The Clock of Judgment
This week I am releasing the 4th installment of my book “Dynasty of Darkness: Satan’s long serpentine trail through human history in the role of successive Antichrists, and the imminent rise of his last days kingdom” in text and video formats. In this installment I analyze the books of Joshua and Judges to profile the Antichrists of the 400 year period of the pre-monarchic Israelite republic, when the Hebrews fought the Canaanites for control of the Holy Land. That season of Biblical history has special prophetic significance for Americans because it parallels the 400 years of our republic from its founding in 1620.
Was pre-monarchic Israel a republic? Yes. The term “republic” is the Latin translation of a 6th century BC Greek term “res publica,” coined to distinguish governments “owned by the public” from those “owned by the rulers.” Historically it included any alternative to monarchy, as was true during the 1600s in Western Europe and Great Britain when the concept of a “constitutional republic” began to mature toward its present form. The Hebrew nation established through Abraham by God has, of course, always been a “theocracy” (a term coined by Josephus in the 1st Century AD), but the terms “republic” and “theocracy” are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, the transition of the nation of Israel, from “republic” to “monarchy” during the time of the Prophet Samuel did not change its essential “theocratic” nature since God ultimately ruled both as the same lawgiver above the same law that both types of government were equally subject to.
Is America a modern iteration of the Israelite republic? I believe it is. America’s first written constitution was the Mayflower Compact, a covenantal oath of Pilgrim Separatists who crossed the Atlantic Ocean with the specific intention to create a nation “for the advancement of the Christian faith” – just as the Hebrews crossed the Jordan River to establish a nation upon the Torah, and whose first act in the land under Moses’ successor Joshua was to corporately reaffirm God’s Abrahamic covenant as codified in the Mosaic law. Both republics acknowledged God as the Supreme Authority, and their leaders managed the day by day national affairs according to the rule of law He had established through human agents.
After the US Constitution had been drafted “in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven” (a quote from the signature clause), resistance at the state level raised doubt it would ever be adopted, until Rev. Samuel Langdon’s sermon “The Republic of the Israelites as an Example to the American States” inspired New Hampshire to cast the final ratifying vote.
Does America’s history parallel that of the Israelite republic? Yes. Like Israel, America started morally strong and grew weaker over time, being intermittently “revived” to spiritual health. God raised up Judges to rescue the Israelites from their sin after its painful consequences caused them to repent and beseech Him for deliverance. America’s pattern was similar and God raised up men like Jonathan Edwards (First Great Awakening, 1730s – 1770s), Charles Finney (Second Great Awakening 1790s – 1830s), and others.
It is human nature to forget God’s law during times of peace and plenty until sin-produced suffering reminds us to repent. It is Satan’s nature to exploit and institutionalize our sin to increasingly weaken us from cycle to cycle. I call this the “Clock of Judgment” because it cycles like the hands of a mechanical clock from Morally Healthy at Noon, to Backsliding by Three, to Judgement by Six, to Repentance by Nine, to Restoration through Revival at Twelve, over and over again.
Eventually, due to the institutionalization of sin, the “revivals” become so compromised they can’t overcome entrenched societal corruption (e.g church-based LGBT tolerance).
In the Israelite republic, the turning point was under the 6th Judge Gideon, whom we tend to lionize in modern sermons but whose father built the town altar to Baal, and who himself took a Caananite concubine whose son Abilelech became the first-ever Hebrew Antichrist. Gideon’s “revival” had virtually no residual power at the time of his death, and soon afterward Abilelech slaughtered all 70 of his male siblings (except Jotham who escaped) to make himself King of (Canaanite) Shechem. God then killed Abimelech by His own hand using a nameless woman (Judges 9:56), NOT by raising a deliverer. After that the republic disintegrated slowly into anarchy until “every man did what was right in his own eyes.” There were other Judges raised to preserve Israel as a nation in the Holy Land, but never again did the republic as a whole return to full spiritual health.
In America, the turning point was under “Antichrist” (or Antichrist-ally) Judge Hugo Black. As the “swing vote” on the Supreme Court he wrote two majority opinions (Everson v Board of Education, 1947; and Torcaso v Watkins, 1961), converting Jefferson’s “Separation of Church and State” metaphor into binding constitutional law. In these, this former KKK clansman who helped LBJ cheat his way into the US Senate, and whose own appointment to the court was illegal ), pushed America off the bedrock of the Bible onto the shifting sand of Secular Humanism with the Everson ruling. This fulfilled a key Antichrist objective in 2 Thessalonians 2, setting the court “above God and everything worshiped as god” as arbiter of all religious claims relating to public policy, under the deceptive rubric of “benevolent neutrality.” And in Torcaso he made Atheism a “religion” equal to Christianity, legally empowering militant God-haters including Madalyn Marie O’Hare to weaponize the 14th Amendment “equal protection” clause to purge Christianity from public life, starting with public school prayer in 1963.
November 18th will be the 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’s landing at Plymouth, two weeks past the 2020 election. Is America doomed to soon surrender its republic to a wicked King Saul as Israel did? Or will we truly repent and be healed as a nation? The Clock of Judgment is ticking.
