Wake Up Call

I haven't felt the pull to write in a very long time. Lately, though, a feeling has sat on me that I have not been able to shake. I have carried it for months without knowing what to do with it. I have hinted at it in church during my teachings and on my podcasts, but I have never laid it out fully.

I feel inclined to call it a burden. When I try to name how it feels, I think of how the prophets penned the phrase, “the burden of the Lord.” Not that the message is bad, but that it is heavy.

This initially started off as a post on X, but it ran too long, so I am putting it here.

A pattern of warning

In the Tanach, YHVH repeatedly sent messengers to warn people when they forsook his Torah or chased other gods. Ezekiel was set as a watchman for Israel. If he warned them and they listened, it would go well. If he warned them and they refused, judgment was on them. If he failed to warn them, their blood was on his head. The pattern is the same either way: a messenger was sent, again and again to warn the people. This held true throughout the history of Israel.

Some will say this only applied to Israel, because the prophecies were addressed to them. They were the people in covenant relationship with him at that time. That does not cancel the pattern. God has always warned before judgement. That is not limited to the Jew alone, but to the Gentile believers as well.

A nation that forgot

The Founding Fathers treated the founding of the United States as a nation under God. They tied blessings to keeping God first. For more than 250 years this country has been blessed in ways that could only be described as the "favor of God". Over time the loyalty of the people gradually shifted away. Like ancient Israel, we began to treat abundance as proof of who we were rather than who God had been to us.

Each generation taught the next less about him. Torah continually admonishes parents to teach their children about the goodness of God, and how it is connected to our obedience to him, so that they in turn can teach their children. The process was intended to go from generation to generation. That chain broke.

Discernment comes from knowing God. Without it, later generations would gradually embrace things that previous generations would have never considered entertaining. The last seventy years make that plain. Consider the mindset of people 70 years ago until now. It's almost a night and day difference. I will not catalog every change, but I will address a few for context.

In our culture today, we literally argue over the “transing” of children, men in women’s sports, and the inability to define a “woman”. We have become foolish in our way of thinking. This is one of the results of a nation who has forgotten who their God was. In the beginning, our identity was found in who God was. Outside of him, our identity becomes distorted.

A shifting culture

That in itself is bad, but that isn't where my concern lies. Within the past 10 or so years, I have noticed a global trend that has even impacted the U.S. During a time that our spiritual identity has greatly decreased, the Muslim population has begun to grow, and with its growth came its own spiritual identity. I've noticed how mosques began to spring up all over the nation. As the Muslim population increases, there has been more of a reverence for their cultural practices and beliefs.

Our elected officials have begun to make accommodations for them out of fear of being called racist or even an Islamophobe. What they have failed to realize is that many who come holding to political Islam have absolutely no intention of assimilating into American culture. Islam has never been a religion of accommodation, but rather subjugation. But when a nation forgets their own identity and allows another culture in that is fully aware of theirs, a shifting in culture becomes inevitable.

Call me Islamophobic if you want. That label does not move me. I couldn't care less what you choose to believe, that's your business. But let's consider Islamic trends. The problem is what political Islam has done when it gains numbers and power in other countries. Again, there is no assimilation into the host nation, but rather the host nation becomes more like Islamic countries.

What history shows

Several Middle Eastern countries once had large, ancient Christian communities: Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Turkey. Political and social shifts, including radical movements, reduced them to minorities.

Iraq is the clearest recent case. Estimates put Christians at about 1.5 million before 2003. The collapse came after the invasion, the civil war, and ISIS. By recent counts the number is on the order of 150,000 to 250,000, close to a 90 percent drop. Islam, in its political form, has not coexisted with those communities on equal terms. The demand has often been conversion, subjugation, or flight.

Sources: U.S. Department of State, 2022 Report on International Religious Freedom: Iraq (fewer than 150,000 Christians remain, down from about 1.5 million before 2003); BBC News, "Iraq's Christians 'close to extinction'", May 23, 2019 (Archbishop Bashar Warda of Erbil: from about 1.5 million to 250,000).

Iran makes the same point from another angle. In the 1970s, city life looked far freer. Women dressed as they chose. After Ayatollah Khomeini took power in 1979, mandatory Islamic dress and clerical rule replaced that. Islam was already the majority religion and had lived alongside other communities. The radical turn is what changed the country.

So there are two faces. One can live quietly. The other aims at subjugation. The second is the problem.

How it unfolds

Where Islam migrates, the early stage is usually a peaceful minority that does not assimilate. As numbers grow, so does the culture. Some adopt liberal language long enough to gain acceptance and office. Liberals treat them as allies and shield them from criticism. Once in power, they advance rules that favor Islamic priorities. A host country that no longer knows its own biblical roots does not see what is coming. Dissent gets labeled Islamophobia.

Someone recently described three phases. Phase one is where the United States is now: growing numbers, seats in office, street closures for prayer, anti-Israel protests, open support for terrorists. Phase two is what much of the UK already shows: authorities and media more afraid of the Islamophobia charge than of the act, citizens treated as the problem, sharia norms pressing in. Phase three is Iran, Afghanistan, and other places where radical Islam holds the state.

People here still cannot see it. Generations that were not taught to fear God have no foundation and no discernment. Those are the people in office today that are ignorantly oblivious of things to come. The two beliefs do not mix. Handing power to people who will not assimilate is how a constitutional country becomes something else. Our elected officials today are writing the conditions our children will live under tomorrow: not the Constitution, but sharia.

Plenty of people are warning of things to come, much like the prophets of old, but the cries are landing on deaf ears. I no longer think this is avoidable anymore.

A pastor once said that Islam is the judgment of God on “Christian” nations that abandoned the God of the Bible for theological liberalism, and again that Islam advances where believers no longer defend the gospel. I think that is right. When the book of Revelation speaks of believers being beheaded for their faith, only one religion comes to mind. Only one religion still demands that the "so-called infidels" either convert or die. Christianity and Islam cannot coexist together. The two are diametrically opposed to one another.

I find it interesting that Christians and Jews can live peacefully alongside non-believers without incident. There is no demand on the nonbeliever to believe. However, when it comes to Islam, there is no peace until the nonbeliever conforms. Conversion to Christianity is from the heart, whereas conversion to Islam is coerced.

Prepare for what’s coming

Warnings are continually being given. Not necessarily from biblical prophets, but they are warnings all the same. If they keep being ignored, judgement will come like a thief in the night. As I look at what's going on in the U.K., I see the U.S. sharing the same fate. We are making the same bad choices they made that led them to this outcome, and if we don't act now, it is just a matter of time before radical Islam rules this nation.

I'm reminded of Jeremiah 29 when the prophet tells Israel about the exile that was coming. He warned that it was inevitable. They were given ample time to repent and change their ways, but since they didn't, they would have to go through it. He told them to basically accept what was coming, get comfortable, marry wives, and even marry off your children there. Life will be much different for them but they will endure.

With this in mind, I see the same for the fate of the U.S. Judgment is inevitable. We've had time to repent and change our ways, but we haven't. So, prepare for what's to come. Adjust to it. It will be hard, but those that endure to the end will be saved.