What is the Bible’s end time message for America and the Church? Find out with Dr. David Reagan on the show Christ in Prophecy.
Air Date: July 22, 2018
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Transcript
Dr. Reagan: What is the Bible’s end time message for America and for the Church? I recently summed it up in a booklet called A Prophetic Manifesto. It is not a comforting message, but it is one that is very much needed. Stay tuned as I share it with you.
Dr. Reagan: Greetings in the name of Jesus, our Blessed Hope, and welcome to Christ in Prophecy. In the spring of 2012, I believe the Lord began to move on my heart with a very troubling message. I turned it over and over in my mind, and I wrestled with it in prayer. Finally, it burned so hot in my soul that I had to put it on paper. When I finished it, and it was published in June of 2012, it looked like this. I called it “A Prophetic Manifesto” and I gave it this stark cover because it contained a very stark message. Since that time, it has gone through printing after printing, and literally tens of thousands of copies have been distributed to pastors all over this nation.
In this program and the one next week, I want to share with you the message of the Manifesto, and I’d like to begin by reading the introduction.
This booklet is titled, A Prophetic Manifesto not A Prophecy Manifesto. The difference is important. My purpose is not to present a prophecy given to me by God. I have no such prophecy. My purpose is to share some sobering truths that are based on prophecies which God gave to biblical prophets thousands of years ago. They are also based on principles the Bible reveals about how God deals with nations.
You are probably not going to like what this manifesto has to say. Throughout history, people have always demanded prophetic voices who would assure them that all is well between them and God. They have desired what the Bible calls “pillow prophets.” And there have always been spiritual leaders who have been more than willing to tickle people’s ears by telling them what they want to hear. I don’t like having to say what I am going to express in this manifesto. But I believe it must be said. It is the duty of a watchman on the wall to shout an alarm when it is appropriate. And the time is certainly appropriate here in America for a shout of warning.
Part 2
Dr. Reagan: The first part of the Manifesto is titled, “The Death of America.” Here’s what I wrote: “America is finished. We as a nation have turned our back on God. We have kicked Him out of our schools and out of the public arena. We have declared Him to be off-limits. We have given the boot to the very One who made us great and showered us with blessings. We are in the process of becoming a thoroughly secular and pagan nation. And in the process, we are courting the wrath of God.
Think about it since 1973 we have murdered our babies in their mothers’ wombs at the rate of 4,000 a day, totaling nearly 60 million, and their blood cries out for vengeance.
We consume more than one-half of all the illegal drugs produced in the world, yet we constitute only 5% of the world’s population.
We spend $2.8 billion dollars per year on Internet pornography, which is more than half the world total of $4.9 billion.
Our rate of cohabiting partners has increased tenfold since 1960, totaling over 12 million unmarried partners today.
Our divorce rate is the highest of any nation in the world.
Forty percent of our children are born to unmarried women.
We spend over $100 billion per year on gambling.
Our number one drug problem is alcohol, producing over 17.6 million adults who are alcoholics or who have alcohol problems.
Our nation has become a debt junkie, leading the world in both government debt and personal debt.
Blasphemy of God’s name, His Word, and His Son has become commonplace in our media.
We are the moral polluter of planet earth through the distribution of our immoral, violent and blasphemous television programs and movies.
We have forsaken the nation of Israel, demanding that they surrender their heartland and divide their capital city.
We have become a nation that calls good evil and evil good. And we are paying the price:
Our schools have become arenas of deadly violence.
Our prison population is increasing exponentially, from 500,000 in 1980 to over 2.5 million today. Over 7.2 million of our people are under some form of correctional supervision.
Over 1.5 million of our women are reported victims of domestic violence each year, and it is estimated that the majority of cases are never reported.
We are currently averaging over 3 million child abuse cases each year, involving 6 million children.
We experience more than 12 million crimes every year, more than any other nation in the world.
Teen violence has increased exponentially, with youngsters killing each other over tennis shoes.
Gangs are terrorizing our cities.
Even the nicest of our neighborhoods are no longer safe, requiring us to protect our homes with security systems and weapons.
Our money is becoming increasingly worthless.
Our economy is being choked to death by a pile of debt that is beyond comprehension.
Our major corporations and labor unions are in bondage to greed.
Our society has become deeply divided, splintered among competing groups defined by racial, religious and economic factors.
Our families are being destroyed by an epidemic of divorce.
Our entertainment industry consists of vulgarians amusing barbarians.
One of our fastest growing businesses is the pagan practice of tattooing and body piercing.
Our universities and media outlets are controlled by radical leftists who hold God in contempt.
Our federal government has become top-heavy with bureaucrats who are insensitive to taxpayers.
Our politicians have become more concerned with power than service.
All levels of government have become increasingly oppressive, seeking to regulate every aspect of our lives.
Taxation has become confiscatory in nature.
Our legal system has been hijacked by activists who desire to impose their will on the people, regardless of what the people desire.
Our freedom of speech is being threatened by “hate crime” legislation.
Our forms of sports are becoming increasingly violent, reminiscent of the gladiators of ancient Rome.
Our society has become star-stuck, more interested in celebrities than people of integrity.
Our churches are caught up in an epidemic of apostasy as they set aside the Word of God in an effort to cozy up to the world and gain its approval.
We are experiencing one major natural disaster after another in unprecedented volume and ferocity.
We have become afflicted with a plague of sexual perversion, producing an army of hard core militant homosexuals.
In summary, we are a people who have become desensitized to sin, and in the process, we have forgotten how to blush.
Another negative characteristic of our society is that true Bible-believing Christians are being alienated from society and are being increasingly subjected to persecution. The speed at which this has happened in recent years is absolutely breathtaking.
Jim Garlow is a Nazarene minister who pastors the Skyline Church in La Mesa, California. He is considered to be an expert on Church history. In a recent presentation to the National Religious Broadcasters, Pastor Garlow presented a sweeping overview of the relationship between Bible-believing Christians and American society he pointed out: from 1607 – 1833 — Bible believing Christians were the establishment of this nation, that is for 236 years folks. From 1833 – 1918 we were the predominant force that is only 85 years. Notice how these periods decrease rapidly. From 1918 – 1968 the sub-dominant force was Bible believing Christians for about 50 years. And then the big turning point came in the 60’s- from 1968 – 1988 we were a sub-culture, a sub-culture for 20 years. From 1988 – 1998 a counter culture for 10 years. And from 1998 – 2008 an antithetical culture for 10 years. And finally from 2008 – Present a persecuted culture.
An overwhelming majority of Americans 85% claim to be Christians, but the evidence of Christianity in the lives of most of them is almost nil. They purchase lottery tickets, frequent R-rated movies, watch trash shows on TV, purchase pornography, idolize crude and vulgar musicians, frequent abortion clinics and compile a divorce rate that equals non-Christians.
They are what might be called “Cultural Christians” born into a Christian family, raised going to church, but without any personal relationship with Jesus. Another characteristic of Cultural Christians is that they rarely if ever read the Bible. This has resulted in gross biblical ignorance and the un-doing of doctrine.
Ignorance of God’s Word has even become true of even Evangelical Christians, the very people whose identity in the past was linked to their reliance on the Bible for their ultimate authority in all things.
Surveys by the Barna Group reveal that among those claiming to be Evangelicals today:
19% are living with a partner outside of marriage. 37% do not believe the Bible to be totally accurate. 45% do not believe that Jesus was sinless. These are evangelicals folks. 52% do not believe Satan is real. And 57% do not believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life despite the fact that He said so. And 57% believe that good works play a part in gaining eternal life. As you can see from these survey results, the term, Evangelical, has lost its meaning.
It is no wonder we have professing Christians voting for candidates who promote homosexuality, same-sex marriage, abortion, and casino gambling. Or professing Christians who vote out of greed for the candidate who offers to give them the most, regardless of the candidate’s wretched lifestyle or beliefs about social and moral issues. Or professing Christians who vote on the basis of race or ethnicity, regardless of a candidate’s viewpoints concerning vital moral issues.
Public opinion polls concerning the fundamental beliefs of Christianity consistently reveal that the number of true Bible-believing Christians in America today is less than 10%. It’s no wonder that during the past 50 years our society has secularized and paganized so rapidly.
We are a nation shaking its fist at God. We are literally crying out for God’s judgment. God has been very patient with us, as He always is. But consider the words of the prophet Nahum he wrote:
A jealous and avenging God is the LORD;
The LORD is avenging and wrathful.
The LORD takes vengeance on His adversaries,
And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
The LORD is slow to anger and great in power,
And the LORD will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. (Nahum 1:2-3a)
Yes, God has been patient, but His patience is wearing thin. He has sent prophetic voices to call us to repentance. And when we turned a deaf ear, He began sending remedial judgments.
But our faces have become harder than stone. And the result is that we are now wallowing in immorality, violence and greed.
The first chapter of Romans reveals how God deals with a rebellious people. He will step back, He will lower the hedge of protection and allow evil to flourish. The first result of that action it says in Romans 1 will be the outbreak of a sexual revolution which occurred in this nation in the 1960’s.
If the nation refuses to repent, God will take a second step back, lower the hedge of protection again, and a plague of homosexuality will be unleashed. And that happened in our nation in the 1980’s, and it accelerated in the 1990’s.
If the nation continues in its sin with no sign of repentance, God will step back a third time, lower the hedge again, and the society will be delivered over to a “depraved mind” that will result in its destruction.
The time has come for God to deliver us over to a depraved mind — to deliver us from judgment to destruction. We have reached the point of no return, which is identified by the biblical prophets as the point where “the wound cannot be healed.”
Only one other nation in history has been as blessed as ours, and that was the ancient nation of Judah. Like us, they rebelled against the God who had blessed them so richly. And as with us, God sent prophets to call them to repentance. When they refused, He hammered them with remedial judgments.
When they persisted in their rebellion, God delivered them from judgment to destruction, allowing the Babylonians to conquer them and take them away from their homeland into captivity.
The fate of Judah prompted two of the saddest verses in the Bible they read as follows: “The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the LORD arose against His people, until there was no remedy.” We may experience a temporary revival, as ancient Judah did when the righteous king Josiah succeeded the monster king Manasseh. But when Josiah was killed, the nation plunged right back into spiritual darkness and soon ceased to exist. Evil had just simply become too ingrained in the fabric of the nation. Like ancient Judah, our fate is sealed. Our collapse will be just as sudden and overwhelming. Why should God treat us any differently? We can be assured that He will not.
Part 3
Dr. Reagan: Welcome back to Christ in Prophecy and my presentation of my message in this booklet called A Prophetic Manifesto. As I said at the beginning my message is divided into two parts. The first part, which I have just presented deals with the condition and fate of our nation. The second part focuses on the condition of the Church. I will be sharing that part with you next week. For now, I would like for us to pause for a discussion of what I have just presented. I’ve invited two Bible prophecy colleagues to be with me in this part of our discussion. And the first is my colleague, Nathan Jones, who serves as our Web Minister. The other is Dennis Pollock he was on our staff for 11 years before he decided to establish a ministry of his own called Spirit of Grace which focuses on outreaches to Africa and India. Well welcome fellows!
Dennis Pollock: Thank you it is great to be with you.
Nathan Jones: Nice to be here.
Dr. Reagan: Always glad to have you back with us Dennis. And I think I am going to start off with you since you are our guest and I will put you on the hot seat first, ok. As we get into a discussion of what I just presented I’d like to start off with a statement that Franklin Graham made when we were having the big discussion in this nation about what was the “fiscal cliff.”
Dennis Pollock: Right.
Dr. Reagan: And he said, “You know folks I’m more concerned about the moral cliff we’ve already fallen off of, then this fiscal cliff.” Let’s just start there, what do you think?
Dennis Pollock: Yeah, well absolutely I agree with that. The politicians are worried about a lot of economic issues and they are worried they make sure to treat the homosexuals properly, and so forth. And they don’t even consider the problem of offending a Holy God who created us, who has graced us and blessed us so much. But you know in getting to the issue of a moral cliff. You are making an assumption, one that I agree with, but a lot of Americans wouldn’t agree and that is that there is such a thing as absolute morality.
Dr. Reagan: Yes.
Dennis Pollock: Because there are a lot of Americans the only morality they would hold to is that we should tolerate pretty much anything, and everything on a personal life style level other than those who don’t tolerate any, and everything, they you can come down hard. But as long as you tolerate everything then everything is fine. Of course you and I and Nathan and millions of Christians disagree with that strongly. We hold to the Bible as our authoritative guide for morality. You know something when I was a kid, back in the 60’s, early 60’s my dad would sit in our easy chair in our living room and read the Bible, he was a tremendous Bible reader. And I can remember to this day him just every night practically reading the Bible. Well he grew old, passed away and went to be with the Lord, now what he does is what I do. I read the Bible a lot. And here is what is interesting Dave, when I sit down to read the Bible and let’s say I am reading the 10 Commandments, “Have no other god before me. And don’t make any graven image. And remember the Sabbath and so forth.” I’m reading the exact same words that my dad read 50 years ago. When I read the Sermon on the Mount exact same thing other than maybe he might have read with some thee’s and thou’s from the King James and I read a different version. But it is the exact same thing. When I read the Epistles of Paul, Paul an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and peace be multiplied to you, exact same thing. And if you went back let’s say 500 years to Luther’s day perhaps let’s say there was a Pollock back then who read the Bible, still reading the same Scriptures. So what that means is our morality, the morality of those who hold to the integrity and the inspiration of the Scriptures it never changes. You know God wasn’t big on adultery on the Old Testament, He isn’t big on adultery in the New Testament. He wasn’t big on it in Luther’s day isn’t big on it today. It doesn’t change. But the world’s morality changes drastically. I mean there was a time not all that long ago when if you were a celebrity and mentioned that you were a homosexual it killed your career; that was the end of it. No longer is that the case and so many things like that. There was time when a divorce was a disgrace and if you had one you were ashamed of it, you wouldn’t say much about it. Now days they have divorce parties. We have changed so drastically. We have slidden backwards in a moral fashion. But those of us who hold to the Scriptures we just stay with the same thing that Paul wrote, and the same thing that Isaiah and all these guys wrote and so our morality doesn’t change, and that’s the problem. We are saying yeah we’ve fallen off a moral cliff, the world is pretty much saying, “There is no such thing as morality or a moral cliff.”
Dr. Reagan: Well it reminds me of a statement a pastor made to me recently when he said, “David have you ever thought about the fact that what you and I believe today which is mainline Christianity 30 years ago is today considered to be off in a fringe. It is a fringe almost cultic in nature that you would hold those beliefs that mainline Christianity held 30 years ago.”
Dennis Pollock: Yeah the press loves to use the word “controversial,” if some Christian pastor makes the statement about a cult is evil, or homosexuality is wrong, they will say, “This controversial statement that was made.” Well it wasn’t controversial at all for 1,000’s of years but suddenly it has become so.
Dr. Reagan: How about it Nathan have we fallen off a moral cliff.
Nathan Jones: Well not having as many years as Dennis is talking about.
Dr. Reagan: Oh, thanks a lot Nathan.
Nathan Jones: No, no.
Dennis Pollock: No, I’m glad he said that because otherwise they would have assumed we were the same age.
Nathan Jones: Yes. We are twins. But growing up in the 80’s as I did, you have to say if you are going to fall off a moral cliff then we have to say at some point at some point of time we fell off. And growing up from the 80’s and forward I didn’t see too much of a change morally. I mean I was used to everybody swearing, everybody getting divorced, homosexuality on the rise. So to me I have no frame of reference to say, “Wow there was a time when it was more moral than it is now.” I remember in my old years of 13 or 14 years old having a discussion with my mother a very godly woman Joyce Jones, good Bible prophecy expert, and she said, “Yes we have definitely slid down morally.” She said, “When I was a child back in the 50’s we could get on the bus as little kids, go anywhere. We didn’t have to worry about molesters and things like that.” She said, “I’ve seen it drastically go down.” And I was like, “No, no, no, it’s the same.” And so we went to our pastor and we asked our pastor, “What do you think?” And you know he was probably in his 70’s or so he says, “I see morality like this: it goes up and down in waves. We have times when we hit real bad morality say 1920’s and then there is a revival of some sort and we’ve seen two Great Awakenings in the United States, so it goes like this. The problem is as time goes on it is going like this, to the point today he would argue that we are way up here in the immorality.” And so that was really eye-opening. I’ve always carried that conversation with me. And now that I am older and almost 40 I can look back and say, “Things have started changing, they are a little worse than when I was a kid and he is absolutely right.” So morally as our country we are worse than we have been. But there have been times throughout American history where we have gotten bad morally. I’m hoping and I’m praying that we will then have that revival that comes afterwards or the Rapture.
Dr. Reagan: You know when you start talking about God judging America I have found that people usually respond very defensively even Christians. Very defensively with immediately talking about patriotism. What about it? Not repentance, but patriotism.
Dennis Pollock: Right, a lot of Christians have aligned themselves with just a certain political idea, it’s conservative which to me is better than the alternative but it is still wrapped up in the American flag and that we are the great shining city on the hill, and the future is bright if we can just get people thinking a little bit more conservatively. The answer to our nation’s problems is going to have to be a whole lot bigger than just getting another conservative politician in office.
Dr. Reagan: Amen.
Dennis Pollock: It is going to have to be Jesus Christ. And it is going to have to involve repentance. And I’ve studied revival a lot Nathan so I know that revival can bring about a change. The sad thing is we are seeing no evidence of it.
Dr. Reagan: That’s right.
Dennis Pollock: And let me, let me say this about the difference between what you described growing up in the 80’s and you are saying you don’t see too much difference, there are some significance differences. And one example I can think of is on one of our talk shows in morning talk shows they had a meteorologist who was a homosexual, and recently they announced that he was engaged. And the first time I saw this they didn’t show who he was engaged to, I had heard he was a homosexual, so I thought, “Well ok, I wonder how far they are going to go with this.” They didn’t show the person he was engaged to, didn’t mention anything about his sexual orientation so I thought, “Ok, they are fearful of letting it out that he is homosexual.” But later they had a show where they actually showed the man that he was engaged to, and they showed them several times and they all gushed about how wonderful it was, how this was making their day, how happy they were for him and how they were a great couple. I mean this is a man engaged to another man. And to me the thing that was so disturbing, it was not just that there was a homosexual in show business, or a celebrity or course there has always been. But that they were making this a prominent thing. They were not afraid to show the American people that this was the case.
Dr. Reagan: Well you know, Nathan I have much longer perspective than you because I was born in 1938 and I can tell you that the America that exists today is as different as night and day from when I was growing up and the dividing line was the 1960’s and the Cultural Revolution that occurred there. You were born after that. I was born before that and I can see an America that is as different as black and white as we are here today. You know I was thinking if you looked at American society today what would you consider to be one of the strongest symbols of American depravity? And I can think of many but one that immediately came to my mind was the fact that the current President of the United States, President Obama ever since he was elected every June has issued a proclamation celebrating sexual perversion, saying that this will be the month to celebrate lesbianism, homosexuality, bi-sexual, and transgender. And it is just mind boggling to think that a President would issue such a proclamation every year, every June. In fact this last time he did it I wrote and said, “Why are you discriminating? Why don’t you include adulterers and fornicators, and pedophiles and prostitutes? I mean if we are going to celebrate sexual perversion, let’s celebrate all of it.” But that is just unbelievable.
And what you have to keep in mind that presidents are politicians especially in their first term and they are terrified, they are petrified of offending the voting public. The only way he could do that which goes with his general instincts no doubt, but normally he would have kept that to himself he would not have made a public issue of it. The reason that he can do that is because he is confident that the general public accepts that, believes that, and has no problem with it. It reminds me a TV show where I saw an actor who was going on and on about his homosexuality and at one point he is talking about how America now accepts homosexuality and the crowd just applauded. And I looked around I couldn’t see anybody who was not applauding, everybody was. Now they were not all homosexuals but they were all going along with the idea.
I just got through writing an article about the difference in the America I grew with and the America that exists today. And the one thing that came to mind was the difference in television in the 1950’s when television first became you know available to people, and television today. And the thing that immediately came to mind was the family that was emphasized in the 50’s, the Nelson’s.
Dennis Pollock: Yes.
Dr. Reagan: And the family that that is emphasized today the Osbournes’s. I mean how different can you get?
Closing
Dr. Reagan: Well, folks, that’s our program for this week. I hope you will be back with us next week when I will present the second half of my Prophetic Manifesto. Until next week, the Lord willing, this is Dave Reagan speaking for both myself and Nathan Jones, saying, “Look up, be watchful, for our Redemption is drawing near.”
End of Program