Beyond Today Magazine -- November/December 2020

Page 14

WORLD NEWS & PROPHECY

America’s Role in History Foretold God gave great promises to the biblical patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Those promises were never fulfilled in ancient times. Yet that prophesied geopolitical role and abundant blessings are paralleled by what the United States and other English-speaking peoples have experienced. This is no coincidence. by Tom Robinson

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his year has witnessed massive assaults on the foundations of Western society. America and Britain have seen national monuments and statues defaced and toppled. Anarchists and Marxists have been at work to erase and replace national history. On this 400th anniversary of the Pilgrims’ arrival in New England, attempts are being made to rebrand them and other colonists from Britain as evil pillagers who plunged the world into centuries of oppression and genocide, with the countries they formed continuing on the same brutal and villainous path. Yet this is a terrible lie. The American and British peoples have not always done right in how they’ve treated others. Slavery was an appalling evil, as were many dealings with indigenous populations. Yet such evils long afflicted mankind for centuries prior, and these nations eventually worked to bring them to an end. They further expanded freedom throughout large parts of the world, spreading principles and opportunities for liberty, and have been very generous in sharing their resources. These two great powers saved the world from despotism in two world wars. After the second world war, the United States even rebuilt its defeated enemies Germany and Japan, along with helping its allies. And America continued to protect the West against communist tyranny for the next half century. These nations have been the greatest political powers in human history, using their might to do much good throughout the globe. They distributed Bibles around the world and long promoted biblical morality. While that good example has tragically given way to purveying depravity for many decades now, the Bible continues to influence large parts of society, being deeply ingrained in the national character and history. Remarkably, it is in the pages of the Bible that we learn just who the people of America and the other British-descended Anglosphere countries truly are, why they are so richly blessed, why they have so greatly helped other nations and what now lies ahead for them.

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Beyond Today

B Tm a g a z i n e . o r g

To see this connection we must begin, surprising as it may seem, with the biblical story of the nation of Israel, starting with prophetic promises made to the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph nearly 4,000 years ago. God told Abraham, “I will make you a great nation . . . and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3). God later specified, “I have made you a father of many nations . . . kings shall come from you,” and “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed”—further promising that Abraham’s descendants would be as countless as the stars and would possess the gates of their enemies (Genesis 15:5-6; 17:1-6; 22:16-18). National greatness and blessings to the world

We see here a promise of both national greatness and blessing on the world through Abraham’s descendants. This blessing would come in part through the national greatness but ultimately, as we later discover, through the quintessential Seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ, and the spreading forth of Scripture. Continuing in Genesis, we see that these blessings were passed down through Abraham’s son Isaac and then his son Jacob, who was renamed Israel. The national blessing Jacob received included the promise of his descendants inheriting the richest producing areas of the earth, with other nations bowing to them (Genesis 27:27-29). God further told Jacob that His descendants would inherit not only the land of Canaan, but that they would spread abroad or colonize around the world and bless all the families of the earth (Genesis 28:13-14). Later, God declared that “a nation and a company of nations” would come from Jacob as well as royalty—thus a great singular nation and a related group of nations (Genesis 35:10-11). We later find that the birthright promises of national greatness, including colonizing abroad, richness of land and people, and tremendous military power, passed to Jacob’s son


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