Second Term - A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 1) (35 page)
Read Second Term - A Novel of America in the Last Days (The End of America Series Book 1) Online
Authors: John Price
“Debbie, you never
cease to amaze me. Sounds like a plan.”
Thus, John and Debbie
Madison took their first tentative steps down a path that could lead they knew
not where, but they were willing, by faith, to step forward.
SEVENTY
FIVE
Falls Church,
Virginia
Residence of
the Commandant
of the U.S.
Marine Corps
The two Falls Church
detectives assigned to investigate the suicide in their jurisdiction were
unsettled.
“Why would the
General hang himself? It makes no sense at all. He had the highest job in his
branch of the military. He was the Commandant of the United States Marine
Corps. He was apparently healthy. His wife says their bills were paid and they
had savings. It doesn’t compute.”
“Any chance he didn’t
take his own life?”
“Why do you ask? Have you spotted something?”
“The pathologists
will have to sort it out, naturally, but when they pulled him down I noticed
some slightly darkened areas on his wrists. That’s consistent with his arms
being held while he was suffocated by hanging, against his will. I’m just
asking.”
“That’s up to the lab guys, not us. By the way, his
wife says there’s letter on his desk in their den. We need to take a look at
what’s in it.”
On the General’s desk
the detectives found a sealed envelope. On the crème colored U. S. Marine Corps
envelope was typed:
MY
CONFESSION ---- OPEN ONLY UPON MY DEATH.
Afterword
In
early May, 1970 I accompanied Indiana State Treasurer John K. Snyder, a
candidate for the U.S. Senate, for a visit to the White House. The purpose of
the meeting, which was held in the East Wing, was to meet with the President’s
chief political advisor concerning the Senate primary race in Indiana. To avoid
media scrutiny, the meeting was set for mid-morning on a Saturday. At the same
time, Vietnam War protestors were loudly making their views known in DC. The
protests had built to such a level of concern that DC police had surrounded the
White House complex with city buses parked nose to tail, to avoid the White
House being rushed by protestors who might then jump the fence and attack the
building itself. The President met with a few protestors and then departed DC
for the weekend to avoid any elevated confrontation had he been present at the
White House.
We
were told to come to a narrow gap in the buses parked to the east of the White
House, and upon presenting our identification, proceed through the security
gate and into the East Wing to discuss politics in Indiana, and what role the
President might, or might not, play in the Republican primary. As we walked
down East Executive Avenue, which runs between the East Wing and the U.S.
Treasury building, we looked towards the Treasury and saw military vehicles.
The two personnel trucks were parked on the ramp on the west side of the Treasury
building that runs down below the building for parking purposes. What
immediately caught our eye was the fact that both trucks were packed full of
armed military personnel, all with full battle gear, helmets and each with a
rifle held across their chests in what appeared to be a ready for battle
position.
Needless
to say, we were taken aback when we saw the armed troops. Our May visit to the
White House came a week after May 4, 1970, the day that four Kent State
students were killed, and nine wounded, after the firing of 67 rounds by
weapons-bearing soldiers, albeit Ohio National Guard troops. Had the
protestors, who were thankfully restricting their activities south of the White
House in the Mall, rushed the White House and attempted to breach the bus
barrier, who knows what would have happened? The United States government was
prepared to defend the seat of power from a mob of unhappy Americans. Had such
an assault occurred, and had the troops on the parking ramp of the Treasury
building fired on the assaulters, history would have been altered. The scene in
Chapter 30 is based, in part, on what we saw that fateful day in early May,
1970.
Watch
For
THE
WARNING
The
Second Book in the SECOND TERM Trilogy
·
Will
Hilde and Wilbur succeed in their plan to replace the President?
·
Will
Pastor Jack Madison be charged and convicted of hate speech law violations?
·
Will
talk radio and Fox be shut down?
·
Will
Texas secede from the Union?
·
What
end times prophecies will be fulfilled in America?
·
Will
America support Israel when it’s invaded?
·
Will
radical Islamists use WMDs on the U.S.? How will they use them? Where?
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ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
John Price
was for forty years an Indianapolis attorney who was active in political and
governmental matters. He now devotes his time to his wife, his grandchildren
and his writing. The author may be contacted at:
Published
Books by the Author
AMERICA AT THE
CROSSROADS
Repentance or
Repression
Christian
House Publishing, Inc. 1976
AMERICA AT THE
CROSSROADS
Tyndale House,
1979
THE END OF
AMERICA
3rd Edition,
2012
(Available in
print form on Amazon and e-version on Kindle)
SECOND TERM
A Novel of
America in the Last Days
For
a non-fiction look at America in prophecy:
See the next page
for a sample from
THE END OF AMERICA
INTRODUCTION
TO
THE
END OF AMERICA
©
2012, John R. Price
It
was 1976. I had been a Christian just a few years, but I knew that something
was seriously wrong in America. Only three years before, in 1973, the nation’s
highest Court had authorized the aborting of infants in the womb, even though almost every State then prohibited abortion as a criminal act. By 1976 there had been very
little public debate and there were but few books published about the issue. I
decided to see what the Bible said. I’ll not soon forget weeping as I read in
God’s Word His view of fetal murder, and I’m not normally given to tears.
I
then outlined and penned a book, which we originally published as Christian
House Publishers entitled
“America at the Crossroads: Repentance or
Repression”.
The book included a brief history of America’s four great spiritual awakenings (1725-1760; 1787-1805; 1857-1865 and 1900-1910) to
hopefully give a vision for a fifth great awakening, if America’s Christians complied with II Chronicles 7:14.
(“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their
wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will
heal their land.”)
. The subtitle of the Tyndale House 1979 edition was “
Can
America Escape National Decline, Economic Collapse and Devastating Conflict?”
This book will answer that question asked thirty years ago.
In
“America at the Crossroads”
we looked at some key societal issues:
The
Economy:
“Given the unbridled right to create money, government will do so
and eventually cause the destruction of the entire system.”
Banks:
“We should anticipate that at any point in time our U.S. banking system could
suffer a blow from which it could not bounce back and which would result in
government takeover…In whatever way it may start, if it starts, a series of
major bank failures would totally alter the nation as we now know it.”
Politics/Government:
“We must not confuse cause with effect. God will heal; that’s the effect. But the cause, the reason He will heal, is our repentance. Just electing
Christians to office won’t change the nation and heal its wounds. Instead,
we’ll repent and God will then allow godly men and women to be elected to
office and He will use them in the healing process. Some well-meaning
Christians want to heal the nation by organizing the ‘Christian vote’ and
voting our problems away.”
Don’t
be too impressed by the last statement, as within a few years of writing it, I
ignored my own words, and declared my candidacy for Congress, hoping to heal
America from Capitol Hill, though without first witnessing a spiritual
awakening. My electoral efforts thereafter were not successful, though not the
fault, certainly, of friends and supporters who worked long hours, from a heart
conviction to see God heal our land.
Sadly,
for almost a hundred years, America has not experienced national repentance,
nor a spiritual awakening, and no healing of our nation. After
“America at the Crossroads”
was published I began to look with some intensity at the role of the United States of America in Biblical prophecy. In studying the possible role of America in Bible prophecy, I soon learned that there were very few authors who had concluded that America was portrayed, or even alluded to, in the Bible, except in the most general sense. Best-selling Christian authors Dr. Tim LaHaye and Dr. Lester Sumrall have stated that view:
“Does
the United States have a place in end times prophecy? My first response is no,
there is nothing about the U.S. in prophecy. At least nothing that is
specific…The question is why? Why would the God of prophecy not refer to the
supreme superpower nation in the end times in preparation for the one-world
government of the Antichrist?”
(Tim
LaHaye’s Perspective, August, 1999)
“The
absence of any mention (in the end times) of a nation we could say is the
United States, therefore, is a cause for great distress among those of us who
live in and love this nation. Where will America be at that time? The
conclusion we must draw is very sad and sobering, and it should serve as a loud
warning to our beloved United States. Simply put, the United States will no longer be a world power in the end times. It will not be a significant enough
nation to play a major role in the events of those days – that is the obvious
answer.”
(
Jerusalem
: Where Empires Die,
Lester Sumrall, Sumrall Publishing).
The
only published writer at the time who had concluded that America is set forth
in the Bible was C. Franklin Logsdon, who in 1968 wrote
“Is the U.S.A. in Prophecy?” (Zondervan,
1968)
.
Logsdon’s little book was an eye-opener,
because the author focused on a subject in the Bible not much mentioned by
Bible expositors, the
“Daughter of Babylon.”
(Throughout the book, the
name the
“Daughter of Babylon”
will be used in reference to the end
times nation that the Bible also labels as
“Babylon the Great”
(Revelation 17-18). It’s obvious from the text and context that both titles
refer to the same end times nation.)
I
pursued studying what the Bible said about the Daughter of Babylon, wrote some
limited pages on the subject, spoke in a few churches on the topic, and then,
ultimately, concluded that though the verses describing the end times Daughter
of Babylon certainly appeared to apply to our nation, there were several pieces
that just did not,
at that time,
seem to fit properly together.
Prophetic
interpretative questions at the time included:
a.)
America was a world superpower, but not the
only
“
hammer of the
whole earth
” that Jeremiah said the Daughter of Babylon would be. The
Soviet Union was then seen by most as equal to America in military power;
b.)
The nations of Europe were not yet united in any meaningful way;
c.)
Several Arab nations mentioned in prophecy were without any power or influence;
and
d.)
Prophetically, the Daughter of Babylon will bring judgment on itself from God
for doing things that America had not itself done a third of a century ago.
After
some study of the subject, I filed away what I had learned, and moved on to
other matters. Along with my wife, we raised four God-loving children (for whom
we are eternally grateful) and watched America change over the last three plus
decades.
That
changed in the summer of 2007 as I began to pray and ponder the prophetic
issues of what would become the contents of this book. I gradually realized that what I had researched and studied almost a third of a century ago was now,
with changed circumstances in the world, beginning to make perfect sense. So,
what had happened over those thirty plus years? Many things, obviously, which
are covered herein. But by far, the two most important changes since the mid
1970’s were:
1.)
America has changed. It has taken actions that have brought it closer to fulfillment
of prophetic end times verses. It is, therefore, now in a position to do other
things it never would have done in the past (more on this later); and
2.)
The rise to world prominence, and to public attention, of radical Islamic Jihadists who are able, and more than willing, to conquer the world for Allah.
Islam
had not been seen by Bible students or commentators in the last century as
having any part in end times Bible prophecy. But now the several pieces that didn’t seem to fit in the late 1970’s, quickly began to slip into place. Is it of
any importance that Christians, and Jews, understand what Muslims believe?
Well, actually, it’s critical that we know what Muslims believe about the end
times, because there is an astounding overlap between what the Bible and the
Quran say will happen in the end of this last phase of human history.
We
are now closer to end times events than in the last century, so we can now
discern much more about
how
these prophecies will be, and are being,
fulfilled. We can now, gradually, begin to understand how those formerly
somewhat unclear prophecies are now becoming clearer every day. It’s like
approaching a light in the night through a fog, the closer one gets, the
clearer one can see. As we get closer to the end, we can begin to see that only
one group of inhabitants of the earth can fulfill these prophecies in our day.
In
this regard, the biggest shock to this writer, in beginning to re-study what
the Bible calls the
“mystery”
of the identity of the Daughter of Babylon,
was that, contrary to the formerly prevailing general belief that America is
not in Biblical prophecy, America, as it turns out, is a
major
player
on the prophetic end times world stage. A major player, that is,
until a
prophesied point in time
. This, then, is a significant conclusion of
The
End of America.
The Bible contains numerous prophetic verses that, we now
increasingly see and understand, can
only
apply, and
do apply
, to
the United States of America, and to no other nation of the past or present.
Those verses have always been there, but it is only now, as we approach their
fulfillment, that we can perceive them as such.
What
must be emphasized is that this is not just another book about the well-known
and often studied end times topics, such as Armageddon, the Antichrist, the
Rapture, the Tribulation and other final days world events. Unlike most books
on prophecy, we will study in depth those end times prophecies that
come
before
these events that we normally think of when we think of end times prophecies
.
As it turns out, the Bible contains over 220 verses (and thirty identity
clues) that describe a particular end times nation (it’s not Israel) which will be fulfilled
before
the final days events with which students of the Bible
are well acquainted.
So,
grab your Bible, and grab your newspaper. As you do, keep in mind that there
are
1,239 prophecies
in the Old Testament, and 578 prophecies in the New Testament. Those 1,817 prophecies
include 8,352 verses. And because there are 31,124 verses in the Bible, those
8,352 verses are about
27 percent of the total
, meaning that
over
one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy
. (
Encyclopedia
of Biblical Prophecy,
by J. Barton Payne). Some of those 1,817 prophecies
have already been fulfilled, many are
not yet fulfilled
, but
al
l
will be fulfilled by the end of the end times. Thankfully, God has given us in
His Word what will happen
before
it all happens. Let’s study those prophecies
together to learn what God wants us to know, and more importantly, to
act
on what He has
told us to do
in the beginning days of the end times. Our
very lives will depend upon it.
THE
END OF AMERICA
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God
bless & thanks for reading,
John
Price