What Role Does America Play in End-Time Events?/Program 3

By: Dr. Mark Hitchcock; ©2010

Many are concerned that the growing level of terrorist threats since 9/11 could be part of the end times mentioned in the Bible. With the potential of a nuclear Iran, nuclear efforts in North Korea, ongoing conflicts between Israel and the Palestinians, and several arrests of terrorists within our own borders, Americans are concerned about the possibility of what some are calling a nuclear 9/11, a terror attack using a weapon of mass destruction, that would wreak havoc at an unprecedented level.

Contents

Introduction

Announcer: America is the reigning superpower in the world, the nation with the richest economy, the strongest military, and the acknowledged global leader. What Role Does America Play in End-Time Events? My guest today is bestselling author Dr. Mark Hitchcock.

Dr. Mark Hitchcock: The conclusion that I’ve come to and really I think that most prophecy teachers have come to is that America is not mentioned in Bible prophecy, and of course then that raises the great question: Well, if America is not mentioned then why aren’t we mentioned?

Announcer: Why is the Bible silent about America, but it names other nations in end time events?

Hitchcock: What I believe is that indicates that something is going to happen to America.

Announcer: What four crises do secular experts predict could bring America to its knees in the future? What is the one event the Bible states will take place in the future that could severely affect American prominence in the world? To hear the answers, join us for this special edition of The John Ankerberg Show.

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Ankerberg: Alright. Welcome to our program. I’m John Ankerberg, and we’re talking about the number one question that people have about biblical prophecy, and that is, where is America mentioned, or what role does America play in end time events? And our guest who’s going to answer that question today, is Dr. Mark Hitchcock. He’s a former lawyer that God called into the ministry. He’s got his Ph.D.; and he’s a adjunct professor at Dallas Theological Seminary; he’s also a pastor of a church; and he’s written 20 books on end time events; and he’s been interviewed on MSNBC and FOX and a whole lot of other stations, in terms of his knowledge about end time events. And, Mark, you’ve studied the scriptures; and answer the question, and kind of give a summary for folks that missed the first couple weeks here. What have you determined when you look at the scriptures? Does America have a place; does it play a role in end time events?

Hitchcock: Well, I don’t believe America’s mentioned in the Bible. And I’ve studied this issue in depth. The reason I’ve studied it in depth is because it’s the number one question people ask. As I’ve been on radio programs, or spoken at conferences, that’s the number one question people always ask is, “Where is America in Bible prophecy?” And obviously, America’s not mentioned in the Bible, the words “America” or “United States,” but people often try to find other places in the Bible, where they think America is mentioned. They’ll point to Isaiah 18 or Babylon in Revelation 17 and 18, or the ten lost tribes of Israel, or the young lions of Tarshish in Ezekiel 38. And I’ve examined all of those in depth and I’ve come to the conclusion, as well as many other prophecy teachers, that America is not mentioned in the Bible in end time prophecy.

Now, that is significant, because America’s the most powerful, you know, economic, political nation that’s ever existed in the world. And we would think that there’d be some mention of this great power, if we really are a great superpower, in the end times. But not finding America mentioned leads me to the conclusion, something must happen to America, to take us down from this superpower perch that we’re on now; to go from being the leading nation in the world, to somehow being a following nation.

And there’s several plausible scenarios that we can look at today, and see in the world, of how that could happen to America. We’ve talked about those in the previous programs. One of them was the oil crisis, the dependency of America on foreign oil; 70% of America’s oil being imported from nations that are, in many cases far away from us, and many cases nations that don’t particularly like us. So, the vulnerability of this long supply line, to get oil to America, could bring America to her knees. We also looked at the mounting debt crisis in America and how that could bury America, and cause us to be a second-rate world power.

And what we want to talk about today is nuclear terror, biological terror. We’re all aware of the war on terror. We’re only one decade into the war on terror. We’ve already seen, of course, what happened on 9/11; we’ve seen numerous attempts since then, fortunately, none of them successful, to bring America down.

Ankerberg: Yeah. And that brings us, Mark, to the question, and that is that people have gotten used to the fact that folks are trying to attack us, but they have been unsuccessful since 9/11, alright? But the amount of attacks continues to increase.

Hitchcock: Um-hum.

Ankerberg: And if you were to ask our political leaders, right now, and in the last few years, what they think is the number one threat to America, okay, what do they say?

Hitchcock: Well, they say it’s nuclear terror. I mean, of course any kind of terror is dreadful. But kind of the gold standard, if you will, for these terrorists is nuclear or biological terror. That is the number one threat;, that’s the number one thing that our leaders fear.

Ankerberg: Prove that. Prove that. People say, “How do you know that?”

Hitchcock: Well, George Tenet, who’s the former CIA director, said this. He said, “I do know one thing in my gut, al Qaida is here and waiting. They understand that bombings by cars, trucks, trains and planes will get them some headlines, to be sure. But if they manage to set off a mushroom cloud, they will make history. My deepest fear is that this is exactly what they intend.” In a book called “The Next American Century,” the author said this, “Terrorists pose the most dire threat to American society today. The gold standard in terror, according to expert Daniel Benjamin, remains mass casualty attacks against Americans.” And then finally, I mean, this is graphic: The UK Daily Mail said this, “Washington is laid waste. The Capitol is a blackened smoking ruin. The White House has been razed. Countless thousands are dead. This is the apocalyptic scene terrorists hope to create if they ever get their hands on a nuclear bomb.”

And, you know, here in our country our own leaders recognize this threat. We expend incredible amounts of resources to prevent this, and fortunately, so far, have been successful. But a survey, some results of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, came up with these findings. They said this: the most significant risk of a WMD attack is from a radiological weapon, so-called dirty bomb, where they get radiological material and hook some kind of conventional weapon to it and blow it up and send this radiation into the surrounding area.

Number two, the threat that a dirty bomb will be detonated somewhere in the world by 2015 was judged to be about 40%. The next highest risk is an attack with a chemical or biological weapon. And the risk of attack with conventional nuclear weapons was judged to be 16.4% by 2010, so we’ve already passed that benchmark, but 29.2% by 2015. So, the world is only in the first decade now of the age of terror, and the unthinkable has already happened in the events of September 11, 2001, an attack on US soil. But we just imagine what could loom on the horizon. Terrorist cells are multiplying all over the world. There’s rogue nations already with, or trying to get their hands on, nuclear weapons. And a major terrorist attack could hit our country; a nuclear or biological attack, and the consequences of that are staggering.

Ankerberg: Mark, I also found, besides these political leaders basically saying the percentages of what could happen in the next few years, they believe that attacks could take place – nuclear, biological, that we’ve got a cultural angst, if you want, that’s being portrayed in novels as well as in movies that we’re seeing. Talk about that for a moment.

Hitchcock: Yeah. To me, it’s really interesting that just out there in the popular culture, there seems to be this idea, just kind of inherent in culture, that there’s some crisis out there looming, this post-apocalyptic type crisis. The hit TV show “Jericho” was about the post-apocalypse here in America after a nuclear device had been exploded here in America. Cormac McCarthy, his book and movie The Road, looks at this post-apocalyptic scenario in America. So, even people in popular culture seem to have this idea that something like that is looming on the horizon with devastating consequences. And, you know, it’s something we really don’t like to talk about; you know, it’s okay to see it in a movie or to read it, but to think about it in reality, it’s something we don’t really even want to imagine. We don’t even really want to think about. But we’re forced to, in this world in which we live today, that it’s a real possibility.

Ankerberg: What would happen if a dirty bomb went off in either New York or Los Angeles?

Hitchcock: Well, a dirty bomb, again, is that, you know, radioactive material that they explode with a conventional device. I mean, depending on the strength of it and the size of it, it could contaminate one of our major cities and make that city uninhabitable for months, maybe even years of time. And we think, what if that happened in New York City, you know, which is the economic capital of America, really of the world and Wall Street in that area, or in Los Angeles, which is the major harbor for the entire western part of the United States. If those cities became uninhabitable for some period of time, I mean, it would devastate our country. And not only what it would do just physically, but what it would do economically. And then just think about the impact that would just have on the collective psyche, really, of this nation. It would be something, maybe, that the nation would never recover from.

Ankerberg: Where does this tie in with the Bible?

Hitchcock: Well, as we see these events taking place in our world today, we see a lot of nations that are out there that are trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons. Some already have them. But as we see this taking place in our world today, with these, you know, rogue nations trying to get these weapons, it just shows us how the scenario that the Bible predicts, of turmoil in the world and trouble and wars and rumors of wars, these are the kinds of things that we see in the world today that are exactly the things that Jesus predicted. And we also see how, if something like that were to happen to America, how the absence of America in Bible prophecy, we see how that could take place. And I think it’s important for us to note, as we’re going through these different scenarios, of the oil crisis in America, the debt crisis, this fear of nuclear, biological attack, these things could happen, not just one of them, but they could happen in some type of fatal combination together.

Ankerberg: The perfect storm.

Hitchcock: The perfect storm, because obviously the nuclear attack would have economic consequences and so forth. So that’s the real fear, that there could be some type of fatal combination in which these things occur, that bring America to her knees and really begin all these other events that take place.

Ankerberg: Alright. We’re going to take a break. And when we come back, I want to start with a segment of an interview that we had with the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, talking about Iran and the bomb, alright. And then I want to go to your book, because you’ve written a couple books on Iran and its place in prophecy and world events. So, folks, stick with us. We’ll be right back.

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VIDEO CLIP

Benjamin Netanyahu: The militant Shiites in Iran are openly racing, and boasting that they are racing to develop nuclear weapons with the explicit announced goal of wiping Israel from the face of the earth, re-establishing the caliphate (of course under militant Shiite Iranian rule), the caliphate includes the territories from Iran to Spain, developing long-range ballistic missiles first that are targeted to every European capital and within a decade to reach the eastern coast of the American mainland. If Iran acquires nuclear weapons, everything that we’ve been talking about will pale in comparison. Because the power to extend power, to threaten, to realize the threats, to make good on the threats, will be on a level that we have not seen, nor one that we can readily imagine.

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Ankerberg: Alright, listening to Benjamin Netanyahu, those words are chilling; talking about Iran and the bomb and what Israel is prepared to do to stop that. What do you make of it, in terms of all of the stuff that you’ve read and things that you’ve written about Iran?

Hitchcock: Well, Iran today is the most dangerous country in the world. They’re the number one sponsor in the world of terrorism. The thing that makes Iran uniquely dangerous, though, you know, it’s like someone has said, like Hitler with nuclear weapons, because of his, his just virulent hatred for the Jewish people and his hatred for the West. He heads up what one Bible teacher has called an apocalyptic, genocidal, death-cult. I mean, he has this apocalyptic view of the Mahdi coming back, and actually preparing the way for the Mahdi, kind of putting out the welcome mat for the Mahdi, by creating chaos and destruction in the world. So that is a bad combination for someone like that to have their hands on a nuclear weapon. And the fear, of course, of Ahmadinejad having nuclear weapons is bad enough, and it appears that Iran is closing in on crossing that nuclear finish line. But the other fear that goes along with that is that Iran themselves wouldn’t use them but they would pass them off to their terrorist clients, these terrorist cells, like Hezbollah, or al Qaida, or others, to go and do their bidding for them and try to get one of those weapons into the United States, so…

Ankerberg: Or Europe, or any part…

Hitchcock: Or Europe, or anywhere.

Ankerberg: Um-hum. Um-hum.

Hitchcock: And you know, the US is trying to help Europe right now develop a shield, a missile shield, particularly because of Iran and the nuclear threats. So Iran getting the nuclear weapons is unacceptable. It’s certainly unacceptable for Israel, they’ve made that clear. But it should be unacceptable to the rest of the world, as well.

Ankerberg: But they’re not the only place that you can get nuclear weapons.

Hitchcock: That’s right. I mean, you have North Korea, already has nuclear weapons, and, you know, there’s a transfer of power there that’s going to be taking place. And, you know, we don’t always know what is being snuck out from their country to other places. Pakistan is a nuclear power, and it’s an Islamic country; and if somehow there was the government there were to be toppled and terrorist groups were to overtake the government there, they would have their trigger finger on a nuclear weapon. So, you know, it’s the whole situation out there; and it’s not going to get better, it’s only going to get worse as time goes on. And that’s why, you know, the leaders in our country, this is a great fear that they have, that this is going to become a reality sometime in the future.

Ankerberg: Alright, talk about, the fact is, if this scenario actually horribly takes place in some city in our country, alright, then how is the power shifted across the world?

Hitchcock: Well, if this were to happen in America, you know, again, we don’t want to think about it, but it’s something that could take place. And again, it could take place in combination with some of these other things we’ve talked about. But if it were to take place, certainly it would cripple America, I mean, in a way that I don’t think we can even imagine. And those that survived, and the country that came out of that, would certainly become very isolationist. I’m sure there would be a great call because, you know, people would say, well, the reason they’re doing this to us is because we support Israel. And Israel would probably be cut off from American support, maybe because of lack of ability to support them, but also just maybe because of, you know, fleeing from any association with them.

There’s also, with the power vacuum that would be created in the world, other nations are going to rise and fill that. And it’s interesting, in the Bible, in the end times, it kind of divides nations into four main power blocks. There’s the King of the North, it’s called, and the King of the South, which is Russia and these Islamic nations that are going to be joined together. In Revelation 16 it talks about the kings of the East, which are these great eastern powers that come from east of the Euphrates River, probably would include nations like India and China. And then there’s also the Antichrist, this final world ruler, and his empire, which is centered in a reunited or Revived Roman Empire, which we could call the King of the West, although the Bible never calls them that specifically. So, these are the kind of different groups that the world’s going to divide up in during that period of time. And America may just kind of be part of this western confederacy; that’s where you’d naturally think that we would end up with our alliances today. But we will not be the great power, although we might be folded into that in whatever exists at the time.

Ankerberg: Well, you got a book that’s about America, Iran and Israel. Where does Israel fit into this in biblical prophecy?

Hitchcock: Well, Israel’s kind of at the center of all of this, because what the Bible says is going to take place in the end times is that the event that actually starts this seven year tribulation, that’s going to take place after the rapture when believers are caught to heaven, this tribulation period’s going to start with a treaty between this Antichrist, this world ruler, out of a reunited Roman Empire, he’s going to make a peace treaty with Israel. And he’s going to enter into this treaty; he’s going to be doing that because evidently America’s not going to be around anymore. They’re going to try to solve this nagging problem that the world’s tried to solve forever. And so, it’s going to be successful in making this peace treaty. It may be a forced treaty. The Bible indicates it’s a “firm covenant,” it calls it. It could be even a forced or a compelled treaty.

But then what’s going to happen is, and we’ll talk about this, I know, in some of the later programs, but in a kind of a Pearl Harbor type surprise attack, Russia and these Islamic nations are going to come in to try to destroy Israel. But they’re going to be wiped out by God, which then is going to leave this huge power vacuum, and I think that’s going to allow the Antichrist then, to ascend to power. So, what we can see from this though, is how the decline of the United States could be a trigger for many of these events that are predicted in the Bible to begin to unfold and take place.

Ankerberg: Yeah. And economically, the fact is, you’ve got all the countries of the world are really having a problem economically, it’s a world global problem, alright.

Hitchcock: It is.

Ankerberg: And so, what they’re trying to do is come up with this global answer. And I found it interesting in 2009 that at the G-20, the fact is, they were calling for a one world government. The fact is, you would have a group of leaders, they would actually control the economies, or be able to put the pressure on different places so that no country goes down. I mean, their main purpose is that we don’t have a flat tire in some of these countries, so that, when somebody has a flat tire, the whole rest of the nations, they all stop, as well. It’s like the car stops. And they don’t want the car to stop. They want everybody to be floating. And so they’re saying, we got to have controls on the whole thing so that we all stick together. Well, this fits into the Bible how?

Hitchcock: Well, the same thing applies, I think, with the, this war on terror that applies in the economic realm. The whole world, you know, the western world, is afraid of this terrorism. The whole world is having to work together on this. There’s intelligence that’s being shared and policing that’s being shared. It’s, again, it’s just this bringing together of the nations of the world to fight this common enemy of terror that’s out there. So, it’s just another of these steps, really, towards the globalization that the Bible of for the end times.

Ankerberg: For people that say, “You know, this is a real possibility as well; I mean, we’ve got the possibility of our dependence on oil, and the economic collapse, and then you’ve got this terrorist attack. And possibly, you could have all three of them happening at the same time. You could have it here in America; you could also have it in other countries of the world, all happening, so that you could really have the entire world upset.” And people that are listening say, “Okay, where does the Bible give us hope, in terms of that kind of a scenario?”

Hitchcock: Well, I think what we need to remember, all of us need to remember, is it’s one thing, and it’s great to know about the future of the world and the future of the nations, but the most important thing for each of us to be concerned about is our own future; that is, where we’re headed. What’s our destiny? Every one of us is going to die, and we never know when that is going to take place. We need to be prepared. And according to the Bible, the only way we can be prepared for the life that will be after this life is through Jesus Christ, through accepting Him and the sacrifice that He gave on the cross, and trusting in Him as our savior. So, that’s what we need to do and that’s what will give us hope.

But I think as we continue to live in this life, as well, we need to be praying for our leaders; praying for our country; praying that God will show His grace and mercy on us, where these attacks and these plans that are going will be thwarted, that they won’t be successful.

And the other thing I think we need to do is cause the things we see in our world today to give us a sense of urgency in our lives: to live our lives for the Lord, to care about others, to do what we can while we can in this world. The great missionary C. T. Studd made a beautiful statement one time. He says, “Only one life, ’twill soon be past, and only what’s done for Christ will last.”

Ankerberg: Yeah. Next we’re going to talk about the fourth scenario, where most of the Bible scholars land in terms of what happens to America; why is it not in end time events in scripture. And that is the grand event called the rapture. And we’re going to take some time to show you what the Bible says, and we’re going to talk about what will happen the day after the rapture across the world, alright. So, man you won’t want to miss this. I hope that you’ll join us then.

Read Part 4