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I know that some people think that the “young lions” of Ezekiel 38:13 refer to the former British colonies, including America. The symbol of Britain is a lion. So, they say, Britain is the old lion and her former colonies are the young lions. But this is a very obscure inference, and I seriously doubt that it speaks of the United States. Even if it does, the verse shows that the “young lions” are too weakened to stop Gog. All the “young lions” can do is complain. They have no power to stop Gog from attacking Israel.

How can this be? How did America, the greatest superpower on earth, become so debased that, if mentioned at all in Bible prophecy, it is weak and unimportant? I believe that America is beginning to pass off the scene as a world power – right now! As was said to King Belshazzar,

“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it…Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting…Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians”
       (Daniel 5:26-28).

The fifth chapter of Daniel records the downfall of the kingdom of Babylon.

King Belshazzar prepared a great feast. Thousands of his lords and ladies came to this wild saturnalia. They were all drunk. The king thought it would be a good joke to bring in the gold and silver vessels that his father had stolen from the Jews’ Temple in Jerusalem. Those vessels had been dedicated to God. But the king filled them with wine. Then these idol worshipping pagans laughed and mocked God, as they swallowed wine from the holy vessels. The king’s princes, and lords, and wives, and concubines howled with drunken laughter as they mocked the God of Israel, and praised their heathen idols. The festival grew louder and louder, into a frenzied orgy.

As I picture the scene, one of the women suddenly screamed. All eyes turned to the wall near the king. There was total silence as they watched the “fingers of a man’s hand” writing on the wall (Daniel 5:5). The king’s face turned pale, and his knees knocked together, as he watched those disembodied fingers writing on the wall,

“MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN” (Daniel 5:25).

The king was terrified. He did not know what the words meant. He was very superstitious. He undoubtedly thought the fingers were those of a ghost or evil spirit. He did not realize they were the fingers of God. I believe they were the fingers of the preincarnate Christ. The king did not know what the words meant.

“The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans, and the soothsayers” (Daniel 5:7).

But none of them could tell him what the words meant. Finally the queen reminded him that Daniel the Jew would be able to decipher the writing on the wall.

Daniel was not there at this drunken festival. The king had him brought in. Daniel looked at the writing and told the king what the words meant,

“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. TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting. PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians” (Daniel 5:25-28).

My mother used to repeat an old saying, “The handwriting is on the wall.” It meant that events showed something bad was about to happen.

“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it…Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”
       (Daniel 5:26-27).

I believe those words apply to the United States of America at this hour. Please understand that I have been a patriotic American all my life. An American flag hangs from a pole in front of our house every day. As I write this sermon, I am looking across the desk in my home study at busts of Washington and Lincoln, our two greatest Presidents. On my desk is a photo of Presidents Ford, Reagan, Nixon and George H. W. Bush and their wives, standing together at the opening of the Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, California. I have loved America all my life. It breaks my heart to see what is happening to our country. Yet, to be true to God, I must say that those awful words seem to apply, more than ever, to this nation,

“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it…Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”
       (Daniel 5:26-27).

In his book Twilight of a Great Civilization: The Drift Toward Neo-Paganism (Crossway Books, 1988) Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, a famous evangelical theologian, said, “We live in the twilight of a great civilization, amid the decline of modern culture…Our generation is lost to the truth of God…and to the authority of His Word. For this loss it is paying dearly in a swift relapse to paganism. The savages are stirring again; you can hear them rumbling and rustling in the tempo of our times…Savages are stirring the dust of a decadent civilization and already slink in the shadows of a disabled Church” (ibid., pp. 15, 17).

A few years later, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Dr. Henry said, “…shameful judgment now falls upon the President and on the nation. It would be well to lower the American flag below half-staff to acknowledge openly that ours is properly a time for grief [because we are] a people who have lost their way” (Carl F. H. Henry, Ph.D., “Lowering the Flag,” World Magazine, January 30, 1999, p. 33). What Dr. Henry said in 1999 applies even more today.

Financial news commentator Max Keiser gave a dismal picture of our economy in a World Net Daily interview on September 13, 2010 – titled “America is Done and Dusted.” Mr. Keiser said, “The economy and the markets are broken.” They asked him, “Will the…Republican landslide in November help the situation?” He replied, “Does it matter? No…it doesn’t matter who the manager is. Whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans running Congress, America is still being relegated to the dustbin of history…the Great Depression…is going to be remembered as a great period of American history by comparison when this is over. When I say America is done and dusted, I’m saying 1776 to 2008. It’s over with. It’s done…From Mexico to Canada, there will be only pieces [of civilization]. How many states are bankrupt already? They can’t afford to…fix the roads. They can’t afford to teach the children. There’s nothing there anymore. It’s an empty shell” (taken from Vox Day’s interview with Max Keiser).

“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it…Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”
       (Daniel 5:26-27).

If you think Mr. Keiser’s view is too extreme, you should read Mortimer B. Zuckerman’s editorial in U.S. News and World Report, December 2010, p. 80 (www.usnews.com). Mr. Zuckerman is the editor in chief of that well respected news magazine. His editorial is titled, “Watching America’s Decline and Fall.”

“God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it…Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting”
       (Daniel 5:26-27).

Ultimately the reason for the decline and fall of America is spiritual. America has turned away from God, and now God is turning away from us. We have allowed our churches to be filled with unsaved people through the heresy of “decisionism.” We have lived for material pleasure, not for God. We have allowed 54 million helpless children to be crucified in their mother’s wombs without any significant protest from our churches. 54 million! That is 9 times as many as the Jews Hitler gassed in the Holocaust – Nine times as many! And our churches were virtually silent! Where were the leading Christians? Why didn’t Billy Graham and the others stop the slaughter, like Dr. King stopped segregation? Where were the mainstream evangelical church leaders during the American Holocaust? They certainly weren’t going to jail, like Dr. King did, to stop segregation. They were making money and enjoying their lives! Their love of personal peace and prosperity was greater than their concern for the crucified children, or the God they offended by their materialism and sloth.

Now we live in a nation under God’s judgment. As Abraham Lincoln said during the Civil War,

We have forgotten the gracious hand [of God] that preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. We have become too proud to pray to the God that made us.

Lincoln was exactly right. By the time of the Civil War (1861-1865) America’s churches were already deeply flawed by the “decisionism” brought in by Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) and other false “evangelists.” People by the tens of thousands had been received into the membership of our churches on the basis of a “decision” – rather than a real conversion (click here to read my sermon, “Decisionism, Calvinism and Today’s Apostasy!).

You and I cannot stop the fall of America. I am convinced that those who think our prayers can change this are wrong. There will be no national revival in America. It is too late for that. As God said to the prophet Ezekiel,

“Though Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls…” (Ezekiel 14:20).

In these evil days of judgment, each of us must be concerned with our soul’s salvation. As we lose our nation, make sure you don’t lose your soul!

“Strive to enter in at the strait gate: for many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able” (Luke 13:24).

Strive to experience a real conversion (click here to read my sermon, “Real Conversion – 2010 Edition”).

You must be drawn to the local church by the Spirit of God. You must hear the Gospel preached, and receive the message by the Spirit of God. Thus, you must hear and receive, by the Spirit of God, the good news that Jesus died on the Cross in the place of sinners, to pay their sin debt – and that He rose physically from the dead to give sinners the new birth. You must be deeply convicted of your own sin by the Spirit of God. You must be drawn by God’s Spirit to Jesus Christ, who said,

“No man can come to me, except the Father…draw him”
       (John 6:44).

We live in a sin-cursed world, in a nation under the judgment of Almighty God.

“Wherefore come out from among them…saith the Lord”
       (II Corinthians 6:17).

Come out from the world. Come into the church. Come to Jesus, the Son of God. Be in church every Sunday. Don’t miss church during the coming “holidays.” Don’t run off at Christmas and New Year’s. Drop out of the “holiday madness” and materialism. Be in church on Christmas Eve and Christmas Sunday. Be in church on New Year’s Eve – not at some wild party! Escape from the wrath of God that is falling on our nation.

The old Civil War song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” takes on new meaning today. Almighty God has indeed “loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword” against America!

“Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues” (Revelation 18:4).

Come out from America’s materialism and sin. Come in to the church. Come in to Jesus Christ, the Son of God!

Please stand and sing hymn number 7, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” God does not need America. His truth will go marching on after we have been “relegated to the dustbin of history” (ibid., Max Keiser).

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,
   He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
   His truth is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
   Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.

He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
   He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
   Our God is marching on.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
   Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
(“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” by Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910).

(END OF SERMON)
You can read Dr. Hymers’ sermons each week on the Internet at
www.realconversion.com. Click on “Sermon Manuscripts.”

You may email Dr. Hymers at rlhymersjr@sbcglobal.net, (Click Here) –
or you may write to him at P.O. Box 15308, Los Angeles, CA 90015.
Or phone him at (818)352-0452.

Scripture Read Before the Sermon by Dr. Kreighton L. Chan: Daniel 5:1-6.
Solo Sung Before the Sermon by Mr. Benjamin Kincaid Griffith:
“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (by Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910).