NOTES ON THE GREAT AMERICAN DENOUEMENT: THE DARK CONSEQUENCE OF GOD’S HISTORIC WITHDRAWL

SCRIPTURE. “But now You have cast us off and brought us to dishonor, and You go not out with our armies.” – PSALM 44:9, AMPC

KEY TERMS. Cast off; Dishonor; Go not out

DENOUEMENT. “Denouement [Day-noo-mon] is a French word that literally means the action of ‘untying or unknotting’ [as in a coming apart or becoming undone]. It is a Conclusion after the climax of a Narrative in which the complexities of the plot are unraveled and the conflict is finally resolved. In the Denouement of a traditionally structured plot, the villain may be exposed, the mystery explained, misunderstandings clarified, or lovers reunited. In a Tragedy, the Conclusion is often called ‘The Catastrophe.’” – EDITORS, Britannica, ret. Aug. 4, 2023; edited

QUOTATION. “More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’Since then, I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’” – ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, “Acceptance Address,” The Templeton Prize, May 10, 1983; edited

Selah.

I.  FIRST THOUGHTS

Virtually all Americans who love their country agree on TWO THINGS, despite political differences: (1) The Republic is in near freefall at any number of levels of objective assessment; (2) We would all of us love to see her recover as soon as possible.

But that’s where American Unity stops cold. The reason is also twofold: (1) There is a contemporary segment of the culture that loves America,“right or wrong,” as we used to shout against it back in the 1960s. Loving the country ‘Unconditionally.’ (2) However, there is a second group, equally fervent but much smaller, that loves America ‘Conditionally,’ and remains loyal only to the extent she remains loyal to a Higher Standard of ethical and moral principles.

The first camp will do virtually anything, up to and including seizing political power by any means necessary, to get us back to where we once belonged. I shall call these, ‘The Pragmatists.’ A second camp wants America to first Repent of her many sins and departures from her earlier Covenant with God, without which they believe God will severely judge and possibly even destroy us for our corruption. I shall call these, ‘The Originalists.’

Their disagreement is so protracted and increasingly severe in recent years, as to be tearing entire cities, organizations and families apart, possibly leading to what some experts believe will be a Second Civil War.

ANOTHER REFLECTION. As I opened my second thoughts to this particular Commentary, I could not help but think of that most famous and gripping of poems penned by DYLAN THOMAS in 1947, ‘The Dying of the Light.’ Throughout our history, America has been referred to by various leaders as “A Light to the Nations,” or, ‘A City on a Hill.”

These Ideals, not unlike Biblical references to Israel and the Body of Christ in foregone days (cf. Isa. 42:6; Matt. 5:14), are the stuff of The Originalists mentioned above. Their deep desire is to see what ALEXIS DE TOQUEVILLE arguably saw in his roughly 10-month tour of the young Nation to see what made her uniquely great (Democracy in America, 1835, 1840):

‘Judeo-Christian Virtue.’

The American Founders wrote often and passionately of our need to remain Virtuous. SAMUEL ADAMS wrote one of the more memorable statements of that aspect of the American Vision in a letter to his friend, JAMES WARREN, who like him had advocated resistance to the British Crown (Feb. 12, 1779).

“A general Dissolution of the Principles and Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. ‘While the people are virtuous, they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their Virtue, they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal invader’ … If we would enjoy this Gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.”

But something terrible and historic has happened to America, what the historian PAUL JOHNSON called a great, ‘Dégringolade,’ in his epic work, Modern Times (1983). It means a rapid fall from some higher estate, a ‘Precipitous Decline’ of some sort leading to termination or death, the end of some great enterprise.

THESIS. ‘America is Dying, beloved.’ Tragically, she has in my view little hope of recovery since her people, especially her Religious Leaders, refuse to recognize our Historic Breach of our traditional Covenant with a Biblical Framework as the basis of our conduct.

It gives me no pleasure at all to write that Epitaph, but after over seven years of the most intense study of us that I have ever conducted, I cannot presently reach any other reasonable conclusion. As the Russian dissident Mr. Solzhenitsyn warned in 1983, the same year as Mr. Johnson’s publication:

 ‘We have abandoned God! That is why all this has happened.’

Indeed, we have not only abandoned God, but we have dared to ‘replace Him with another king,’ an altogether foreign ruler, Antichrist himself, very likely about to become reelected as America’s First Dictator and our Last President. Selah.

II.  THE TEACHING

SCRIPTURE. “But now You have cast us off and brought us to dishonor, and You go not out with our armies.” – PSALM 44:9, AMPC

KEY TERMS. Cast off; Dishonor; Go not out.

• CAST OFF. ‘Zanach’ [זָנַח]: “To push aside, reject, forsake, fail; to remove far off or away; to spurn, as with one who stinks or emits an offensive stench; to throw away, as any thing useless or vile; refuse to receive; to slight; to despise.”

• DISHONOR. ‘Kalam’ [כָּלַם]: “To be humiliated; to wound, taunt or insult; to be [publicly] brought to shame; dishonored and confounded by judgment; to be reproached for corruption; disgrace; ignominy; whatever constitutes a stain or blemish in the reputation.”

• GO NOT OUT. ‘Yatsa’ [יָצָא]: “To refuse to go forth on behalf of; to [thereby] condemn; or depart from; to let go of; to no longer grow or germinate; to go forth from the presence of; permitting a calamity from which they shall not be able to escape; refers to ‘a time of expiring’ [or dying].”

COMMENTARY. “‘But thou hast cast off’ – This, with what follows to Psalm 44:17, describe the desolate and afflicted State of the Church, under the Gospel Dispensation, in some parts and ages of it; and in the light in which it was viewed by the Church, previous to the encouragement she took from the consideration of favours and benefits formerly bestowed, and of her covenant interest in God, related in the preceding verses. She looked upon herself as ‘cast off,’ because afflicted and persecuted, and the Lord did not arise to her immediate help and deliverance …

‘And put us to shame’ – Before men, at the taking of the Ark, as Arama; rather for their faith in God, and boasting of Him, when He did not appear for them, but suffered them to continue in their afflictions and distresses; which occasioned their enemies to triumph over them, and say unto them, where is your God? And also before God, who being forsaken by Him, could not come before Him with that holy boldness and confidence they were wont to do; see Sol. 2:14.

‘And goest not forth with our armies’ –  As the Generalissimo of them; see 1 Samuel 8:20; not leading them forth, and going before them; not teaching their hands to war and their fingers to fight; nor inspiring them with courage and valour; nor giving success and victory to them as formerly … ‘The Gospel ministry is a warfare;’ the preachers of it are good soldiers of Christ under Him; their weapons are not carnal, but spiritual; great success attended the word in ‘The First Times of the Gospel;’ Christ went forth with His armies conquering and to conquer; and multitudes were subdued by Him and became subjects of Him.

But in some [‘Later or Last] Ages’ there has been but little success, few have believed the report of the Gospel, and been converted by it; Christ’s ministers have laboured in vain, Satan’s kingdom, though attacked, yet not weakened, nor Christ’s Kingdom enlarged, but rather all the reverse; ‘Antichrist has been suffered,’ as to make war with the saints, so to prevail and overcome, and will do so, Revelation 13:4; but it will not be always the case, Christ will [ultimately] go forth with His armies, and make great conquests again, Revelation 11:15.” – JOHN GILL, An Exposition of the Old and New Testament, 9 vols., 1746-1763; edited

ALL SHALL SUFFER. The riveting point of this passage and it’s rendering by the good Mr. Gill is something I had never fully realized as clearly as I do now. I remember BOB DYLAN’S early Evangelical ballad that declared, “You gotta serve somebody. Well it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody” (1979). And by inexorable extension: ‘We will suffer, for someone.’

The Question: But ‘for whom,’ beloved, and ‘for what cause?’

IV.  THE GREAT AMERICAN DENOUEMENT

In 1958, EUGENE BURDICK AND WILLIAM LEDERER published a riveting political novel titled, The Ugly American that set the international diplomatic world afire. It depicted the catastrophic failures of the U.S. diplomatic corps in Southeast Asia, and unearthed a Taproot of hatred for America that had been building globally in the aftermath of World War II, when American Hegemony had become the fixed pillar upon which the International Order had become built.

AMERICA GONE UGLY. Most of you already know of my strong affinity for the sort of analytic journalism produced by The Atlantic magazine. Today’s excursion into their rich pool of wisdom is by TOM MCTAGUE, a political affairs analyst and author of two books dealing with, respectively, the 2017 House Election, and one on the way dealing with the Fracturing of Britain.

This piece is titled, “The Decline of the American World,” published on June 24, 2020 (edited). I will bullet point his main ideas best I can from the typically wide-ranging review of this historic issue.

• INTRODUCTION. Other countries are used to loathing America, admiring America, and fearing America (sometimes all at once). But pitying America? That one is new.

• EXPATRIATION. “He hated america very deeply,” JOHN LE CARRÉ wrote of his fictional Soviet mole, Bill Haydon, in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Haydon had just been unmasked as a double agent at the heart of Britain’s secret service, one whose treachery was motivated by animus, not so much to England but to America. “It’s an aesthetic judgment as much as anything,” Haydon explained, before hastily adding: “Partly a moral one, of course” …

• MOTIVATION. At one level, the ‘Ugliness of the [American] Moment’ seems a trite observation to make. And yet it gets to the core of the complicated relationship the rest of the world has with America. In Tinker Tailor [1974], Haydon at first attempts to justify his betrayal with a long political apologia, but, in the end, as he and le Carré’s hero, the master spy George Smiley, both know, the politics are just the shell. The real motivation lies underneath: the aesthetic, the instinct. Haydon—upper-class, educated, cultured, European—just could not stand the sight of America. 

• HUMILIATION. It is hard to escape the feeling that this is a uniquely Humiliating Moment for America. As citizens of the world the United States created, we are accustomed to listening to those who loathe America, admire America, and fear America (sometimes all at the same time). ‘But feeling pity for America?’ That one is new, even if the schadenfreude [pleasure at America’s downfall] is painfully myopic. If it’s the aesthetic that matters, the U.S. today simply doesn’t look like the country that the rest of us should aspire to, envy, or replicate.

• EUROPE. If this is a uniquely Humiliating Moment for the U.S., then, it is also, by definition, a uniquely humiliating one for Europe. Each of the Continent’s major countries has the freedom to break from American power should it summon the political will to do so but prefers to offer symbolic opposition while hoping for a change in leadership. In some respects, Europe’s response since 2016 has been almost as lamentable as Trump has been to American prestige.

• APOGEE. By 1946, when Winston Churchill arrived in Fulton, Missouri, to deliver his famous Iron Curtain Speech, the might of the United States was obvious. The U.S. had the weapons to destroy the world, the military reach to control it, and the economy to continue growing rich from it. Churchill opened his speech with a warning: “The United States stands at this time at the pinnacle of world power. It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future. If you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done, but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement.”

• BLINDNESS. America’s problem is that the rest of the world can see when it has fallen below its achievements. In moments such as the current one, it is hard to dispute some of the criticisms leveled by the country’s most vociferous critics from abroad: That it is irredeemably racist or overly ambivalent to poverty and violence, police brutality and guns. The rights and wrongs don’t appear particularly complicated in this Dilemma, even if the country itself is.

• DISGUST. In his travel book, American Notes, for instance, CHARLES DICKENS recalls his loathing for much of what he saw on his adventures through the country. “The longer Dickens rubbed shoulders with Americans, the more he realised that the Americans were simply not English enough,” JEROME MECKIER, a professor and the author of Dickens: An Innocent Abroad, told the BBC in 2012. “He began to find them overbearing, boastful, vulgar, uncivil, insensitive, and above all acquisitive.”

• CONCLUSION. Dickens, like le Carré, captured America’s unique hold on the world and the fundamental reality that it can never live up to people’s imagination of what it is, good or bad. As it watches today, it recoils but cannot stop looking. In the United States, the world sees itself, but in an extreme form: More violent and free, rich and repressed, beautiful and ugly. Like Dickens, the world expects more of America. But as le Carré observed, it is also, largely, an aesthetic thing—‘We don’t like what we see when we look hard, because we see ourselves.’

Based on this prescient Portrait of the American Decline into Ugliness, I will offer my own thoughts on all that we have read thus far in the next and final section of this Commentary.

IV.  LAST THOUGHTS

I have said before and need to clearly restate for the record once again that I take absolutely no pleasure in watching the collapse of my Nation or my Church. Frankly, it is very much like seeing your mother and father die at the same time.

I quickly add, by rich contrast, that I take enormous comfort in the faithfulness of God who is telling us the Truth of what is taking place all around us and exposing the many lies told to us by our leaders and teachers for generations. I celebrate, therefore, the Words of The Christ in this regard:

“So Jesus said to those Jews who had believed in Him, If you abide in My word [hold fast to My teachings and live in accordance with them], you are truly My disciples. ‘And you will know the Truth, and the Truth will set you free.’” – JOHN 8:31-32, AMPC

MACDONALD’S DISTINCTION. “Jesus made ‘a Distinction’ between those who are [mere] ‘disciples’ and those who are ‘disciples indeed.’ A disciple is anyone who professes to be a learner, but a disciple indeed is ‘one who has definitely committed himself to the Lord Jesus Christ.’ Those who are true believers have this characteristic – they ‘abide’ in His Word. This means that they continue in the teachings of Christ. They do not turn aside from Him. True Faith always has the quality of permanence. They are not saved by abiding in his word, but they abide in His Word because they are saved.” – WILLIAM MACDONALD, Believer’s Bible Commentary, 1995, p. 1517; edited

It is significant that the largely OSAS Mr. MacDonald cannot in conscience avoid making this vital distinction, and I commend him for his integrity in doing so. The Church needs to be teaching this, but refuses! It is the height of cowardice and avarice.

WHAT IF TRUMP WINS? Our last consideration is the most important: ‘How do we Prepare for America’s collapse,’ should God not intervene to prevent the Reelection of Donald Trump? While many are praying that he will not achieve that unprecedented ‘achievement’ of becoming our First Criminal President, I expect that he will.

Writing for The Atlantic once again, PAUL ROSENZWEIG, published a keenly crafted piece entitled, “The 2024 Election Could Be the End of the Cases Against Donald Trump” (July 26, 2023; edited). Former deputy assistant secretary for policy of the Department of Homeland Security, he teaches cybersecurity at the George Washington University Law School.

Here are THREE SUMMARY OBSERVATIONS about where we are likely headed under a Second Trump Term America. Chilling, I’d say.

• “If, as seems likely, Donald Trump is the Republican presidential nominee next year, the 2024 elections will be a Referendum on several crucial issues: The prospect of Authoritarianism in America, the continuation of a vibrant Democracy, the relationship between the Executive Branch and the other two branches of government, and much else of grave significance.”

• “It will also be a referendum on whether Trump will ever be held legally accountable for his actions. Trump faces multiple civil suits and at least two criminal indictments (with two more seemingly just over the horizon). If Trump were to win reelection, it is almost certain that none of these will ever be resolved—at least not in a way that is adverse to his interests, which any reasonable system would admit as a possibility. Such is the power of the presidency.”

• “The prospect that Trump will almost certainly avoid accountability for his criminal conduct if he is reelected is just a small subset of the broader threat he poses to the rule of law. But it is an emblematic possibility redolent with the odor of kingly prerogative. Sadly, the reality is clear: When Americans go to the polls in 2024, if Trump is a candidate, they will not simply be choosing between two political alternatives; they will also be making one of the most important choices in the history of the country. They will be choosing between the modern conviction that no man is above the law and a return to a time when political leaders could act with impunity. Our own national character rests on what choice we make.”

CODA: ANTICHRIST & BABYLON. The very first step in preparing for a Trump Second Term is to: ‘Assume and prepare the Worst. Pray for Better.’ So let’s not forget the WISDOM OF SUN TZU (5^th Century BC) whose ‘The Art of War’ remains a classic taught in most war colleges around the world.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

If indeed Mr. Trump is “The Chosen One” as he declared on August 21, 2019, looking toward heaven with hands upraised in feigned reverence, then this is what we can expect a Trump Government to look like. Beloved, it shall look very much like:

Babylon the Great.

In my research for the Conclusion for this Commentary, I found a theological treasure in the person of DR. STEVEN ANDERSON, career Bible scholar, teacher, and author, with three seminary degrees and a Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary. I liked his careful eschatology so much, I have dubbed him: “Mi querido compañero académico” – My beloved academic companion.

He has led me to a gold mine of the ‘Theology of an American Babylon’ which I will merely introduce here, to be followed by in depth analysis in future weeks.

“‘Babylon the Great is a World Hegemon,’ a country which dominates world politics, economics, and culture in the end times. Further, the text of Revelation indicates that it is a unique entity in the world, ἡ πόλις ἡ μεγάλη ‘the Great Polis.’It uniquely makes all the nations of the world wealthy, reigns over the nations of the world, imposes its culture on all the nations, and leads them in a massive downward spiral of materialistic depravity that culminates in worldwide worship of Satan and the Antichrist during the second half of the Tribulation Period.

These are things that can only be done once, and the United States is now doing them. Never before in history has a single country dominated all the other countries of the world and enjoyed such preeminence in comparison to all the others. The United States finds itself in the historically unique position of monopolizing every significant power source in the world—a position it began to occupy since the end of World War II, and which was greatly enhanced by the end of the Cold War.

In summary, the Book of Revelation describes Babylon the Great as the dominant superpower in the world of the End Times—so dominant, that it actually shapes the culture and economy of the world as it exists at the start of the tribulation period. The nature and scope of Babylon the Great’s dominance is such that only one such entity could ever exist in the history of the world, and there is no doubt that the United States of America is this entity. While some aspects of the prophecy remain to be fulfilled—most notably the prophecies of Babylon the Great’s attempts to put Christians to death worldwide (Rev 17:6; 18:20, 24; 19:2)—enough aspects already match so as to leave no doubt as to the fulfillment of the rest.” – “The Case for Identifying Babylon the Great with the United States of America,” Truth Only Bible, July 29, 2021; edited

TO BE CONTINUED. I unapologetically leave this shameless ‘Cliff Hanger’ over you all as some of the richest doctrinal Food for Thought I have ever offered in my nearly 50 years of teaching. More to come on the next Shabbat’s Commentary.

Might just want to tell a friend or two.

YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da7RB-sSqoY