A Facebook friend suggested that I might like Prophecy News Watch. I took a look, and found a discussion of why the United States seems not to have been mentioned in the Bible. Since it is (from their perspective) inconceivable that such an important world power would be overlooked or omitted, it must be an indication that by the end times, the United States will have been destroyed, or incorporated into a larger political entity. Here is the whole section from their Facebook page:
One of the most common questions regarding Bible prophecy is where is the United States in scripture? Many nations of the world are not mentioned in scripture, however it is hard to understand how the world’s most powerful nation would not be. At least not in a way that we recognize it clearly.
There are many theories and ideas as to why this is but here are three of the most common:
The United States is no longer relevant
The United States is destroyed
The United States is no longer its own country – but part of a larger union of nations – possibly controlled by the Antichrist.
All of these responses are based on speculation. We simply do not know the answer but it is very possible there may be some symbolism that the United States may fit into. We must simply watch and wait to see what God’s plan for America is.
More obvious solutions immediately come to mind if one has engaged in any sort of serious, well-informed study of the prophetic and apocalyptic literature in the Bible. First, the Biblical prophetic literature doesn’t engage in accurate long-term accurate forcasting in detail. The few instances that seem to offer detailed descriptions of events even a few centuries in the future (such as the Book of Daniel) are almost universally agreed to have been written in light of the events, rather than offering actual prediction. Second, it may be that the focus of even the future-focused works are focused on the near future, and never look ahead to our time.
And so I wish once again that Facebook had a “dislike” button, because I dislike Prophecy News Watch. It is just the sort of thing that inspired an apocalyptic fervor in me in my teenage years, and yet missed an opportunity to actually provide me with a greater understanding of this Biblical literature.
Let me end with a verse from the Bible that sounds like it could be a prophecy about Prophecy News Watch:
For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge (Romans 10:2)
As Proverbs 19:2 says, “It is not good to have zeal without knowledge, nor to be hasty and miss the way.”
If you want to take some steps towards understanding the Bible, stop browsing the web and open an academic commentary. Start with one written by someone affiliated with your denomination or tradition. If you claim to take the Bible seriously, then show it by actually taking the time to learn about it at more than a superficial, web-site level.
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