America at the Red Sea

President Bush's speech yesterday was described as a "painful" experience by veteran news reporter, Daniel Schorr. He said it was painful to watch the president have to admit that the US is not winning the war in Iraq, finally piercing the veil of wishful thinking and catching up to the public perception of the situation.

But, of course, we're not losing the war either, he says. What he means is that we do not lose any pitched battles that we fight.

The president also warns of the dire consequences of being run out of Iraq. That part is certainly true. It is for that reason we should never have gone into Iraq in the first place. One must count the cost before engaging in a project. First, the war was justified on the grounds of their supposed WMD's, which somehow disappeared. Then it was about Iraq's non-compliance with a UN resolution, ignoring the 30 UN resolutions that the Israelis have flouted.

Then Saddam was a bad man and needed to be deposed for the good of the people. "He was a brutal dictator," was the justification. Yes, he and a hundred others in the world. The fact is, when you rule a nation cobbled together from three distinct ethnic groups in a part of the world where ethnicity is far more important than in America, the choice is to rule by fear and force, or else see chaos develop.

Fear of Saddam was the only thing that kept the Shia and the Sunnis from killing each other earlier. A simple study of history shows the potential for sectarian violence, for we saw that not too long ago between Catholics and Protestants.

Once we overthrew the big bad wolf, we then disbanded the Iraqi army. This was our second mistake, for US troops then had to fill the vacuum. I knew this was a mistake when they did this, for they had too much confidence in their ability to shock the people and awe them into peaceful submission. After all, they had just witnessed the awesome firepower of missiles and tanks.

But necessity is the mother of invention. If you cannot win a war with troops, you can always make the victors wish they had never come in the first place. This has been accomplished by guerilla war, or "insurgency." Remember all those movies about the specter of a Soviet invasion and takeover of America? Remember how it glorified guerilla war by pockets of patriotic Americans? It showed how such tactics can bleed a country drop by drop until it has no more life blood in it.

That is what is happening today in Iraq. The only question is how long it takes before we have no more "blood" left in our economy. I don't mean just the blood of soldiers. I mean money, the life-blood of our economy. The Fed's policy of giving us money-transfusions is like giving a body too much saline solution. Pretty soon, there are no more red blood cells in the veins. Last March the Fed stopped telling the public how much money was being created ("M3"). Why? You can bet that it was not because of a lack of readership or lack of interest.

In my view, God is behind all of this. His short-term purpose is to bring us to the Red Sea, where the situation is hopeless and extremely dangerous. His long-term purpose is to show us that the American way of life and our secular government will not be able to save or sustain us from collapse. He will then pour out His Spirit upon us in order to give us the faith to call upon Him for divine intervention.

Is this not how God worked all through Scripture? How is it that it would be any different for us? The primary disconnect is the idea that God is partial in His dealings and that somehow He would do such things only to and for "Israel." Since most do not consider America to be Israel, we have this idea that God does not care about this nation.

My most recent book, taken from last Spring's web logs, is The Prophetic History of the United States. It shows the absolute link between America and ancient Israel. All of our major historical events have occurred on major time cycles linked to ancient Israel. Other nations no doubt can produce similar prophetic histories, but their citizens must write their own prophetic histories.

So it has been difficult to watch America being bled dry in the past few years. The only thing that sustains me is knowing God's reasons for allowing this, and faith that He knows what He is doing. Events are not spinning out of control. Biblical history is simply repeating itself precisely as revealed in Scripture.

The book of Judges gives us many examples of Israel's captivity, and each time it was brought upon the nation by forsaking God. So said the prophets. But the people did not really believe their word, so they did not take it seriously. Thus, time after time, they were brought into captivity until they repented. Then God would bring deliverers ("judges") to end their captivities.

America was a mixed bag at its founding. Though the Supreme Court ruled often that it was a Christian Nation, there was enough ambiguity built into the system by secularists of the day that our Christian status could be altered. Then set in the inevitable Christian hypocrisy and lawlessness (1800's), which weakened us further. Then God finally brought in a Babylonian system to rule us directly (1914).

They, in turn, brought us secularism (1930"s), and gave us a new goal of American Economic Empire, One Nation Without God. "Freedom" became synonymous with sexual freedom (1960's) and became a way of life. Now, as the President tells us, we are fighting a War on Terror to preserve that way of life. We are fighting those who "hate freedom," without seeing the full definition of "freedom."

It is not that I would support Islamic rule in America. But God raised up Islam to judge the Church back in the 7th century, and He has again called upon Islam to judge America. If Islam were ever to rule America, you would see the same blood bath here as we now see in Iraq, because it is not the average Muslim who would set the policy. It is always the most ruthless of them. And such people are willing to sacrifice thousands of other Muslims on their altars, to say nothing of Christians and secularists.

But in the Bible God never used good guys to judge Israel. He raised up ruthless kings and nations that thought nothing of killing others. Jeremiah was accused of supporting King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon--who was not Mr. Nice Guy. The prophet, however, knew the mind of God in this matter. He had no faith in Nebuchadnezzar; his faith was in God who had raised up Nebuchadnezzar as His servant (Jer. 27:6) to judge Israel.

It is difficult for people to comprehend such a thing. We never view ourselves as God does. Our patriotism often gets in the way of seeing the nation realistically as God sees us. It is the same with the denominational system. Our loyalty to denominations often gets in the way of seeing it as a manifestation of King Saul, as Scripture teaches. Yet Christians demanded an earthly "king" to rule them, and so they got their desire, even as Israel did in getting King Saul.

We do not need to make a few adjustments and corrections. We need a complete overhaul in both the Church and the Nation. This is not possible without direct divine intervention. But He is certainly intervening just by placing us in an impossible situation in Iraq that has no solution. We cannot stay, and we cannot leave. We are at the Red Sea. The only salvation is through it, and this can happen only by divine intervention, for He alone can part the Sea.