As it was in the days of the Prophet Samuel, so shall it be today...

In the eleventh century before the birth of Christ on earth, the people of Israel had grown weary of being ruled by God. And they said so to God. 

They wanted a king, instead.

God knew this would be the case. Even before they came into the Promised Land, even before they were given the land at the hands of the Lord Almighty, leading them into battle to defeat the Canaanites and the other six tribes who occupied said land while they grew two million strong as slaves in Egypt. In the book of Deuteronomy (among other places), God through Moses told them when they decided they wanted a king, he was not to have too many wives, too many horses, or too many possessions. Not IF...WHEN.

(Imagine - a leader who had too many possessions! What kind of folly is that?)

And, sure enough, when Samuel was prophet of Israel, the people came to him and said they wanted a king. God reassured Samuel that it was Him being rejected, not Samuel, and chose a king for them, (This part of the tale is in First Samuel 8 through 10.) Now, Saul was a tall, handsome warrior of a man, and at first a man of God. But he failed both the Lord and the country with his petty battles that only he cared about. (Sad.) Then, the Lord had Samuel anoint David king, and while he was indeed "a man after God's own heart", he was guilty of adultery, murder to cover up that adultery, and whatever the term for bigamy is when you have children by six different women. Hexigamy? God forgave him often because he never forgot to repent of his sins (alright, he did need to be reminded that one time), but when those issues were exacerbated with his incredibly wise -yet- unbelievably foolish son Solomon (for whom we have to invent the word tri-centu-gamy, I guess), that was the end of the united nation of Israel until 2900 years later, in 1948, when End Times prophecy began to kick in and brought back a united Israel with a pure Hebrew out of almost nowhere. That subject's for another time.

So, when the people choose to elect a leader without God - and in Israel's case, that was only a relative term: God and His prophet Samuel still anointed each of the three kings the united kingdom of Israel had - the country soon found itself drifting farther and farther away from God's teaching. Even King Solomon, given by God "a wise and discerning mind, so that none like you has been before you and none like you shall arise after you," (1st Kings 3:12), wasn't smart enough to see the signs in his own life of disobedience - rather than one wife, he took 300, with another 700 concubines for good measure. Rather than use the great wealth granted him by God, he kept far too much of it for himself in direct contradiction of Deuteronomy. Rather than follow in God's teaching, he strayed far from it, as the writing of Ecclesiastes tells us. When his son tried to ascend to the throne, ten of the twelve tribes of Israel refused and balked, deserting Jerusalem and establishing their own kingdom, one which lasted less than three centuries before its own wicked ways brought God's judgment down on it. (Jerusalem lasted another hundred years, but it too fell to foreign powers by God's wrath, and Israel was destroyed. Only prophecy revived and reunited it, centuries later.)

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If you want to assume the position that the United States of America was blessed by God at all - and I challenge you to find me any Scripture which anoints any nation "across the sea" or some such phrase with His blessing. You won't find it - I would argue that the election of 2016 feels incredibly like Israel saying to God in 1050 BC, We don't need You any more. We want our own leader now. Evangelicals were so desperate to grasp onto any straw of a religious candidate that the majority of them backed a man who was the very antithesis of Christian: a serial liar, a serial adulterer, a narcissist, a dis-respecter of women, minorities, the poor, the downtrodden, the sojourner. But really, what were their alternatives? Most of them saw Mrs. Clinton as a godless liberal elitist, neither the Libertarian nor Green Party candidates expressed any positive statements on the Christian front, and even if you wanted to take a flyer on Evan McMullin, you were putting your eggs in an LDS basket that had scared them silly four years earlier. 


Christ and God were not represented in this election. 

And that's as He wanted it.

As I've said before, the cards played out FAR too conveniently to consider Mr. Trump's election a "fluke". For whatever reason, God wants Mr. Trump in office, and as the new POTUS demonstrated with a potential ban on refugees from Muslim countries that had nothing to do with terrorism, his policies are not those of Christ in any way, shape or form. 


So, why would God set up this particular 'king' over our nation? Hint - read the book of Samuel.

Whether you want to tag Mr. Trump as Saul, David, or Solomon, if you see an analogy (and God is nothing if not consistent and repetitious in His lessons), it's hard not to see the end coming soon for the United States of America. Beyond that, the question becomes, does the rest of the world go with us? (Translation: are we talking about an End Times scenario here?) Or is it merely the comeuppance of a nation that became far too enamored of its own importance, far too disobedient of the One True God, far too ignorant of the teaching of the Word? 


It's impossible to argue that we are currently a Christian nation, if indeed we ever truly were. Our national position on abortion, on adultery, on helping the poor, on the sanctity of marriage (not the rights of the individual seeking marriage, which is an entirely different issue), on warfare and any number of other topics damns us beyond our own national salvation, whatever your individual position may be.

But the eschatological evidence suggests that the world itself is not long from the Great Tribulation, and the pointlessness of smiting even the most powerful nation so close to the AntiChrist's appearance would seem to be in our favor. My own study of the facts in the world today compared to the signs in Scripture makes me place the beginning of the Great Tribulation (and the Rapture, since I'm a pre-millennalist) as coming within the next three years or so, give or take. I'm not about to tell the Lord Almighty how to run His World (and never forget, it IS His world, no matter what you see around you), but it would seem to be a lost lesson if we were to blow ourselves up, for example, right before the Rapture.


Unless, of course, our own self-annihilation was the cover for the Rapture. Hmmmm. There's an interesting thought that I really wish I hadn't thought of....