What Has Happened to America?

The recent events in Charlottesville have prompted many observers and commentators to ask the question, “What has happened to America?” Here is my brief analysis of how I see the last 75 years in order to introduce what I believe is the answer to that question.

1. Post war years – 1945-1950. Years of joy and a return to national peacetime.
2. 1950’s – Eisenhower years, Korean War, post war economic peace and prosperity (if you were white).
3. Late 1950’s, early 1960’s – Civil rights movement and Martin Luther King.
4. Late 1960’s, 1970’s – Vietnam war, hippie sexual revolution, characterized by not only ignoring God’s absolutes in the culture, but actively attacking them. The public attack on our Christian civilization has begun. Prayer in public school is outlawed.
5. Late 1970’s, 1980’s – First widespread church interest in politics with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Ronald Reagan. Christians became a factor in the Republican party, as the Reagan years became similar to the Eisenhower years, but with official, legal equal opportunity for all, regardless of race.
6. 1990’s – In 1991 the Soviet Union fell and George H. W. Bush promised a “new world order.” The digital revolution begins. The world-wide web explodes from a single web-site in 1991 to 17.1 million web-sites by 2000, and the world is changed forever. Ditto when Islamic terrorism invades the US in 1993 with the World Trade Center bombing. Bill Clinton, the first openly and unashamedly immoral president accepted by the nation and then re-elected. The sexual revolution in mainstream America is complete and the nation’s families, the foundation of a society, are in crisis everywhere.
7. 2000’s – Bush’s son. George W., fails at his attempt to bring in his father’s “new world order” by miring us in middle-eastern war. Trillions of American dollars and thousands of American lives later, we have as yet not extricated ourselves from that war. After Bush’s ineffective, eight year term of fighting a losing battle with Islamic terrorism, Barak Obama, who promised to “fundamentally change America,” is elected.
8. 2010’s – And change it he did. The seeds of rebellion planted in the 60’s and 70’s came to full flower under Obama and the Democrat party as the hippies of the 60’s had become the political leaders of the 2000’s. They succeeded in dividing America into victims and oppressors, haves and have-nots, and produced a permanent government-dependant lower class by using Obama’s rhetoric and policies. Rebellion and rioting became a part of mainstream America. A slumbering nation came awake with resounding Republican electoral victories in 2012, 2014 and 2016, culminating with the election of Donald Trump, but by then about half of our country, including the “elites” had bought into Obama’s “new America.” The future remains in doubt.

A sovereign God has ordered all these events, and yet within His providence and according to His decretive will, there have been people and their ideas who have led us to Charlottesville. Paul says, “lest Satan should take advantage of us . . . we are not ignorant of his devices” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

To help us not to be “ignorant of his devices,” the following YouTube video is a 28 minute college class on what has occurred behind the scenes during the period outlined above. It is the best education I have ever received on the planting, germination and flowering in America of the ideas that brought us Charlottesville. It is time for us as His church to “Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light.”“ (Ephesians 5:14).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z98LP5a1zyY&feature=youtu.be