With a faltering economy and failing moral values, America’s future is teetering. Best-selling author Joel C. Rosenberg sees only one way out of it, and that’s for us to turn our hearts back to God before it’s too late.
Rosenberg, who has written six New York Times best-selling novels, including The Last Jihad, The Last Days and The Ezekiel Option, implores Americans in his latest non-fiction book, Implosion: Can America Recover From Its Economic and Spiritual Challenges in Time?, “to get down on their knees and plead for God’s mercy,” and to return to the spiritual values our forefathers set down.
Charisma News caught up with Rosenberg recently to discuss America’s wake-up call, its role in the end times, and his new book coming out in the fall.
Charisma News: Do you believe there will be a sign prior to the rapture, one that will give Christians and non-Christians alike a wake-up call?
Rosenberg: We have already seen an awful lot of signs. I describe 20 of them that have come true. The rebirth of the state of Israel is the super sign. The facts that Israel was reborn in 1948 and that millions of Jews came back to the Holy Land after centuries of exile are alone the most dramatic fulfillment of end times prophecies.
Many people, including many church leaders, thought that would never come true. We are seeing all kinds of signs coming true, including that one, and it tells us we are getting close. As Jesus said in Matthew 24, when you see all these things happening, he is near and his hand is right on the door.
Now, I don’t know when the rapture is going to be by the day or the hour; nobody knows. But, we won’t be able to tell the Lord we didn’t have warning. He gave us a list of signs and said I’m not going to tell you exactly when. But, here is what you should be watching for. He said that when you see these things, know that I am about to walk in the door.
Charisma News: Your indications are that the Babylon mentioned in Bible prophecy is in Iraq. So, what then about America? Some believe it is, but isn’t it your contention that the U.S. isn’t specifically mentioned in the Bible?
Rosenberg: That’s the No. 1 question I get asked and is one of the reasons I wrote the book. The bottom line is there are a lot of theories over the years over what prophecy in the Bible might refer to the United States. A careful analysis of all of them indicates that there is not a single direct reference to the United States as a player in the last days.
So, the question really is ‘Why not?’ If we are already in the last days, how could the United States not be a clearly defined player? The answer is, we don’t know because the Bible doesn’t say.
Something happens by which the U.S. is paralyzed, sidelined or neutralized and therefore unable or unwilling to project influence to be a major force in the major events of the last days. That’s what Implosion is about, walking through a whole series of things that could happen to the United States, things that are consistent with Bible prophecies and what the Bible says will happen to various nations in the last days.
There is not a verse specifically about what happens to us. You have to look at a whole range of scenarios and say any one of these, or even a combination of them, is possible.
Charisma News: Can you talk about your new book coming out in the fall, The Invested Life?
Rosenberg: The book is subtitled, “Making Disciples of All Nations, One Person at a Time.” You actually are the first person that has asked me about that. When you boil down all the failure of the American church, you could summarize it in the fact that we are experiencing epic failure of discipleship.
