What if

America is NOT standing on the verge of massive divine judgment? History is clear that God judges nations corporately. It is also clear that the judgment of each nation is finite not open ended or random. There is an end to each season of judgment, whether the people have repented in full or not. I feel there is reason to believe that we have just come through a season of punishment but that it is a new day now. Ponder the following concepts with me. The First Generation My perception of Scripture is that the generation of a nation is 70 years. In Old Testament terminology we are looking at lunar years of 360 days, so when you crunch the numbers it comes out to about 69 of our solar years for a single generation. You could reasonably peg the beginning of Americas history at Dec. 15, 1791. That was the day the Commonwealth of Virginia became the 9th state to ratify the Bill of Rights, and that action put into force of law the whole Constitution of the United States. After the first generation, the nation was weighed in the balance and found wanting by God. Clearly the endless abuse of the African American population was a crime of national proportions defining the first generation. The judgment was the Civil War. The armies on both sides were sure this would be a ninety day riot. God saw to it that it lasted four years, killing one out of every eight men who voted in the election of 1860. President Lincoln poignantly connected the depth of the sin with the intensity of judgment in his second inaugural address. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." The Second Generation The war did not last forever, although it seemed as though it might. After four brutal years, peace was formalized by the government, and the painful task of rebuilding began. The nation did not suddenly rebound after the end of the judgment, but at least it was possible to rebuild once the war had stopped. Slavery was not the only sin of America in the first generation, but it was the outstanding one,

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the one which warranted the most comprehensive punishment. As America rebounded from the war, it piled up other sins, most specifically the gluttonous expansion of the nation, driven by greed, with no holds barred. And precisely one generation later, we were judged again and the judgment this time was the Great Depression, the devastation of the bread basket of the nation and our being drawn into World War II which our president vowed we would not be drawn into. While the judgment was massive and lengthy, there was an end. When the soldiers were mustered out at the end of WW II, the businesses of the nation were at a crossroads. Montgomery Ward looked at the options, decided another recession was imminent, and pulled back into a conservative stance which forever cost them the lead they had as the senior department store in America. Sears, Roebuck and Co., by contrast, guessed that the economy would expand so they embraced an aggressive growth plan. The Third Generation The judgment had in fact ended, and America was in fact in a place where spiritually and economically the nation could and did rebuild. We became a military power with an unprecedented reach. Our economy dwarfed the world. We also managed to sin at levels never achieved by our forefathers. What would God see as primary sins of our nation in 1998, looking back at the previous 69 years? Certainly the rejection of God in public life was an unprecedented slap in the face to our forefathers and the God of this nation. Devaluing life through abortion, euthanasia and drug use was new in this generation. A generation ago we could not have even imagined the way we have vigorously legitimized immorality and exported it to the whole world. We bathed the imposition of our values on the world with arrogance backed by military and economic might. I propose that the judgment of our third generation of Americans began with the impeachment of Mr. Clinton. There was no possibility at all, from the very beginning, of his being convicted by the Senate. Yet, because God was behind this, no detail of the defilement of the Oval Office was left untold, and the presidency of our nation was shamed before the whole world over immorality. No amount of military or economic power could slow or stop the impeachment process and the public humiliation of the man and the nation. Mr. Clinton was replaced by Mr. Bush who promptly took us to war. Again, shame covered the White House as the much touted weapons of mass destruction which would legitimize the war were never found. Our vaunted military machine rolled up a quick victory then found it was no victory at all as they became mired first of all in guerilla warfare, then in a civil war. Notice the precision of Gods judgment. As a nation, we discarded religious convictions as too cumbersome for modern man. So we have been roundly spanked by a nation driven by extreme religious convictions. As a nation we devalued the lives of our elderly and the children in the womb as having no economic worth and therefore no value. So a nation that values life even less than we do is killing the finest of our young men and women, those whom we highly value. As a nation we spurned morality so we are being spanked by a religion that purports to hold an extremely high standard of morality.

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Notwithstanding the pious pontificating about WMD, the world knew we went to Iraq for the economic gain of oil. All such economic gain has vanished as our nation has been plunged into levels of debt we had not even imagined a decade ago. So we have been judged. Surely we deserve it. We deserve far more. It could well be argued that the huge outpouring of confession and repentance across this nation in the last 15 years has served to blunt this punishment significantly. The current expression of the wrath of God is a mere shadow of what the first two generations faced. What Now? How long will this judgment last? I would like to propose to you that it ended around the beginning of July, 2007. I feel that we are now in a rebuilding mode and we need to shift gears spiritually and mentally to seize the moment. The clues that lead me to think this is the massive change in the press coverage of the war in the last two months. I have a son who has done two tours of duty in Iraq, along with two nephews and sundry friends. We have hard news, eyewitness reports, from the ground-floor level about good things that have been happening all along, but the American and world press was intransigent about only portraying the bad news from the war front, not the good. That changed in July. I read the same liberal and conservative American press that I did before and see stories which would never have been reported a few months ago: -- Iraqis are beginning to accept that the Americans are there for their best interests. -- A significant number of Iraqis in an Al Qaeda dominated community turned on the terrorists and became informants. -- Across Iraq enough people are becoming sufficiently affluent that they are more interested in protecting their assets than dying for their ideology. -- The Surge is working. Even the most intransigent American senators admit that. Internationally I see a dramatic shift as well: -- Lebanon, the weak link of the Middle East, the nation that has hardly had a functioning government for decades, has taken on and successfully destroyed a terrorist base in their nation. Astounding. -- Pakistan, the nation that is actively harboring Bin Ladin, destroyed a mosque filled with hard line Moslems and definitely said they would do it again, as often as necessary to rid themselves of radicalism. -- The U.K. has been astoundingly passive about Muslim intrusion into the culture, but suddenly they have begun to move against abuses of their cultural standards by offering a $40,000 reward for information leading to successful prosecution of forced female circumcision. I think of Gods relationship with Babylon. He used them to punish Judah. When their season was over, God removed His hand from them and they were no longer invincible. It appears to me that for a season, in all things related to the Moslem world, America could do no right. Now, suddenly, world press has tilted at least slightly toward a just presentation of the story. What changed? I can think of no explanation except that God has lifted the protection he gave the Muslim world during their season as a tool of judgment. Back to the home front, what about China? For a decade they have made a mockery of us economically and have been immune to any attempt by the U.S. to take the high moral ground. Both economically and in public relations we were putty in their hands. Now suddenly, they come across badly nearly every week.

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First it was the toxic pet food. Then it was the toxic toothpaste. Then it was the toxic toys. And a second recall of toxic toys. And now a third recall of toxic toys. Could it be that they were part of Gods strategy to humble us, but now the judgment has ended? Who can prove exactly when a season of judgment from the hand of God is over? I cant. However, there is this ever-growing mound of positive shifts on a national level that came out of nowhere. I cant really find any other explanation for most of them, but the same explanation the end of the season of judgment seems to fit them all. If I am right, does that mean all will be smooth sailing for the next six decades? Not at all. There are smaller judgments occurring at all times, and the natural consequences of violating Gods principles are not seasonal. Nonetheless, I believe that we have abruptly shifted into a climate where rebuilding is possible. Rebuilding is a long, hard process. We are not out of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan yet. How on earth will we ever deal with the national debt? These are questions that will haunt this generation for years to come. What matters most right now is for each of us to seek Gods direction. If additional massive judgment is pending, we need to adopt a crisis management model for our ministries and businesses. If however, God is making available to us -- as a righteous, visionary people who understand the times -- a grace to rebuild, it would be a shame for us to be caught in our bunkers ten years from now, inspecting our defenses. Montgomery Ward died a slow death. It took almost one entire generation for it to cease to exist, but the decision to brace for the worst cost them their vitality and they never recovered. Sears, Roebuck and Co. made many mistakes in the last generation but their vigorous belief that the American economy was on the verge of expansion, not contraction, made all the difference in their story. What you believe about the seasons of American history and the timing of our judgment will affect how you interpret the mass of changes that are occurring all around us right now. For example, on the blog on our website, I have tracked a new assault from the enemy. My suggested strategy is based on my belief that we have entered into a new season. This is an example of how our stance on this one issue of the length of Gods judgment, colors our response to other things in our world. Study American history. Do your own calculations. Then look at the news through that grid and make a decision. Mine is made. Sapphire is in expansion mode! Arthur Burk Sept. 5, 2007 Anaheim, CA

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