THE WARNING A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 2)

by John Price

  Something is indeed happening. We sense it. We feel it. We know things in our world are changing, and not for the better. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on America and the financial tsunami that became public on September 17, 2008, our personal anxiety levels have increased significantly.

  Our bookstores reflect these perceptions. The End of Prosperity (Laffer, Moore & Tanous, Threshold Editions, 2008), The End of Wall Street (As We Know It) (Dave Kansas/Wall Street Journal, Collins Business, 2009), and The End of Food (Paul Roberts, Mariner Books, 2009) all are

  views of a new and different world in which we will likely live. What these and other similar books, columns and commentaries are describing pale in significance, though, to what Biblical prophecies tell us will happen to cause The End of America.

  Biblical prophecies? Some may question if what is happening in the world today was actually foretold in ancient scripture. But the Bible’s primary claim to authenticity is fulfilled prophecy, i.e., the ability to know the future with precision. “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come…What I have said, that I will bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.” (Isaiah 46:10a-11b). This claim is somewhat astounding, since we, as mere mortals, can only guess about the future. God shares with us what will happen before it happens. “Surely the Sovereign LORD does nothing without revealing his plan to his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7). Jesus affirmed this in Matthew 24:15: “See, I have told you ahead of time.” Thus, God’s claim to divinity rests in large part on His ability to see and accurately foretell the future.

  A fair number of people believe not only that the Bible contains reliable and accurate prophecies, but also that we are today living in the days described in the Bible as the “end times.” Ten percent of all Americans believe that we are living in the end times prophesied in the Bible (Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life). That would be about thirty million of us. Though that’s a large number, it conversely means that most Americans don’t share such a belief. The stark reality, though, is that the early days of the final end times prophesied in the Bible have already begun. Most of us don’t have a clue that we are now living in the beginning of the last days, which will be completed by a final world war that will end human history. If you would like more background on the history of Biblical prophecy, visit www.endofamericabook.com and click on PROPHECY 101 – A Brief History of Prophetic Interpretation.

  THE END TIMES

  How can we know from prophecy that we are actually in the end times? It’s a question of considerable urgency, as Jesus demonstrated by weeping when He came into Jerusalem to present Himself, unsuccessfully, as Israel’s Messiah. He wept because Israel ignored the prophecies that should have led to His acceptance:

  “As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.” (Luke 19:41-44)

  Likewise, for centuries, scriptures prophesying that the sovereign nation of Israel would some day be re-born were generally not believed. That is, until May 14, 1948 when Israel was re-born, to the astonishment of disbelievers. God’s Word was, again, proven to be correct. In our day, the re-birth of Israel back in the land is an element of fulfilled prophecy that: a.) can’t be overlooked or ignored; b.) is clearly a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies; and c.) should cause us to watch, as Jesus said, for the end of time, and all that will happen as part of the climax of human history.

  Jesus gave us in Matthew 24:32-34, a clear prophecy for our guidance:

  “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.”

  These words answered His disciples’ initial question as to “when shall these things be?” The phrase “until all these things” used by the Lord at the end of this prophecy was to those events that He had just told His disciples would happen in the end times, including prophecies about the Antichrist, the tribulation, the Lord’s return to earth, etc. So, what did He mean when He said the generation that sees the fig tree bloom would not pass away until all those things have happened?

  Hosea described Israel in this way: “When I found Israel…it was like seeing the early fruit on the fig tree.” (Hosea 9:10). Over time the clear consensus has been that the reference to the fig tree is an allegorical identification of Israel, and its re-birth in the land, as prophesied, in both the Old and New Testaments (Deuteronomy 30; Matthew 24). Mike Evans has written: “The fig tree has always been a symbol of the nation of Israel. The leaves of the fig tree are common ornaments on government buildings in Israel.” (The Return, Nelson, 1986). Hal Lindsey located a writer as far back as 1611 AD who wrote that Israel would, as the Bible prophesied, return to the land. In 1819 former President John Adams wrote “I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.” Many wrote in the 1800’s that Israel would some day return to its original location, as unlikely as that must have seemed at the time. See Attachment C (End Times Time Line) for details of end times events.

  THE BUDDING FIG TREE OF ISRAEL

  Before we examine the issue of timing, it’s important to note that when Jesus told His disciples about the re-birth of Israel, and illustrated it by describing a future budding of the fig tree, His words were a meaningful symbolic prophecy to His Disciples, because of what they saw and heard from Jesus in about the same time frame. Mark tells us in 11:13 that as Jesus was on His way to Jerusalem in the days before He was to be crucified, he left Bethany, just east of Jerusalem. On the way, He saw a fig tree. Alas, the fig tree, though covered with leaves, had no figs on its branches. Jesus spoke to the tree and admonished it for not bearing fruit. He then pronounced on the fig tree that this particular fig tree would never bear fruit, a malediction which was confirmed the next day, as Jesus and His disciples passed by the same fig tree, now “withered away” and “dried up from the roots.” (Mark 11:20, 21).

  Obviously, this was about more than talking to a tree. One of the stated signs of God’s blessings on the Israelites was that “every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree.” (I Kings 4:25; Isaiah 36:16; Micah 4:4) Fig trees bear fruit and are a blessing to their owners. This particular fig tree was no blessing, as it had literally no figs, and symbolically, no spiritual fruit. So, as Jesus ended His earthly ministry, He gave a symbolic assessment of Israel’s rejection of Him, by finding no fruit on that fig tree, representing Israel, and by saying that this early fig tree, Israel at the time of Christ, would not bear fruit. His statement, of course, was accurate, as early Israel didn’t bear spiritual fruit, itself withering away and going into dispersion within a few short years after the rejection of its Messiah.

  Moving forward then to Jesus’ prophecy that another, a second, fig tree would bloom signaling the end times, there has been some significant level of dispute as to what Jesus meant by telling us the generation that would see the fig tree rebud/Israel return, would not pass away/die until “all these things (the end times prophecies He gave us) have all “happened.” What is a Biblical generation? Some argue forty years, some one hundred years, but that’s not really the relevant question. Jesus didn’t invite us to guess how long a generation was considered to be. Instead, He said the generation that was in existence, or that witnessed the budding of the fig tree, would not pass away, or all die out, before all of the prophesied events would happen. That’s not a terribly difficult concept. How long will that be? One should be careful in this regar
d, as Jesus warned that no man knows the day or the hour, except for God the Father. (Matthew 24:36). But Jesus does invite us to “watch” and be aware of a rebudded Fig Tree/Israel.

  One writer in 1973 wrote that a generation was forty years, added forty to 1948, and then concluded “…we should expect the Second Coming by 1987 at the outside”. Another writer, coming closer to the point nevertheless, wrote in 1986 that “the generation of people that saw the blossoming (of Israel), was born between 1925 and 1935. Their lifespan will be roughly seventy years…,” thus, pointing to a 1995 to 2005 time of the Second Coming. The first problem with this analysis is that people born as late as the first five months of 1948 “saw” the rebirth of the fig tree/Israel on May 14, 1948. That’s 13 years after the author’s start date for a Biblical ‘generation.’ Secondly, seventy years is not today’s average length of life because of the medical and healthcare advances we have enjoyed.

  So, how much time should we expect to pass after May 14, 1948, before all of these things Jesus prophesied actually happen? Well, the last living American World War I (1914-1918) veteran, Frank Buckles, died on March 19, 2008. Once 16 million strong, U.S. veterans of World War II are dying at a rate of more than 1,000 a day, and now number about 2.5 million, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates. Martin Morgan, historian for the World War II Museum in New Orleans predicts that all World War II veterans will be gone by 2020.

  Obviously, Jesus gave us enough flexibility and time-spread in His prophecy that no one, just as He said, can know the day and hour. Only general parameters are safe: a.) as noted, the end won’t come after those who saw Israel’s re-birth have died off, but instead before we who witnessed the rebirth of Israel in 1948 have all passed away; and b.) many critical prophesied world events must occur before the end, some lasting as long as seven years, some happening before those specifically prophesied periods of years. This means that the early events in the end times, such as the Russian-Arab invasion of Israel (see Chapter 5) and the fall of the Daughter of Babylon (see Chapter 9) could happen at any time, but not too much later, because those who witnessed Israel’s rebirth won’t live that long. People who “saw” Israel re-born in 1948 will be around for several more years. Whatever the specifics of the timing, Jesus just did not give us the option of timing the end times for any longer than a few decades after Israel’s rebudding. About sixty of those years since 1948 have now passed, so fasten your seat belt.

  TWO MAJOR GLOBAL CHANGES

  Two major world events have occurred in the last 60 years that should give any person cause to seriously ponder Biblical end times prophecies. The first, which we have already examined, is the re-birth of the nation of Israel in 1948 back in its original land. In spite of the good intentions of a lot of good people, to find the end times in their times, it was just not going to happen until the Fig Tree of Israel re-budded, which it miraculously did in the middle of the last century. The second event arises from Daniel’s prophecy (Daniel 2) that the fourth great world empire would spring from the third, the Roman Empire. Virtually all Bible scholars are in agreement that, when Daniel saw legs of iron, with feet mixed with clay, he was foreseeing a revived Roman Empire, again uniting the majority of the land mass of Europe, as it had been united under the rule of Rome from 2,000 to 1,600 years ago. Until the uniting of Europe in 1993 with the Treaty of Maastricht, a revived Roman Empire fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecy didn’t appear it would ever happen.

  Are these two events, Israel’s re-budding and Europe’s uniting, important matters, apart from prophecy? Even if we had no Biblical indication that they would take place, their occurrence would constitute two of the more critical geopolitical events in our lifetimes. Israel is in almost every daily newspaper, and very few days pass without articles about the European Union. The EU represents 30% of the entire world’s gross domestic product. Israel and the EU are on the world’s center stage.

  Angel Second Class Clarence Odbody, in Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life,” tried to convince George Bailey that suicide wasn’t the answer to his problems: “You see, George, you really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?” How does Angel Clarence Odbody relate to a reborn Israel and a united Europe? For those of us who are alive in the world as God has restored Israel and united the continent of the former Roman Empire, we also have had a wonderful life of observing God at work without parallel in human history, thus far. It would also be a mistake for us to figuratively throw it away by ignoring God’s mighty hand at work.

  He said over 2,000 years ago He would bring Israel back–after its forced dispersion around the world. He said a little over 2,600 years ago that He would create the Fourth World Empire, and then much later, in the end times, reform that Empire. Both of these prophesied events have happened before our very eyes. We are eyewitnesses to God fulfilling these two major prophecies. Both had to occur before the Day of the Lord. We’ve been privileged to be alive to see both–but if we overlook their significance we will have thrown away the great privilege God has given us to be witnesses of the mystery and miracle of prophetic fulfillment.

  As the days after the rebirth of Israel (1948) and the unification of Europe (1993) continue to mount, we are increasingly seeing the curtain pulled further back, revealing to us more of the details of the last days. Since 9/11 what we have seen, and now increasingly understand in more depth than Christians in past generations, is that the final enemies of Jesus and of His people are not who we thought they would be. It may be surprising to learn that the future prophesied destroyers of the United States, and the purported conquerors of the world, pray regularly each day, prohibit abortion, denounce homosexuality, and forbid alcohol. Who are these people? Christian fundamentalists? Well, not quite.

  As indicated by the book’s sub-title, it is now increasingly obvious that those who would seek to be conquerors of the world in the end times, are radical Islamic Jihadists, who will do exactly what they have been doing in the world for the last 1,400 years (kill for Allah). They are today telling us they will in the future: a.) destroy America, b.) destroy Israel, and c.) conquer the world for Allah. It will, undoubtedly, be a shocking realization to read how familiar end times prophecies will be fulfilled in a very unfamiliar and surprising way by people whom, a few years ago, were dismissed as mere nomads, living as if they were in the middle ages, with many still dwelling in tents. It is only as radical Islamic Jihadist teachings are understood that we can answer questions many of us have pondered about end times prophecies. To understand the threat to America, we need to know more about the agenda of Jihadists who regularly fill Muslim city streets chanting, “Death to America, Death to America”.

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