A Reflection on the Massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Have you ever wondered if the United States is anywhere in Bible prophecy?

It is. Right here:

Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed (Revelation 15:3–4). ¹

And here:

Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living (Revelation 18:2–3).

If you missed it, scan the verses for these words: “All nations.”

Looks like that includes your nation and mine.

Yes. All nations will worship the Lord God Almighty some day.

And all nations have “drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality.”

Both of those things.

Should that surprise us?

I don’t know—nobody does—what Babylon is, but in my opinion, it isn’t the modern city of Babylon. The city in these verses has immense power. I’m more inclined to think that it represents the city of man in contrast to the city of God.

So, what does this mean to us, residing in this current time?

First, we should all know that each of our nations, are nothing.

Behold, the nations are like a drop from a bucket, and are accounted as the dust on the scales; behold, he takes up the coastlands like fine dust. All the nations are as nothing before him, they are accounted by him as less than nothing and emptiness (Isaiah 40:15 and 17).

However, let’s be frank, most of us love or appreciate our countries. I want a safe nation, one free of corruption, that does and honors good things. But my nation murders babies. My nation has redefined marriage.

My nation has turned away from God.

And my country is drunk with Babylon’s sexual immorality, just as yours has. My country needs Jesus, like yours does.

And that’s what I pray for, and I know that you are likely praying for that, as well.

One of the great sadnesses of my life is that this country, which I grew up loving, despite the cruelties she has inflicted, which she has striven to correct, is degenerating, like Rome, from within. Perhaps we will change our ways. Perhaps one day we will look back and say, “What on earth were we thinking when we thought it was good to kill babies?” Perhaps we will say, “Why did we ever think your sex could change because you thought it had?”

However, I don’t think this will happen.

I also wonder—I have no word from the Lord on this—if the United States is undergoing judgment. Many people within this beautiful nation, with all its prosperity, are killing themselves with drugs, for example; the highest rate in the world. This penchant for unhappiness, a desire to escape the realities of this world, is stunning isn’t it, for a country whose Declaration of Independence states that people are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? We don’t seem to be very happy. We don’t seem to value life in certain cases. We are killing each other with guns—not the highest rate of homicides in the world thankfully, but too many for a country that is supposed to be a Christian nation—which we are no longer.

Is this degeneration the American church’s fault? No, I don’t believe that. I have been and am deeply concerned about the unbiblical way the church conducts herself, but I have serious doubts if she had conducted herself as the early church did, that there would be much difference. The culture is too strong for us. It’s too easy to accede to its demands. It overwhelms too many of us in our individual lives, and it overwhelms us in the way we do church.

It’s too easy, too enticing, to be part of Babylon.

No surprise here, though, right? Remember the verses quoted earlier. All nations drink Babylon’s wine. And all nations are nothing, dust on the scales, a drop in the bucket.

Is the United States—is your country—in Scripture? Yes. And it’s exactly the way God foresaw it.

Lord God, be merciful. Please give us patience and perseverance, love, faith, and hope. We look forward to Your government. Your kingdom. We do not have the capacity to rule ourselves.

¹All Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

Gif courtesy of giphy.com