God sent us the prosperity of the 1920s to show that He loves us, but we didn’t listen, so He sent us the Depression as an increasing attempt to inspire us to “call on His Name, humbling ourselves and praying, seeking His face, and turning from our wicked ways.” But we did not. Thus, the world turned its back on the Jews, and Hitler’s genocidal extermination machine closed in on them. Few acted to help until it was too late. A third of the world’s Jewish population—six million men, women, and children—were lost with little hope of salvation.
Look around: We are going through much the same cycle today. The prosperity of the 1990s made us even more selfish than we were in the decades before. September 11th and its aftermath hit us far worse than the stock market crash on Black Tuesday of 1929. What was one of the main causes of the Depression? A new concept that had been introduced at that time called “buying on credit.” The entire nation had borrowed to buy things. The economy soared because of increased consumer spending, and when the debts were called in, too few had the cash to pay. America lapsed into the Depression, and then World War II.
America had enjoyed prosperity in the 90s, but terrorists struck on September 11, 2001, and then a recession followed. Since that time, our country has been drawn into conflict after conflict—Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, with the looming prospect of another Cold War with Russia and possibly a confrontation of some sort with Iran. And again, the Jews hang on the edge of a precipice as anti-Zionism arises the world over. As the U.S. and Great Britain have been the only nations with enough moral backbone to confront terrorism, so we are also the only nations that can stand up and defend Israel and the Jewish people. We didn’t in the 1920s and 1930s. Will we do it now?
Isaiah 24:6 declares: “Therefore a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt. Therefore earth’s inhabitants are burned up, and very few are left.” Does God fight nations? Yes, He does. Zechariah 14:2-3 states that He will fight all nations that come against Jerusalem. Why would we not allow the only democracy in the Middle East to join us in fighting Iraq? It was simply because we feared the anti-Semitic nations in the area, those who hate Israel, and are afraid they will withhold the oil that lubricates our economy.
Just as Abraham Lincoln proclaimed that the Civil War was God’s judgment for the bigotry behind slavery, the Great Depression was surely God’s judgment for the bigotry of anti-Semitism that was buried in the souls of many Americans. Seeds of that same anti-Semitism that fed and fueled the Holocaust are alive and well in 21st century America, no matter how dormant they seem to recently have been.
