A biblical perspective on current events

Thirty-two years ago, in May of 1988, God told me that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was going to be president and that he would have a vice president from the south, one who opposed him during the primaries but later joined with him. That VP turned out to be Al Gore of Tennessee.

Revelation from God always has a purpose. I have never known Him to do “small talk” or to engage in mere gossip. The revelation of 1988, I suppose, was partly because I lived in Arkansas at the time and knew many things about Clinton long before the general public knew. At any rate, God referred to him as a “beast man,” one having the heart of a beast.

I understood that terminology better as time passed. I now see it in terms of Daniel 4:16, the prophecy that King Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled in Daniel 4:31, 32. It refers to the rulers of Babylon who see and treat people as other animals (very “evolutionary”) and who rule according to self-interest. They eat “grass,” and we know that “all flesh is grass” (Isaiah 40:6; 1 Peter 1:24).

My ministry in Arkansas ended after Bill Clinton moved out of state. He moved to Washington DC in January 1993 to be the 42^nd president, and I moved to Washington state—the 42^nd state—in November 1993.

By this time, we also knew that Bill and Hillary Clinton were playing the role of Ahab and Jezebel in the biblical story. A few years later, many church prophets were saying the same, yet I know of none of them who expected Bill Clinton to humble himself as Ahab did in 1 Kings 21:29, nor did they have any revelation that his humbling would postpone divine judgment on America for precisely three years (1 Kings 22:1).

Clinton’s humbling came on September 11, 1998 in the wake of the Monica Lewinsky affair. On that day, Bill Clinton confessed his sin at the White House prayer breakfast and read Psalm 51, David’s prayer of repentance after his affair with Bathsheba. But like Ahab before him, his repentance was incomplete. Ahab did not give back the stolen field to Naboth; neither did Clinton end his evil practices. Hence, in both cases, while God gave both of them partial credit by postponing the judgment to the next generation (or presidency), the judgment itself was not cancelled.

Three years after Ahab’s humbling, war broke out between Israel and Syria. Three years after Clinton’s humbling was September 11, 2001, and America’s wars in the Middle East began. The precise timing, of course, should teach men about the sovereignty of God. The world is not run by men—good or evil. The world is run by the Creator Himself, who has every right to interact with the nations and to judge them according to His own laws.

Likewise, God gives men good or evil rulers according to His judgments. Such rulers do not merely bring about divine judgment; they are the judgment. Hence, God gave Judah to be under the authority of King Nebuchadnezzar as a matter of judgment against Judah for its lawlessness (Jeremiah 27:6). Nebuchadnezzar would never have become king if the kings of Judah had been righteous.

Nebuchadnezzar’s heart was changed after acting as a beast for a period of “seven times,” and he then gave glory to God and publicly recognized the God of Daniel as the true God (Daniel 4:34). In fact, the fourth chapter of Daniel was written by Nebuchadnezzar himself. He was not the only king in the succession of beast empires to do so. King Darius did so in Daniel 6:26, decreeing that everyone in his realm should recognize the God of Daniel as the true God.

In later history, we see that the Grecian king, Alexander the Great, came to Jerusalem and paid homage to the God of heaven. I shared this history here:

https://old.godskingdom.org/blog/2007/01/greece-a-christian-nation

Still later, Rome finally bowed to the God of heaven as well. So Bill Clinton’s humbling was not without precedent. God has done this with every beast empire throughout history just to show us that He remains sovereign and that these “beast-hearted” kings did not gain power by their own strength or wisdom.

That is perhaps the most important lesson we must know, if we are to have a right perspective of current events. Some love Donald Trump; others hate him. There is no neutrality or indifference among the people. But most people, including Christians, have difficulty recognizing that no president or king is really the one in charge. I have learned over the years to focus not on the works or policies of men, but on the purposes of the sovereign God as he uses men to accomplish His purposes and plans.

Hence, God raised up Donald Trump as a Jehu to destroy the house of Ahab (2 Kings 9:6-10). Whether people like it or not, Trump is doing this, because the purpose of God is to “avenge the blood of all the servants of the Lord at the hand of Jezebel.” Most of those sins have yet to be uncovered to the public, and so Jezebel still has much public support. But the judgment has already been set, and enough prophecy has already come to pass that confirms His word.

I am not on one side or the other; I am on God’s side and am in agreement with His word as revealed to me long ago. In my view, no one can truly understand the current political conflict without understanding its connection to the biblical pattern being replayed since 1993.