Forty-Forty Vision

Most of my life has been centered around Bible study. About ten years ago I came to an understanding of Scriptures that led me to believe the year 2013 would be a very bad one for the United States of America.

The potentially fateful year is forty years after the year in which were established two abominations: Abortion on demand and Child Protective Services. Both began in 1973.

Nearly fifty-million babies have been murdered in the last thirty-five years, and millions of other children have been run through the miasma of foster care (CPS).

If you don't think foster care is so bad, consider this: At least half of the felonies in this nation are committed by the less than two percent of the population that went through foster care. These kids were shunted from house to house until they felt unwanted and turned bitterly angry.

In the Bible, the number forty is often associated with judgment and punishment. Jesus wept over the impending demise of Jerusalem in 30 A.D. Forty years later the city was destroyed by the Romans.

The Israelites in Canaan worshiped idols and were punished by Philistine oppression for forty years (Judges 13:1). The number of lashes for a convicted man were limited to a maximum of forty (Deuteronomy 25:3).

The Israelites were punished forty years of wandering in the wilderness for disbelieving and disobeying God. Often, there is a forty-year grace period before judgment falls.

Now for the good news.

Even if it God's intention to bring judgment on the USA for this nation's wickedness, He could relent, as He did for the repentant Ninevites after the prophet Jonah preached to them.

God promises in 2 Chronicles 7:14: "If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven, forgive their sins and heal their land."

Jesus promised in Matthew 24:22: "If those days (of end-time tribulation) had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of (Christian believers) those days will be shortened."

Christians everywhere should pray according to both of these promises, if we want to see the life of our nation sustained beyond the next five years, and if we want the coming time of great tribulation to be shortened.

Pray hard and believe, and there's no reason for fear or anxiety.