DAVID WILKERSON: AMERICA'S PROPHET OF DESTRUCTION


  The America I grew up in is gone. It is dead. And there is no hope of its resurrection.

I was born in 1938, making me 77 years old, and when I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s we went to church three times a week - Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday evening - and we had four week-long Gospel meetings each year. All but the most essential businesses like hospitals, pharmacies and gasoline stations were closed on Sundays. No secular events, including sporting events, were scheduled on Sundays or on Wednesday evenings.

We had daily prayers and Bible readings in school, and we celebrated Easter and Christmas with special plays and musicals. We also used readers in our English classes that contained Bible stories. At graduation time, we had special baccalaureate services where a minister would deliver an inspirational sermon to the graduating class.

Every public event from court proceedings to city council meetings and PTA meetings were opened with a prayer. Movies and television programmes were strictly regulated by strong moral codes. Our local and national leaders talked openly about God and their Christian faith and often led prayers, as President Franklin Roosevelt did on D-Day in 1944 when we invaded the European mainland.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. America was not a perfect nation. Racism was still rampant and materialism was gaining momentum, but we were a nation that honoured and recognized the Christian principles of our forefathers and the founders of our nation. And we were still very aware that our blessings came from God.

The America of today is radically different, and the changes have taken place with startling rapidity. Incredibly, in just over 50 years, we have become a nation in fullblown, open rebellion against God! Today we worship the 'Almighty Dollar'. Greed has become our national motivator, and Sex is our obsession. Gambling is our national pastime. We are the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs and we have banned God from our schools.

We have declared God off limits in the public arena and are teaching our children the fantasy of evolution. We are slaughtering babies in the name of "freedom of choice" for women, and we have glamourized homosexuality. We have legalized same-sex marriage and are in the process of legalizing marijuana. We have also become the moral polluter of planet earth with our violent, immoral and blasphemous movies and TV programmes.

In summary, we are a nation that has rejected its Christian heritage and has replaced that precious heritage with a crude, paganized culture. We are a rebellious nation that is thumbing its nose at the Creator God Who showered us with unparalleled blessings for over 300 years.

We have expelled God from the life of our society, and the result is an avalanche of violence and immorality. We have lost our moral compass, and we are raising a generation of moral pygmies. The same is true of the raging apostasy within the Church. The term Evangelical, has lost its meaning, as some who claim to be Evangelicals are proclaiming that there are many roads to Heaven and there is no Hell.

A Second Reformation is going on in the Church today, but unlike the first, which was based on a call to return to the Bible, this new Reformation is calling people to jettison the Bible in favour of their own feelings and beliefs. As the Church grows increasingly weak from its internal rot, society continues to plunge into darkness. I would therefore assert without hesitation that we are a nation begging for destruction!

Let's take a look at God's prophetic warnings to our nation. The first I would cite came from the heart of a great Scottish-American preacher named Peter Marshall. He came to this country in 1927 when he was 25 years old and died in 1949 when he was only 47. During his 22 years in this country, he went to seminary in Georgia and distinguished himself as an eloquent preacher. He quickly became the pastor of the prestigious New York Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. in 1937 - the Church that was known as "the Church of the Presidents."

In 1947 he became the Chaplain of the United States Senate. At that time, our nation was on top of the world. We had won World War II and had emerged from the war as the world's most powerful nation. Our economy had been revived and was generating unprecedented wealth. Our potential for the future seemed unlimited. But Peter Marshall was spiritually unsettled.

Even before the War ended in 1945 Peter sensed in his soul that America was heading in the wrong direction - towards a secular, pagan society. He unleashed his pentup concerns in a sermon delivered in 1944 at a Church in New Orleans. The sermon was titled "Trial by Fire" and it focused on the spiritual battle portrayed in the Bible between Elijah and the prophets of Baal.

Over and over in the sermon, he declared that the time had come in America for us to take sides - to decide whether we as a nation were going to follow Yahweh or Baal. Each time, he put the challenge in the words of Elijah: "If Yahweh is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him!" (1 Kings 18:21).

In the middle of his sermon, Marshall called for prophetic voices: "I suggest to you that America needs prophets today who will set before the nation the essential choices." He then proceeded to speak prophetically: "Love of power and authority has enslaved the hearts of many Americans. The seeds of racial hate and intolerance have been sown. And we will reap a bitter harvest... Our moral standards have been lowered. And no nation makes progress in a downward direction..." He developed his point further by saying: "We must decide and decide quickly who is chief, whom we will serve. Millions of people in America live in a moral fog... Modified immorality on the basis of cleverness guides millions of people. Modified dishonesty within the letter of the law is the practice of millions more. Surely the time has come, because the hour is late, when we must decide. And the choice before us is plain - Yahweh or Baal. Christ or chaos. Conviction or compromise. Discipline or disintegration."

Marshall then concluded his sermon with a startling proclamation: "We need a prophet who will have the ear of America and say to her, 'How long will you halt and stand between two opinions? If Yahweh is God, follow Him, but if Baal be God, follow him, and go to Hell!'"

That was 1944, and just as Peter Marshall feared, we as a nation became captivated by materialism in the Post War Years. This obsession, in turn, fuelled a spirit of rebellion against God and His Word. For many years we had been overwhelmed by the sufferings of the Great Depression, and living through that time, we had felt a great dependency on God. But now, we were able to stand on our own, and God and His Word receded into the background. This led to the morally disastrous decade of the 1960s and the Sexual Revolution it produced. And that, in turn, resulted in God sending us the prophetic voice that Peter Marshall had yearned for. That voice arrived on the scene in 1974, exactly 30 years after Marshall had called for it. The voice was that of a remarkable man named David Wilkerson.

Wilkerson started out as a Pentecostal preacher in rural Pennsylvania. In 1958, at age 27, he felt the Lord's leading to pull up stakes and move to New York City to minister to its violent street gangs. Through many trials and tears, he succeeded in establishing a ministry to the gangs, and in 1962 he published a book about his experiences which was titled, The Cross and the Switchblade. It made him nationally famous, and even more so when it was converted into a movie in 1970. As a result of the book and the movie, Wilkerson became the darling of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements - until he published another book in 1974 called The Vision. It was advertised by the publisher as "A terrifying prophecy of Doomsday that is starting to happen now."

This book presented a very negative prophecy about the future of our nation, warning that because of our rebellion against God, we were headed toward major judgments and ultimate destruction. The world, as would be expected, wrote the book off as "insane." But what proved tragic is that the Church also dismissed the book as the ravings of a radical.

The Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements responded with strong condemnation. They were full of pillow prophets at the time who were prophesying a great end time revival that would renew and refresh America as a Christian nation. They did not want to hear a negative message from anyone, especially from their best-known spokesman.

Accordingly, Wilkerson became an outcast overnight. His books were removed from churches' bookstores, and he was personally condemned as a "fearmonger." In like manner, mainline churches - both Evangelical and non-Evangelical - also denounced the book, arguing that Wilkerson must be a "false prophet" because "God no longer speaks in visions."

Wilkerson had anticipated this response because he addressed it at the beginning of his book by pointing out that the Scriptures say that in the end times, God will give his servants visions and dreams. Joel 2:28-29 states: "It will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on the male and female servants I will pour out My Spirit in those days."

In accordance with this passage in Joel, Wilkerson revealed that his prophecy for America had come from a vision given to him in April 1973, and for that reason, he titled the book, The Vision. Wilkerson also pointed out at the beginning of his book that he did not believe that most of the prophecies in his vision would be fulfilled in his lifetime, and that proved true when he was tragically killed in an auto accident in East Texas in 2011. However, many of the prophecies contained in his vision have been fulfilled since 1974.

His first category was "Worldwide Economic Confusion." He wrote: "It is not really a depression I see coming - but a recession of such magnitude that it will affect the lifestyle of nearly every wage earner in America and around the world. This, of course, was fulfilled in the outbreak of the Great Recession in 2008. Wilkerson further asserted that "some of the nation's major corporations will declare bankruptcy." In fact the 12 largest bankruptcies in U.S. history have occurred since 2001.

Wilkerson further predicted that because of the recession, "The auto industry is going to be hurt badly." This was fulfilled when the government took over both Chrysler and General Motors during the Great Recession. Concerning gold, Wilkerson predicted that "the price of gold is going to rise astronomically but will not be sustained over a long period of time." When Wilkerson published his book in 1974, the price of gold was $183 per ounce. At the end of 2014 it was $1 200 per ounce.

Wilkerson's last economic related prophecy was this: "A revived Roman Empire will eventually become the power base for a super world leader who will arise to restore economic order." This has been partially fulfilled in the formation of the European Union which became a supernational political organization in 1992 with the Treaty of Maastricht.

Wilkerson's second category of predictions related to what he called "Drastic Weather Changes and Earthquakes." He summed it up by saying: "The world had best prepare for weather changes that cannot be explained by any other word but 'supernatural'. The world is about to witness the beginnings of great sorrows brought about by history's most drastic weather changes, earthquakes, floods, and terrible calamities." Worldwide weather-related disasters have increased from an average of 300 per year in the 1980s to almost 1 000 per year in 2010.

The third category of predictions in Wilkerson's vision he labelled "A Flood of Filth." (Again, keep in mind that he was writing in 1974). He wrote: "We are facing a moral landslide... Satan is going to open the floodgates of Hell and seek to baptize the world in erotic filth, smut and sensuality." The evidence of this is all around us and in our homes through the invasion of TV filth. And the corruption of entertainment is exactly what Wilkerson predicted: "Movies and TV programmes will feature the exploitation of every sex theme, with an emphasis on blood, violence and occult practices." Movies and TV programmes are doing this today.

Further, Wilkerson warned that "there will be movies glamourizing rape." He also predicted that "thousands of newsstands across the nation will soon be selling explicit sex magazines that will make Playboy seem almost puritanical". This has become a reality with sleezy magazines like Quicky, ADHD Sex, Carnival, and Hustler.

Wilkerson declared that "students will be told that homosexual love is normal." In recent years several school systems all over the nation have incorporated teaching units designed to portray homosexuality as normal - even at the elementary school level. This effort has even infiltrated books and magazines aimed at children. A good example is a recent Archie comic book that featured a same-sex marriage on its cover. He also wrote: "The homosexual community will become so militant and brazen that they will flaunt their sin on network talk shows."

In the Church world, Wilkerson predicted that "homosexuals and lesbians will be ordained and given places of authority." The Episcopal Church elected its first homosexual bishop in 2003, and since that time, many of the mainline denominations have sanctioned the ordination of practicing homosexuals.

Wilkerson's fourth category was "Problems with Youth." Since this had always been the focus of his ministry, he had more predictions in this category than any other. He said he saw youth hating their parents and rebelling against them, even to the point of betraying their parents. He also saw them enslaved to alcohol and drugs and predicted the legalization of marijuana. There would also be an astronomical divorce rate.

Wilkerson's fifth and last category of prophecies contained in his vision was what he called "Persecution Madness." He predicted the growing persecution of Christian believers: "I see an hour of persecution coming such as mankind has never before witnessed. This will be a persecution of true Jesus believers that will soon arise like a many-headed monster out of the sea."

In the last ten years in our nation, Christianity and Christians have become the object of ridicule, defamation, harassment and outright persecution. Wilkerson even predicted that Christian harassment would become official government policy. "An antichrist spirit will enter the hearts of certain men in high places in government and in the judicial system, causing these officials to engage in legal manoeuvres designed to harass independent churches, missionaries and ministers."

We can see this antichrist spirit operating at all governmental levels today. Wilkerson also stated that the entertainment industry would focus on demeaning portrayals of Christians and Christianity and would blaspheme all that is sacred: "TV comedy shows will become bolder and bolder in poking fun at Christ and true Christians. Television programming will become absolutely blasphemous."

Need I bother to say this has been fulfilled? Yet, despite the fulfilment of these very specific prophecies contained in Wilkerson's vision, some have continued to claim he was a "false prophet" because some of his predictions have not yet been fulfilled. But the same could be said of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel because all of them made prophecies 2 500 years ago that still have not been fulfilled. How do we know they are not false prophets? Because they made prophecies about their day and time that were fulfilled and they also made prophecies about the first coming of the Messiah that were fulfilled. So we can be confident that their unfulfilled prophecies concerning the end times will also be fulfilled.

The Bible says that the test of a prophet is whether or not his prophecies come true: "...when the word of the prophet comes to pass, then that prophet will be known as one whom the Lord has truly sent" (Jeremiah 28:9). Thus, if I were to prophesy that America will be destroyed by a nuclear attack, you would have to wait until our nation was destroyed to determine whether or not I was a false prophet - and you might have to wait several hundred years. But, if I were to say America will be destroyed by a nuclear attack before 1 January 2016, and that did not happen, then you would know that I am a false prophet.

Wilkerson did not give dates for any of the prophecies in his vision, except to say that all the predictions would not be fulfilled in his lifetime. Therefore, it is impossible to declare him to be a "false prophet" at this point in time. Some of the unfulfilled prophecies are very ominous. They include that the U.S. will experience the worst earthquake in its history in a place least expected; the taxation of churches, ministries and Christian schools will be instituted and TV will feature full nudity and X-rated porno movies.

But for me, the most ominous statement in his book was this one: "I believe we have passed the point of no return." (Again, that was 1974).

I underlined that statement in red and put a question mark after it. That's because I was not ready to say that in 1974. I am now! The Bible clearly teaches that there is a "point of no return" when a nation is in rebellion against God. It is the tipping point where God decides to deliver the nation from remedial judgments to complete destruction. In the Bible it is referred to as "when the wound becomes incurable." For example, God told Jeremiah to tell the people of Judah that their nation was going to be destroyed because "Your wound is incurable and your injury is serious... because your iniquity is great and your sins are numerous" (Jeremiah 30:12-15).

The Lord directed Nahum to say the same thing to Nineveh: "There is no relief for your breakdown, Your wound is incurable..." (Nahum 3:19). To emphasize His declaration, God even told Jeremiah to stop praying for Judah: "Do not pray for this people, and do not lift up a cry or prayer for them and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you" (Jeremiah 7:16).

Ezekiel was told the same thing when he tried to pray for Judah, but in even stronger terms. He was told that the prayers of the three most righteous men who had ever lived would not avail for the nation - specifically, Job, Noah, and Daniel (Ezekiel 14:12-21).

Today, 42 years after the publication of The Vision, God is raising up new prophetic voices all over our nation to warn us of our impending destruction. Unfortunately, there are Christians in our nation who refuse to believe that God will ever touch us - that He will ever allow us to be destroyed. They tend to think that God sits on His throne draped in an American flag. But, my friends, God cannot be deceived. He will not tolerate unrepented sin!

The Jews of ancient Judah thought the same thing about their nation. When Jeremiah warned them of imminent destruction, they cried out, "The Temple, the Temple" (Jeremiah 7:4), meaning they did not believe that God would ever allow anyone to destroy His Temple. But He did!

God is gracious. He is long-suffering. He warns and warns before He pours out judgment and ultimate destruction, but, again, He will not tolerate unrepented sin! God loves our nation. He was the One Who raised it up on the foundation of His Word. He is the One Who has blessed it so abundantly. He is the One Who worked through us to spread the Gospel all over the world. But the Word of God says: "to those to whom much is given, much is expected" (Luke 12:48). Our nation is in full-blown rebellion against God, and God is not going to tolerate it much longer.

In Romans 1:24 we are told how God deals with a rebellious nation. He steps back and lowers the hedge of protection around the nation and allows sin to multiply in the form of a sexual revolution: "Therefore God gave them [those in rebellion] over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonoured among them."

This is exactly what happened to our nation since the 1960s when we experienced the Sexual Revolution. If this action proves insufficient to produce repentance, then Romans 1 says that God will take a second step back and lower the hedge of protection even further: "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural, and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing indecent acts and receiving in their own persons the due penalty of their error" (Romans 1:26-27).

We have been in this second phase ever since the Supreme Court struck down all the state laws against sodomy in 2003. Romans 1 continues by revealing what God will do if the rebellious nation sets its jaw and continues to rebel against God and His Word. God will step back a third time and lower the hedge of protection again, and according to Romans 1:28, He will deliver the nation over to a "depraved mind," at which point the nation will either destroy itself or be destroyed by an outside force. I believe we have reached that point!

Is there still any hope for America? My answer is: How can there be? We have turned our backs on God and rejected the very One who gave us all our blessings. And we need to be clear as to why that happened. It was not due to the attacks of the Secularists, the Humanists, the Atheists or the Sexual Libertarians. No, it has been due to the failure of the Church to preach the Gospel, call people to repentance, and stand for righteousness. In short, the Church has sought popular approval, and in the process, it has jumped into bed with the world. The Bible prophesies in many places that the end times will be characterized by major apostasy - and we are up to our ears in it right now.

It all began in the 1920s when our seminaries were captivated by the German School of Higher Criticism which argued that the Bible is not God's revealed Word, but, instead, it is Man's search for God and is thus filled with myths, legends, superstitions and errors. This produced the liberal Social Gospel that soon came to characterize the mainline denominations as they focused on social and political action rather than the preaching of the Gospel. This spiritual virus has since spread to the Evangelical sector of American Christianity in the form of the Emergent Church Movement.

Sixty years ago, in the 1950s, to be an Evangelical meant that the Bible was your source of authority for all beliefs and actions. Today, the term 'Evangelical' has lost its meaning because there are professing Evangelicals who believe that the Scriptures contain errors and contradictions; that there is no Hell; that there are many roads to God; that homosexuality is a valid lifestyle; that evolution is the true explanation of life and that the ultimate purpose of the Church is not the salvation of souls but the saving of our planet! It is no wonder that our nation is wallowing in spiritual darkness and rebellion against God. And how can anyone truly believe there is any hope for our nation in the midst of such gross spiritual apostasy?

But there IS good news in the midst of the growing spiritual darkness and the consequent decay of our society. There is individual hope for those of us who know Jesus as our Lord and Saviour. God has promised repeatedly in His Word that He will never forsake us. For example, in Isaiah 43 He has promised to walk with us through the fire and high water, comforting us in our sufferings and providing our needs (Isaiah 43:23). And consider this promise in Deuteronomy 31:8 - "The LORD is the One who goes ahead of you; He will be with you. He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed." We also have the incredible hope of the Rapture of the Church when true believers will be taken out of this world in the blinking of an eye to be with Jesus forever.

There is also hope for those who do not know Jesus. As the darkness deepens, the light of Jesus will shine more brightly like a diamond on a black cloth, and more and more people will be drawn to Jesus and their hearts will be penetrated by the Gospel.

The message of the Holy Spirit for believers in these end times is twofold: "Commit your lives to holiness and share the Gospel with as many people as you can, as quickly as you can."

The message of the Spirit for unbelievers is that "Jesus is coming soon. He is returning to pour out the wrath of God on those who have rejected the grace, mercy and love of God. Reach out now and receive Him in faith as your Lord and Saviour before it is too late!"

I must add that there is an ironic way in which there is good news that can be derived from the collapse of civilization all around us. It can be found in the statement of Jesus in Matthew 24:37-38 where He said His return would occur at a time when society has gone full circle back to the immorality and violence that characterized the days of Noah.

In 1996 a federal judge named Robert Bork published a book about the moral drift of our nation that was titled, Slouching Towards Gomorrah. Well, my friends, we are no longer slouching. We have arrived. And that terrible fact points to the good news that Jesus is returning soon!

In conclusion, let me say we live in the midst of an increasingly secular and evil society - a society that calls good evil and evil good. As we look around the world today, we can see that evil is multiplying. It is as if the whole world is falling to pieces. But the truth is that from a biblical perspective, the pieces are all falling into place for Jesus to return!

Here's how Adrian Rogers once put it: "The world is getting gloriously dark." As we wait for His return, we need to stand for righteousness and speak out in behalf of it. Jesus commanded us to do so when He exhorted us to be light and salt (Matthew 5:13-14). But in doing so, we need to realize that all of us have been desensitized to some degree by the sin that is abounding around us and to our participation in it.

Thus, before we go forth to confront the evil in society, we need to face up to it in our own lives and respond in repentance. Revival must begin in our hearts before we can take it to society! And as we confront society, we should expect increasing hostility and persecution. Let us, therefore, keep our eyes focused on Jesus, for He is "the Author and Perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2).

In summary, as we await the Lord's return, we are to stand for righteousness; to pray for courage; to commit to holiness; to share the Gospel and we are to put our trust in Jesus and in Him alone! And don't forget to cry out daily: "Maranatha, Maranatha, Maranatha! Come quickly, Lord Jesus! COME!"

Dr. David R. Reagan - http://christinprophecy.org

---oooOooo---

When we consider the circumstances in our own beloved South Africa, we note the many striking similarities when comparing our society to that of the US.

We also face moral decay, rebellion, and malicious evil. Where will our help come from? Our help is from the Lord God, Creator of heaven and earth!

Our country as a whole, as well as every individual South African, have to answer the question, "Who do we serve? God or Baal?" We should repent unreservedly and wholeheartedly!

- Editor, Good News



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