The Party’s Over

I fear for America because I tremble for its leaders. Yes, of course—the grand celebration of this country’s semiquincentennial birthday this summer was characteristically over the top. Nobody throws a party like America!

But as the hoopla fades, the somber depiction of this nation in the Apocalypse cannot be shaken:

“Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people” (Rev. 13:11-13, NIV).

As it turns out, “fire from heaven” has nothing to do with birthday fireworks and everything to do with an endgame strategy to rule this land, this world. Let me explain.

In the previous Endgame column, “Happy Birthday, America!” we examined five of the six embedded clues to the identity of this apocalyptic earth beast. Here is a summary:

1. It springs up “out of the earth” (Rev. 13:11)—the Greek verb describes the rapid growth of “thorns” (Matt. 13:7).

2. It springs up “out of the earth” (Rev. 13:11)—in contradistinction to the previous sea beast arising from the sea (an apocalyptic symbol for people and nations—Rev. 13:1; 17:15), this earth beast arises far from the populated crossroads of humanity.

3. “Then I saw a second beast” suggests a sequence (Rev. 13:11, NIV)—the sea beast appears first (Protestant Reformers identified this antichrist Middle Ages power as Rome), after which the earth beast later appears at the time of the sea beast’s mortal wounding (verse 3), when Napoleon ordered the arrest and exile of Pope Pius VI (February 1798).

4. “It had two horns like a lamb” (Rev. 13:11, NIV), but no crowns—clearly not a monarchy like the sea beast, with its 10 horns and crowns. Instead, the earth beast appears to be lamblike, Christlike, or even Christian.

5. But “it spoke like a dragon” (Rev. 13:11, NIV)—a quasi-Christian power whose dragon-speak betrays its endgame role.

So with these five clues, who is this earth beast power that springs into existence in the late 1700s? This nascent power far away from the sea beast’s crowded crossroads in Europe; this lamblike power that looks quite Christian but in the end advances the agenda of the dragon; this global superpower that performs such “great signs” (Rev. 13:13) as to “deceive the inhabitants of the earth” (verse 14, NIV) in order to make them “worship the [sea] beast” (verse 12)?

For the answer, consider one more embedded clue to the identity of this earth beast. It is the critical game changer. And it is already in place.

• The earth beast is called “the false prophet,” a moniker, an alias, used three times in the Apocalypse (see Rev. 16:13; 19:20; 20:10).But why this “false prophet” nickname?

Sadly, apostate Israelite monarchs filled their courts with these prophetic hangers-on. The prophet Elijah had to face off with Ahab and Jezebel’s 850 false prophets atop Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:19). Later Micaiah was attacked by another 400 false prophets during the same administration (1 Kings 22:6). Still later, Jeremiah himself faced down his prophetic nemesis, the false prophet Hananiah (Jer. 28). Wherever God is at work, here comes the dragon, and then come the false prophets!

Is that true for America? Enter what some call Christian nationalism on steroids—the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR):

“The New Apostolic Reformation [is] a charismatic evangelical Christian movement led by a loose network of self-appointed prophets and apostles, who claim that God speaks directly to them, often in dreams. They believe that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States. In the vanguard of an ascendant Christian nationalist movement, they are seeking an explicitly Christian command of public schools, social policy, and all levels of the government, including the courts. Some scholars claim NAR is the fastest-growing spiritual movement in the United States. Evangelical writer C. Peter Wagner described it as the most significant shake-up in Protestantism since the Reformation. Its laser focus on starting a spiritual war to Christianize America has led the Southern Poverty Law Center to call NAR ‘the greatest threat to U.S. democracy that you have never heard of.’ ”[1]

The key players in this New Apostolic Reformation are self-proclaimed apostles and prophets, who claim direct messaging from heaven to organize and implement their national and global strategy, called the Seven Mountain Mandate. Lance Wallnau, one of their lead apostles and visionary of this strategy, has written: “There are 7 spheres that shape nations, 7 realms that control the minds of multitudes. . . . The Apostolic assignment is to take those spheres, and bring them under the dominion of the Embassy of Heaven, the Kingdom of God.”[2]

What are the seven spheres of society they seek to conquer? Religion, family, government, education, media, arts/entertainment, and business.[3] Their mission is to place influential Christian leaders atop all seven of these summits—“all toward the ends of strategizing for global Christian supremacy.”[4]

The key players in this New Apostolic Reformation are self-proclaimed apostles and prophets, who claim direct messaging from heaven to organize and implement their national and global strategy, called the Seven Mountain Mandate.

But wait a minute. What’s so wrong about visioning for global or even national Christian supremacy? Didn’t Jesus command us to take the whole world for Him in His Great Commission? Yes, but Jesus’ commission is not about a global supremacy but rather a global mission to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). “Nationalism is an ideology that emphasizes collective loyalty, devotion, and allegiance to a nation-state.”[5] Whereas our primary allegiance must be to Christ and His mission.

Thus Paul Miller is right: “Nationalism is a dangerous path; Christian nationalism doubly so. . . . Nationalism turns Christianity primarily into a political project with all the temptations and compromises inherent to politics. . . . Jesus did not come among us to promote a certain cultural blueprint. The church doesn’t exist to do moral policework among the unconverted. The resurrection of Christendom is not the point of Christianity.”[6]

Tim Alberta, in his book The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, warns: “This effort to assert dominance over the culture is but a precondition for dominating the country itself.”[7]

And “dominating the country” and the world itself is the prophesied geo-religiopolitical ambition of the earth beast in Revelation 13. Global supremacy indeed!

Precisely because they feared such domination of the church over the state (as existed in England and Europe at the time), the Founders intentionally established this young nation on the bedrock principle of the separation of church and state. It comes as a surprise to budding Christian nationalists to discover that the Constitutional Convention of 1787 purposefully crafted “a godless Constitution,” in which “God and Christianity are nowhere to be found in the American Constitution, a reality that infuriated many at the time.”[8]

Consider these two familiar provisions in the United States Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”[9] and “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”[10] Clearly church and state—both essential elements to the American experiment—were from the beginning wisely kept separated.

Thus, to maintain that America was established upon the union of church and state is patently false. That the proponents of the New Apostolic Reformation, these self-appointed apostles and prophets, continue to propagate that falsehood is a shame.

Do I believe God raised up America? Absolutely. Do I believe our Founders intended to create a Christian nation? Absolutely not. “In a treaty with the Muslim nation Tripoli initiated by [President] Washington, completed by John Adams, and ratified by the Senate in 1797, the Founders declared that ‘the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion.’ ”[11]

But let us be clear. The separation of church and state does not mean the separation of God and country. In fact, as Ellen White observed, “The Lord has done more for the United States than for any other country upon which the sun shines.”[12] As Seventh-day Adventist Christians we need to be the first to testify that God has indeed blessed America.

But what lies ahead?

The speed with which the New Apostolic Reformation movement is realizing its ambitions for American political power is startling. Without naming them, there are now NAR apostles and prophets occupying influential positions in the highest echelons of the United States government. Their stated goal to provide their brand of Christianity for the United States government—and, by extension, for America—is being achieved.

Consider this prescient warning: “When the early church became corrupted by departing from the simplicity of the gospel and accepting heathen rites and customs, . . . she sought the support of the secular power. . . . In order for the United States to form an image of the beast [Rev. 13:14], the religious power [Christian nationalism] must so control the civil government that the authority of the state [Rev. 13:16] will also be employed by the church to accomplish her own ends.”[13]

Let a word to the wise be sufficient.

And please answer this question: “Which is more ‘Christian’: a democracy that respects the rule of law and treats all citizens equally, or a tyrant waving the cross?”[14]

[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/10/new-apostolic-reformation-christian-nationalism/

[2] Matthew Taylor, The Violent Take It by Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books, 2024), p. 157.

[3] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/seven-mountain-mandate/.

[4] Taylor, pp. 154-156.

[5] https://www.britannica.com/topic/nationalism.

[6] Paul D. Miller, “Baptizing Politics: Christian Nationalism in Global Perspective,” Liberty, September/October 2023, p. 9.

[7] Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism (New York: HarperCollins Publisher, 2023), p. 433.

[8] Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1996), pp. 27, 28.

[9] Amendment I of the United States Constitution.

[10] Article VI, clause 3, of the United States Constitution.

[11] Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation (New York: Random House, 2006) p. 19. (Emphasis supplied.)

[12] Ellen G. White, Maranatha: The Lord Is Coming (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Pub. Assn., 1976),p. 193.

[13] Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Mountain View, Calif.: Pacific Press Pub. Assn., 1911), p. 443.

[14] Miller.