy, perversion and anarchy, and we are not going to be the first. Beyond that, it does not appear that there are any new frontiers. There is nowhere to go and start over this time. I am not like some of the prating fools that one may hear in the media these days, predicting times and dates, but it does appear that the end must be near.
There is a solution for the individual, though there is none for America or for this old creation. That solution is to come to the Cross, to repent of being a depraved child of Adam, to be baptized by the Holy Ghost into the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and to be born into the New Creation of the New Adam. It is only that for which Christ is tarrying, and it is only that toward which we should bend every effort. If anyone should read this who is not a child of God by the new birth, let him hear this Gospel message and respond to it. God has made Christ to be sin for us, the incarnate God Man, who had no sin of His own in order that we might be reconciled to God. And now there is nothing left to do but to get on with that program. But do not wait too long; the next hurricane, volcano, fire, flood, incurable disease or economic devastation my come down on you.
December 2, 2010
God’s Point of View ©2010