Prophetic Perspective on the USA – Star Parker

Here’s the second article of a prophetic perspective–this time on the USA. 

As we approach the home stretch of the 2024 presidential election, it’s crucial that we choose wisely for the future of our nation. I will say much about this in coming weeks and encourage you to pray, act, and vote as if your life depended of the November result.

Yet, the greater need in our nation is for a deep and abiding spiritual awakening–a revival. Here is a clear prophetic voice on America’s greatest need.

Prophetic Perspective on the USA – Star Parker

The focus of my life’s work has been to pursue “revival in America” for the sake of world evangelization. 

America has been the leading nation in fulfilling the Great Commission for over one hundred years. We send out more missionaries, give more money, and do more to promote religious freedom than any other nation around the globe–actually, in the history of the world.

But we are a deeply backslidden nation in desperate need of a moral and spiritual awakening. 

If we don’t return to God, we will commit suicide as a country.

There is a “Life Calendar” in the back of my autobiography (One Small Life: Revival Adventures From My Fifty Year Journal) where I took the time to list the important people, decisions, and events of my life. 

Forming a calendar dawned on me while I was preparing to write the book. While going through the 2400 pages of my fifty year diary, many important people, revelations, and events stuck out that I felt God wanted me to remember. So I created the Life Calendar and placed these important moments under the month in which they took place.  A few quotes and scriptures guided my thinking:

“To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it more fit for its function of looking forward” (Margaret Fairless Barber).

“The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see” (Winston Churchill).

“You thrill me, Lord, with what you have accomplished for me! I sing for joy because of what you have done” (Psalm 92:4).

“So it is right for me to be enthusiastic about all Christ Jesus has done through me in my service to God. I dare not boast of anything else” (Romans 15:17,18).

On September 1, 1974–exactly fifty years ago this week–I was in England just finishing my first Summer of Service with Youth With A Mission. I was 21, and knew very little about life, the world, and missions. But I had grown through my YWAM training and was sensing God’s call on my life for the first time. 

Here’s what I wrote in my journal a half century ago: 

“First “call” to take America for Jesus Christ (revival).”

Three years later my wife and I launched the “Renewal Team” that did revival crusades in various parts of the nation. In 1980, we landed in Washington, D.C. to help coordinate first great national prayer meeting for spiritual awakening (Washington For Jesus) that helped usher in the Reagan Revolution (“Morning in America.”) During the 1990s and early 2000s I spoke on revival in many towns and cities across America in forty states.

My heart still yearns for revival in this generation–for world evangelism. Without revival we could commit suicide as a nation and the world tumble into darkness. 

Recently I read an article by Star Parker who is an American columnist, political pundit, author, TV Host, and fellow believer. In 1995, she founded the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

Ponder carefully her wise and sobering words.

America: A Nation Committing Suicide

Star Parker

Over the years 1934-1961, British historian Arnold Toynbee published his 12-volume “A Study of History.” Toynbee studied the rise and fall of 23 civilizations. His conclusion was that great civilizations die not from external causes but from internal causes.

They commit suicide.

Toynbee concluded, in the words of one journalist, that “civilizations start to decay when they lose their moral fiber.”

We don’t have to be great historians to know that civilizations have come and gone. Forever is not a given fact of life.

In this vein, in this political season, with the excitement of an upcoming election in which we will choose who holds the highest office in our government for four years, as well as elections for the Senate and the House, I pray for a grand national awakening.

It is the business of politicians to aspire to power, to tell us that our problems are because of the other party, and to divert our attention from where it should be—on ourselves.

If we so focus, many I believe will conclude it is hard to see a future for a nation with fewer and fewer children, greater and greater government and debt, and less and less economic growth.

Per the Congressional Budget Office, growth of the U.S. population averaged 0.9% per year from 1974 to 2023. It projects from 2024 to 2054 it will be half that—0.4% per year.

For a population to hold steady, to not shrink, the average fertility rate must be 2.1 children per woman. We have fallen well below this to 1.67, and CBO projects it will stay there.

The implications are an aging population, with fewer and fewer of working age and an increasing burden of the expenses of an aging population—greater retirement costs and health care costs.

One measure of this picture is the ratio of the size of the working-age population—ages 25-64—to the size of the population 65 and above.

In 1950, that ratio was over 6 to 1. In 2004, it was 4 to 1. In 2024, per CBO, it is 2.9 to 1. And CBO projects that by 2054, it will be 2.2 to 1.

Per Pew Research, in 1980, 6% of 40-year-old Americans had never been married. By 2021, it was 25%.

In 1980, federal debt held by the public was about 25% of gross domestic product. Now it is almost 100%. CBO projects that by 2054, it will be 166%.

Explosion of federal debt is the result of the explosion of federal spending and growth of government.

More government means more of our economy is diverted to bureaucrats and away from those who work and create. As a result, economic growth suffers.

From 1950 to 2000, per Hoover Institution economist John Cochrane, the U.S. economy grew an average of 3.5% per year. Now we’re around 2%. Cochrane notes that if from 1950 to 2000 growth was 2% rather than 3.5%, per capita GDP in 2000 would have been $23,000 rather than $49,000.

CBO projects average growth rate of the U.S. economy for the next 30 years less than 2% per year. This, of course, means diminishing average income for all Americans.

Many years ago, when I turned away from welfare and turned toward God, my guide and mentor told me that there are two possibilities—government or God.

The data shows more Americans turning away from faith and church attendance, and hence they are choosing government.

We hear much rhetoric now about American democracy, but democracy is about how we choose, not what we choose. The focus of a free nation under God is about what we choose.

So, I return to where I was at the beginning. A nation without children, without marriage, with expanding government and debt, is a nation, in the words of historian Toynbee, committing suicide.

I pray for a reawakening.

***

The coming elections will help hasten either a societal renewal or cultural suicide. Another leading prophetic voice, Eric Metaxas, says:

We are facing the last exit before the toll.”

“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (Revelation 2:7,11,29).