MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN and the USA

Part II

By Jason Lovelace

 

Key Scriptures:

“And this is the writing that was written.  Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin.  This is the interpretation of the thing:  Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.”

– Daniel 5.25-26

 

“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come upon thee, and overtake thee…”

- Deuteronomy 28.15

 

“And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.”

- Leviticus 26.17

 

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land.  But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; then I will pluck them up by their roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight ,and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations.”

– II Chronicles 7.14, 19-20

 

In the1960s, a landmark case brought before the Supreme Court of the United States of America by one Madeline Murray O’Hair forever changed the face of the US of A.  In the Supreme Court’s decision, it was declared that public schools could no longer engage in teacher- or administration-led prayer to God as it was deemed a violation of the separation of Church and State clause as founding the Constitution of the United States of America.  This case was the basis for further cases and decisions which have, to this date in the year 2009, effectively removed from public school the very mention of the name of Jesus Christ.  How has this affected the United States since?  Has America been bettered because of this decision, or worsened?

 

A Glorious Past

As we saw in the earlier “Mene” lesson, from the time that the USA was formed and from the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775, until the 1960s, the United States of America was the greatest and fastest rising power ever to have graced the world stage.  Despite relatively little military experience in international conflict, by the 1900s, few nations on earth could – or even would – challenge the United States of America.  The Economic might of the USA grew exponentially in the 18oos and 19oos, and, despite a horrifying Depression in the 1930s, became the most powerful in history, out gaining the rest of the world combined in 1945.  Socially, the USA – though mixed with a great variety of races, cultures, and nationalities – banded together to form a strong, cohesive society which touted its diversity as the keystone of its unity.  Whereas other nations and societies fought almost incessantly between each other with regards to race and heritage, the USA was the envy of the world in that such was not the case in her long history, with, perhaps, the exception being the War Between the States (also known as the U.S. Civil War) of 1861 to 1865.  Morally and Religiously, the USA was accepting of every belief under the son, yet, all the while, her leaders holding to the Judeo-Christian and Biblical values as proscribed and prescribed by her founding fathers: again, a marvel to the world!  God was respected in our culture, taught in our schools, worshipped in our churches, and preached from our pulpits without fear of retribution from the government.  Even if a President or other Government Personality didn’t particularly have much faith in God, that leader nevertheless respected God as being God. The USA was sending out Missionaries, training preachers, pastors, teachers, evangelists, and chaplains to spread the Word of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ far and wide, both domestically and internationally.  By the 1960s, the United States had never known military defeat; had suffered through and gloriously triumphed over many economic depressions, national scandals, scares, and tragedies; and had advanced both technologically, socially, and morally in exponential measures.  People from all over the world clamored to our shores to become one of the many that had already joined the “Great American Melting Pot”.

 

One Small Step…One Giant Leap

While these words were uttered by Astronaut Neil Armstrong as a phrase of victory, at his and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the moon in 1969, the fact of the matter is, these words could easily have been applied to an even more spectacular and consequential event that took place seven years before.  In 1962, a woman claiming to be an atheist filed suit on behalf of her son against the local school district.  Up to this time, teacher and administration-led prayer in public school had been the norm and a regular occurrence for more than two centuries in the thirteen colonies and later in the United States.  Madeline Murray O’Hair and her attorneys argued that this sort of prayer in public school was an infringement of the Separation clause, a section in the Constitution of the United States of America which states that the Government (congress) shall not establish a state church.  After appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, Ms. O’Hair won her case in 1962, and from that time onward, any kind of teacher or administration-led public school prayer was banned.  In an instant, God was dismissed from the public school forum with unceremonious arrogance on the part of a woman who happened to be part of a small, small percentage of the United States’ Population.  Subsequent decisions by the Supreme Court, some at the instigation of Ms. O’Hair, some at the instigation of others, have made God such an alien and so unwelcome to Public School that even if a teacher brings a Bible to school in order to read during break time or planning periods is grounds for termination of employment, often on the spot.  Further, students wishing to create a Bible club at most public schools in the USA have to wade through an ocean of red tape and paperwork before approval can even be considered.  How has the US of A fared since this time?

 

Then Will I Walk Contrary To You

The heading above comes from a passage of Scripture found in Leviticus, chapter 26.  In this particular chapter (echoed in Deuteronomy 27 and 28), Moses – under the direction of God, begins to list the blessings of following God and the curses for turning away from him.  It is interesting to note that almost immediately after the ruling by the Supreme Court in favor of Ms. O’Hair’s lawsuit, problems began to arise.  Within just a few months, a student and former Marine – holing himself up in a high clock tower – killed several students and innocents before being himself killed by police (essentially the first modern school shooting).  Within a year of this decision, the President under whom this decision was made (and, incidentally, who claimed to be a practicing Roman Catholic, yet did nothing to reverse this SCOTUS decision) was assassinated in broad daylight in Dallas, Texas.  Within a few years, the drug culture that would span another decade and a half had sprung up, and “rock ‘festivals’” held at Woodstock, New York, were little more than orgies of illicit sex and illegal drugs combined with music which preached disobedience to parents and dissemblance towards government..  Even before the end of the 1960s, the United States saw involvement in Vietnam, a Missile Crisis in Cuba which nearly brought the United states and the Soviet Union to nuclear war, an attempted and failed invasion by Cuban Nationalists with American Support crushed by Communists in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, Civil rights riots and marches, and the assassination of two prominent Americans, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, the brother of slain President John F. Kennedy, the former of which sparked nation-wide riots in reaction. 

 

The Lord shall Cause Thee to be Smitten before Thine Enemies

The nation of Vietnam has never been a world power.  In all of her history, from ancient to the end of the 1940s, Indo-China in general and Vietnam in particular, have all been dominated by one power or another over the millennia of time.  In 1954, following the final strategic and tactical defeat of their overlords, the French, the Viet-Mihn under the direction of Communist Ho Chi Mihn had finally liberated themselves form the oppression of foreign control.  Vietnam – a country hundreds of miles long but dozens of miles wide – was split in to two halves by the United Nations: _Communist North Vietnam, and the Republic of Vietnam in the South.  Almost immediately, guerilla infiltrators from the north began a campaign of warfare in the South.  These guerillas, later known as the Vietcong, were supplied weaponry and expertise by the Communists Red (The People’s Republic of) China and by the Soviet Union. The United States, seeing the need for the preservation of the independence of South Vietnam, began to send supplies, equipment, infrastructural material, and advisers to the government of South Vietnam based in Saigon.  As time went on, the United States escalated her involvement, and, following the Gulf of Tonkin Incident – an event in which US Ships were allegedly fired upon by North Vietnamese vessels – sent front-line troops into battle to fight a police action war against North Vietnam and the Vietcong.  Up until this time, the United States Military had never known defeat.  Though the Korean War didn’t end with an outright victory as World War Two ended, the Republic of Korea was preserved and peace – if tenuous at best – was achieved.  By the end of the 1960s, US military involvement in Vietnam was very heavy, with personnel in country numbering more than half a million.  However, by 1970, the promises of victory against the North Vietnamese and Vietcong began to ring hollow, and despite warnings against, the US Military was further ordered to invade Cambodia and Laos in order to stymie the actions of the Vietcong.  All of this proved fruitless, and by 1973, US Troops and military personnel had been withdrawn in earnest from Indo-China.  In 1975, the Communist Army of North Vietnam – after a decision by the Congress of the United States to cut off funding for the South – at last conquered Saigon, unifying Vietnam under the banner of the Communist North.  United States’ Military involvement had lasted nearly 15 years and it had come away with defeat for the first time in the nation’s history.  It was the worst military defeat by a native contingent over an advanced power sine the Zulu defeat of the British at the Battle of Isandlwana in South Africa in the late-1870s.  Is it mere coincidence that this military disaster – of which the USA has really not fully recovered – began in earnest for the USA not too long after the Supreme Court decision to end formal prayer in public school?  Is it just by chance that the sex and drug culture that sprang up in the 1960s and eventually led to the erosion of further American Values came abreast just a few scant years after Ms. O’Hair “won” her landmark case?  It is further interesting to note that, since the end of the Vietnam War – yea, since the decision to remove prayer from public school – that the United States’ Military has never scored an all-out victory in any major conflict since, with the exception of the Grenada Intervention and the Intervention in Panama in the 1980s.  In 1993, US Forces in Mogadishu, Somalia, were defeated and humiliated by forces under Somali Warlord, Mohammad Aidid.  These forces – part of a UN Peacekeeping and Humanitarian Aid Force – were withdrawn just over a year later.  Could it be that these battles and wars are the fulfillment of God’s promises as recorded in Deuteronomy 28?

 

But Turn Thee Yet Again, and Thou Shalt See Greater Abominations

As if the decision to rid public school of the presence of God in the 1960s wasn’t enough, in 1973, the United States was ushered into an age which has cost the innocent lives of more than 50 million to date.  That year, the Supreme Court declared abortion on Demand to be a woman’s “right”, ruling in favor of the plaintiff in the Roe vs. Wade decision.  Since that time, not only has more than fifty million babies been mercilessly slaughtered, but federal taxpayer dollars have been sent overseas to facilitate abortion on demand in third world and developing countries.  Since that time, there have been further and greater steps further away form God and towards abomination.  In the 1980s and 1990s, laws have been passed in several states allowing for the murderous practice of “assisted” suicide, judicial decisions made ‘legalizing’ “Gay ‘Marriage’”, decisions made repealing sodomy laws, and rules declared protecting pornography of many and varied sorts as “Free Speech” under the First Amendment to the United States’ Constitution.  In the US Media, sex has become a casual thing in media, and in advertisements, the #1 selling strategy.  Homosexuality – once shunned as deviant and declared to be a mental illness – is now being accepted by more and more people, with the Mainstream Media in the United States upholding homosexuality as a desired type of life.  Radio and music now speak of sex acts and sexuality, not to mention killing of police officers, politicians, and national leaders, drug use, and other deviant acts, whereas fifty and sixty years ago musical themes were quite different.  US Television has become a cesspool of moral aversion, sexual immorality, homosexual support, psychic readings, and any and every other deviant form of abomination being practiced, upheld and glorified.  With the advent of the internet, we have seen an explosion of websites geared towards pornography, violence, terrorism, and disobedience.  All the while, the church is mocked, Christian values laughed out of the public arena, traditional ideology blown off as part of a by-gone era, and anything pointing out the truth shunned, shouted down, and silenced.  No longer is sexual purity viewed as the best and only way to live prior to marriage, it is now deemed deviant, unacceptable, and “weird” by a society which has now placed “Self” on the throne of God.  Even worse, Hollywood has produced movies in recent years that have also glorified and uplifted any and every deviant, abominable lifestyle, not to mention portraying ever-increasingly grisly acts of violence and horrendous shedding of blood, but also a total disrespect for parents, even going so far as declaring total disobedience to parents and their house rules as a good and acceptable thing.

 

Enter Omri and Ahab

If these things weren’t bad enough to cause people to hit their knees in repentance, consider the last sixteen years with regards to the Office of the President of the United States of America.  In 1992, Americans – listening to rhetoric concerning some alleged economic failing under President George H. W. Bush rather than the good fruits of his presidency – elected to office one William Jefferson “Bill” Clinton.  President Clinton proved to be a pariah in the office.　　Not only was he responsible for the debacle in Somalia in which dead US Delta Forces Soldiers were dragged through the streets on live television, but also sold US Rocket and nuclear secrets to Red China, was duped into signing a bogus treaty with North Korea concerning nuclear proliferation, was the main instigator of the US Military intervention in Kosovo, and lied under oath concerning an affair he had with a White House Intern who was young enough to be his daughter.  He further gave great impetus to the Homosexual movement and agenda in creating and allowing special rights to be given to them, despite there being no conclusive evidence to prove that homosexuality is anything other than a lifestyle choice.  President Clinton also gave much taxpayer money to abortion proponents, enabling protective laws to be emplaced, and allowing more freedoms for women and girls desiring abortions.  No president in U.S. History did more for deviant “rights” and abominable practices than any other president before.  President Clinton and his administration are very similar to one of the Kings of Israel, named Omri.  King Omri is described this way in the Bible:

 

“But Omri wrought evil in the eyes of the Lord, and did worse than all that were before him.”

– 1st Kings 16.25

 

This is but one verse describing King Omri; the rest of chapter sixteen of First Kings is even more descriptive of the reign of King Omri.  Similarly, President Clinton wrought much evil in the land, and also did worse than all of the Presidents of the United States that came before him.  Despite the good administration of President George W. Bush (whom was likened to King Josiah in an earlier post), in which the barbaric practice of Partial-birth abortion was declared illegal by congressional legislation and signing into law, and the right military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, the populace and electorate of the United States went a step further than President Clinton, and elected socialist and anti-American Barack Hussein Obama to be the 44th President of the United States of America.  Not only did Mr. Obama sit under the tutelage and preaching of a rabid anti-American pastor, he became a close friend of a known and unrepentant domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers.　　Since being elected to office and being sworn in as President, Mr. Obama has reinstituted US taxpayer dollars going to third world and developing countries for abortion on demand (something Presidents Reagan, G.H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush stopped during their respective times in office).  He has further promised to make abortion the law of the land by enacting FOCA (Freedom of Choice Act) which would repeal the Partial-Birth Abortion ban of 2006, and allow greater freedoms across the board for women desiring to kill their unborn babies.  He has also promised to revisit the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy for the US Military, vowing to end this practice, allowing the freedom of homosexuality to be open and displayed in the United States’ Military.  Finally, Mr. Obama has drilled law after law, policy after policy through congress, changing the very fabric of what the United States of America is and has been.  His ultimate triumph just this week (November 7th, 2009) was the ramming through the House of Representatives a Health Care Bill which will essentially make the United States a medical welfare state, further plunging us into debt.  If President Clinton was akin to King Omri, President Obama surely must fit into this description of Omri’s infamous and nefarious son:

 

“And Ahab the son of Omri did evil in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him…and Ahab did more to provoke the Lord God of Israel to anger than all kings of Israel that were before him.”

– 1st Kings 16.30, 33

 

“Mene, Mene”

Is it any wonder that the United States of America has been, and is, in these latter and late days, losing the prestige she once had so many years ago?  Should it be any surprise that the USA has been stripped of her might, her power, her prestige in the world, when we take a look at how we, as her people, have given up so much in the name of convenience, the economy, change, and selfishness?  The Prophet Daniel spoke this to Babylonian King Belshazzar concerning the Babylonian Empire:

 

“This is the interpretation of the thing:  Mene; God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.”

– Daniel 5.26

 

In a similar fashion, God is speaking to us today. He wants us to know that he has numbered the days of the United States, and has finished us.  Already, the worldwide strength and prestige we once contained and spread about the world is vanishing. and may never be regained.  Everywhere our new President has gone, he has declared to our sworn enemies that we are not to be feared, apologizing at every turn for the alleged and so-called “misdeeds” of the United States in the past.  He has declared to our would-be conquerors that we are no longer a Christian nation (and though there are many who would debate this issue, the glaring fact of the matter is, anyone who takes a good look at the US of A today will have a hard time finding anything positively Christian and positive towards Jesus Christ).  Already, President Obama has dropped his guard with regards to those who would kill Americans and attempt o finish us, and he has promised to enact policies that will surely bring about the wrath of God upon the USA.  As has been written by this writer before, we have learned nothing from 9/11/2001 and the terrorist attacks of that time; the next terrorist strike will be nuclear, to the detriment of the USA.

 

The Bottom Line – REPENT!

Jesus and John the Baptist say it best:

 

“Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

– Matthew 3.2

 

“Repent:  for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”

– Matthew 4.11

 

If we as a nation will return to God, we may yet avoid nuclear 9/11.  Just as King Belshazzar could have been saved, had he listened to God speaking through Daniel, so we, too, can be saved, as a nation if we will return to the thing – to the One that made us great to being with:  Jesus Christ..

 

Conclusion – God Hath Numbered Thy Kingdom and Finished It

President Reagan had a dream that it would always be dawn and a bright day in the USA.  The sad fact is, we as a society and nation have slid far from where we once were. Whereas we were a nation that revered God, his laws, his values, worshipped him in Spirit and in Truth, and at the very least, respected him and his holiness, we are now a depraved society that has come to mock God, worshipping, instead, idols of our own making.  People like to think of God as loving, forgiving, and caring, and he is all of these.  However, God is also Holy, Just, Righteous, and, as it is stated in the Psalms, “angry with the wicked every day”.  He will finish us as a nation if we fail to heed his warnings!  He will pass his righteous judgment upon us as a society and a nation if we continue to mock him and his gift of salvation!  God will render verdict and pass sentence without delay on those who thumb their noses at him.  He has done so to greater societies and civilizations in the past, and unless we as a nation wake up and smell the coffee, we will very soon feel his wrath…and it will not be pretty.  It will, in fact, make the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001 seem amateurish by comparison and childish in execution in contrast.  Nuclear 9/11 is on its way, unless we return to God our Father now.  The word is sent out to the USA today:  Thy Kingdom is numbered by God, and he has finished it, yet, if we repent, we will be saved.

 

Prayer - Lord Heavenly Father, help us to turn back to you, before it is too late.  We need revival, and we pray for such, in Jesus’ Name, Amen.

 

Verse to Remember:

“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and heal their land.  But if ye turn away, and forsake my statutes and my commandments, which I have set before you, and shall go and serve other gods, and worship them; then I will pluck them up by their roots out of my land which I have given them; and this house, which I have sanctified for my name, will I cast out of my sight ,and will make it to be a proverb and a byword among all nations.”

– II Chronicles 7.14, 19-20

 

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