An interesting and important question : Why doesn't the Bible mention
America ?
After all, the Bible is authoritative, some people claim it is inerrant,
and in
any case, God -the ultimate author- is prescient and can easily foresee
the future. By rights, American should be in the Bible.
Rev Laurie's answers to the question are evasions laced with paranoid
delusions.
Essentially his approach is worthless.
To get at the best available answer with our current state of knowledge,
the
obvious explanation is simply that for all of their supposed ability to see
into time,
the people who wrote the books of the Bible were clueless that America
existed.
They were hardly alone, of course. Close to 100% of ancient people had
no idea that the New World existed. Probably the Phoenicians had some idea,
there is evidence of landfall in a cave in Brazil to this effect, but ,
if so, no-one
had any idea of the extent of the Americas and at most the discovery, if it
was
known at all, would have been a curiosity about a large island beyond the
Pillars of Hercules. By then, whenever that took place, large parts of
the OT would already have been written.
Still, the Pharaoh Necho did commission a trans-African voyage by
Phoenician
sailors and it succeeded in circumnavigating the continent. That time
period
would make the most sense for the years when at least vague knowledge
of the existence of America could have first occurred. This was ca 600 BC.
This, at any rate, is the closest I can think of to a time when information
about
America could have been known to the Biblical writers.
Not that you will find a trace of such empirical reasoning in Laurie's
speculations.
Hell, why study history when you can indulge in fantasy based on fears and
supported by ignorance ? That ignorance may be "justified" by using
prayer
as an excuse not to become informed. That is, and in contrast to many
believers who do make serious efforts to become informed, there really
is an attitude "out there" to the effect that research is not important
and that you don't need to be informed. All you need is prayer,
so to speak.
You can raise the question, of course, what kind of faith does not regard
BOTH as vital ? And that is where the problem seems to lie.
Of course, some people have attempted to interpret various allusions
in the Bible as references to America. Ezekiel, Isaiah, and the Book of
Revelation
have given us a variety to theories to the effect that an eagle symbolizes
America,
or that references to sealed scrolls and the like give us clues, but all of
this,
to the best of my knowledge, really is a stretch. And to say the least,
there is no agreement among students of the Bible that those figures
of speech have anything at all to do with America.
Joseph Smith tried to fill the void with his creative invention of the Book
of Mormon, but while he deserved some kind of prize for literature,
there are no reputable scholars that I have ever heard of who take
the BofM seriously as history.
So, we are left with the question: Just why isn't America in the Bible ?
My answer? Because, as good and precious and filled with wisdom
as the book is, it isn't perfect and isn't the final revelation.
Anyone who wishes is free to disagree, of course, but this
is how it seems to me.....
Billy
----------------------------------------------------------
Christian Post
Greg Laurie on Why Bible Prophecy Makes No Mention of America
* By _Anugrah Kumar_
(http://www.christianpost.com/author/anugrah-kumar/)
July 15, 2013|6:15 am
Bible prophecy related to the end times mentions many nations, including
Libya, Iran, Iraq Ethiopia, and possibly even China and Russia, but not the
United States of America. In an _article on his blog_
(http://blog.greglaurie.com/?p=8931) , Pastor Greg Laurie gives three plausible
reasons for the
nation's exclusion.
"Where is the United States? Why are we not in the last-days scenario?"
asks Laurie, pastor of Harvest Church in Riverside, Calif.
One reason why the United States is not mentioned in Scripture is perhaps
because the nation "might be devastated by a nuclear war," the pastor
writes. "It is a horrible scenario and one that none of us would want to see,
but
we cannot rule it out as a possibility."
The threat remains despite the dissolution of the former Soviet Union,
Laurie argues. "It could indeed be a rogue terrorist nation with nuclear
capabilities, or even a terrorist group that could set off the dominoes
falling
onto each other. I hope this isn't the case, but we cannot rule it out."
Laurie is for a strong military for that reason. "We need to take seriously
any foreign threats. But having said that, what about an internal
collapse?"
A second possible reason could be that the U.S. might decline as a world
power, Laurie says, quoting Proverbs 14:34, which reads, "Godliness makes a
nation great, but sin is a disgrace to any people."
"As our country becomes more and more secular, systematically eliminating
God and the Bible from our education system, courts, and the arts, we will
begin to reap the inevitable results of sin. We will begin to rot from the
inside," the pastor warns. "I think to some degree, we already have [seen
that happen] as we have seen the breakdown of the family, rampant crime and
so many other problems that have come from disobeying God."
Laurie points out that what once was freedom of religion seems to have now
become freedom from religion. "We have succeeded in getting God out of our
schools, out of our sporting events, out of our public places and out of
our workplaces."
The nation needs to remember that the freedom we enjoy is built on the
foundation of absolute truth, he says. "And when you remove that foundation,
this freedom actually can turn into anarchy."
A third possibility could be that the U.S. will witness a revival, "which I
find a lot more hopeful," Laurie goes on to say. "That is not to say a
revival would eliminate us as a world power. But if our nation had a revival,
it would affect us. Think about this. Let's say, for example, that
one-fourth of all Americans are believers. This would mean that we have
approximately 78 million true believers in our country today… When the Rapture
of the
church takes place, don't you think there would be an impact on the United
States…?"
Laurie said we need to, therefore, pray for revival in our country today.
"When I say that our nation needs God, I don't mean that we need whatever
god everyone happens to believe in," he clarifies. "The only hope for America
is when we turn back to the true and living God – the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, the God who gave us the Bible as the revelation of who he is,
the God who loved us so much that he sent his own son, Jesus Christ, to die
on the cross in our place."
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